FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

The Raptor was returning an ambassadorial team from negotiations on Elgdos, a frightfully diverse planet that had 11 different sentient species and was almost literally worth its weight in gold. When the planet had formed, it came from the byproducts of three different supernovas. As a result, the planet was mineral heavy, with nearly inexhaustible supplies of precious metals like gold, silver and platinum, as well as lithium, cadmium, and titanium, all of which were needed for the electrical components in every starship. Given that Elgdos was unaffiliated, the Confederation had decided that it was better to court them now before the Urtheans invaded.

Lieutenant Michelle O'mara looked over her shoulder. She could have sworn she heard someone whispering her name. That didn't make sense though, since she was alone in her cabin aboard the Raptor as it surged through warp space. A couple of her blue feathers molted from her head plumage as she turned her attention back to her console.

She glared at the feathers. Recently, she hadn't been stress molting as much. The only thing that made her stutter these days was when Rivas was being cute. She paused in her thoughts. She wondered if, maybe, she should say something to him. But every time she tried to work up the courage to do so, she ultimately gave up. After everything that had happened, part of her was surprised she hadn't gotten worse. There was a lot about herself that she was surprised about, but there wasn't much time to worry about those kinds of things.

Her attention was pulled back to the readouts on the console. Once the Raptor dropped off the diplomats, they would be taking a short trip over to the Gyre Nebula. There had been reports of anomalous activity in the area. It was unclear whether the readings were the results of enemy weapons tests or just the nebula misbehaving. Whatever the case, Starfleet needed answers.

O'mara had her own personal interest in the Gyre Nebula. If the data she had was accurate, a star had recently ignited in the nebula and would be properly visible for the first time ever when they arrived. The idea of being the first one to see a brand-new star made her talons itch with glee.

He watched from a slight distortion in time. This one was interesting. She was so dedicated, so focused, so intelligent...so eager to learn. And she was improving herself. But it wasn't just that. She was the one that had stood her ground when the lunar moth was born. She was the one that had handled everything in an objective fashion, and had cared for life regardless of its form.

"Oh yes..." Coyote grinned, "I think we can play."

============================

A God's Gambit

Episode 10A

By Saurex Conoway

Editor/Consultant: Vakash Darkbane

2021

============================

Harry Martinez sighed, stretching and glancing over the reports Terri Lu had brought him. The one nice thing he had found about not engaging in combat maneuvers for over a week was that it created far less paperwork. The Urtheans had been utterly silent for a while now, so Starfleet had decided to take the time to try and bolster their presence on the border by probing the willingness of nearby planets and systems to join the Confederation. The Raptor had been dispatched with a team of diplomats to attempt to secure Elgdos and was now returning to Starbase 186. As soon as the diplomats were off, the Raptor would be off to investigate erratic readings coming out of the Gyre Nebula.

The Ready Room door chime went off.

"Come in," Harry called.

The doors parted and Lt. O'mara stepped inside.

"Sir," she said with a slight smile, "I have the geology reports you had us running during the negotiations. It would appear that, despite a few thousand years of mining, if the Urtheans were to conduct their usual stripping operation they would end up with the resources to build multiple fleets and have enough resources left over to conduct centuries of R&D. It would be a real problem if the...."

Harry glanced up when she failed to continue. She was looking over her shoulder. A few stray feathers molted off the back of her head.

"Lieutenant O'mara?" He prompted.

She quickly turned back to him. "S-s-sorry, sir, thought someone was calling my name."

Harry frowned. He hadn't heard anything and the coms were silent. "Are you feeling alright Lieutenant?"

"Just fine," she replied without a hint of stutter, "er...here...the report."

"It's been a while since I've heard you stutter," Harry noted as he took the datapad from her.

"I suppose so, sir," she said, "I think I'm just tired. Diplomatic stuff wears me out."

Harry chuckled. "I think it wears all of us out."

O'mara smiled. "Did you need anything else?"

"Not right now," he replied. "We're about an hour out from Starbase 186. We'll be on standby until the diplomats disembark, then it's off to the Gyre Nebula. Dismissed, Lieutenant."

"Thank you, sir," O'mara said.

Harry smiled to himself as she left. It felt like it had been ages since he had met her, his stuttering, self-conscious, easily startled Science Officer. She had changed so much, and it was all for the better.

The more he thought about it, the more Harry was forced to admit that a lot of his officers had changed. O'mara was becoming stronger. Fara was opening up and becoming more than just her work. Even Rivas seemed less cross. Harry was sure that O'mara's influence was to blame for that positive turn. Jarkar was...well...he was still his usual charming self.

"Maybe some haven't changed that much," Harry muttered as she began signing off reports again.

He had barely put his name to a dozen reports when the hair on his head stood on end. One hand hovering over his com badge, he glanced around. There was no one around, but the feeling that something was in the room with him wouldn't dislodge itself.

"Computer," he said, "scan the Ready Room."

There was a slight chirping sound from his terminal before the computer reported. "ONE LIFE SIGN: COMMANDER HARRY MARTINEZ. OXYGEN, NITROGEN, CARBON, AND METHANE READINGS ALL WITHIN REGULATION. GRAVITY NORMAL. NO ANOMALIES DETECTED."

Harry stood slowly, his eyes still tearing the room apart. This nearly electric tension was familiar, but he couldn't put his finger on it. All he knew was that something was in the room with him.

When the door chime rang out, he nearly leapt out of his skin. Snarling, he straightened his uniform and said, "Who is it?"

"Terri," came the reply.

"Enter," he said, his attention back on the room at large.

"Sorry to bother you sir," Terri Lu said as she slipped inside. "There's a handful of inventory manifests that engineering just finished that...are you alright? You look kind of, well, O'mara-ish."

Harry chuckled. "It's nothing. The inventory?"

Terri handed him the datapad. She was trying to read him as he glanced over the data, but he kept his entire body blank. It was bad enough with Starfleet constantly questioning whether the Raptor was stable. The last thing he needed was for his crew to start filing reports that they thought their captain was going off his nut.

Without comment, he signed the inventory reports and handed the datapad back to Terri.

"Thank you," he nodded to her as he turned back to his desk.

"Are you sure you're alright?"

Harry smirked at her. "We haven't been shot at in a while. I'm starting to get jumpy."

"Right," Terri laughed. "Well, we could have Jakar use you for target practice, if that'd make you feel any better?"

"I doubt he needs the practice," Harry remarked.

"Can't argue with that, sir," Terri said as she turned to leave. "Ensign Land wanted me to tell you our ETA is 50 minutes."

Harry watched her go with a pensive glare. He never could tell what was going on with Jack and Terri. One day they were thick as thieves, the next she was ready to keelhaul him. It was a marvel that neither of them ever got whiplash from trying to keep up with their relationship.

With a little less intensity, the feeling of eyes being on him returned. This time Harry was able to brush the feeling off. It likely was just jitters, his own gut trying to anticipate an attack that wasn't there to begin with.

* * *

The Raptor docked under the flawless skill of its crew and began the ordeal of disembarking the envoys and taking on new supplies. Cargo was on the move. Personnel were flitting back and forth. Fara was barking at someone about an umbilical connection that was trying to ground out. To the casual observer, it was all worse than a page in one of those "find the hidden object" books. But, to the crew of the Raptor, it was all as obvious as the noses on their snouts.

A particular snout was milling among the crew. He was, coloration wise, no different from the other coyotes laboring around him. The difference was that he was not from Corneria. In fact, the place he was from had been gone for so long that even its name had fallen apart. His own name had been chewed up and spat out by the void so many times now that he just kept it to Coyote.

There you are, he grinned to himself as he caught sight of blue plumage and heard a snippet of excited warbling. The little bird, O'mara, was the one he was looking for. Sure, the Captain was an amusing subject, but this one seemed like she would be more fun. Perhaps tracking her down in such mundane fashion was beneath Coyote, but somehow it just felt right to track her this way, watching her oversee the loading of fresh supplies for the little onboard lab.

The minds around him were oblivious to his presence. Even the eyes that did fall on him ignored him. Had they bothered to look closer, all they would have seen was a Cornerian coyote in an Ensign's uniform. With the powers of the cosmos in his paws, it was easy to pass unseen, even in a more mundane than usual fashion.

Tingles ran over his ears and tail. Scanners tended to make his more mundane disguises itch in funny ways. The army of electronic eyes the Raptor possessed were watching the creatures scurrying around him.

"Oooh...to play or not to play," Coyote pondered, leering up at the ship. "Oh! I can't say no to such pretty toys! Besides...he's gonna come in handy."

* * *

Jakar frowned. For a fraction of a second one of the deck scanners had spiked. It was the sort of thing one could dismiss as a trick of the light, but Jakar poked the console anyway. He hadn't lived this long by being complacent when something seemed out of the ordinary.

But there was nothing out of the ordinary to find. There was a little energy spike from one of the personnel scanners that was watching the gangplank, but nothing more. This could have been caused by one a million things, from a minor radiation leak from one of the torpedoes being loaded to someone with a prosthetic walking by. Just to be on the safe side, Jakar drew up a quick record of the spike, filed it away, and began running diagnostics. Sensor spikes fell into the category of things that Fara was supposed to look into.

"Is there a problem, Chief?" Harry asked as he entered the bridge.

"Just an anomalous reading," Jakar grunted, "but I wanted to double check."

"They're hooking up two new electromagnetic scanners," Terri Lu noted from her station. "Fara mentioned that we might get some twitchy readings when they plug them in for the first time."

Jakar just grunted and continued running the diagnostic. It came back with a clean bill of health for all systems under his control.

"All systems show green," he reported over his shoulder as Harry settled into the captain's chair.

"Thank you Chief," said Harry. "We'll be off in a few minutes. Mr. Land, start preparing to take us out under impulse power."

"Working on it, Skipper," Land said as he stretched and sat up in his chair.

Jakar's attention was pulled back to his console as the docking crew finished up. The cargo bay was bustling with Ensigns getting everything organized. Engineering was scurrying as they got the new scanners integrated into the system. The rest of the bridge was focused on the task of undocking and slipping away from the starbase and back into the void beyond.

Like he had stuck a finger in a power conduit, every inch of Jakar's body went tingly. His thick skin crawled as he glanced around the bridge. He knew that sensation and he didn't like it. There had only been one other time he had felt it. That day had ended with an exploding moon and a giant space moth.

With the bridge appearing perfectly normal, and no one else seeming to have felt the same jolt, Jakar began flicking through commands on his console. If the thing that called itself Coyote was nearby, Jakar would be ready this time.

Given how often the Raptor had been battered, a fair number of shipboard records had been lost. However, many of them had backups on the starbase. There were even a few that had been meticulously remastered after some rough encounters. Jakar took the few moments they had left before the umbilicals came undone to pull all the records he could in the general timeframe of the lunar moth event.

With the data safely tucked away in his console's memory, he went back to his pre-flight checks.

The bump of the ship pushing back from the slip was a familiar sensation. Everything on the screen swirled past and then the docking doors slipped by. Jakar ran through his procedures automatically, reporting normal functions, not really paying attention to anything other than his console's readings. Everything was as normal as it could be.

As the Raptor leapt to warp five, his console flickered. Jakar glared at it. In a split-second decision, he decided not to say anything. Instead, he began running another diagnostic. Everything came back clear, with one exception: The records he had pulled were gone.

"Is there something wrong, Chief?" The question came from Harry.

"Sir," he said, still digging through the files, "before we embarked, I downloaded some extra records to cross check diagnostics for this console. My console just flickered and those files are now gone."

Jakar could feel Harry get up and approach. No one ever expected him to lie, and it wasn't exactly a lie. He had pulled records and he did intend to cross-reference them with the sensor glitch, just not for the exact reasons he stated.

Harry glanced over the console. "Will this affect our ability to operate?"

The Commander had become very tense whenever something was slightly amiss. Jakar couldn't really blame him. When the Raptor threw a fit, it tended to do so in spectacular fashion.

"May I speak to you privately?"

Jakar could feel the bridge raise its collective hackles. Even Harry looked a little startled. All of them knew that Jakar's sense of danger was sharper than a tack and no one had ever seen him nervous. In fact, none of them could tell if he was nervous now.

"Sure," said Harry, eyeing Jakar warily, "let's talk in the Ready Room."

The two of them stepped into the Ready Room. As the door closed, Harry did his best to read Jakar. Like always, the grumpy old echidna was inscrutable.

"Sir," Jakar began, straightening his uniform, "there was a small sensor irregularity on the gangplank monitor. A diagnostic showed no errors, but I filed a report for engineering to take a look at the sensor if they have a moment." He hesitated and Harry saw the first crack in Jakar's armor he had ever witnessed. "Before we embarked, I got a feeling. It's difficult to explain, sir, so I'll understand if you don't take this at face value, but...it was the same sensation that Coyote creep gave off."

Harry sat up straighter. The nightmarish encounter with the creature called Coyote had been one for the books and Harry had no desire to ever cross paths with that thing again.

"What are you talking about?"

Jakar shrugged. "It was a feeling, the kind you get when someone is sneaking up on you. Anyway, sir, I pulled the records of the event we have and intended to peruse them while the eggheads do their bit with the nebula. However, the glitch just now seems to have erased the files I just downloaded."

Harry was on his feet now, pacing the well-worn path behind his chair. Part of him was more than ready to dismiss Jakar's concerns. It hadn't been that long since the repairs from their last disaster and a few of the ship's systems were still twitchy. Terri had brought him a handful of reports about files going missing, but it was usually things that had been lost during the repairs.

Then again, Harry wasn't really sure what the Coyote was capable of. Even with all the digging O'mara had done after the incident, they still had no solid data on this creature. Even the data they had managed to accidentally capture during the incident had gone missing.

Harry stopped short. There were shells of the data from that incident, including Harry's personal encounters with Coyote. The records of Land being thawed out, records of where Harry was each time he encountered Coyote, but there were no records of the creature itself. It was like the Coyote was just a hole in the cosmos. However, Harry's fist had a very clear memory of how it felt to connect with that creature's jaw.

That moment, as Harry recalled, had startled them both. Coyote had seemed alarmed that Harry had hit him. Harry, now that he was thinking about it, he was surprised he hadn't just been erased from being.

"Do you think that bastard is messing with us again?"

"I can't say, sir," Jakar grunted, "but even with the glitches left over from the repairs, this seems like too much of a coincidence. But, honestly, sir, I don't know what we could possibly do to prepare for any future event involving the creature known as Coyote."

Sighing, Harry braced himself against the back of the chair. "So...is that a really fancy way of saying that there's nothing we can do?"

"This thing literally froze Ensign Land," Jakar replied evenly. "It also seems to have the ability to move unseen, ignore the laws of nature, manipulate matter at will and traverse space and time like it's strolling down the promenade. I have no doubt that there is nothing we could do to possibly prepare for a visit from this creature other than make a sandwich for him." Jakar hesitated, his brow crinkling. "Sir?"

"What?"

"This thing...it did harm a crewmember, but I don't recall it ever actively trying to kill us," said Jakar. "In the end, again to the best of my memory, it was more concerned with the fate of that creature that came out of the moon. Its motives could be similar to our Prime Directive."

Harry raised an eyebrow. "Did you just defend that creature, Chief?" Jakar opened his mouth to reply, but Harry held up a hand. "It was rhetorical, Chief. It's actually something I've thought about. While it may be true that damage was caused by that creature hatching, it wasn't nearly as catastrophic as if they had nuked their own moon." Harry chuckled. "Makes me shudder to think Coyote might actually have a motive similar to ours."

"All the same, sir, I'd like to try and do any sort of prep work I can in case this thing comes back to haunt us."

"That sounds like a good idea, Chief." Harry sighed, running his hands down his face. "Can't we just have one normal, quiet science mission? I just want one!"

Jakar chuckled. "I don't think that's our fate, sir."

"Maybe it isn't," Harry relented as they both moved towards the door. "Keep your little project under wraps, Chief. I don't need anyone going into panic mode."

"Understood, sir," Jakar nodded as he followed him back onto the bridge.

* * *

One of the primary draws of the Gyre Nebula was its coloration. Many nebulae were flush with royal purples, deep blues, violent oranges and yellows. The Gyre Nebula was a network of a dozen bright, swirling arms of mixing tones of reds and bright greens. Streaks of ebony rose and fell throughout it, leaving it with an appearance of an exploding cloud of blood.

O'mara was practically glued to the porthole, her eyes picking apart the nebula. The feathers around her neck were all fluffed up as she traced the end of the 7th Cluster Arm of the nebula, called the Constrictor. What she was looking for was supposedly in that arm.

She had started scanning as soon as the Raptor was in range of the nebula. While most of the crew was busy scanning for enemy movements, she had been using the two new scanners to look for the new star she had read about. As far as she could tell, it was there. The strongest readings were coming from the tip of the Constrictor. Most of space moved really slow, but this star seemed to be in a hurry. Between the initial readings and the readings she had taken during the journey, the new celestial body had moved several hundred kilometers.

It wouldn't be long before she would have to go check with her instruments. She had every available ounce of power directed at the tip of the Constrictor in anticipation of the star's emergence. By now she felt confident that the computer could handle the micro adjustments required to track radiation and electromagnetic readings, but she wanted to oversee the visual scans herself. It wasn't often one got to look at a brand-new star and she wasn't going to pass up the chance.

The door of the mess hall opened, but O'mara ignored it. This was far more interesting than anyone that could possibly walk through those doors.

Every feather on her body quivered as someone stepped up beside her. It was a primal response, designed to make an Avian look bigger than they were to frighten off predators. Normally, it was triggered by the fight-or-flight instinct. The sudden torrent of adrenaline that crashed through her system made her squeak as she lurched away from the observation port, whirling to face the newcomer.

He didn't look all that suspicious, a Cornerian coyote with the typical bronze coat and piercing eyes, a bit bowlegged, but decked out in an Ensign's uniform and a charming smile. Before she could relax, he opened his mouth and a voice that tormented some of her worst nightmare issued forth.

"Fear not fair feathered maiden! I am here to show you wonders beyond your sad mortal comprehension!"

O'mara took several quick steps back, her eyes quickly tracing across the room. There were four other crewmen in the mess hall, but they weren't moving. They didn't look frozen. They were simply idle, as though trapped in a single cell from an old strip of record film. She chanced a glance at the door.

"Tut tut," Coyote chided, wagging a finger at her, "don't run! It isn't nice to run away when someone just wants to play."

"What do you want?" O'mara snapped.

Coyote recoiled a fraction of an inch, his eyebrows jumping in shock. "What happened to that cute little stutter of yours? Gracious how you've grown!"

O'mara took another step away, edging towards the door. Coyote sighed, rolling his eyes, and held up his hands.

"Alright alright," he said, "I get it. I am an intimidating sight, given how perfect I look. I'm actually just here to reward you for your good work. You stuck to your guns when the Lumarin--"

"The what?"

Coyote grinned as he sidled forward. "Still eager to learn, eh? A Lumarin is exactly what you helped save from nuclear annihilation, at no small risk to your own feathered self. Even Mr. Martinez was ready to rest on the laurels of those primitive brutes, but you wouldn't stand idle and trust them. You fought them right to the breaking point. Bravo!"

"Thanks," O'mara cringed as Coyote came toe-to-toe with her, "but I still don't get why you would want to show yourself. You went to a lot of trouble to make sure we lost any record we had of you."

"Oh that," Coyote waved, "I have appearances to keep up! Besides, you have logs from many of your onboard friends to prove I was about...though some might pass it off as mass delusion, space madness you know? Can't stare too long into the void after all, can you?"

"Clever."

"I can be," Coyote grinned wickedly as O'mara backed up and he followed. "I see you've taken an interest in the new star. Would you like to say hello to it?"

Before she could answer, O'mara felt the world shift around her. It was what she imagined a piece of laundry might have felt like during washing as everything crumpled and folded over itself. When everything resolved, her eyes flew wide. Out of instinct her hands clamped over her beak. Whether this was a hallucination or real, she couldn't tell. All she knew was that she was now floating in the void.

A cackle drew her attention. Coyote was floating about a yard away.

"You can breathe silly," he laughed. "I borrowed some atmosphere from the nebula, made it comparable to your home world air, and even added a fresh citrus scent!"

Reluctantly, O'mara let go of the breath she had managed to catch. Oranges and lemons pranced across her sense of smell as she took in a very comfortable breath.

"A-a-are we..."

"We are indeed!" Coyote crowed, flitting around her like a gnat. "Space! The final fun-tier!"

O'mara did her best to move and quickly found that the rules of zero-g applied easily here. However, because there was air, there was resistance. She was able to twist and turn, even move a little forward and backwards. Suddenly she had to flail to a stop. The crown of the Constrictor was around 400 meters away from where she was floating.

From the left-hand edge of the crown, a blinding white blue glow was shifting. The gasses parted, the dust rolled inward, and a star, massive and fiery, emerged from the maelstrom of material. Trails of debris tumbled along behind as it moved, consuming O'mara's view. She was so close that she was certain she should have been consumed by the unspeakable heat of the celestial body drifting before her. Instead, she felt no change in her surroundings.

Streamers of nebular material fell out of the star's gravity well as it surged onward. It really was moving surprisingly fast for such a large object. O'mara gasped as it came straight at her.

"Just relax," Coyote whispered in her ear. She could feel his hands clamp down on her shoulders.

Before she could react, they were engulfed by the star. There was no heat, no pain, nothing unpleasant. All around there were sounds O'mara couldn't name. For an instant, she caught a glimpse of atoms colliding, bursting into atomic fire, reforming into new elements, and then doing their dance all over again.

The heart of the star slid past, a mass of such explosive heat and power that it seemed to radiate pride in itself. Hesitantly, O'mara reached out a hand. Her talons disappeared into the raging core of the star and she gasped. Desire, intent, a meaning and purpose beyond her comprehension took hold of her hand. It held her as though it had locked eyes with her and for a moment the cosmos made perfect sense.

Her entire body shook as the star let go of her hand and drifted onward. There was material to collect, planets to form, life to warm into being, to guide, to protect and cherish, and there was an eternity to accomplish this task.

"Now that's a proper introduction!" Coyote smirked at her.

O'mara couldn't reply. One hand was outstretched to the fleeing star, the other clutched to her chest. A chill ran through her as the knowledge that no one would ever understand what she had just experienced settled on her. For one instant, she had gone beyond the limitations of all the knowledge ever acquired by her people, by any people for all she knew, and seen the soul of something so vast that it was incomprehensible.

"W-w-what...what w-w-was...."

"You touched the heart of a star," Coyote said matter-of-factly. "To be honest, I was touching you, so you borrowed a bit of my understanding and were able to communicate with the star--"

"You can do that?!"

Coyote shrugged as O'mara twisted around to face him. She ended up upside down, but was still on eye level with him.

"There's a lot that I can do," he said. "What? You thought I was relegated to just babysitting cosmic eggs and tormenting primitive lifeforms? Pssh! Shame on you, silly birdy! My power is knowledge limited only by imagination! You can't know something unless you talk to it, right? What do all your machines do when they scan things? They're just talking, a harsh mechanical language to be sure, but it's still them communicating with the thing they're scanning. Then you talk to your toys and with the information they give you, you learn. That's what I do as well, but I moved past machine learning long before your species was even a hiccup in the universe's worst nightmares."

O'mara swallowed and closed her eyes. She was still reeling from what had just happened, but she wasn't about to let it crush her. She had been crushed once before. That would never happen again.

"Why? Why show me any of this?"

Coyote grinned wickedly. "I want to give you some of my power."

O'mara's eyes locked with his. "What?"

"I thought I was still speaking your language," Coyote frowned playfully. "Should I try a different dialect?"

"That's not what I asked," O'mara snapped. "Why would you even say something like that?"

"Do you want my powers or not?" Coyote said flatly. "This is nonrefundable and nonnegotiable. A simple yes or no is all I am asking for."

O'mara froze halfway to a response. Her gut was squirming. This had to be a trick of some sort. She was going to go mad or become a giant cosmic moth or something equally unpleasant. That kind of power could easily destroy someone, especially someone like her. She couldn't even imagine what she would do with power like that.

A little flutter issued from her heart as it replayed the moment she had touched the heart of the star. Everything had flown into perfect order for the briefest of moments. She was out in space, breathing and moving about without mechanical aid. She had just witnessed the majesty of a newborn star in a manner that no scanner could ever hope to replicate. If that was what Coyote's power could do, what harm could it bring?

"Wait," she growled, shaking her head. "What about all those stories? My people have a bevy of legends about a dastardly dog-faced being that would lure them to the ground where they would be killed."

"Or they would go on to gain fabulous reward," he reminded her and she cringed, aware of the truth she had willfully omitted. "Wasn't there a legend about one that wished to fly to the sun? He did so, but in doing so he was destroyed, because the sun was too powerful for any mortal to handle. You just flew through the sun and you didn't singe a single feather." Coyote put a finger to his cheek and looked wistfully. "Perhaps,if he'd been more specific in his wishes, he wouldn't have been incinerated. Oh well! You live and you learn!"

O'mara started to wring her hands as a few feathers molted into the void. If she rejected this moment, it would be lost forever. This being--Coyote--was offering her the keys to the universe. All she had to do was hold out her hand and let him drop them onto her palm.

"Why me?"

Coyote grinned. "You're objective and careful. This is a rare opportunity few have experienced, but that's another story for another time. Yes or no, little bird?"

Taking a deep breath of citrusy air, O'mara squeezed her eyes shut and held out her hand.

"Welcome to the club," she heard Coyote whisper as something hot touched down on her palm.

* * *

Harry frowned, rubbing his nose and cursing. Usually, the door to the mess hall opened without any prompting when someone approached, especially when no alerts were active. He had bounced off of it and was now standing before the still closed door.

"Damnit," he grumbled, "what's broken now?"

Before his hand could tap his combadge, the door opened. An Ensign slipped past with a muttered "Captain" and then the door snapped shut again. Harry approached again and the door opened. He stepped through it, glaring at it over his shoulder as it closed again.

"Something wrong sir?"

Harry did his best to smile as he turned to face O'mara. "Nothing Lieutenant. Just trying to get through the door. Did it give you any trouble?"

"No, sir," O'mara replied.

"Probably just another glitch," Harry grumbled as he approached her. "And here I was hoping to relax a bit."

"I know the feeling," O'mara admitted. "The star came out!"

"I noticed," Harry said as they both walked over to one of the observation ports.

The new star was moving at an unprecedented rate. Scanners indicated that it was traveling at roughly 500 kilometers per hour. In terms of space travel, it was a snail's pace. For a star, however; it was unheard of.

"I thought you'd be monitoring sensors by now," Harry said idly as they watched the star drift away from the tip of the Constrictor.

"I trust they'll do their jobs without me," O'mara said. "I got so busy watching I couldn't leave. I mean...no one has ever seen this before! It's a once in a lifetime opportunity and I had to take it."

"Hmm...that's fair," Harry relented. "Its speed is also exceptional. As best our scanners can tell, that's what caused the disturbance that got us out here in the first place. Due to its composition, it has a powerful gravity well and its movement is causing ripples in space."

"It's in a hurry," O'mara said calmly. "It knows where it needs to go and what it needs to do."

Harry raised an eyebrow at her. No one would have put it past O'mara to make a comment about gravitational distortions brought about by mass and speed. What no one, not even Harry, would have ever expected was such a non-scientific answer.

"I see the event has you quite taken," he said cautiously.

O'mara gave a little shake like she hadn't been paying attention and smiled at him. "Oh yes! Sorry if that was a weird answer, sir."

"It's fine," Harry said, turning his attention back to the nebula, "just not something I'd thought I'd ever hear you say."

O'mara touched him on the arm. After a pause the length of a breath, he recoiled. It was like making contact with a live circuit in a control system. O'mara was smiling at him as he rubbed his arm.

"Sorry, sir," she said.

"What just happened," Harry asked, glancing at O'mara's hands.

"You're worried about me, I know," O'mara said sweetly, "but really, I'm fine. You worry about all of us, about this ship. You feel personally responsible for what happens to us, but you don't let it eat you alive. You know you can't let that happen because if it does, you'll lose control. You won't let that happen. That's good."

Harry frowned. The situation was off, but not so far off that he could place his finger on what was bothering him.

"Are you sure you're alright Lieutenant?"

She chuckled. "See? Still worried."

"You usually don't talk like this," Harry said, "or act like this. What's going on?"

"I'm just excited about the star," O'mara grinned sheepishly, her demeanor shifting to its usual shy self. "I should go check on my scanner readings."

"The readings can wait," said Harry as she stepped around him. "I want you to drop by sickbay first."

She paused, her back still to him. "Why, Captain? Can't you handle the idea that we can go on a single mission without something bad happening? Or is it the fact that I'm not so fragile any more that bothers you? Enjoy the view, sir."

Harry stood there, shell-shocked, as O'mara sauntered out of the mess hall, the door opening and closing as normally as ever. He was fairly certain she had just ignored him. What had him locked in place with his mouth hanging open was the fact that she had, as far as he could tell, just condescended to him.

What was worse was that he couldn't think of a way to argue back. Since he had set foot aboard the Raptor it had been a nearly endless parade of catastrophe. It seemed like even the "quiet" missions had a way of blowing up in his face. Even if he wouldn't say it out loud, he had been expecting this mission to do the same thing. In his heart, he was ready for Xox to come bursting through the nebula, compression beams roaring and ready for a fight to the death. He wouldn't have even been surprised if a big green hand had appeared out of nowhere and grabbed the Raptor to drag it off to some unknown doom.

The one thing that could have caught him off guard was indeed happening. This mission was going quietly.

With a sigh, Harry slumped into a seat. It didn't seem possible to him that he had become so paranoid in such a short amount of time, but it was hard to reject that conclusion.

Someone sat across from him. He glanced up to find Dr. Okan settling into the seat on the other side of the small table.

"O'mara seems to be in a really good mood," Okan noted.

Harry just nodded.

"What's eating you?" Okan wondered.

"Doc...I need your professional opinion. Do you think I'm paranoid?"

Doctor Okan raised an eyebrow. "Not really, though I'm no psychologist. What's got you thinking that?"

"Just something O'mara said," Harry sighed, running a hand over his eyes. "I keep thinking something is going to go wrong, like it always seems to."

"We do have perfectly uneventful missions," Okan reminded him with a wry smile.

"I know," said Harry, "but it just feels like most of the time things go so wrong for us. I guess I just wish we could have more of those uneventful missions."

"You'd go nuts if we did," Okan scoffed. "Look, we were sent to check on screwy readings from a nebula. Turns out a new star is creating gravitonic waves and there's nothing to worry about. Once the eggheads have all their numbers, we can go back to the starbase and put our feet up."

"You really believe that?"

"Don't you?"

Harry rubbed his chin, sorting through the jumbled thoughts in his head. "I want to believe it," he confessed, "but it's hard."

"Don't worry about it," said Okan. "You're a starship captain. If you didn't worry about stuff, we'd all think you were slacking off. Here, lemme get you a drink and we'll watch the nebula for a bit."

Harry chuckled. "Sounds good doc."

* * *

Fara tapped her foot, mentally making funny pictures out of the data points scrolling across the screen of her console. This mission had quickly turned into a very dull one. The Raptor was behaving itself for once. Even the new scanners were working flawlessly. There had been a couple of little spikes in power consumption, but other than that there was nothing for Engineering to do. She was hoping this would be wrapped up soon. Nikolai was due to be swinging by the station for a week-long visit, starting today. She was more than eager to get back to the station as a result.

"Bored," she announced as she got up and stretched. She heard Land chuckle.

"What are our readings looking like?" Jakar asked from his seat.

Fara rolled her eyes and glanced at her terminal. "Five by five across the board. There's literally nothing out of the ordinary going on."

Jakar just grunted. He had been busy at his station since he had returned from his little talk with Harry. Part of Fara was dying to know what the echidna was up to, but she also knew he'd never say.

The turbolift opened and O'mara skipped onto the bridge. Fara watched her as she settled in at her console and began cheerfully logging the data the scanners were sucking up.

"You're in a good mood," Fara noted.

"Of course! No one's ever seen a brand-new star before!" O'mara chirped happily. "It looks like the readings the starbase picked up we're coming off the star too, so there's nothing actually wrong out here. Just as soon as I get all this logged, we can start heading back."

"Yippee," Land sighed, "guess I'll start plotting our course."

Fara smirked at the Ensign. She'd noticed he'd been trying to be more proactive. Now it wasn't uncommon for Harry to ask for a course to be laid in and Land to respond that it was already set up. It wasn't a bad change. Perhaps Terri's influence was starting to rub off on him. She glanced over at Terri Lu, who looked just as bored as Fara felt, sitting back in her chair idly listening to the earwig and slowly turning the pages of the book she was reading. It seemed that all of them had gotten so used to having to respond to constant attacks that not being under siege was leaving them all a bit out of sorts.

"Hey Terri," O'mara called as she worked, "when we get back to the starbase, wanna go get drinks or something?"

Every head on the bridge pivoted to look at O'mara. She was still typing happily away, seemingly unphased by the question.

"Um...I guess," Terri said, "but since when are you the one asking if people wanna go do fun stuff? Don't you have mushrooms to grow or something?"

O'mara giggled. "You guys are always taking me out so I thought I'd return the favor."

"You really are in a good mood," Fara said as she leaned against O'mara's console. "I don't think I've ever seen you this bouncy before."

"We just witnessed something no one has ever seen before," O'mara smiled. "I'm just super excited! I want to get the data back so we can start feeding it into the network. There's some information here on gravitational distortions that are really interesting."

"Really?" Fara leaned over to peek at the data that was open on the screen. "Wow! This thing is actually bending space like a warp engine! How fast is it moving?"

"586.7 kilometers per hour," O'mara reported as Fara tried to read more, but the screen flicked to the next data set.

"Send me a copy of those scans," Fara said, turning to her console. "I wasn't aware they could just move like that."

The data appeared almost instantly and Fara began pouring over it. It was unlike anything she had ever seen.

Warp drives ran on antimatter being energized through dilithium crystal structures. The electromagnetic response generated a great deal of plasma, but it also created a field that bent space. Using the vented plasma as well as an ionic propulsion system, a starship could slide through the bends it created in space and move at faster-than-light speeds. The star seemed to be doing this on a much larger scale, but naturally.

"Land, take a look at this," Fara said over her shoulder as she sent him the readings.

"Huh," Land frowned as he looked at the data now crawling across his screen. "Wild! A star that generates a warp field! How'd that even happen?"

"Who knows," Fara shrugged, "any ideas O'mara?"

"It was just meant to be that way."

Fara frowned over at her. "What kind of dippy answer is that?"

"Huh? Oh! Sorry! I just meant that it came out that way, that's all." O'mara chuckled. "Can you let the Commander know we're ready to go whenever?"

"Yeah," Terri replied, hitting a toggle on her station. "Captain to the bridge. We're ready to get underway, sir."

"Very good," Harry's voice replied. "Helm, plot a course back to Starbase 186."

"Already on it, Skip," Land replied as the Raptor swung around and rushed back towards the base.

* * *

It was a 40-minute flight back to Starbase 186. The entire time, O'mara was trying not to lose her mind. Everything she touched screamed at her, deluging her with information. By the time they had docked and she was hurrying down the gangplank, she was ready to just strip down and run away from her own clothes. They had told her the story of their creation four times now and it was starting to get a little overwhelming.

There was also the issue of her left palm. She hadn't noticed it at first, but shortly after she had set about transmitting the data on the star, she had spotted the mark. A bright red paw print stood on her left palm like a welt. It didn't hurt or give off any heat, but she suspected that it was the result of Coyote lending her his powers.

O'mara careened into her quarters and locked the door behind her. As quickly as she could, she stripped and threw everything to the floor, panting. Now the floor was talking to her feet, rambling on about how it had come into being.

She clenched her eyes shut and started to shake, her hands clutching her head. The flow of information had been slow rolling at first. It had started when she touched Harry out of instinct. For a second, she had been in his thoughts, heard all the worrying, felt the tension he experienced every day. Not only was she now certain she never wanted to be a captain, but she had felt an overwhelming wave of sympathy for Harry.

From there it had only gotten worse. When she got to the bridge, nothing seemed amiss. It was shortly after she had asked if Terri wanted to go get drinks that it had really increased. The console had started feeding data into her fingers. She was aware of things before they happened in the circuits. Her chair had started to interpret its existence just before they reached the starbase. By the time they had docked, she was being pelted with information from anything she touched.

The clamoring in her head had stopped. Chest heaving, heart roaring in her ears, she opened an eye. She was curled up in the fetal position about three feet off the ground. Some of her furniture was a few inches off the floor too as small objects all around drifted aimlessly.

"What did I get myself into?" She shuddered as she slowly rolled in the air. "Okay Michele, focus! Focus! Coyote doesn't panic and he seems to touch stuff all the time...or maybe he has a thin barrier of some sort around his entire body? No!" She shook her head, sending feathers flying in all directions. "Focus! It's just information...it's just data...I c-c-can handle a bunch of-of raw data!"

The instant she put conscious thought into no longer floating, she began to sink to the floor. Everything else in her quarters responded as well, slowly touching back down, with most of it in its right place. O'mara shivered as she touched the floor and the echoes started again. This time she tried to zero in on them.

It was, indeed, the life story of the floor she was lying on, but it went beyond that. She could feel every girder and rivet in the entire station vibrating as the main reactors sang to her. The stone of the asteroid was stoic and cold, a reverent mixture of iron, cobalt, nickel, zinc and ice that thrummed along with the tone of the background radiation that reached them from the nearest star. Now, instead of being harangued by a single voice, she was surrounded by the low rumble of thousands of data points.

The data points began to reconcile themselves. Echoes formed into pinpoints--rivets on the outer hull of the station's superstructure. A spiderweb of murmuring clarified itself as the bones of the station--every beam and girder and strut and shock absorber, from foundation to antenna point. Electrical impulses were blueish white slashes as steam, antimatter, plasma and ever more metal manifested as the beating heart and throbbing veins of the station. She was no longer looking at a million sounds in various hues. She was seeing Starbase 186 as a complete entity, a whole creature filled with information that was hers to browse.

"Okay," she breathed, shambling to her knees and rubbing her arms. "Okay...that's a little better."

Again, she reached into the pool of information that she was submerged in. Spotting people was a little harder than she had anticipated. Each body she encountered had the same cacophony of noise in it as the starbase. Bones knew things that skin didn't and the eyes were louder than the tongue. With each person she encountered, she had to reconcile not just who they were, but everything they were.

Eventually she stumbled across Terri Lu. She was in her quarters browsing news feeds from the network while sipping coffee.

"That's right," O'mara muttered to herself, "I said we should go get drinks. Hmm...Terri?"

She could feel Terri's pulse and respiration change, taste the adrenaline that dropped into her bloodstream as she looked around.

"Michele?" Terri glanced at her combadge, which was sitting on the desk by her terminal. "Didn't hear your page. What's up?"

"Still up for drinks?"

O'mara was fascinated as she watched the chemical shift in Terri. The adrenaline was reabsorbed into the body, but her heart rate stayed elevated as a spike of dopamine was released into the system.

"Hell yes! Mind if Jenna tags along? Maybe we can see if we can get Fara to go too if she hasn't shut herself in again."

"I'll check with Fara," O'mara smiled, "can you check with Jenna?"

"Sure," Terri said, getting to her feet and snatching up her combadge. "This is really different Michele. I'm used to being the one that has to drag you out!"

"I know, I know," O'mara muttered, rolling her eyes. "I'll let you pick the location. Let me know when you decide and I'll let Fara know."

"Sounds good!" Terri said, tapping her combadge to end the conversation.

O'mara kept watching. Terri was frowning at her combadge, turning it over in her hands.

"Huh," she mumbled, setting it back on the desk. "I'll have someone take a look at it. Wonder why it isn't chirping? She called me and I terminated it...I should have heard something."

"Make combadge sounds," O'mara noted to herself as she stretched her mind out around the station again. "Where'd you go Fara?"

With a little chirp, O'mara pulled her mind back quickly. She had found Fara entangled with Nikolai and had caught just a glimpse of what was going on. It must have been a surprise visit. She was shocked that Fara hadn't said anything. Heat rose in her cheeks. A few feathers molted as she snuck one more peek at them.

"Guess she's busy," O'mara giggled, smoothing down some of her plumage as she looked around. "I'd better get dressed."

As she dressed, she practiced listening without focusing. It was a surprisingly easy skill to pick up. Soon she was sorting information as quickly as it could come in. By the time she walked out the door, she knew every inch of the starbase's structure, where every living creature on the starbase was and what their current emotional state was.

"What are you up to?" She wondered as she spied Jakar aboard the Raptor. He was still on the bridge. She decided she would check in on him as she went to meet up with the others.

* * *

Jakar typed furiously. With the Raptor tied into the station again, he was using an obscene amount of power to scan the starbase and all surrounding ships.

It was so small it could be easily overlooked, but during his last visit, the Coyote had left a sort of signature. While it was true that there were no solid records of the thing ever being on the Raptor, there was a residual energy that he left behind anywhere he went. It was essentially low scale radiation, completely harmless, but traceable when the scanners were tuned just perfectly.

Trails of this radiation were all over the ship. They varied in intensity, but there were a bunch of them. Jakar was doing his best to make sense of the pattern he was seeing, but it was difficult. One thing he had managed to confirm was that the scanner blip before they had embarked was not a glitch. The gangplank scanner had pinged a small spike in radiation, the exact radiation that Coyote left behind wherever he went.

Jakar frowned. While there were radiation trails all over the ship, there was just one in the starbase. It went from the slip, up across a few decks, and right to someone's quarters, where it pooled. Jakar checked to see whose quarters they were and his frown deepened. Michele O'mara was the name fixed to the cabin.

Before Jakar could change any settings, he began sweating. It felt like a migraine mixed with the mother of all hangovers. He felt queasy and clammy as he stumbled back before lurching forwards, clutching the console. The sensation was getting worse, but there was something else starting to kick in. There were flashes of what felt like emotion, thoughts centered around some sort of data, and then a flash of blue so vivid that it made Jakar's eyes ache.

"Out!" Jakar roared, slamming his face into the console and then falling back on his haunches to the floor.

"Chief?" Rivas called as he stepped onto the bridge, seeing what Jakar had just done.

Jakar sat up, whipped out his phaser, and let off a shot. Rivas barely managed to fold himself out of the way of the bolt that scorched the bulkhead.

"What the hell?!" Rivas yelped as he landed on his butt, spilling the cup of copy he had on the deck.

Jakar wasn't paying attention. He was still trying to spot what had tried to grab a hold of his mind.

"Hey! Chief!" Rivas barked, getting shakily to his feet. "You just tried to blow a fucking hole in me! Explain!"

"I'm...not sure," Jakar admitted, slipping his phaser back into its holster as he also got to his feet. He didn't remember falling, but realized that smashing his face into his console had likely knocked him down. "I think something just attacked me."

Rivas was looking at him as though he might explode. "You're kidding, right? Jakar, there isn't a soul on this damn tub right now, except us! What do you mean 'something attacked you'?"

Jakar growled. "I don't know. It was like my brain got bitch-slapped by a mountain...no...more like...like someone pressed their...their everything up against me...."

"What? Like an ESP attack of some kind? Is there something going on I should be aware of?"

"I don't know," Jakar grunted. "Commander...can you keep a secret?"

Rivas frowned. "Some sort of Confederation classified data?"

"Not exactly," Jakar admitted, bracing himself against the console. "We encountered some odd scanner readings before we left to examine the nebula. After some digging, I realized that the Coyote thing we encountered left behind a sort of radiation. I've got the shipboard scanners tuned to that radiation and it's all over the ship right now."

"You think Coyote tried to keep you from scanning for him?" Rivas asked, glancing around as though he expected to find Coyote sitting at one of the stations.

"No...maybe...I can't really tell," said Jakar, "but it's possible. Look, sir, I don't know exactly what's going on right now, but something is wrong. I want to keep looking into this. If something happens to me, and I mean anything, I want you to take care of this."

Jakar pulled a small transmitter from its slot in his console. Rivas recognized it was a backup drive. Even when removed from the console, it still pulled data from the console and stored it. It was a type of one-way system that didn't allow anything other than the console to input data, but the data could be removed with the right authorizations.

"Anyone ever told you you're nuts," Rivas asked as he took the drive.

"Just do it," Jakar grunted.

"I wasn't saying no," Rivas said. "I have a clear memory of that monster freezing Land and I want to make sure that doesn't happen again. You're sure Coyote might be around?"

"It's a hunch," Jakar admitted.

"Your hunches always seem to be right," Rivas smirked. "Sure your brain is gonna be alright?"

"Should be," Jakar grunted. "Thanks, Commander. I'll be here on the scanners if anyone needs me."

"Does Harry know?"

"The Captain is aware of the situation," Jakar replied.

"Alright then, Chief," Rivas nodded as he left.

Jakar turned back to the console. All the data was still there. Perhaps it wasn't Coyote. If the data was still there, it was possible that Coyote wasn't the one that had attacked him. Still, he was now on his guard. If Coyote had attacked him, Jakar had just discovered something important. He could actually push back against that thing.

"So...maybe it is possible to fight back," Jakar smirked as he returned the scanners. There was a new radiation trail in the station and he wanted to know where it was going.

* * *

O'mara sat heavily on a bench, trying as best she could to catch her breath. It was like she had been kicked in the face by an angry horse. She had been trying to figure out how to read different people and had reached out to check on Jakar. He was still on the Raptor's bridge and she wondered if there was anything he needed help with. A pain that didn't have an equal had struck her. It had passed just as quickly, but it had still knocked her off balance.

A burst of information hit her. With her defenses off kilter, she wasn't able to manage the flow of information. She was being bombarded through all five senses by the starbase. With a shudder, she managed to gain control again, but not before she caught a snippet of conversation.

"...polywater after all...."

Her feathers bristled and the corridor around her groaned as the air around her compressed outward. It felt like a lifetime since she had heard the name of that disease. She had helped Doctor Okan log the polywater virus samples after their nearly fatal encounter with it. Being so out of control, unable to think straight, or control her own impulses, it was all part of a nightmare she didn't want to remember.

Still seated, she began to sift through all the sound in the starbase. Filtering out the noise of the starbase itself was easier this time, since it was what she had been doing since she left her quarters. It was much more tedious to try and sort all the voices of the people, especially since she kept overreaching and touching on their thoughts instead of their actual voices. She would catch garbled phrases that were mixed with emotion and bright colors that were hard to push aside.

"That's not true!" A stray thought from another mind on the starbase screamed even though the mind attached knew it was perfectly true...whatever it was.

"...and then, with a crash..." A sergeant from a freighter was trying to work out a scene in his screenplay while in the shower.

"I love you."

She lingered on that conversation, but she closed out the words. There were two bodies, though she didn't try to identify them. Their energy had collided, swirling together in a mix of hues that made O'mara tingle all over. She could have stared at these two lovers for hours, just to watch their emotions and thoughts swirling around each other, but a voice caught her attention.

"So then, I'm assuming we're marking this batch as a success?"

"I would say so," replied the first voice she had caught a snippet of, "given that all the subjects perished, either from idiotic acts or liver failure, I'd say it lives up to the specifications we were given."

O'mara zeroed in on the two voices. One of them belonged to a deep crimson echidna with short black head fur. He was handling several biohazard containers, carefully collecting dead rats and placing them in the containers. An Avian with bright green feathers was watching over his shoulder, but it was hard to see more of them. Both were wearing heavy protective suits and only their faces were visible through the front of the helmets.

"They really thawed this out of a research station?" The Avian asked.

"Sure did," the echidna replied, tossing the last of the dead rats into a container. "A research team got wiped out by it, then a whole ship. That scrappy crew on the Raptor almost got burned down too, but their doc was able to whip up a plasma based anti-viral solution to the problem. Apparently one of the crewmen had some natural resistance to this stuff and they used him to formulate a vaccine."

"Huh," the Avian grunted as he helped dispose of the containers in a small incinerator. "Think that medicine would work on this?"

The echidna laughed. "Not a chance! The virus was dangerous, but as a bacterium? This stuff is damn near unstoppable! It produces twice the ethanol with half the sugar, reproduces like mad, and transmits via surface contact or air. Honestly, this is one hell of a weapon."

O'mara broadened her senses. There was a lab buried deep under the section of Starbase 186 that was still heavily damaged. There wasn't supposed to be any sort of activity in that section other than the repair crews. Beyond that, they were talking about the disease as a weapon. O'mara had seen some of the data on Confederation weapons development. It was all advanced photon torpedoes and attempts to improve the energy efficiency of phasers. What was a bioweapon lab doing on a Confederation starbase?

She needed to know more, but she also took a second to glance around. While the corridor was deserted at the moment, it was one of the main walkways from the habitation section to the promenade. If she sat here while she tried to investigate, someone would notice. She wasn't exactly sure what outward signs would be present if she started probing that far out with her mind. It also wasn't clear yet why the air in the corridor had responded to her shift in mood. She would need to be more conscious of those things and until she understood them she didn't want to be too close to anyone.

Before she could decide what to do next, a thought struck her. Coyote could appear unbidden wherever he pleased. She had his powers. What could stop her from appearing in random places she wasn't supposed to be?

Hoping she wasn't crazy, O'mara got to her feet and started walking. Her eyes were fixed on a point down the corridor as she did her best to locate the lab again. She found it, a quivering pocket of secrets beneath the cold hum of the asteroid's stone. Her foot came up, the world twitched like paper being crumpled in a toddler's hands, unfolded like a sheet in the wind, and suddenly she was standing in the lab, right behind the two she had overheard.

"Freeze!" She screamed at them.

Both of the lab techs, neither of which had even noticed her, locked up, covered in a layer of ice. Neither one of them could move. She could sense they were still alive though.

I could kill them, O'mara thought, causing her skin to crawl.

Life and death were at her command. She hadn't seen Coyote kill, but with this kind of power? How hard could it be? Both the lab techs were already frozen in a manner similar to cryogenic pods. It wouldn't take much to stop their hearts, or cause a fatal aneurysm. She could do something more direct, like crushing them with their own gravity or causing their bones to burst into flame. They were freezing, she could just let the frost claim them or even shatter them.

She staggered back a little, shaking her head violently. That wasn't why she came down here. These two, Dr. Kord and his intern Orlan, were just following orders. Even though they were frozen, their brains were still working. Bolts of fear crackled through them, fighting to force their icy limbs to respond. The will to live, the rampant fear of death, the subdued stench of their adrenaline, all of it made O'mara nauseous.

Carefully, she unfroze them, using her limited knowledge to paralyze them as she went. With a flourish of light the ice disappeared and they both collapsed to the ground. There was likely, she realized as she finished, an easier way to do what she had, but she couldn't think of it at the moment.

O'mara turned her attention to the lab at large. Polywater made a really funny sound when she located it. The bacteria, and even the original viral samples, made a sort of fizzing sound when she touched them. It was almost adorable. These tiny creatures had no malice in them. In their Petri dish worlds, they were flitting about, eating sugar, creating ethanol, and spiraling along aimlessly in the agar. If it weren't for the fact that she knew they would kill everyone on the starbase, she would have let them run free. They were, in a microscopic way, minding their own business, with no clue that creatures billions of times their size even existed or that they could kill those creatures.

Looking around the room, O'mara frowned. This was just one lab. How many more were there like this one?

She walked over to the lab terminal and hesitantly rested a hand on it. Information roared through the circuits. Learning how computers talked took a moment, but soon she was chatting with the mainframe like they were old friends. There was only one real problem, she wasn't tapped into the mainframe of Starbase 186. This was an unknown system that didn't even possess a proper name. There were layers of encryption and so much information was missing it was clear that someone was working hard to ensure this database was never found.

The information that was there was startling. Bioweapon labs were lurking in facilities all around the quadrant. A depot of chemical arms was laid away on another starbase, primitive tools of warfare that served only the cause of death. A centrifuge on a nearby planet was spinning down, the nuclear material in it ready to be used for weapons testing. Plans for starships that bristled with weapons instead of scanners were laid bare to her perusal.

O'mara sat, shaking, the chair rolling back from the terminal as she stared at her feet. The Confederation was supposed to foster peace, to protect and nurture. Yet there it was, all the evidence she could ever need that this purpose had been lost on some in the shuffle of bureaucracy. Confederation officials were developing weapons based on some of the cruelest designs curated from so many worlds.

A thought, dangerous yet perfect, stood suddenly at the forefront of her mind.

"They've lost their way," O'mara muttered, reaching out with her mind and latching onto the terminal like malware. It resisted her, but she blew right through the firewalls, past all of its lockouts, and straight into its primary programming. "Someone needs to show them the error of their ways. That's all...just a bit of help."

* * *

"Sir...we just lost life support."

Captain Stiles perked up at his station, turning the Ensign that was one of four monitoring the Ops station. All of them were scrambling, but their consoles were ignoring their input. Stiles got up and quickly strode over to check the console. It was running, even though it was refusing input. He frowned at it. Even though it wasn't responding, everything was still functioning. Atmosphere was still stable, no gravity was lost, electrical and water were still online, heating hadn't even missed a beat.

"What the hell...touch pad must have gone bad," Stiles growled, tapping his combadge. "This is Stiles to Station Engineering. We have a faulty panel on the Central Control Ops console."

He waited for a second and his frown deepened.

"Maintenance? Come in!"

He tapped his combadge multiple times, but it didn't do anything.

"Sir, our communications array is scrambled," one of the ensigns on the comms station reported. "That goes for internal comms as well. I can't raise anyone on anything...."

Stiles returned to his terminal and attempted to access it. It refused any input he tried to give it.

"Get something to write with, bring in every available Ensign we have," Stiles barked at everyone in the control room. "If the replicators are running, make some paper. We'll have to do this the old way."

Two of the tactical officers made a break for the door. The first officer bounced off the door and the second caught him.

"Never mind then," Stiles grumbled. "We'll have to come up with something else. Does anyone have access to the system?" All answers were in the negative. "Alright. Lieutenant Eddleman, find us a way out of this room! Lieutenants Fiore and Stark, come up with some way for us to communicate with the rest of the starbase. Everyone else, break out the repair kits and start working on your consoles! Your goal is to restore functionality. Ensign Wu!"

The startled Ops Ensign saluted. "Sir?"

"Your job is to monitor every console in this room for irregularities in readings and keep record of them any way you can," Stiles explained as he dug through the only drawer at his console. He found a few chocolate wrappers that had to be ancient and what he guessed was a pencil. "My god...do I even remember how to write? Alright people, I'm not fully sure what we're going to do next, but as long as we're not dying yet, the goal is to regain control of station functions."

On the back of a wrapper, he quickly scribbled:

Station Log, Stardate 348011.10

We just lost control of all systems, but they're still functioning. We've been locked out of all controls and it appears that some of the automated systems, such as doorways, are no longer functioning. If you find this and we're not here, assume we escaped and are attempting to restore control before something goes seriously wrong.

"Damn," Stiles muttered, appalled at the hideousness of his handwriting. "Hopefully someone can read this if it comes down to it!"

* * *

Harry raised an eyebrow. Glaring suspiciously, he waved his hand in front of the door to his quarters. This was the second door today that had refused to open when he approached. It was also the second time he had smashed his nose against a door.

"What is wrong with the doors today?" He wondered as he mashed the door button again.

"Sir!"

Harry turned to find Terri Lu rushing down the hall towards him.

"Lieutenant," he nodded as she skidded to a halt in front of him.

"Can't get into your quarters either?" She asked him.

"No," Harry admitted, glaring at his door. "Seems to be a theme today."

"Hey! Harry!" Land was jogging down the hall towards them.

Harry sighed. "Let me guess, your door won't open?"

"Er...yeah," Land nodded, smiling as he spotted Terri. "Hey there!"

"Hey," Terri flashed him a quick smile before turning back to Harry. "What's going on? Comms aren't working and half the doors around on the base won't open. The replicators are down too if all that screaming from the promenade is about what I think it is."

"Let's make sure the Raptor is in one piece," Harry said, heading down the corridor with the others in tow.

"Already checked, Skipper," Land reported as they walked. "That's why I was trying to find you. The gangplank is still down and I think we left Jakar onboard. Anyway, even with the plank down, none of the other doors work there either. All the turbolifts are stopped too. It feels like a lockdown, but there's no klaxons or alerts."

"Some sort of cyber-attack?" Terri offered.

Harry shook his head. "The Urtheans have been trying that for ages and they still can't crack our encryptions. Setting up a lockout wouldn't really help them much either. Our life support is still online. Other than doors and replicators, it looks like everything else is still working. That's not something you do when trying to cripple an opponent. Someone like Xox would just dump our air supply and throw open all the emergency hatches to kill us. This is...benign."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Land asked.

"He means someone isn't trying to kill us," Terri snapped, rolling her eyes. "Alright then, so...what are we going to do?"

Harry stopped short, with the others coming up on either side of him.

"I'm...I'm not actually sure," he admitted. "With comms down we need to find a way to communicate...or...hmm." He ground his teeth. "Actually, I'm not really sure. There wasn't exactly a class in the Academy on what to do if we're left with no tech to work with. Give me a second to think."

"No comms, no ship, no...nothing...." Land listed on his fingers. "Hang on," he pulled his phaser from its holster and huffed. "Damn! Call it weird, but the phaser lost its charge. What the hell do we do?"

"He said he needed to think," said Terri, playfully bopping him on the shoulder. "Do some thinking of your own too! You've got a brain. Use it."

"Yeah, yeah," Land waved her off. "Okay...well...we could track down Captain Stiles? Station control might be the epicenter of this problem. We should start there."

"I agree," Harry said, turning toward the control center, "assuming the doors will let us get there that is."

He made it to the next door--an automatic portal that led into the administrations section--and stumbled as he pulled up short. This door wasn't opening either.

"At least I didn't run into that one," Harry muttered to himself.

"Come on!" Land whimpered as he kicked the door. "This is insane! What is going on?!"

"We'll find out," Terri said, leaning in to examine the door controls. "Come over here and help me get the manual switch loose."

* * *

Jakar sat and wiped his brow. It had been 33 minutes since the ship had locked him out of literally everything. All the systems were still functioning, but he couldn't get any of the controls to respond. So, he had pulled a slightly rusted prybar from a case under the engineering console, shrugged off his tunic, and ripped the cover off of one of the ventilation shafts.

Part of being the Tactical Officer of any starship was understanding how any enemy could make their attack work. This meant knowing the ship better than knowing one's own naked body. Navigating the ventilation system was a little harder than he thought it would be, partially because he didn't have access to any schematics. He was doing everything by memory. Those memories turned out to be just a pinch dimmer than he had thought. From the bridge he had ended up in sickbay, then someone's quarters, and finally he had tumbled into the shuttle bay.

"Damn vents," he growled. "Why'd Fara have to make them all tangled?"

"Chief?"

Jakar glanced up to find Rivas approaching. His uniform had several tears in it and he was covered in lubricants and coolant.

"What happened to you, sir?" Jakar asked as he got to his feet.

"Before I could make it off the ship, Fara paged me. She wanted me to run down to Engineering and check if she left her personal datapad. I was in the turbolift heading down there when everything stopped working. It let me off, but I ended up in the shuttle bay access airlock over there. I had to wiggle through a service tube." He frowned down at his uniform. "I...may have bumped a few things along the way."

"You hurt?"

"Nah," Rivas waved the question away. "Just a few scratches."

"Follow me then, sir," Jakar grunted as he crossed to another vent and began prying off the grille.

"Sure," Rivas nodded, helping Jakar set the grille on the ground. "What's going on?"

"I'm not sure," Jakar admitted, offering Rivas a leg up. "Whatever it was, it came through the umbilical. I caught a glimpse of trouble in the station's readouts just before my console locked me out. It looks like there's some sort of systemwide lockout in place. We aren't under attack though and there was nothing from medical about a quarantine, not even a drill. Someone took control of the mainframe."

"Is that even possible?" Rivas wondered as he heaved himself into the vent.

"Shouldn't be," Jakar grunted as he climbed up. "We had to give the Epsilon 3 access to our systems, remember? That's just our shipboard stuff. If a supercomputer can't hack us, there's no way in hell anything got through the station mainframe."

The two crawled through the vents until, with a startled yelp, Rivas disappeared.

"Commander!"

"I'm fine you old bastard! I just found the end of the vent is all."

Jakar clambered out of the vent and looked around as Rivas dusted himself off. They were in the primary airlock with the open gangplank off to the right.

"Finally!" Jakar grunted, tossing the prybar aside and pulling Rivas to his feet. "Let's go find out what's going on."

"By the way," Rivas asked as they moved, "what happened to your tunic?"

"I didn't want to get it dirty," Jakar replied simply. His bare torso was covered in dust and grime.

The two headed across the docks, which were swarming with confused workers. Combadges were failing to connect. Only some doors were working. None of the terminals were responding to any input. Phasers and portable tools had lost their charges. There were engineers crawling over everything trying to find out why nothing was responding. Jakar glared around the docks.

None of this felt right. There was tension, but no panic. It wasn't a combat situation. It didn't smell like one. This was too careful, too focused, too precise.

"This isn't an attack," Jakar growled as they moved.

"How could it not be?" Rivas snorted.

"It's too clean," Jakar said, grabbing an engineer by the arm as they scurried past. "What doors still work?"

The Alterian looked startled. "What?"

"What doors on the station are still working?" Jakar demanded, tightening his grip on the engineer's arm.

"Uh...well...I've been hearing that doors into the sickbays are still working, and so are some of the maintenance access points. Any manual doors work though, even the ones with electronic locks. Sir...I really need you to let go!"

Jakar just nodded as he pushed the engineer away.

"You cut off life support and medical access during an attack," Jakar explained to Rivas as they started moving again. "This isn't an attack. Someone has control of the station, nothing more. They aren't trying to cause damage...."

Rivas waited for nearly a full minute before prompting Jakar. "Then what are they trying to do, Chief?"

Jakar turned suddenly, bearing down on one of the dock monitor terminals. He roughly shoved the technician working on the terminal aside. Rivas approached cautiously. Instead of asking, he tried to see whatever it was Jakar was seeing as he glared at the console. The information tumbling past wasn't abnormal. In fact, it indicated that the slip the console was linked to was on standby and in borderline perfect condition.

Rivas frowned. "Looks fine to me."

"There!" Jakar pointed.

One of the data points changed. There was a coupling in the slip that had been showing a hydraulic inefficiency. As they watched, the readings leveled out. Rivas stepped over to the observation window. No one was out there working on the slip, but he could see the clamp in question moving just a little. It was correcting itself, recalibrating until it was, essentially, perfect.

"What the hell?" Rivas muttered.

"Someone is messing with the station," Jakar said, "but they're not trying to cause damage. It..." Jakar scratched his head, "looks like they're trying to help."

"This is really weird," Rivas grumbled. "Who would take over a starbase just to fix it?"

Jakar raised an eyebrow. "You can't think of someone who likes to be helpful?"

Rivas stared back, dumbfounded. "I can think of a lot of people, Chief. Look, my gut doesn't work like yours. I can't smell trouble, even with this snout. Who are we talking about?"

"We're talking about Science Officer O'mara," Jakar grunted, stomping out of the station. "Come on! Let's see what she knows about this."

"That's quite a leap of logic," Rivas snapped as he chased after Jakar. "What makes you think she knows anything about this?"

"Remember the radiation I told you about? The kind that Coyote creep leaves behind? It was all over the ship, but there was a single trail on the starbase. It led to her quarters. Before I got locked out, I was watching the radiation move. Wherever Lieutenant O'mara went, the radiation followed. I have no idea what's going on with her, but she's got something to do with all this." Jakar shrugged as they moved quickly down the corridor. "Either way, she's the one Harry set to learning about the Coyote thing after we encountered it. If the Coyote is screwing with us, she's our best bet at finding a way to stop him."

Rivas nodded as he kept pace with Jakar. "Now that made sense, Chief. Let's go find O'mara."

* * *

The lab was starting to deform. One of the walls was splintering as it collapsed on itself. Workbenches were melting, equipment disintegrating into dust. Dr. Kord and Orlan could each see a different part of the floor that was peeling up like dry leaves and drifting around. There wasn't anything they could do about it, but they were trying all the same.

O'mara couldn't see the changes around her. She was focused on what she was doing.

Each time she came across another terminal related to the weapons programs, more threads spiderwebbed out from there. It was such a massive network that she was baffled no one had stumbled onto it before. The sheer volume of data was impressive. It would have taken her weeks to even read through a tenth of the reports that she was browsing at the speed of thought. All of it was similar enough that she had stopped reading individual readouts and was now blowing through data caches in milliseconds.

With each new terminal or subsystem she contacted, the resistance was growing. It wasn't just the computers fighting back now. She was getting a lot of feedback from input sources like consoles and terminals. Technicians were trying to lock her out. Parts were being swapped out on some equipment, forcing her to double back and regain control of the unit again. All of this was happening so fast that O'mara couldn't help but giggle. It didn't matter how quick anyone was, she was faster. She was moving to the frantic beat of the cosmos and no mortal could possibly keep up with her.

There was a flicker of pain out in the cosmos. O'mara paused what she was doing to check on it. It looked like an engineer had gotten their hand caught in a door while trying to open it manually. He wasn't severely injured, but he was yowling for his comrades to get the door open.

As the resistance to her efforts increased, there was more pain popping up. The doors she had locked were being forced. Technicians were taking unnecessary risks to try and bypass systems she had control of. She battled them while chasing down every scrap of weapons data she could find. It was getting increasingly difficult to split her attention like this.

The room was deteriorating faster now. Fragments of the floor were evaporating into radioactive dust, mixing with vapors from the melting workbenches. The temperature in the room was steadily rising, causing Dr. Kord and Orlan to start sweating profusely in their suits.

Fear roared into O'mara's thoughts. It was coming from just below her. The minds she touched on were of a Doctor Kord and intern Orlan. Both of them were terrified as they watched the room around them slowly disintegrate.

Pain exploded around Orlan as his left leg shattered like it was made of crystal. Glistening spikes of blood, dull gems of bone, stiff strands of sinew and prismatic feathers drifted into the chaos forming around O'mara. The experience, however, was lost on her. She was processing so much that Orlan's mental roar of agony was just a vibration in the background.

She was so preoccupied that she didn't even notice the Coyote stroll in, flick a few stray bits of shattered material out of the way, pick up the unconscious scientists, and leave.

* * *

Chaos was spreading like a wildfire in dry grass. Systems were locking their operators out across Confederation space. Terminals were going offline, data was vanishing. Prototypes were becoming inoperable. Evacuation orders were coming from an unknown source shortly before labs burst into flames or outright exploded. Ships were inexplicably dumping cargo into the void. Control of practically every system in the Confederation was slowly being lost.

Engineers and technicians everywhere were scrambling. When it had all started, no one panicked. If it was some sort of cyber-attack, they could battle it into a corner and shut it down. Then the injuries started. It was simple at first, doors that shut on fingers when opened manually, circuits shorting out and shocking those working on them, all things that could be explained away. Then an arm was lost to a door that shut with twice the force it was supposed to. Electrical fires started breaking out on ships as engineers battled the unknown controlling force. Civilians ran over the wounded as facilities they hadn't even known existed exploded.

Terror was unfurling its black wings across Confederation space. No one could venture a guess as to what was happening, let alone what to do about it.

Despite this, every console was producing normal readings. Terminals were reporting no errors. People relying on the machines of medicine to keep them alive appeared to be in no danger as those machines were still functioning.

In the midst of everything, it was discovered that all weapons were completely inoperable. Phasers had lost their charges and all their backup charge packs were empty too. Torpedoes wouldn't arm. Shipboard weapon systems were ignoring even their manual overrides. Nothing anywhere would allow anyone to tell it what to do.

Communications across the Confederation were down. Urthean listening posts at the border were baffled at the sudden silence, eager to investigate, but also a little worried. Something had knocked out the entire Confederation communication system in less than an hour and they worried they were next.

In the ensuing silence, fear grew. The inability to communicate was an inconvenience at first, but it quickly became apparent that without it there was little anyone could do. Ships struggled to coordinate the actions of their crews. Starbase personnel, cut off from all outside contact, began experiencing anxiety attacks. People were stuck in rooms with no way of contacting the world beyond. Officers were trying desperately to reach out to any part of the system they were familiar with, but all they were met with was silence punctuated by screams as the number of injured continued to climb.

Coyote grinned as he watched the chaos roll through the Confederation.

"Oh, you are such a naughty little birdy," he chuckled to himself. "So bad! They're so terrified they aren't even seeing what you're doing. There are a few that see it, but most of them? They're scared out of their wits! You're so bad!"

He turned his attention back to the inert form of intern Orlan. The Avian's left leg had crystallized and then shattered under the pressure building around O'mara. She was extending her power so quickly and with such force that the elements in the immediate area around her were starting to respond. Nothing would be safe in her presence unless she stopped what she was doing.

With a little chuckle, Coyote sat next to Orlan and began putting his leg back together like a puzzle.

"She's naughty alright," he commented to the avian, whom he had brought back to consciousness while deadening his nervous system to the point where he couldn't do anything--though he also couldn't feel the pain of his missing leg. "No matter," Coyote continued, examining a shard of muscle tissue before slipping it into the gap where it belonged, "it's still under control. Besides, if she does start to go overboard, well..."

He grinned wickedly at Orlan as he drew his finger across his throat and made a hideous gurgling sound.

* * *

Terri cursed as she wrenched her hand free from the door. They were only a couple of doors away from Central Control. Based on the muffled shouting from beyond, Captain Stiles and his men were working their way towards them, but weren't having much success either.

"Here," Land offered, examining her fingers. She was bleeding, but everything was still there.

"They're getting harder to open," Harry grumbled as he flipped the manual override on the door for the fourth time. "How is that even possible? It's like they're trying to fight back!"

"You're the one that wanted something to go wrong," Terri reminded him. Harry raised an eyebrow at her and she added, "Jakar mentioned you felt like things were too quiet."

"I'm starting to regret ever thinking that," Harry growled as he and Land wrenched the door open.

Land slid a chair from the lobby they were in into the gap between the doors. As they snapped shut, the chair caught them, groaning and partially collapsing.

"Damn! Since when do the doors have that much force?" He wondered as he climbed over the mangled chair and into the short corridor beyond.

"They shouldn't," Terri growled as she crawled through, doing her best to ignore her hand. They had found a couple of first aid kits, but the dermal regenerators in them were discharged like their phasers, so they had to make due with bandages and antiseptics for now.

Harry followed her through. Just as he passed the doors opened and then slammed shut, cutting the chair in half.

"Maybe we should wait here," Land said, glancing from the half of the chair on their side to the next door.

"Captain Stiles is more than likely trying to get out, which would mean control isn't operational." Harry said as he advanced on the next door. "We need to help. Even if he isn't trying to get out, the ability to communicate has been cut off. They could use some help. We can't do anything with the ship right now, so we'll do what we can to keep the station operational."

Land sighed and moved to help him pull the manual override switch. Even the switches had started fighting back, as though the hydraulic systems they were hooked to were receiving negative pressure, creating an incredible amount of resistance. After a fair amount of struggle, Terry handed them the leg off of the chair half. With the extra leverage, they were able to pry the manual switch to the open position.

Terri was set to holding the switch. It had almost immediately tried to close again. Land and Harry started working on the door.

"This...is...ridiculous!" Land panted as he strained against the door.

"Less talk, more pulling!" Harry growled. "Here...."

He jammed his foot into the gap between the door and the wall, using his leg to help push the door back. The sound of metal tearing echoed through the corridor. Terri had just enough time to yell "Watch out!"

The chair leg sheared off as the switch shattered. Land threw his hands over his head, letting go of the door as he was peppered with shards of metal.

No one heard the sound Harry's leg made as it was pinned between the door and the wall, but they could easily hear his scream.

"Shit!" Land barked, flailing his arms, which were covered in little metal fragments. "Harry!"

"I'm fine," Harry snarled, breathing sharply.

"Like hell you are," Land objected as he looked at Harry's leg. "Ok...it missed your artery...but...." He stopped. Harry's leg had been severed just above the knee by the door. "Eeeesh! Well...it'll be a cool scar?"

Harry didn't have the breath or energy to get angry, but his look could have vaporised Land if it were possible.

"Switch is gone," Terri reported. "It broke too. If that door is gonna open it'll have to be from the other side."

Land quickly took off his tunic and quickly made a tourniquet above the stump of Harry's leg. He had lost a significant amount of blood before he'd managed to get the wound treated. "Hang in there buddy you are going to be fine."

"Find a way through," Harry panted. His vision was starting to blur as nausea and shock started to overwhelm him.

"Stay still," Terri chided as he tried to sit up. "Jack, see if you can do something with the door."

"On it," Land said, turning his attention to the controls. "Huh...it'd be easier with a proper tool kit...."

"This is not going well," Harry gasped as Terri took off her own tunic and tried to staunch any bleeding the tourniquet was struggling with.

"You're the one that was complaining about not getting shot at," she reminded him.

"Your bedside is terrible," Harry chuckled weakly. "You should ask Okan for pointers."

Terri rolled her eyes. "I'm sure he's got his hands full right now. Try not to move. You're definitely going into shock, so just lie there and keep talking to me, alright?"

"I'll try." Harry grunted, his eyes rolling around as his breathing got shallower.

"Just hang in there Skipper, I'll find a way to get us out of here." Land noted as he tried to use a fragment of the chair leg to pry the door control open. As he did, his look of confidence left him. He knew Harry didn't have long if they didn't get out of this situation quickly.

* * *

Jakar turned in circles, glaring at everything around him.

The starbase was descending into chaos. It was as if everything was beginning to fight back. Doors were shutting on people. Electrical systems were jolting anyone that got too close to them. Comms were still down. It was starting to feel like one of those tacky horror movies Ensign Land watched all the time.

"Are you sure?" Rivas had asked the question several times and Jakar was just about done with it.

"Yes," he grunted, glaring around the corridor. "This is where the radiation trail ends according to the last readings I got."

"There's no one here," Rivas said flatly. "Come on. We could be more useful elsewhere right now."

"Get going then," Jakar growled. "I'm not giving up that easily."

"Chief," Rivas snapped, "knock it off! You're chasing a ghost! We have a real problem to deal with--"

The entire starbase trembled. Without warning, the deck beneath them pitched and they were thrown into the wall. Jakar recovered quickly. There were still no alerts. Even if that had been some sort of attack, they would never know it.

Again, the starbase shook. This time there was a response from the computer.

"ATTENTION: THIS IS AN ENVIRONMENTAL ALERT. RADIATION LEAK IN SUB-DECK 4 DETECTED. ALL PERSONNEL PLEASE EVACUATE TO HIGHER DECKS."

The warning started playing on a loop.

"What's on Sub-deck 4?" Rivas asked. "Isn't that part of the damaged sector?"

"Sub-deck 4 runs under the entire facility," Jakar replied, striding quickly towards a maintenance tube. "It's mostly for transportation during attacks, since it's mostly beneath the asteroid it affords protection. There's a lot of the electrical system down there too."

"And now you're going down there?" Rivas asked wearily as Jakar crawled into the tube.

"There are no reactors on Sub-deck 4," Jakar replied as he started to climb down. "In fact, there's nothing left down there that should cause any sort of radiation spike. The only thing that could cause it now would be a new source."

"Wait...you don't honestly--"

"Commander," Jakar growled, "I appreciate what you're doing, but I'm going with my gut on this one, orders and opinions aside. I suggest you either nut up and come along or go find something else to do."

The starbase shook again, causing Rivas to brace himself against the entrance to the maintenance tube.

"What if you're wrong? What if you're about to take a fatal radiation bath for nothing?"

Jakar sighed. "If I'm right we might be able to stop whatever is trying to rip the starbase apart."

Without waiting for an answer, he started down the tube. He hadn't gone very far before he heard boots on the rungs above him. Glancing up he found Rivas descending as well.

"We were in a hurry?" Rivas quipped, glancing down to see why Jakar had stopped.

Grinning, Jakar loosened his grip on the ladder and slid down to the next deck with Rivas close behind.

Sub-deck 4 had been designed for easy transport of personnel and equipment during an attack. As a result, the only doors down there were emergency bulkheads that would only close in the event of a hull breach. Once they had made it into the tunnels it was fairly easy to move.

Above them, they could still hear the alert from the station computer, but they weren't feeling any different. As he moved, Jakar kept careful track of every sensation in his body. Radiation was not something he wanted to play with. If anything felt off, he was more than willing to head back with all haste.

"That radiation you mentioned Coyote leaves," Rivas asked as they jogged along a tunnel, "it wasn't anything dangerous, was it?"

"It'd take a lot to make it dangerous," Jakar replied.

"So that's why you came down here," Rivas nodded. "You knew there was nothing down here that should be giving off radiation unless it was the Coyote."

"That's the idea," Jakar grunted as they came to an intersection. "Any idea on which way to go?"

"You're the one with the hunches," Rivas reminded him as he pondered their options. "That left hand tunnel just leads to the bombed-out bits of the station if I've got my bearings right. The one in front of us probably dead ends in a service point, since I think we're close to the edge of the starbase here. No idea where the right one could go."

"We split up," Jakar said. "You take one, I'll take another."

"Is that a good idea?"

"We might not have time to do it any other way," Jakar grunted. "I'll go left, you go straight. These two are most likely to deadend, so if we do have to double back at least we'll only have one left and we can both take it."

"You're good at giving orders, you know that?" Rivas chuckled as he started down the tunnel.

Jakar just shrugged as he turned left. Giving orders was something he had always been good at, but not on a grand scale. With a small group he could work wonders. With an entire ship, things quickly came unhinged. He was too good at micromanaging and often left key details of some things abandoned until it was too late to attend to them. He had to wonder, as he jogged along the dimly lit corridor, whether that was just a flaw when dealing with details or if it was something his whole life suffered from.

He was trying to calculate when he would run into a collapsed section or bulkhead when he realized there was a light ahead of him in the tunnel. It filled the space with shifting colors like a prism made of shattered stained glass. Slowing down and catching his breath, Jakar approached the light. The closer he got the more he had to wonder if it was an iridescent liquid of some sort. It was pulsing like it had mass.

The floor under his feet heaved and he was thrown down. Everything pithed to the left and he rolled, landing on all fours up against the wall of the tunnel. He stood and dusted himself off, glanced up, and froze. The wall of light was closer now.

"Okay you pointy faced bastard," Jakar growled, hoping Coyote could hear him, "ready or not, here I come!"

Taking a deep breath, Jakar stepped into the wall of shifting colors.

* * *

O'mara was getting a little sleepy. It was hard work constantly fighting so many battles. Thousands of points of conflict demanded her attention and her patience for them was running thin. Each response was becoming more forceful, her actions more sporadic.

The thing that bothered her most was that she was nearly done. Instance after instance of weapons data was crumbling before her. Almost every prototype she could find a record of was gone. Things were going really well, but there was other stuff coming to her attention as she worked. There were little flaws in equipment all over the Confederation. If she could fix those too, that would definitely be helpful.

Something cold washed over her and she brushed at her feathers. There was nothing there, but she could have sworn she had been doused with cold water. The sensation persisted and she shivered. It was like having a foot fall asleep and then wake up, except it was all over her body.

"Maybe I'm straining my body too much," she noted, trying to relax a little.

The momentary retreat from her work forced her to take in her physical surroundings. She was fine. Everything around her didn't look too good. In fact, she had no idea where she was.

There were bits of shiny metal floating in the air all around her. Clouds of dust rose and fell in a thousand colors as light danced off the shattered remains of machinery. Tiny objects were orbiting slightly larger ones. O'mara watched, mesmerized. A tiny ball of material was forming just off to her right. It congealed, flared for an instant, and suddenly there was a small ball of plasma drifting around her.

O'mara gasped, recognizing the patterns of the plasma as it continued to burn. It was a tiny star. All around her, the same reaction was occurring. Marble sized balls of dust were forming in rings around these tiny suns. Planets, ranging in size from a pea-sized lump to a cluster of gas the size of her fist orbiting a sun as big as her head, were forming. The swirling dust around her was organizing, the light concentrating into points, the atoms in the air seeking each other out to form order in the midst of chaos.

In the midst of all this, something caught her attention. Whatever it was, it was radiating curiosity and just a pinch of fear. It was cold, calculating, almost mechanical, but there was a heartbeat attached to it.

Her thoughts propelled her towards the new things, her little universe shifting as she moved. She was startled to find an echidna drifting on the edge of her selfmade universe. His jaw was tightly clenched, eyes watering. He was clearly running out of breath.

With nothing more than a thought O'mara pulled a pocket of atmosphere together around him. He gasped, coughing and sputtering as he turned slowly in the lack of gravity around him. She knew who he was, but was struggling to put a name to the face. There was so much information tumbling through her head that she couldn't keep it all straight anymore.

"O'mara!" The echidna finally choked out. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"Who are you?" She said curiously with an aloof tone.

He looked angry. "Don't start that shit with me Lieutenant! What's going on here?"

She reached out to touch him but he batted her hand away. He was glaring at something on her palm and she followed his gaze. There was a red paw print on her palm that was glowing brightly.

He took her by the wrist and she gasped as his essence made itself known to her. He was Jakar, the Tactical Officer of the USS Raptor. As he held her, she could feel his confusion, his rage, his regrets and his fears. She tried to pull her arm away, but his vice-like grip was unbreakable. She suddenly remembered that he taught a self defense class. It made sense she couldn't match his strength.

Before she could call on her power, however, she noticed something. As tight as he was holding her, he was shaking. His face was stoic, but there was strain in his eyes. He was in agony.

"What's happening to you?" O'mara asked, eager to help.

"You're...killing...me...."

O'mara could feel Jakar's systems shutting down the longer he held her. She again tried to pry his hand off, but couldn't. She tried to teleport away, but he was still stuck to her and she realized she didn't have time to figure out how to move and leave him behind. Cutting her arm off came to mind, but that didn't seem like a good idea.

"Let go of me," she cried, still attempting to wrench his hand off. "You'll die!"

Jakar just held on tighter. Even though his grip was tight, the rest of him was shaking like he was on the verge of collapse.

"I don't want to hurt you!"

"Then stop what you are doing...right now," Jakar wheezed. His strength was fading, his heart rate dropping as his mind started to develop little dark patches. "Just...stop...."

His grip slackened and he let go. O'mara reached out, but the instant she touched him he started to die again. She couldn't help him. Her power was killing him. The longer he was around her, exposed to her, the more damage she did.

"No...d-d-don't die!" She screamed. "I'll get help...that's it! I'll get you help!"

O'mara reached out to try and find Doctor Okan. Instead, she was greeted by a wall of torment. She could sense Okan in the mix, but he was submerged in a sea of minds in agony. There were so few lights of hope in the growing darkness around her. There was pain everywhere she looked. Limbs were missing their owners. Bones were breaking, blood filled the air in places. People lay dead in the streets, trampled in a mad stampede caused by their fellow citizens. Terror had full control. Agony filled the air as the screaming, both vocal and mental, reverberated around her. It wasn't just coming from the starbase. It was coming from every conceivable direction.

She clamped her hands over her head, trying to shut out the apocalyptic roaring that filled her senses. Try as she might, she couldn't shut anything out. Over and over, she tried to close off her senses, but it was no longer possible. There was too much everything around her. All she could do was absorb the chaos.

"Stop," she whimpered, curling up in a ball, aware that Jakar had started gasping for breath. "Stop...please...s-s-stop! Stop it!"

With a low whine, like a starship coming out of warp, everything she was feeling slipped away. There was something cold under her knees, possibly a floor. Everything was simply gone when she opened her eyes. She was just sitting in an iridescent field of unending white. Someone nearby was coughing and gasping, frantically trying to breathe.

Jakar was lying on the cold, featureless floor of this strange realm, a skeleton of his former self, gasping and trying feebly to sit up. O'mara was shaking as she crawled over to him. Every instinct she had was screaming that she needed to help him, but she couldn't think of what to do. Touching him had nearly killed him. How could she help if she couldn't touch him?

"I'm sorry..." she sobbed, "I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to hurt you!"

Jakar, in his weakened state, could only nod in acknowledgement before he went slack. He was still breathing, but it was shallow.

"That was intense."

Her head snapped up. Coyote was standing over Jakar, regarding him as though he were an expensive work of art for sale at a snobby gallery. He was now dressed in a white, intricate robe that looked almost regal by nature.

"What happened?" O'mara sobbed looking over at Jakar's emaciated body. "I...I th-th-thought I had everything under control!"

"You overdid it," Coyote replied evenly, turning his piercing eyes on her. "You even lost control of your ability to create. You were in the process of starting another universe in that very hold you found the lab in. Had you continued, you would have consumed everything and started an entirely new cosmos, with you as its god."

O'mara sat heavily on her butt, staring at him, jaw slack with horror. "Why...why would you let me do that?"

"I gave you the power to change everything," he grinned, "but no power can change the person wielding it. It just shows their true colors."

"Please, save him! He's dying!" O'mara demanded, pointing to Jakar.

"So are a lot of other mortals. No can do, little birdy," Coyote shrugged. "You made this mess. You fix it. If you can't, I'm afraid you'll have to just live with the consequences."

O'mara's thoughts scrambled across one another in a frantic search for a solution. An actual number likely didn't exist for the amount of damage she had just caused. She had nearly killed Jakar. As far as she could tell, she had killed a fair number across the Confederation as well. All of this was because she thought she knew best. She had seen a direct wrong, tried to stop it, and had nearly undone everything.

She tried to make it stop, tried to undo the damage that had been done, but there was so much noise in the surrounding galaxy that she couldn't focus. It was like trying to fight a raging structure fire with a water gun.

"Can you turn time back?" She asked desperately

Coyote laughed. "Time is linear little birdy. It only moves one way."

O'mara nodded. That made sense to her. She wasn't much of a physics student, but she had been compelled to learn a few things about relativity in the Academy. Even if she somehow managed to move backwards in time, the best she could do would be to create a splinter timeline in which this all never happened. This timeline would still exist and there would likely be a lot of people that died because she never fixed her mistakes.

Standing, she let out a long breath. Coyote was watching her, his wicked little grin still in place, his hands on his hips. She felt like whatever she said next had almost dire importance. Coyote was seemingly patient, but that patience appeared to be wearing thin. The look he gave her was the same one Harry used to give her when she couldn't even stutter out the results of a simple sensor scan.

"I need your help," she begged him. "Please."

"Now that's what I have been waiting for," Coyote said with smug satisfaction. He snapped his fingers and Jakar disappeared in a flash of light.

"Where is Jakar? Is he...."

"He's fine," Coyote said dismissively. "Grumpy as ever, alive, and unharmed. I wondered how many more were going to die before you came to that little realization."

"What do you m-m-mean?"

"My precious little birdy, didn't you know? Give a good person power and they'll never run out of people to kill and maim because they think, by their nature, that they're right!" Coyote said, clenching his fist for emphasis.

O'mara started to sob. "I didn't mean to hurt so many people!" She cried, burying her face in her hands. "I just wanted to stop something horrible from happening!"

"Wonderful effort, accomplishing that," Coyote said sarcastically, "at least you tried."

O'mara sat before him, folded up, sobbing loudly. A faint look of compassion crossed his face. Coyote pulled out a handkerchief from his pocket, approached, lifted her head with a gentle touch, and dabbed her tears.

"There there, no cause for waterworks. I've opened your eyes to the wonders of the cosmos and the horrors of mortal reality. It's a lot to take in." He offered her the handkerchief, which she took. "No mortal ever means to do harm when they have the means to do a great good, but alas, it always happens. I think you understand that now. It weighs on your heart. That's good. Rookie mistakes are allowable when dealing in phenomenal cosmic powers, especially if you learn from them."

O'mara sniffled, trying to get her composure back as Coyote helped her up. "So, you'll help me fix this?"

"One god to another," Coyote winked at her. "Tell me what you need and I'll do my best to accommodate!"

* * *

Harry blinked. There was a faint ache in his right leg and a fading memory of something terrible happening, but it was slipping away like a bad dream.

He looked up at the door to his quarters. This was the second time today a door had refused to open for him and it was starting to get annoying. He mashed the door button again and it slid open. Everything was right where he had left it.

"What was I going to do?" he wondered to himself as he sat on the couch.

His thoughts felt scrambled. There was a fleeting twinge of fear and a sense of danger. Butterflies were landing in his stomach, but he couldn't recall what had stirred them in the first place. There was also an ache in his leg.

Curious, he slipped out of his trousers. There was a vivid scar on his right thigh. It wrapped all the way around his leg. He gawked at it. Not only did he have no recollection of how it had gotten there, but he could tell by how the skin was puckered that it was recent. It looked like his leg had been chopped off and then fused back on.

"Whoops! You missed one!" Coyote called to O'mara from out in the corridor.

O'mara jogged over and poked her head through the door Coyote was standing in front of.

"Ah! Sorry Captain!" She cringed as she snapped her fingers.

Harry blinked again. Now he was really confused. He could have sworn he was sitting on his couch, but now he was standing in front of the door to his quarters, glaring at the door because it hadn't opened when he pushed the button.

Slowly, wondering if he had gotten caught in some sort of temporal loop, Harry pushed the door button. The door opened and the computer greeted him cheerfully. He stepped inside, glaring at everything, half expecting his furniture to take off running.

"What is going on?" He muttered, glaring at his couch.

The door chime went off and he let out a little squeak as he jumped. Grumbling and smoothing out his hair, he answered the door.

"Hi sir!" Lieutenant O'mara beamed. "I just wanted to drop by and let you know I'm feeling alright. It was really nice of you to worry about me and I wanted to say sorry for mouthing off to you in the mess hall. It was really rude."

Harry nodded slowly. "Don't worry about it, Lieutenant. Michele?" He glanced up and down the hall. "Have you noticed anything odd going on around here?"

"No sir," she said earnestly. "Why?"

"It's nothing," said Harry, shaking his head. "I'm just being paranoid, I guess. Go get some rest, Lieutenant."

"Thank you, sir, I will," she smiled before spinning around and skipping down the hall.

The door closed and Harry turned back to his quarters. On the edges of his senses, he had the creeping feeling that he was being watched again. This time, instead of acknowledging the feeling, he sighed, trudged over to the replicator, and replicated a bottle of Cherry Fizz soda.

"Everything went right for once," he chuckled as he popped the cap off the icy bottle. "That's a nice change of pace."

* * *

Exhausted was not a strong enough word for how O'mara felt. Every muscle in her body ached and she had a throbbing headache. Apparently, orchestrating a cyber-attack across half a galaxy using nothing but your brain was a bit much.

Zero gravity helped her relax, but she knew it wouldn't last. Coyote had agreed to help her fix what she had done, but he also mentioned there would be a surprise. So, she had told him she would wait for him with the new star, which had already been dubbed as Sirius 2234-E. Floating on the surface of the solar body as it drifted through the cosmos was surprisingly therapeutic. It gave her time to think. With her enhanced senses, she could see the stars beyond, the glow of Sirius's corona, and listened to its nuclear heart as it pulsed below her, filled with so much potential and life.

She had wanted to do the right thing and stop all those horrible programs. However, when those who sought to protect those projects pushed back, she felt infuriated and retaliated with even more force. She sighed as she floated, enjoying the gentle warmth surrounding her. She had been so focused on stopping the evil that nothing else mattered and their insolence in resisting her only made her more focused on her goal.

Unfortunately, her actions had brought her to the brink of destroying everything. She hated to admit it, but she had gone a little power mad. Guilt was gnawing heavily on her because of this. Her, of all people! How could she be so cruel? Ultimately, her compassion for Jakar had brought her back from the edge. Jakar had somehow found her, stepped into the mess she had made, and had nearly sacrificed himself to make her stop what she was doing. She chuckled as she watched an arch of plasma erupt from Sirius's surface.

She supposed she owed Jakar big time now.

"Refreshing, isn't it? I find bathing in solar flares to be quite invigorating."

O'mara turned effortlessly. Coyote was approaching with a towel wrapped around his waist and another wrapped around his head like a turban.

"Cute," she said curtly. "You said you had a surprise for me?"

"The doctor and his intern, the ones playing with polywater," Coyote said, unwinding the towel on his head and using to brush crumbs of plasma from his snout, "you'll be pleased to know that they are safe and currently reporting to their superiors that polywater cannot, in fact, be weaponized. I simply altered the bacterial strain they created and corrupted their data. According to them, there is no way to create a bioweapon out of that particular bug now."

O'mara let out a sigh, smiling as Coyote snapped his head towel out of being.

"Thank you," she said. "That's probably what I should have done in the first place."

Coyote nodded. "The simple steps are harder to see when you have the means to avoid them. Changing the universe is a subtle, tricky matter. An art, not a science, as they say."

"I guess this means I have to give my powers back?" O'mara sighed.

"Obviously," Coyote laughed. "What? You thought you got to keep them?"

O'mara looked over the surface of Sirius. "Maybe just the part that lets me do this?"

Coyote smiled softly. "Sorry little birdy, no can do."

"I was afraid of that," O'mara sighed, finally meeting his gaze. "Did I miss anyone with the memory wipe?"

"Just a few stray thoughts here and there," Coyote shrugged. "They'll pass it all off as nightmares or anxiety."

"That'll have to do I guess," she frowned. "So, how does this work?"

Coyote held out his paw and she took it with her left hand. She could feel the spot where the red paw print was growing hotter.

"Will I remember any of this?" She asked.

"Only if you want to," Coyote grinned.

O'mara thought for a second. On the

on one hand, she hated what she had done to so many people. Their pain, the scent of their blood filling the air, the thunder of their hearts as fear gripped them in their final moments, it was all a bitter taste she didn't care for.

At the same time, she wanted to remember other things. She wanted to remember the heart of Sirius, the little planets she had accidentally spun into being, the brief moment she had understood Harry, the fact that Jakar was willing to go to such lengths to protect not just her, but everyone. The creation, the bravery, the wonder and the sense of purpose were all things she wanted to hold onto.

"You can keep those," Coyote whispered in her ear. "Call it a gift. Now, play nice little birdy. I'll be watching you."

O'mara glanced up. She was sitting on a bench in the main corridor between habitation and the promenade. Her combadge chirped at her.

"Terri to O'mara."

"O'mara here," she said, "where should I meet you guys?"

"Hangar 47," Terri replied. "I've got Jenna here too. Any luck with Fara?"

"She's...busy," O'mara replied with a little smile. "I'll meet you guys there."

She ended the call and stood up. Out of curiosity, she glanced at her left palm. It was faint, but there was a red paw print there, barely visible against her black skin. She smiled at it and then headed down the corridor. She had earned an evening off after spending a day playing god.

The End