Return of the Captured - Present Part 1
Posted on Wed Sep 30th, 2026 @ 3:29pm by Lieutenant JG Abrasax & Commander Peter Horn & Commander Hiro Sommers-Yoshida & Lieutenant Alena Alessa & Glinn Vaaet Pazon & Ilyas Horn
Edited on on Wed Sep 30th, 2026 @ 3:30pm
1,400 words; about a 7 minute read
Mission:
Episode 9: Across Time
Location: Across the Deep Space 21
Timeline: Present (takes place before "The Retrieval Order")
on:
===Present, Deep Space 21===
Abrasax had been fascinated by the trinkets' effects on the Beacon, almost as if they were designed to be the Beacon's controls. Sadly nothing he did with them mounted too much since he wasn't Alena nor a telepath.
One thing was clear, the Beacon and trinkets are connected. The questions so far are: Why? How? Not to mention who? Of course Alena told him all she knew about them and couldn't stay for her duties did require her.
He needed something new to help fill in more of the blanks in this puzzle and soon. He was about to go and get a meal to rest his mind while he refueled his body, Abrasax rubbed his face as he began walking to the door.
Alena sighed as she entered her quarters. So far, there were no news. No lead. Nothing. She went to her bookcase to look at the books and collections of literature through the years. Since she suspected that Mrs. Anderson, a wonderful woman, knew what had been going on. Why else would she had grown up in that town full of hostile people who hated outsiders?". "There has to be a lead here", she muttered as she browsed through her collection.
There. "Most things are not tied to situations. They are tied to the person making the thing. If the craftsman adds to it, it can be further tied to another object", she read aloud. She grabbed the journal, an old one made by Mrs. Anderson. The woman had never hid anything from Alena. She did a fast check thorugh the journal and froze. There was as detailed drawing and description of the very same beacon they had in their science lab. She closed the journal, held onto it, and started running. If this could crack the mystery, they might get Ilyas back in one piece.
Vaaet stepped out of the primary science lab, his fingers methodically wiping a smear of standard decontamination gel from his hands. His mind, as always, was a hyper-accelerated engine, dismantling and reassembling the data he had observed over Abrasax’s shoulder. The telepathic connection to the trinkets was an annoying, irrational barrier, but the mechanical and structural layout of the Beacon itself? That was pure, logical puzzle-solving.
He nearly collided with Alena as she came tearing down the corridor, the old journal clutched tightly against her uniform. Vaaet blinked, his brown eyes tracking her rapid breathing and the distinct posture of someone experiencing a sudden neurochemical spike—excitement, perhaps, or adrenaline.
"If you continue like that in these tight corridors, Alena, you're going to hit a wall," Vaaet stated, his tone flat, analytical, and entirely devoid of basic social greeting. He didn't wait for her to apologize. Instead, his sharp eyes locked onto the aged binding of the book in her hands, "That manuscript look's ancient and your respiratory rate suggests you didn't just find a piece of literature, you found a correlation."
Peter entered the science lab, his son's badge firmly clutched into his hand. "How do we get him back?" He asked anxiously, "do you need this?" He offered the now 20 year old badge to the science chief.
Close behind the XO followed Hiro. “It was found near the Science Lab in a Jefferies tube. Tricorder scans confirmed this is Ilyas’ commbadge.” He then looked at Elena who had found something herself. “Counselor, it seems you also found something. What is it?”
"This journal belonged to a woman who raised along with my Ma. She was quite the collector of i-don't-know-how-many-things", Alena said as she tried to catch her breath. She opened the page she had found. "Here", she said, tapping on the page. "Seems familiar? The only reason I got this was when she died. That place was full of people who weren't overly fond of technology, no matter what the rest of the world did. Hence all that paper and pen than digital content. No voice memos or anything. Only her large collection of paper books. I did look a few pages beyond this one. I found the bracelet trinket I have, drawn in the finest details. There has to be a connection".
"Archaic methods remain a sensible means to preserve records," Peter acknowledged. "But how does your bracelet connect to a probe and a twenty year old commbadge belonging to my teenage son?"
"I don't know, but I feel that that beacon is the middle-man, so to speak. I wonder if this isn't just a beacon. What if it is a bridge, of some sort? By studying the some of the old journals I inherited, I found several entries from 20 years ago. The entries was from Mrs. Anderson's early adult life. But, when I looked at the records about her death, i found that she was in her late 70's when she died. But some of the entries are from more than 40 years ago. Long before She took my Ma and I to the states. Those sketches in this journal. The entries are far before my time. Why would she know about this? She was secretive when I grew up. There are so many unknowns to consider", Alena admitted. It was a headache to pick apart what was going on. But if they couldn't sort this out, Ilyas, who seemed to be stuck in another place, would be stuck.
Abrasax changed his mind and headed for the replicator at the back of the Lab. He'd put his command code in in order for it to give him a meal, it was usually for lab equipment and apparently food had been restricted. That was the first thing he'd fix once this was over, he'd never had to use it for food before now.
After several moments of indecision, he returned with a small meal tray to the main console hosting the Beacon; he'd had both Alena and the Cardassian doctor, Vaaet, come by when their duties allowed. Suddenly the Executive Officer entered, followed by the Commanding Officer. Immediately he was presented with a combadge that didn't look new, Abrasax heard Peter ask about if the badge could help. He put his meal tray down and reached out to take it. "May I?"
Peter handed the commbadge over without hesitation.
Commander Sommers-Yoshida explained that it was confirmed to be Ilyas' combadge. Abrasax found that interesting and it hopefully would fill in some of the puzzle spaces and allow them to retrieve Ilyas. "I'll check it out right away," he said best not to promise anything just yet.
Feeling anything but at ease, Peter watching the people in the room but said nothing. What was he going to tell his family if they failed to get the child back? Was his son still alive today and why hadn't he been in contact if he was?
At this stage, he was listening to the others talk about Alena's family journal along with the control trinkets having a connection to the Beacon. Abrasax smiled as he'd already discovered that but considering that he lacked the knowledge on how to use them, giving Commander Horn false hope was not productive.
"Yes, Counselor Alessa's trinkets and the Beacon do have a subspace connection. Unfortunately that connection is so low it didn't help when the Counselor and I were testing them before. You are welcome to examine the logs from Science Lab 2." Abrasax said as he placed the combadge on the secondary scanner plate and triggered the array of many perimeters to catalogue.
"Who found this and did they scan it? What did they say about it?" Abrasax turned to Peter as the computer worked.
"Maintenance workers found it. They scanned it and then summoned myself and Hiro," Peter answered, "they said it was twenty years old and registered to my son."
Vaaet stepped past Peter and Hiro, his eyes fixed on the archaic paper journal Alena held like a missile heading for its target. The sentimentality radiating from the room’s non-Cardassians was clinically inefficient, a localized variable he found entirely unnecessary to the problem at hand. "You're confusing historical chronology with linear displacement," Vaaet cut in, his voice flat and analytical. "If Mrs. Anderson authored entries describing this precise technology forty years ago, yet the hardware mirrors contemporary Federation design principles, the discrepancy is not historical. It is temporal."
TO BE CONTINUED...
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