Return of the Captured - Present Part 2
Posted on Wed Sep 30th, 2026 @ 3:32pm 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 @ 3:32pm
1,084 words; about a 5 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===
He turned his attention toward the secondary scanner plate where Abrasax had placed the twenty-year-old commbadge. "A bridge is a rudimentary metaphor. Statistically, we are looking at an anchor point for a localized, non-linear chronological rift." Vaaet’s fingers tapped a rapid, precise rhythm against his PADD as he cross-referenced the energy outputs from Science Lab 2 with the drawing of the bracelet trinket. He had no patience for telepathic ambiguity, but an empirical, structural correlation between ancient ink and active subspace frequencies was a puzzle he intended to solve.
"The trinket, the beacon, and the combadge are sharing a localized quantum signature," Vaaet concluded, offering a cold, critical glance to the anxious XO. "The boy didn't travel across spatial coordinates; he was displaced across time."
"Obviously," Peter answered dryly, "why else would his commbadge be twenty years old? The question is, why did he take it off? Or what happened, if he somehow lost it. And why there, where it was found?"
"The where is the key, Commander," Pazon interjected, his sharp gaze cutting across the lab. "He didn't just lose it anywhere. He lost it in a Jefferies Tube adjacent to this laboratory. If the Beacon is a temporal bridge, then its physical proximity dictates the strength of the rift." Pazon stepped closer to the primary console, his eyes scanning the data pouring from Abrasax's scanners. "If Ilyas was pulled through, the displacement likely caused a localized atmospheric vacuum or a structural phase-shift right inside that tube. He might have been forced to leave it behind, or the rift ripped it from him as the frequencies mismatched." He looked toward Hiro and the Captain. "We need to sweep of those specific Jefferies Tubes for chroniton particles."
"That's the long and short of it all," Abrasax said as he turned to the doctor. "Are you a scientist?" He couldn't help but feel a little challenged by a medical professional in the areas of science.
Doctor Pazon allowed a thin, humorless smile to touch his lips, his posture radiating the cold, aristocratic certainty of the Cardassian military elite. He adjusted his uniform with meticulous care, looking down at Abrasax with a gaze that treated the chief scientist’s professional insecurity as a mild, transparent amusement.
"We need all the help we can get," Peter suggested, "anything to get my child back."
“Relax Abrasax, the Doctor isn’t out to get your job. He’s merely trying to use all of his talents.” Hiro briefly smiled in the direction of the Chief Scientist. “So, do you agree with Vaaet? Would scanning the Jefferies tubes for Chroniton particles get us a step further to solve this mystery and get Ilyas back?”
"A step further, yes. We should get to Ops," Abrasax told them all. He grabbed his padd and headed out of the Lab at a brisk walk, a smile spreading the corners of his mouth outward a little further then he normally does. A Denobulan trait.
The whole group rode the turbolift up to Ops and Abrasax made the mistake by being at the back.
During the ride. "Did they say exactly where they found Ilyas' combadge, Commander?"
Hiro looked behind him to where the voice of Abrasax was. "The Docking Ring, Section 1C, Tube 4A. Some 5 meters from the Science laboratory."
He sighed as he was last off, but he quickly walked to the Science console.
He tapped at his sensor suite's controls, he trained the suite's target on Docking Ring, Section 1C, Tube 4A. He glanced at the combadge he place on the top of his console and smiled. "We'll have you home soon." Abrasax muttered as he set the Chroniton scan, he was glad that Chroniton don't decay over time.
He chuckled as he initialized the scan to begin once the relays were reconfigured. Abrasax glanced up and blushed. "Preparing the Chroniton scan of Tube 4A."
"Lets hope this works, Lieutenant. Then we finally can leave this temporal incident behind us." Although there would still be the mandatory paperwork that he had to file to Starfleet Command, but Hiro would be glad to do that as long as they had Ilyas back.
The progress indicator seemed to taking its sweet time. Abrasax sighed. "Where time is not really on our side, I can't help feel it is fighting us. That said, isn't time always trying to fix itself if it has misplaced elements." He smacked the side of the display as he sighed in frustration.
A blinking control told the reason. "Ops to Maintenance, please send someone to check Docking Ring's Section 1's sensor pallet, it seems out of sync with the entire suite."
Looking up to the Maintenance Duty Roster, the crewman in that section had yet to sign in to Section 1. "On it." R'Shka said tapping on her combadge.
Stepping into the wider, bustling perimeter of Ops, Vaaet Pazon kept his posture rigidly immaculate, his dark eyes cataloging the subtle atmospheric shifts of the room. The air was thick with the distinct, suffocating scent of humanoid anxiety—specifically Peter’s. To Vaaet, the frantic search for the boy was an equation that required precise data points, not the chaotic variable of parental panic. Time was not a sentient entity attempting to 'fix itself' - it was a rigid, mathematical dimension currently experiencing a localized fracturing, and treating it with poetic sentimentality was entirely useless.
Vaaet’s focus narrowed on the blinking indicator reporting the sensor pallet error in Docking Ring Section 1. A cold, analytical theory began to take shape in his mind. The misalignment was highly unlikely to be a simple maintenance oversight, not with a localized temporal anomaly active in the adjacent structural sectors. If the sensor pallet was out of sync with the main suite, it was entirely logical to deduce that the chroniton emissions or a phase-shift from the rift were actively distorting the subspace relays in that specific sector.
He didn't speak, refusing to clutter the comm lines or interrupt the workflow with unverified hypotheses, but his fingers moved with silent, deliberate speed across his personal PADD.
"Murphy's law. If you believe in that." Hiro sighed, then continued when he saw some confused looks. "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong."
"Nothing will go wrong," Peter insisted anxiously, "this has to work, it has to bring Ilyas back."
Hiro nodded, suddenly regretting he brought up Murphy's law. "Of course, Commander. I have faith it will."
TO BE CONTINUED...
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