Part II

Near Williamsport, Pennsylvania
Earth
2 September 1859

That deer had been through here within the last ten minutes, John Hauser knew. The fifteen-year-old jogged along a game trail through the woods of northern Pennsylvania, tracking dinner. A broken twig here, a footprint in the mud there, the odd pile of scat.

The woods were oddly quiet for a clear September day as he came up on the deer, a yearling buck fifty or so yards away, just getting his first set of antlers, grazing quietly on a patch of clover under an oak tree. Quietly as he could, he unslung the much-loved flintlock longrifle his great-grandfather had fought with in the Revolution and loaded it, tearing the cartridge open and pouring the powder down, followed by the paper and the bullet with the ramrod. Then he added the priming powder to the pan, which was when the dinosaur dropped out of the oak tree.

The deer never knew what hit it.

John Hauser stared uncomprehending as the eight-foot-tall dinosaur, green and scaly with a pale front and a wedge-shaped head, dressed in leather, took the carcass, tore a leg off the deer with little apparent effort, and stuck it in its crocodilian mouth, ripping a strip of meat off. On some strange reptilian instinct, Hauser later supposed, the dinosaur happened to glance up, and saw him. Those big, wide-set yellow eyes fixed on him.

Then the dinosaur gulped back the meat, wiped its mouth on the back of its hand, and in a voice underlaid with hisses and growls said, "Blink, boy. Your eyes are stuck!"

Hauser fainted.

Ila'kshath shrugged and went back to her lunch. "Mammals," she muttered under her breath.

"That was damn reckless, Ila'kshath," Brokosh growled when the Gorn reported back to the ship.

"I'm not a telepath, sir. He was downwind of me so I couldn't smell him, and I didn't see him until he'd already seen me."

"I believe the general meant you speaking to him," Meromi pointed out.

"Oh, that. Captain, speaking frankly?" The girlish-looking Orion, barely half her science officer's height, waved her on. "Who'd believe it? Seriously, think about it—a giant reptile that talks? He'd be laughed out of the room before he got three words out."

"Lizard-Breath's got a point," Norigom commented. Then noisily fell over when a huge reptilian paw knocked into the back of his head. "What was that for!?"

"For calling me 'Lizard-Breath' again."

Brokosh looked on, bemused, as the two left the bridge arguing. "Why don't those two get a room already," he murmured to Meromi, who snorted in spite of herself. "How are we doing on the thorium?"

"Lady Ba'wov's team finished building a makeshift refinery a couple hours ago and the digging is going well. We'll be out of here in a day or so."

"Any sign we've been detected?"

"No, sir."

"All right. Speaking of Her Ladyship, have you seen her today?"

"She went into town with Sergeant Major K'Gan."

"Ah, good. Hopefully she finds me a newspaper so we can see how much damage that solar flare of yours did."

"It was a coronal mass ejection, sir."

"Same difference. Last I looked, auroras weren't supposed to be visible at this latitude."

"Bartender! Whiskey!" K'Gan bellowed, slamming a fist into the counter. Ba'wov groaned. The QaS DevwI' of the HoSbatlh had apparently decided that the best way to remain inconspicuous was to be as conspicuous as possible.

Although, granted, it was easier to be inconspicuous when you weren't two meters tall, wearing an eyepatch, and built like a tank. At least he was wearing native clothes and had a rag on his head.

The barman rather nervously handed the Klingon NCO a glass of bourbon and asked, "Will your wife be having anything?"

"Coffee," Ba'wov answered. "And he's not my husband," she added.

The coffee was terrible, and weak compared to the raktajino she usually drank. Ba'wov sipped it grudgingly and looked around the tavern, sizing up the clientele. Mix of workers, but one oddity caught her eye. A pair of men by the unlit fireplace munching on sandwiches, blond, looked like they could be brothers, each with a reddish-brown mammal that looked something like a targ, except sleeker, curled up at his feet, and each with a strange gun attached to his hip.

A noise from K'Gan distracted her. The NCO knocked back his glass of booze and started to order another, but Ba'wov grabbed him and dragged him out of the tavern before he could make any more noise, throwing a coin to the barman.

They emerged onto a boardwalk by a dirt road and Ba'wov irritatedly adjusted her floral bonnet and scratched at the rubber prosthetic on her nose. "Remember what we're here for, K'Gan."

"I'm not allowed to have a little fun?"

"You're not allowed to pollute the timeline any more than you have to. That's an order." The larger Klingon growled something unintelligible deep in his throat and Ba'wov spun, grabbed the front of his shirt and yanked, dragging him down into her face. "You want to repeat that, petaQ?"

"No, milady," he meekly replied.

"Good. Now, let's see about a newsp—" BANG! "What in the name of qeylIS batlh was that?"

"It came from down the street!" The two started running, Ba'wov grabbing up her skirts and swearing continuously as she struggled to keep up. Which moron's idea was it to make women dress like this? Because when I find out, I'll rip his spleen out.

They came around the corner to see somebody dragging a man with badly burned hands out of a building marked "Western Union Telegraph Company". K'Gan quickly ran up and took the man's other arm. "What happened?"

"Fucking telegraph coil exploded!" the burned man wheezed.

"Here, lay him down on the boardwalk," Ba'wov said, pressing fingers to the man's wrist to take his pulse. "Somebody get, um, ice and a couple of rags!" She heard a thrum from up above and looked up to see sparks flying from the telegraph poles. "Ql'yah!"

"What'd you say?" a freckle-faced kid next to her asked.

"Something I shouldn't have," she muttered.

"Yeah, my papa tells me not to swear all the time."

Somebody, a slim dark-skinned man, handed her a rag and a couple chunks of ice and she thanked him, knowing refrigeration was something precious and rare in this time. She wrapped the ice in the rags and pressed it to the telegraph operator's right hand. "Can you get—"

The dark man knelt across from her and started tying the impromptu ice pack to the opposite hand. "Sho' can, Miss, uh—"

"Bowie," she offered her pseudonym. "That's my husband's man Keegan."

"Benjamin Smith," he returned, shaking her free hand.

Ba'wov looked at the telegraph operator. "You ever seen a telegraph do that?"

"No, ma'am," the operator wheezed. "It's been actin' strange for two days. Boston said he and Portland were running with their batteries disconnected." Somebody whistled in disbelief.

"Let's get you inside."

"You're not from around here, are you, Missus Bowie?" Smith asked as they helped the operator into a house. "I ask 'cause I know most of the nee-groes 'round here and you ain't familiar."

"Um, no, we're, uh, passing through." He took her wrist, gently, and led her aside. "What are you doing?"

"You need any help?" he asked quietly. "I know a few guys."

"Take your hands off her," K'Gan growled.

"Mistah Keegan, I knows where you are. You's tryna get to Canada." Ba'wov looked at him incredulously, then burst out laughing. "What?"

"I get it, you think we're, uh"—she looked around—"escaped slaves," she added in a whisper.

"You ain't?"

"No!"

"Oh. Well, good for you."

"You got a newspaper?"

"I got a copy of The Williamsport Press here somewhere."

"Is the telegraph operator all right?" Brokosh asked.

"First-degree burns on his hands, broqoS Sa'," K'Gan answered. "At most he'll be out of work for a couple days."

"Well, this newspaper you found, and that thing you mentioned about the Western Union guy in Boston running without his battery, basically confirms what we've been suspecting. Coronal mass ejection's interfering with whatever electrical tech they've got right now. Aurora borealis way further south than it should be, telegraph interference all over. Our fault."

"Maybe not something we could've avoided, sir," Ila'kshath said. "Norigom got the computers fixed, finally, and there's records of a major solar storm in early September 1859. The humans called it the 'Carrington Event' after one of the astronomers who analyzed it."

"Why were we carrying human historical records, anyway?" Ba'wov asked.

"It seems Bekk Tengku is something of a history buff, ba'wov joH," K'Gan explained.

"Wait, back up," Brokosh said, waving a hand. "Are you saying we went back in time and caused a historical event that was going to happen anyway? Had already happened?"

"The technical term, sir, is a 'predestination paradox'," the Gorn confirmed.

The Lethean stood there looking something like a stuffed fish with his mouth hanging partway open for a moment. "K'Gan, is that tavern you and Ba'wov found still open? I think I need a drink."

"Probably, sir," the QaS DevwI' answered with a smile. "But, uh, how are you going to—"

"—explain how I look? I'll tell them I'm a Pacific Islander and I got burned in a fire, or something." He turned to go, then stopped. "Where's Meromi?"

The woods were dark, and quiet but for the crickets as the barely 147 centimeter emerald-skinned Orion ran through them. She'd eschewed her customary Imperial Honor Guard armor and furs in favor of a simple dark blue synthcloth tank top and cargo pants, practical and functional. Slung across her back, a stripped-down disruptor rifle of Nyberrite manufacture, simple iron sights and manual safety, matte black and unadorned, and enough stopping power to bring down a charging Voth dino.

Tree, veer left. Jump a fallen log and use another as a bridge across a creek bed. Duck a low-hanging holly branch.

Hear a twig snap. Freeze.

Meromi Riyal pulled her tricorder and checked ahead. Six humans, three of them children, making their way north by northwest. Strange. She knew why she was out in the woods late at night: she needed some fresh air and exercise. Hardly a concern for people of this tech level, she knew, having used at least one primitive world as a hidey-hole in her arms dealer days.

That left people doing things that couldn't be done in the light of day. Illegal things.

Her kind of things.

But children, that put a twist on it. Not likely drugs or guns. Why, then?

All this passed through her mind in the space of half a second. Her curiosity piqued, she changed course and clambered up a thick conifer ahead of the group.

They came into view a couple moments later. Two men, one woman, three kids probably aged seven, eleven, and fourteen, all but one dressed in much-patched clothing, all dark-skinned.

"Keep moving, keep moving," the man in the lead, with better clothes, whispered to the group.

"We're gonna make it, right, Mister Smith?"

"We'll be fine, just a few more miles. Just gotta—" Meromi heard a sound to the south. It sounded like a targ yelping, but that couldn't be right—wrong planet. Whatever it was, the man named Smith clearly didn't like the sound of it. "Run!"

Meromi panned her tricorder in the direction of the noises. Two humans, two smaller mammals, heading this direction at a fast jog.

Meromi's mind clicked over. 1859. Earth. Dark-skinned humans. Tracking animals.

Slaves, and their hunters.

Her lips twisted into an angry, wordless snarl as she reached for the gun on her back.

The escaped slaves passed under her tree as she spotted lights panning through the underbrush. "There they are! After them!" a man's voice shouted. Two men and two targ-like animals came barreling out of the woods at a full run and Meromi dropped to the ground. The disruptor barked once and the reddish-brown animal in the lead violently exploded. The other leaped at her and she shoved the gun forward and slammed it into the animal's head. Its momentum bore her to the ground and she instinctively squeezed the trigger and it blew apart amidships. The jolt tore the weapon from her hand as one infuriated human reached for her.

A blast of pheromones confused him long enough for her to grab him around the neck with both ankles. She rolled for leverage and threw him hard sideways into his companion; something fell from the latter's hand. The Orion jumped to her feet, spun, and kicked, the durasteel toe of her boot connecting with the top of the second man's head as he scrabbled for his gun; she heard a wet slap like a hammer hitting a side of meat as his skull caved in. One down.

She heard a deafening bang and the sound of air ripping as the other man apparently pulled his gun and fired, but the shot was nowhere near her; she oriented on the noise and punched. Her small fist connected with flesh and bone and the man's head snapped sideways. Sidestep, grab gun arm, pull gun past, hammer-chop to the wrist and the revolver fell from her opponent's nerveless hand. A sharp kick to the groin and the man folded in half. As he fell against a tree she stomped his upper arm for good measure and as he shrieked in pain she reached around her back for her holdout and leveled a small Romulan-made pistol at his face. "What are you?" he wheezed.

"I'm complicated," she answered in her usual girlish voice, and shot him between the eyes.

The Lethean lifted the tiny Orion clear off her feet and slammed her into the bulkhead, holding her there with one forearm. "What part of 'don't pollute the timeline' is so targ-fucking hard for you to understand, Captain?" Brokosh spat into her face, the horns on his nasal opening a hairsbreadth from her nose. Meromi kicked him in the shin and he grimaced but held on. "Don't try that again; you're not getting out of this one by fighting me."

"Let me down."

"Do you have any idea of the kind of damage killing those men could do to history?" Brokosh didn't, either, but he wasn't letting on.

"Do you have any idea what it's like to be a slave, sir?"

He stared at her face. It was carefully expressionless, almost like a Vulcan as was his flag captain's custom, but he could see naked rage blazing in her hazel eyes. He drew back and she dropped off the wall onto her feet, carefully straightened her tank top, and adjusted her jet-black ponytail. "You may not think it, General, but subconsciously you think we're all alike. All us Orions, we're all about controlling people with our pheromones. I was fifteen when the Queen Bitch of the Syndicate took me and gave me to that disgusting Klingon as a housewarming gift."

"Who do you think you're talking to? I know all about that, Meromi. You think I didn't do my research before I brought you onto the MupwI'?"

"You know it up here"—she tapped the side of her head—"but you don't grok it unless you've lived it. No true will of your own, no future, no nothing! I'm still a slave! I may not be in danger of getting f*cked to death anymore but I can't leave the House of Chel'tok without a death mark from the Imperial Security Service! I don't care what I did to the timeline because that's a family that won't have to live the life anymore, at least for a little while longer, and that's a win in my book."

"You want out? You're out. You've been out since Old Man Chel'tok died—I put the paperwork through myself."

"You're missing the point, sir."

"Yeah, maybe I am. But what I know is, you just caused me one hell of a headache when we get back to the future. The present. Whatever the fuck noun I'm supposed to use."

In spite of herself, Meromi giggled a bit at her general's confusion. "How long before we can lift, sir?"

"Eight hours."

The air ripped and distorted as the cloaked Tor'Kaht-class battlecruiser clawed its way skyward the next morning, aiming for the sun. "Reactor crystals?" Brokosh asked.

"Check," Ba'wov answered through the intercom.

"Disruptors?"

"Number Four needs a shipyard but the rest are up," Lieutenant Brax, the tactical officer, answered from his console.

"Torpedoes?"

"Rear is usable but the targeting sensors are fragged. Forward tube's a wreck."

"Damn. Shields?"

"Eighty percent capacity," Norigom answered.

"Hull integrity?"

"Spaceworthy but I wouldn't get into another firefight if I had my druthers."

"Cloaking device?"

"Leaky."

Brokosh groaned at the thought of the repair bills. Just when they'd finally gotten the House finances in the black again.

Then again, he could probably bill it to the Empire, given the source of the damage. "Are we at least in good enough shape to pull a warp slingshot?"

"I think—" Then the ship shook. "Ila'kshath, what—"

"Chel Grett, forty klicks out and closing!"

Brokosh grumbled, "Mother of—Helm! Full impulse! Get us to minimum safe distance and on course for the Sun! How can they see us? We're cloaked!"

"I clearly said it was leaky, General!" Norigom shot back.

"Rear guns!" Meromi barked.

"Turrets locked and firing!" Brax confirmed. The bridge shook again and the lights dimmed. "We can't take them out with just the turrets!"

"They're in pursuit!" Ila'kshath cried. "We can warp at anytime!"

"Set rear launcher for proximity detonation and fire a full spread! Engage!"

A salvo of torpedoes belched from the aft launcher as the HoSbatlh swiveled on its axis and leapt into the distance, breaching the light barrier with more effort than it usually seemed to take. "Approaching maximum warp, sir," Meromi said to Brokosh.

"He following?"

"Yes, sir," Ila'kshath confirmed.

"Good," Brokosh said with a nasty grin. "Keep our speed just low enough that he can keep up, and get us onto course for a slingshot back to 2410."

"Here we go!" Faster than any mortal eye could ever hope to follow, two starships, trading blows, rocketed around the sun. "Comms! Open a channel!" The bekk at communications waved him on. "Any Starfleet vessel in the vicinity, this is IKS HoSbatlh, requesting assistance immediately!"

"IKS HoSbatlh," a Caitian-sounding voice answered, "this is the USS Cathain. Where the hell did you come from?"

"I'll explain later! Get this targ-fucker off our asses!"

"Change vector to two-oh-two by zero-five and drop to sublight. One Avenger-class battlecruiser, coming right up!" As the two combatants dropped out of their breakneck gallop a hailstorm of phaser fire and torpedoes blasted into the sickle-shaped Breen ship and tore it to fragments. The warp core blew a fraction of a second later, washing out all the screens.

"Damage report?" Meromi requested.

"Sir, I think it'd be easier for me to list what isn't damaged," Norigom deadpanned.

"Well?"

The Nausicaan got up and went to the back of the bridge. "Two raktajinos." He inspected the output. "Well, the command deck food replicator works."

Brokosh cracked up.

Author's Notes: So the solar storm of 1859 was a predestination paradox.

I did a lot of research on the time period but I honestly don't know if the Underground Railroad really ran through Williamsport, PA.

While I was researching the events of 1859 for this story, I downloaded the PDF of a book on solar storms, Storms from the Sun: The Emerging Science of Space Weather, from the National Academy Press website. The website asked me why I was downloading the book, and I replied, "Research for a Star Trek fanfic involving time travel to Pennsylvania at the time of the 1859 solar storm."

I hope they'll understand.