Say what?

Posted on Thu Feb 5th, 2026 @ 5:56am by Captain Rhenora Kaylen & Commander Jennifer Baldric & Commander Jenna Ramthorne & Commander Savar cha'Salik hei-Surak Talek-sen-deen & Commander Dean House & Ensign Kitiuas Thenis ie-Jia'anKahr & Lieutenant Commander Bonnie "Bon-Bon" Durnell

1,353 words; about a 7 minute read

Mission: Beholder
Location: Here - There - Nowhere

Vadia IX

Commander Jennifer Baldric whipped around as Kit vanished mid sentence. They had just walked through another gateway, this one internal within what was left of the prison structure. Commander Savar had also vanished.

"Commander? Kit? Everybody hold your positions" she ordered, not game enough to take another step lest more of the team disappear.

Bonnie froze, mid-step, halfway between the door and the Beholder statue at the center of the the space. She held her breath taking note that half of the team had vanished. She could see the text on the Dias shining and illuminating in gold script, but coud not read any of it.

"Away team to Sunfire...." nothing but static.

Adrenaline coursed through her veins, she took a deep breath and recalled the Enterprise files she had been reading earlier. Something like this had happened before. She tapped her comm-badge "Baldric to Savar..."

There was a second of silence filled with static and then Savar's voice came through her comm-badge. "Savar here Commander Baldric. I hear you but there is static, can you clean up your transmission?"

"We'll try Savar, do you know where you are?" Baldric looked towards Bonnie for ideas into cleaning up the transmission.

Without moving her feet, Bonnie nodded and whipped out her tricorder and her Engineering kit and began tinkering to find a way to cut through the phased interference.

USS Sunfire

Meanwhile back on the Sunfire, Captain Kaylen sat forward in her chair, coffee going cold beside her. She didn't like not being able to contact her team, not the Skygowan officials pandering about giving her an open gateway to contact Vadia 9. Even a long range communications bour would take days to reach the prison planet.

"Captain, Skygowan officials have agreed to open the gateway, but there's conditions." The ops officer announced.

Kaylen looked over the conditions. They wanted a security detail on the podium, and the Sunfire's weapons systems charged and ready. They were evacuating their people from the area in case such actions were warranted.

Somewhere in the timestream

“…cles. Suggest we hold off venturing further…” Kit stopped talking and looked up from her tricorder. She realized she was no longer standing on Skygowan any longer. Fact was she was alone on a glimmering plane of multicolored light. ~Where in the Thousand Gods amI?~ thought Kit. She hollered out “Hello, anyone here?” to no response. She then looked at her tricorder, no readings except tachyon radiation, that was off the known scale. ~Well crap, what now?~ thought Kit.

---

As Commander Savar replied, Baldric breathed out just a little. He had vanished at the same time as Kit, surely they were together. She had read that this prison messes with time and space, creating time paradoxes and well as dimensional shifts in order to keep its charges contained. "Commander, do you know where you are, and can you seen Ensign Thenis?'

USS Sunfire

Dean finally made it on to the Bridge after his extended visit to Sickbay and then a number of hours to heal. Still curious about what material that sword was made out of.

Moving over to his station. Giving a look down a moment. Dean looked back up, "I can fix the issue. Given the links in communication the suits have to each other. If we drop down our frequency level, we should be able to get both audio and video."

"Do it Commander" Rhenora replied as she sat forward in her command chair. Having comms with her team was paramount.

Dean's fingers rushed across the console in front of him. There were a number of times it gave an error sound. "I'm trying, I'm trying." A final error sound and he just took a step back a moment, to calm down. "I'm getting nothing!" stepping back up to the console. "I'll make it happen."

On the planet below - the gateway opened.

"Well son of a bitch!" Dean pursed his lips a moment at the outburst. "I um. I've got it open. Give it a try, Captain."

Vadia IX

"I do not see Ensign Thensis, nor do i know where I am. I appear to be standing on a platform or plane of multi colored light." He paused for a moment, "I am going to attempt to contact Ensign Thensis." He told Baldric. "Savar to Thensis, do you read me? What is your location?"

As the gateway opened, the communications came back to life, working through the static. Bonnie continued to tinker in an effort to stabilize incase the signal cut out again. The problem wasn't just a phase discrimination, it was also distance. They were essentially on Vadia IX, and long distance from Skygowan and the Sunfire. Every time the gateway closed they lost communications. Here in the 'prison' there was localized interference.

"Sunfire to away team - do you read?" Came the slightly distortrd voice of the ship's Captain.

"We have you Sunfire, we have a situation, Commander Savar and Ensign Thenis have disappeared. We have comms with Savar but have been unable to raise Kit" Baldric reported. As she spoke the Beholder statue seemed to shift slightly.

"Do you believe there is further threat to the team?" Kaylen's words were straight to the point.

"Ahhh don't know. When I was reading the old Enterprise mission reports they said this prison could manipulate space and time, then sortrd itself out once a puzzle was solved. It's doing it's job so to speak, we have coms with Savar, not yet for Kit. There is a very real possibility they are still within the prison" Baldric explained.

"Maintain your position, we've convinced the Skygowan officials to keep the gateway open. We may be able to scan for Kit and Savar through said gateway" Rhenora, hoping such thing was possible. She looked at Dean with a raised eyebrow.


Bonnie tweaked her tricorder, aligning the phased variance of the room with the communications signal and then she felt it before she saw it, the noise inside the signal thinned, shedding its static like frost melting off glass. Her hands moved in tight, economical gestures over the console, fingers chasing a rhythm that finally held still. The chamber answered. The walls, once drifting out of agreement with themselves, slid into shared cadence, seams lining up with a soft, resonant hum. Doorways emerged where none had insisted on being before, their edges sharpening as if reality had just remembered the rules. The air rang, not loudly, but precisely, each harmonic clicking into place like the final piece of a patient, stubborn puzzle.

At the center of it all, the Beholder changed. Stone softened along its joints, lines flowing instead of locking. The weight of it shifted, marble breath giving way to something warmer, more fragile. Light crawled across the figure and rewrote it, surface becoming skin, stillness becoming the small, involuntary movements of life returning. Marie Batel stood where the statue had been, unsteady but present, the last echo of the harmonics settling into her chest with a quiet, borrowed breath. Bonnie exhaled only then, the signal stable, the room aligned, the universe, briefly, behaving as though it had meant to do this all along.

For the barest moment, Baldric stood gobsmacked, her brain struggling to comprehend this turn of events. Savar and Kit were back with the team, and the Beholder statue was now a living breathing woman several centuries old but didnt look a day over 45.
"Captain..." Jennifer started, unsure if she was addressing her own Captain or the one on the dias. Batel looked up, confused, exhausted but very much alive.
"The Vezda?" Jennifer continued before Batel shook her head "They're contained...for now" she wavered and dropped to her knees.

"Sunfire, lock phasers on the gateway but dont fire yet. The away team and Captain Batel are returning to the ship" Baldric ordered, stepping forward and looping Batel's arm over her shoulder and hoisting the woman to her feet. "It's ok, we've got you, we'll sort this out"

TBC

 

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