The Guardians Pt 2

Posted on Sat Aug 15th, 2026 @ 9:46pm by Captain Marie Batel & Patin

1,503 words; about a 8 minute read

Mission: Pirates!
Location: Badlands

"No, we're not too late" Marie murmured as they advanced towards the wrecked hull of the Sunfire. "The bridge is mostly intact and the forcefields are holding" she commented as it came into view. "Geeez, they're a mess though, heavy casualties. Looks like they took the bad guys with them though."

Patin moved with Marie toward the wreckage, but the relief that had briefly touched her face was already gone. The closer they came, the more she could feel the wrongness of the ship around them. Emergency forcefields shimmered across ruptured sections of the bridge while sparks drifted lazily through the air, each one hanging for an impossible moment before continuing its fall. The world remained caught in the strange, slowed rhythm of the Temple, allowing Patin and Marie to move through the destruction while everyone else seemed trapped between one heartbeat and the next.

Then Patin spotted Rhenora and her expression changed immediately. The captain lay beneath a collapsed support beam, motionless amid the wreckage. T'Lar was already there, kneeling beside her and passing a medical tricorder over the battered body while the rest of the bridge continued its desperate struggle around them.

Patin heard the T'Lar's words, but they seemed distant. She stepped over a fractured console and into the rubble. Her boots scraped against the deck as she approached Rhenora. For once, there was no joke waiting behind her teeth. No clever remark. No irreverent observation about gods, explosions, or the universe's increasingly questionable sense of humor. She knelt beside her.

Patin reached through the debris and carefully placed both hands against Rhenora's chest. Her voice came quietly. "First day on the fucking job and I've already failed to keep her safe." The admission carried none of her usual bravado.

Patin closed her eyes. Something within her responded. It began as warmth beneath her palms, faint enough that she could have mistaken it for imagination. Then the sensation deepened, spreading through her arms and into her chest as the same strange energy she had felt when she touched the lightning gathered around her.

The bridge seemed to dim. The sparks stopped falling. The smoke suspended itself in the air. Even T'Lar's movements slowed until she appeared almost motionless beside them. Patin breathed in. She could feel Rhenora. Not the broken ribs. Not the blood gathering where it shouldn't. Not the concussion or the damaged tissue. Those belonged to the body, and Patin knew better than to pretend she could simply wish those injuries away.

She felt something deeper. A flicker. A spark. A presence. The stubborn, living thread that still connected Rhenora to the universe. Patin followed it.

Energy flowed from her hands, not as an attempt to repair what had been broken, but as something quieter. Something that seemed to wrap around the fading rhythm beneath her palms and hold it in place. "Come on, Nozzie," she whispered. "You don't get to leave yet. Stay with me."

The energy strengthened. Rhenora's life force answered with the faintest pulse. Patin opened her eyes. There it was. Still there. Her jaw tightened as she leaned closer. "I've got you."

Marie moved quietly next to Patin, watching in reverence as the Bajoran woman seemed to be able to bring life back from the brink with simply a touch of her hands. Her hands had glowed, the same way Marie's had when she battled the Vezda. Maybe this had been her destiny all along?

"This isn't the end of her story - she survives, as do most of her crew." Marie let her mind wander forward in time. "And her family." She fell quiet for a moment, recalling the similarities between this and the destruction of the Kyuga only last year. Was it only a year? No... wasn't it more like a century? Linear time was all messed up still in her mind.

Patin's eyes never left Rhenora. "I know. I've seen every timeline." Her voice remained quiet, but there was an edge beneath it now. "Still pisses me off that I wasn't here when she needed me."

Her head snapped toward Marie. "You know as well as I do there's a difference between living through something and nearly dying." She glanced back toward Rhenora. "She'll live, oh yes. But she'll carry the scars. Physical and emotional. For a long time."

Patin's fingers flexed against Rhenora's chest. For a brief moment, she considered something else. The lightning had reminded her that the boundaries between things were thinner than she had understood. Time, energy, life, death. She had touched the storm and felt the Badlands stretching around her. She had felt the life inside Rhenora and held it against the edge of death.

Perhaps she could do more. Her fingers curled. Patin reached backward through time. The response was immediate. An invisible force slammed against her will, pushing back with such certainty that she felt it through every bone in her body. The energy around her hands flickered and collapsed inward. She recoiled slightly because she knew exactly who had answered.

She stared upward. The Prophets said nothing. Of course they didn't. They would let her keep Rhen's fragile thread of life from slipping away. They would even let her strengthen it. But they would not let her erase what had happened. Of course they wouldn't allow her to fix her lapse in judgement. She would have to live with it, just as Nozzie would.

"What happened?" Marie queried as Patin moved backwards with a confused look on her face. "What did you do? What did they do?" She had so many questions that had no answers at the moment.

Patin's gaze dropped back to Rhenora. "I steadied her life force. Kept her here, in the now." Her body released an exasperated sigh. "Then I tried to turn back time." She looked toward Marie, irritation and frustration fighting across her face. "I thought I could undo my mistake." Her eyes lifted toward the Temple, narrowing. "But they won't let me."

She flexed her fingers, still feeling the resistance in her bones. "Apparently I'm still tethered by their leash. Like a service animal."

She looked back at Rhenora with sorrow in her eyes. They'd let her adjust time before. During the battle at Bajor's Northern Pole, they'd let her make minute changes. They'd let her reach backward and influence what was happening.  Apparently this lesson was different.

"But you saved a life, and who knows how more," Marie soothed, moving to sit beside Patin as the anger and frustration washed over them. "I guess some mistakes have to be made for reasons even we can't figure out." The fabric of the universe seemed to flex with affirmation.

Marie's attention shifted, to the frightened cries of a youngster seeking comfort in the arms of her father. "Patina is scared, but alive"

Patin, seeing that Rhenora was in good hands, followed Marie's shift in attention. "Patina?" She looked toward the sound of the frightened child's voice. Then she started walking.

Marie followed as the two of them passed through the wreckage of the Sunfire, moving through bulkheads and sealed doors as though the duranium had forgotten they were supposed to be solid. They drifted through corridors filled with suspended smoke, flickering emergency lights, and crew frozen in the middle of movement. A hand reached for a damaged console and remained there. A medical officer shouted an order that seemed to take forever to leave her mouth.

Patin kept moving. The farther they went, the quieter the ship became. Eventually they reached the captain's quarters. The room had suffered its own small catastrophe. The kitchenette had been torn open, its contents scattered across the deck. The table had been thrown against one wall, one leg broken beneath it. Fragments of personal belongings drifted through the air before settling slowly amid the wreckage.

Even the small Bajoran shrine had been damaged. Patin stopped when she saw it. For a moment, she simply stared. Then she heard the crying, and she turned.

Remal sat on the floor with his back against what remained of the bed, his arms wrapped tightly around Patina. The child was pressed against his chest, trembling as she buried her face against him. He rocked her slowly, whispering something Patin couldn't quite hear.

Patin's expression softened, and she stepped closer. Normally, they were invisible here, on this plane of existence. Ghosts moving through the moments of the living. Spectators who could touch nothing and change little.

But Patina lifted her head. The child sniffled and looked toward the darkness. Her eyes narrowed as she tried to make sense of the shape standing there. Patin froze. Patina stared directly at her.

Not at the Guardian.
Not at the Prophet of Chaos and Boom.
The child saw something else. Someone else. Her lower lip trembled. Then, barely above a whisper, the child spoke. "Sissi?"

Marie froze, looked at Patin, then back at the child. That was NOT what she had expected to happen.

TBC

 

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