The Guardians Pt 3

Posted on Thu Aug 20th, 2026 @ 10:01pm by Captain Marie Batel & Patin

1,777 words; about a 9 minute read

Mission: Pirates!
Location: Sunfire

"How does she...." Marie's voice trailed off as she struggled to understand the significance of what had occured. In this frozen time, out of phase with the rest of the universe, a young child had recognised Patin, who had yet to be reborn back into this universe, as her sister.

Patin stared at the child for several seconds. Something about the moment unsettled her more than the battle had. She had spent enough time among the Prophets to understand that time did not always move in the straight lines mortals preferred. She had seen futures overlap with pasts, possibilities become memories, and lives that had not yet happened leave fingerprints on lives that already had. But this was different.

Patin slowly crouched, bringing herself closer to the child's level even though she remained completely out of phase with the room. "I have no idea." She said, answering Marie. She was still staring at the little girl. "It's been said that children are the most innocent of us. Capable of seeing things Adults have long forgotten."

She glanced toward Marie, then back to the child. A strange warmth had begun spreading through her chest, tangled with something that felt dangerously close to grief. "Maybe that's the trick." She spoke more to herself than to Marie. "Maybe souls don't forget as much as we think they do."

Her eyes drifted toward the damaged shrine. "Adults tend to forget with time. Names, faces, places. We get busy surviving and growing and making all our wonderfully terrible decisions." A faint smile appeared. "Children haven't learned that trick yet."

Patina shifted slightly in Remal's arms.

She reached toward the child instinctively, stopping just before her fingers would have touched Patina's cheek.

Marie watched the moment, allowing Patin this time to process this new turn of events. She was a spectator, a grateful one to be involved at all, and the wonder of new connections in this strange messed up universe.

As Patina shifted, Remal rubbed her back. "The environmental controls must be out," he murmured, feeling the temperature continuing to fall around them. He tucked her closer against his chest. "Getting a little cold, huh, baby girl?"

Marie moved closer to the wall, seeing the broken EPS conduit for the living quarters in this area, it was 0.4mm out of alignment. Enough to trigger the system going offline, not so much that she could accidently touch it and shift it back into place. Power - albeit reduced under the current conditions, began to move into the life support systems in the area.

"They allowed you to make an adjustment?" Patin said, perturbed but grateful anyway. "That was mighty nice of them." She glanced toward Marie, then back at Remal and Patina. The little one was already settling against her father as the environmental controls slowly returned. "They'll be fine." Her gaze drifted toward the wreckage beyond the quarters. "Noz will be too. I think."

"0.4 of a millimetre, not much of an adjustment" Marie smirked, before realising what she had gotten away with. "Maybe they have their attention elsewhere, or maybe they don't want their Emissary to die before they need her" She shrugged before heading back to where Patin stood. "Either way, they won't freeze to death"

Time sped up, the Bristol attaching a tractor beam and towing the Sunfire towards DS9 again. The injured were transported and the pressure seemed to ease just a little.

Marie looked outside at the drifting hulk of the Dreadnought and mirror Sunfire "What about them?" She asked.

Patin remained distracted by the child for another moment, watching as Remal carried her from the damaged quarters toward the waiting medical teams. Only when the little girl disappeared from sight did she turn toward the viewport. Her eyes settled on the crippled dreadnought, then the ISS Sunfire, both battered and now lying dormant in space. "The other Nozzie?" she murmured. "I don't know. She's still alive, I can feel it. And the Mirror version of Meatbag fled his nasty little Sunfire, so I'm guessing we'll see them again eventually."

Her gaze shifted toward the open tear in space. Beyond it, the battle in the Mirror Universe continued, Terran vessels still moving among the Alliance ships. Patin's expression hardened. "And those bastards..." She folded her arms, studying the portal. "The hole's still open, which means we've got a door between two battles." A crooked smile returned. "That's probably going end up being our problem."

"Think we should care?" Patin asked, a mischievous grin filling her face.

"Abso-friggen-lutely" Marie scoffed as she peered through the viewport at the beast that allowed passage through two universes. "Problem is, what can we do about it without getting busted" She referred to the Prophet's policy of non-interference, an interesting concept for one designated as a Guardian.

She drifted through the bulkhead and out into space, drawing closer to the ragged hole in the fabric of the universe. Beyond the battle raged, on this side it was well and truly over. The Dreadnought still hung dead in space - it's crew battling to stay alive. Marie couldn't resist the urge to poke at the hole, wondering if it would do anything. Always curious.

The moment Marie's fingers touched the edge of the rift, the distortion answered. The surface of the tear rippled outward from the point of contact like a stone dropped into perfectly still water. A thin thread of violet energy crawled across the opening and snapped toward Marie's hand.

Patin's head whipped around. "Careful."

The charge jumped again. For an instant, the space around Marie's hand shimmered, and the sensation traveled through the rift like an enormous electrical circuit that had discovered a new path. The hair along Patin's arms rose in response, though she was several meters away.

Patin stared at the phenomenon. "Yeah... that'll tingle the nipples and get ya outta bed in the morning."

Marie shivered as the electrical discharge worked it's way through her body before returning to the portal before them. It was the oddest sensation, pure power flowing through a body that didn't exist in this place and time. Most odd and most....exhilarating.

Patin turned away from the rift before she could be tempted to investigate it herself. The crippled dreadnought hung nearby, its bridge still dark. She drifted toward it and passed effortlessly through the hull. Marshal Kaylen remained on the bridge, surrounded by the wreckage of her command. The woman was alive, but visibly furious. Her uniform was torn, blood streaked down one side of her face, and one hand gripped the arm of her command chair as if sheer spite was the only thing keeping her upright.

Patin stopped beside her. She studied the Mirror version of Nozzie for several seconds. "...Man she's really pissed off." Patin glanced around the ruined bridge.

"Like, really pissed off." A crooked smile appeared. "I recognize that look. My Nozzie gets that look when somebody denies her coffee." She tilted her head.

"Somehow I don't think Rhenora gets the same level of homicidal tendancy when she is denied coffee" Marie snorted a laugh, the pure hatred on the Marshall's face was damned impressive.

Patin turned toward the viewscreen just as movement caught her attention. A runabout was moving toward the dimensional breach. The Prime universe Dean. She watched it for only a moment before something cold crawled across the back of her neck and she froze.

She couldn't see him, but she could feel him, like a dark presence. Not aboard the runabout, but somewhere closer. Patin slowly turned her head toward the darkened reaches of the battlefield, searching through the wreckage and the lingering distortion around the portal. "Dean...?"

The feeling disappeared almost as quickly as it came. Patin's expression hardened. She looked back toward the runabout. "Well, shit."

"What's he doing?" Marie asked rhetorically, knowing Patin had as much information as she did. They watched the runabout haul first the Mirror Sunfire, then the Dreadnought back to whence they came, before sealing the portal shut behind them.

Patin shrugged, though the expression on her face suggested she wasn't entirely convinced by the gesture. "It felt familiar." She glanced toward the place where the presence had vanished. "I could feel the Mirror Dean, but he felt sorta like the Prophets, but not." Her brow furrowed as she searched for the comparison.

"More like..." She grimaced, concentrating until the word finally surfaced. "The Pah'Wraiths." Her eyes narrowed. "I don't know why, but whatever I felt in him..." She looked toward the now-closed portal. "It felt like he was one with the Vezda'Pah."

"Well, that looked a lot simpler than I had assumed it would be." Marie shrugged. "Although somehow I think it won't hold them there for long. They'll regroup and come back with a vengeance"

Patin watched the final shimmer of the portal disappear. "I doubt it'll hold them." She folded her arms. "There's something they want over here. And until they get it, they'll keep finding a way through." Her crooked smile returned. "Which means I'm guessing we're not done with this particular cosmic clusterfuck."

The last shimmer of the portal disappeared. For several seconds, there was nothing. Then the stars changed. There was no thunder, no voice from the heavens, no brilliant light announcing the will of the Prophets. The stars simply seemed to move closer together, their positions shifting until they formed a pattern Patin recognized. Her expression fell.

Patin glanced upward. "That's our cue."

The space around them softened. The wreckage of the battlefield seemed to lose its edges as a faint warmth settled across Patin's skin. She knew the feeling now. She'd felt it in the Temple, in the storm, when she'd reached for Rhenora's life. They wanted them back.

Patin looked through the ruined hull of the Sunfire. Somewhere her Rhenora was still alive. Somewhere on the Sunfire, Remal was holding their daughter, her future sister. Her jaw tightened "Wait."

The word came out before she could stop it. Patin looked upward again. The stars remained still. She swallowed. "Can we stay?"

There was no answer.

Patin gave a frustrated little laugh. "Yeah, I know. This is usually the part where you make me figure it out for myself." She looked toward Marie, then back toward the wreckage. "I just..." She rubbed a hand across the back of her neck. "I don't really want to leave them yet."

That admission seemed to cost her something. Patin rarely asked the Prophets for anything. She argued with them. Complained at them. Occasionally told them to go bother somebody else. Asking felt different.

The stars shimmered only once.

TBC

 

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