Episode Five "Night Watch"

"Personal log. Captain Ekaterina Romanova, USS Nevsky. Encryption matrix willstown delta three."

I'm not entirely unfamiliar with the work of the Department of Temporal Investigations, or their sometimes cousins and sometimes adversaries the shadowy group known as Aegis. DTI reminds me, more than anything else, of that twentieth century classic "Dragnet". A bunch of grey agents knocking on doors and demanding 'just the facts'. You know, 'it was September, 2378. I was working the day watch in the James T Kirk office' etc. And yes, they do have an office and a team devoted exclusively to James Kirk. I pity those guys. But here's the thing with DTI. I've seen them work hand in hand with Aegis, and I've seen them work against Aegis. I've seen them do some things that, by all logic, go against our interests. Then I've seen them work to stop Aegis from apparently doing the same.  When it comes down to it, DTI is an agency of the present or near-future. They are operating without the resources available to Aegis, but their interests are a bit more grounded in the here and now and not so much in the far flung future. But it's also a bureaucracy, and therefore not to be trusted blindly. 

Aegis is another matter. I have reason to believe that I've been an occasional unwitting agent for Aegis, and there are times when they rival the mythical Section 31 for ruthlessness. I've spoken at length with a man named Gary Seven about the Krenim, and made him explain exactly how I once found myself crawling through a Jefferies Tube in the bowels of the starship Voyager which was itself in middle of the Delta Quadrant. I confronted him about the presence of Tricobalt torpedoes on Voyager as well as the improbable chain of events that culminated in Voyager's trip to the Delta Quadrant, as well as Voyager's coincidental appearance in just exactly the right time and place to destroy a Fury base and halt their invasion of the Alpha Quadrant. His answers came only with the promise that I would keep the information confidential, particularly from Starfleet Command.

Some of those answers are now having a direct influence on my ship and crew. Mister Seven sent an associate, a Mister Daniels to meet with me at the UESPA museum in Riverside, Iowa, supposedly to consult on historical research into Starfleet's pre-Federation history. In fact, Mr Daniels handed me a packet that included orders and a briefing from DTI to travel, quite literally, where no Federation starship has gone before. With permission, anyway. 

Now as we get closer and closer to Tholian space, I find that I can no longer put off thinking about those disturbingly personal aspects of this otherwise historic mission. There is a reason that some of our records show an NX-01 Enterprise, and some show an NX-01 Yorktown. The same reason that two different sections of the Memory Alpha library complex show two different dates and circumstances of a 'disastrous' first contact with the Klingons. Based on exhaustive study of records in the 23rd century, Spock was known to be the first Vulcan in Starfleet, and yet, Ambassador T'Pol once served with distinction as a Starfleet officer on Enterprise NX-01. The seeming contradictions grow and grow as the years go on. Most people don't know anything about it, but the Department of Temporal Investigations has briefed me fully.

There was, or will be, something called a Temporal Cold War stretching from the 31st century back to the 22nd. As a result of that, as well as a mission that the Enterprise-E undertook to April 5th, 2063, we had the Enterprise NX-01 launching in 2151 and all of the changes that came with it. And involved heavily in that temporal cold war was the Suliban race, under the direction and sponsorship of a power that we believe to be future Romulans. There did eventually come a time when the Suliban abandoned their benefactors and sided entirely with the Coalition of Planets, but were heavily punished by those same benefactors. Every world that the already nomadic Suliban had settled on was destroyed, and the surviving 33,000 Suliban were forced to flee.

It was fifty years later that Suliban bases, known as helixes began to be discovered in wildly random and remote places, and the Suliban began to flock to them as homes. Since then, the Federation has actively but quietly worked to find more and more helixes for the Suliban to live on, and powers and races that would allow the Suliban to live in their neighborhoods. Two leading civilian proponents of Suliban refugee relief in the 24th century are descendants of two legendary names in Starfleet history. Sammy Jo Archer and Jamie Lynn Kirk are also good friends of mine, and they were investigating a reported massive Suliban helix near the Tholian homeworld (incredibly, at the request of the Tholians) when they disappeared. The Tholians have now demanded that Starfleet dispatch a sufficient force to find the two humans and the helix and remove all from their space.

While I am an advocate for any refugee, and I harbor none of the ill will that some still cling to against the Suliban for crimes and aggression by their ancestors in the 22nd century, I have to say that I have taken issue with some of the risk-taking that my two friends have engaged in up until now. While it is true that civilians can often go places and open doors that military or government members can not, they are also not afforded some of the protection that fleet and ambassadors can offer. 

This is a deeply personal matter for me, and I will admit that the sense of thrill and wonder and anticipation that comes with entering what has been until now forbidden Tholian space is deeply overshadowed by a very personal stake I have in this operation. It is extremely disquieting, and I am concerned that my sense of objectivity will be challenged along the way.