Reflections and Tachyons
" You have a long way to go before you find my limits, missy. Denorios belt? Go for it," Noelle said, and Diziara didn't even wait for Noelle to finish her statement before snapping the Obama about so that its nose was pointed about ninety-degrees from where it'd been before, and then twisting her into a roll to change their course towards the Denorious belt. Spiegel looked at Noelle with a raised eyebrow, as she continued to laugh longer than really was necessary.
"You okay?" he asked her, then took a sip from his glass as the craft rolled again and he was worried about spilling his freshly refilled Romulan Ale. Noelle waved him off, and both had to grab for the arms of their chairs or the edge of a console, as Diziara pulled an especially tight turn, giving them a very intimate view of a comet she'd found.
"Pretty ain't it?" Diziara asked, grin wide, as the ship went dead for a moment. Diziara's hands flew across her console, and the craft shuddered a bit as she had to make a quick course change when the sensors and consoles came back up. "What was that?" Both engineers snapped to attention, despite the alcohol in their systems, and started to run diagnostics.
"It's the phase inducers," Noelle declared. Spiegel quickly emptied his glass, and shoved it into his pocket for safe keeping. Diziara likewise emptied hers, and handed it back so that Spiegel could put it away too.
"You just took us through a tachyon eddy, didn't you?" Spiegel asked Diziara, as he snagged Noelle's empty glass from the edge of the console she'd set it on. As he put it away, Diziara brought up the sensor logs in a little window on her panel, then nodded.
"You didn't tell me that was going to be a problem. It usually isn't..." she objected, defensively. He sighed.
"If I had known it was going to be a problem, I would have said something," Spiegel explained impatiently. Spiegel turned to look at Noelle, opening his mouth to speak, but Diziara piped up first.
"Where'd the comm traffic go?" she asked as she tapped at a small window on her panel, and brought it to the forefront.
"You're still using that program? I'd almost forgotten I'd thrown that together for you..." Spiegel commented, leaning over Diziara's shoulder to look at the program, even as Noelle was pulling up the comm system's diagnostics.
"The comm system seems fine, and there's traffic out there," Noelle pointed out.
"But none of it is on fleet channels or using fleet encryption," Diziara explained, and sent the little window on her console to the main display. She highlighted the blue line, that was flat in front of the various other colored lines that were actively spiking about. "The program scans fleet channels, decrypting anything I have authorization for, and skims for key words, phrases and alerts, to let me know if there's anything interesting or important going on. The blue line represents fleet traffic and it just died out."
"I've got some updates I could make to the program," Spiegel offered, even as he pulled up the display on his own panel to closer inspect the output.
"Did everything else stay the same when the fleet comm traffic died?" Noelle asked. Diziara turned her attention to the display again.
"Well, the Orion channels died down a lot about the same time too," she pointed out. Noelle and Spiegel raised an eyebrow at her. "Old habits die hard, it's useful to know what the pirates are up to when you're running expensive cargo all over the quadrant. So what if it's been over a decade and a half since that was a real concern for me..."
"It looks like everything shutoff at that same moment, but most of the other channels sprung back to life only a moment later, but everything is on different encryption and algorithms now," Spiegel pointed out.
"Well, what is out there?" Noelle asked, and turned the comm on to scan active channels and play back aloud.
“...the Intendant demands their heads at his feet by the end of the day...” There was a bit of static as the channel switched. “...I told you the Terran rebels would attack Cardassia Prime next...” The static came back, but was squelched down quicker this time, the computer adjusting to the unfamiliar comm patterns and compensating. Where the first two bits seemed to be frequency hopping, and from more private conversations, the computer latched onto something that sounded more like a public broadcast news report. “-re somber news, Casualties continue to mount up as rescue teams continue to work through the rubble, and soldiers stand watch in case of a second attack.” Noelle shut off the comm channel at the end of the statement.
“We're in the mirror universe,” Spiegel commented.
“Which one?” Diziara asked, even as Noelle asked, “What do you suppose our doubles are like?”
“What do you mean, which one?” Spiegel aimed at Diziara, his head tilted in confusion.
“There are an infinite number of them, you know,” she answered.
“There's only one they warn you about in the Academy, “ Spiegel retorted.
“Just because they only warn you about one doesn't mean her question isn't valid,” Noelle pointed out. “We certainly didn't use a transporter to get here, and that's usually the method of crossover for that universe.”
“It was probably the trouble we had with the tachyon eddy,” Spiegel muttered, having placed the two logs side by side. He overlayed them together, and shot them over to both Noelle and Diziara.
“The timing is about right,” Diziara commented.
“We need to figure out what happened and see if we can recreate it,” Noelle pointed out. Spiegel nodded.
"The computer said we're running on the backup phase inducers now, we're going to have to put in somewhere to get parts. I don't think they gave us any spares for this beast, and doubt they were helpful enough to load any of the specs into the pattern bank for the replicator,” Spiegel grumbled. “See anywhere we can put in, Diz?”
“Well, regardless of which universe we've ended up in, it doesn't seem that divergent from ours. We should find a version of Terok Nor or Deep Space Nine, hanging out either above Bajor or near the wormhole,” Diziara explained, accessing the sensor controls as she said this. “We should be fine as long as we don't wear our uniforms, hopefully be in and out quick enough that no one will even notice us.”
"I don't think you're capable of escaping notice," Spiegel observed to Diziara. "Also, I didn't pack anything to wear that's appropriate for mirror universe espionage."
"You filled out the leather pants on Andor well, we can replicate you something," Diziara pointed out with a toothy grin. She laid in a course towards where the wormhole should be.
"No leather," Spiegel objected sullenly.
"Okay, I'll stick with some nice black then," she told him, "with cargo pockets, don't worry."
"I can stay on the Obama, make sure no one comes along and tries to take it," Spiegel offered. "I wouldn't have to change out of my uniform. You two are better suited for recon anyways."
"But if someone did come along, you have no combat skills to defend yourself or the ship with," Diziara pointed out.