Ansolon Season 02 / Episode 16
by Alan Tripp
— 2412 —
I.K.S. Qu’In ’an bortaS — The Straits, Malstrom Expanse
The storm changed long before anyone aboard the Qu’In ’an bortaS admitted it aloud.
At first the differences had been subtle enough to dismiss. A fluctuation in the currents. A lessening of gravimetric stress along the hull. Plasma rivers that no longer crashed violently against one another, but instead folded together in long spiraling arcs that reminded Brianna Llewellyn less of storms and more of ocean currents.
But over the past several hours the pattern had become impossible to ignore.
The Straits were no longer resisting them.
They were guiding them.
Brianna stood near the forward science stations with her arms folded tightly across her chest, studying the layers of sensor telemetry suspended in pale blue holographic light before her. The data streaming across the display should have been impossible. Gravity did not move like this. Subspace fields did not breathe in rhythmic pulses. Corridor vectors did not align themselves ahead of vessels in motion.
And yet that was precisely what the scans were showing.
The currents ahead of the battlecruiser were opening.
Not randomly.
Intentionally.
Behind her, the bridge of the Qu’In ’an bortaS remained quieter than usual. Klingon warships were rarely silent places. Even at their calmest there was normally an underlying current of noise—voices, movement, the low rumbling growl of machinery built for war rather than comfort.
But now the crew watched the storm outside with an unease no warrior wished to admit.
Even the air felt different here.
Heavy.
Pressurized.
As though the Straits themselves were leaning inward around the ship, listening.
“Current shear continuing to drop,” Lieutenant Velk reported from tactical. “Environmental turbulence down another four percent.”
No one celebrated the news.
That was perhaps the most unsettling part.
The Straits becoming calmer somehow felt more dangerous than the violence they had passed through to reach this place.
Brianna adjusted the magnification of the forward scans and watched as another series of gravimetric channels slowly rotated ahead of the ship. She could not shake the feeling that the region surrounding them resembled less a naturally occurring stellar phenomenon and more the interior circulatory system of something unimaginably large and ancient.
Commander T’Vek stepped beside her, his expression carrying the carefully measured concern of a Vulcan attempting to pretend he was not concerned.
“The corridor geometry continues to adapt to our movement,” he said quietly.
Brianna gave a small nod without looking away from the display.
“Not adapt,” she corrected softly.
The Vulcan tilted his head slightly.
She hesitated before continuing.
“It feels more like…” She searched for the word. “Accommodation.”
T’Vek considered that in silence.
The bridge lights dimmed slightly as another wave of crimson plasma rolled across the forward viewscreen. The storm clouds ahead began to thin apart, folding slowly away from one another like curtains being drawn back by invisible hands.
And then the stars vanished.
Not entirely.
They became obscured by something so vast the human mind instinctively struggled to process its scale.
The first visible section appeared as a curved shadow against the darkness beyond the storm. At first Brianna mistook it for a moon.
Then lightning illuminated the structure fully.
Her breath caught painfully in her throat.
The thing hanging beyond the storm wall was not a station.
Not a ship.
Not even a Dyson Sphere in the traditional sense.
It was an entire world of structure.
Immense curved latticework stretched across distances too large for her mind to comfortably frame. Sections of armored plating wrapped around a partially enclosed spherical framework larger than some inhabited star systems. Great fractures split portions of the surface while other regions remained eerily intact beneath the dim glow of ancient running lights.
Lights.
Actual lights.
After all this time.
After however many thousands—or millions—of years this place had remained hidden behind the storms of the Straits…
something inside still possessed power.
The bridge had gone utterly silent.
Even Ka’nej Hauk had risen slowly from his command chair without seeming fully aware he had done so.
The reflected glow from the distant structure shimmered across the old Klingon admiral’s scarred features as he stared at the impossible construct before them.
Brianna felt her pulse beginning to hammer harder in her chest.
Not from fear.
Recognition.
Not conscious recognition. Not memory.
Something deeper than that.
The same feeling she had experienced standing inside the temporal observatory aboard the Temporal Storm while watching dying timelines collapse into darkness around her.
The feeling of standing too close to something civilization itself was never meant to fully understand.
“It’s rotating,” someone whispered behind her.
T’Vek enlarged the telemetry field. “Minimal rotational velocity detected. Artificial stabilization systems may still be operational.”
Still operational.
The words should have sounded absurd.
Instead they felt inevitable.
Brianna swallowed slowly as her gaze drifted across the immense structure.
The storms.
The currents.
The nonlinear corridors.
The environmental harmonics.
None of this was random.
This place had been built into the Straits.
Or perhaps the Straits had been built around it.
That thought disturbed her more than she cared to admit.
“How many people would it take to build something like this?” Velk asked quietly.
“No single civilization could,” T’Vek answered.
Ka’nej’s deep voice finally broke the silence.
“Perhaps that was the point.”
Brianna glanced toward him.
The old Klingon’s eyes remained fixed on the ancient sphere, but there was something beneath his expression she recognized instantly.
Not awe.
Grief.
Ka’nej Hauk had spent most of his life watching civilizations break themselves apart through pride, politics, fear, and war. The idea that there had once existed a place where multiple races had come together to build something this impossible…
perhaps he wanted to believe such things could survive.
Or perhaps he feared what had become of them when they failed.
The Qu’In ’an bortaS drifted slowly forward as the final edges of the storm wall peeled away behind them.
And suddenly the violence was gone.
Not reduced.
Gone.
The transition was so abrupt it left Brianna physically uneasy.
Beyond the storm lay stillness.
A vast dark basin stretched outward beneath drifting rivers of crimson plasma flowing high above like glowing auroras suspended beneath invisible glass. Massive structures floated throughout the calm region beyond—some whole, others broken apart into silent debris fields drifting through the dark.
Ancient spheres.
Fragments of impossible civilizations.
Ruins hidden behind storms no one in Alliance history had ever crossed before.
Brianna felt very small standing there.
Smaller than she had during the Iconian War.
Smaller than she had while watching entire realities burn.
Because this place made even the scale of galactic war feel temporary.
Ancient.
Forgotten.
The realization chilled her.
“Incoming transmission,” communications announced suddenly.
The bridge shifted instantly back into motion.
“Source?” Ka’nej demanded.
“Federation encryption signature. U.S.S. Fortitude.”
Brianna froze.
Only slightly.
Only long enough for Ka’nej to notice.
The old Klingon turned toward her slowly.
His expression changed almost imperceptibly.
Protective.
The same expression he had worn for years whenever anyone or anything threatened her. The same look he wore around Shallana Ironwolf. Around those he considered his own.
He knew enough of Brianna’s history to understand this moment mattered.
Perhaps too much.
“Put it through,” Ka’nej ordered.
Static rolled briefly across the viewscreen before resolving into the image of a man standing upon the dimly lit bridge of the Fortitude.
Captain Miles Llewellyn looked exhausted.
Not merely physically tired.
Worn down in ways that reached deeper than fatigue.
Behind him, officers moved rapidly between consoles while strange reflected light shimmered across the bulkheads from whatever ancient structure the Fortitude had apparently entered.
Brianna stared at him silently.
This was not the father she had spent her life imagining.
Not the myth.
Not the absence.
Not the ghost she had chased across timelines while entire civilizations collapsed around her.
This was simply a man.
A tired man carrying burdens she could not yet see.
And somehow that hurt more than she expected.
“Admiral Hauk,” Miles said after a moment. “We’ve established temporary shelter inside one of the structures. Structural integrity throughout the region is unstable, but for the moment it’s holding.”
His voice carried calm professionalism, though she could hear the strain beneath it.
Ka’nej folded his hands behind his back.
“Any sign of Crazy Horse?”
The silence that followed answered before Miles spoke.
“No,” he admitted quietly. “Nothing yet.”
Brianna saw the frustration flicker across his face.
Not hopelessness.
Determination buried beneath exhaustion.
“We’re conducting long-range scans now, but the geometry of this region doesn’t remain stable long enough to maintain coherent mapping. Internal structures don’t align consistently. Sensor reflections overlap. Some sections appear larger internally than externally.”
He exhaled slowly.
“Honestly, Admiral… we don’t know what we’re looking at yet.”
Neither do we, Brianna thought.
And time was slipping away.
Shallana and her crew were still out there somewhere beyond the storms, somewhere inside a region none of them remotely understood.
Alive.
Or not.
The uncertainty pressed against her chest like weight.
Miles continued speaking with Ka’nej, discussing scans, corridor mapping, structural anomalies, possible search patterns.
But Brianna barely heard the words anymore.
Because for the first time in her life…
she was looking at him.
The man she had crossed realities searching for.
The man who had unknowingly shaped her entire existence simply by vanishing before she was born.
The man she had saved timelines trying to find.
And he had no idea who she was.
Not really.
Not fully.
Perhaps not at all.
Her jaw tightened slightly.
Because beneath all the longing, all the years of wondering, all the desperate need to finally understand him…
there remained another truth.
Darkstar.
The manipulations.
The timelines she had altered.
The pebbles she had thrown into history’s river.
Even Ka’nej did not know the full extent of what she had done trying to prepare this reality for what was coming.
Would Miles understand?
Would he hate her for it?
Would he see her as a daughter…
or as a weapon built by a dying timeline?
As though sensing her thoughts, Ka’nej shifted slightly closer beside her.
Not touching.
Just present.
Steady.
Protective.
Family.
Onscreen, Miles suddenly stopped speaking.
His eyes had shifted toward her.
Confusion crossed his face first.
Then uncertainty.
Then something else she could not quite identify.
Like a memory attempting unsuccessfully to surface through fog.
The bridge around her seemed impossibly quiet.
Brianna held his gaze without expression.
Stone-faced.
Controlled.
The same mask she had worn through war, temporal collapse, and the deaths of worlds.
But deep beneath it, her heart was beating hard enough to hurt.
Miles stared at her for several long seconds.
Then softly—almost cautiously—he spoke.
“…Bree?”
And for the first time in many years…
Brianna Llewellyn no longer knew what expression she was supposed to wear.