Title: Equilibration



Part: Prologue (many chapters follow. Not sure how many just yet.)



Disclaimer: The characters of Willow Rosenberg,Tara Maclay, Xander Harris and Buffy Summers, or the reasonable facsimiles that I employ in this story, are the property of Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy productions. The setting for the story is within the universe of Star Trek, created by Gene Roddenberry and owned by Paramount Pictures, Inc. No infringement of copyright is intended. The other characters are the creation of either myself or several colleagues who don't care what I do with them. In any case, I'm a firm believer in Kasden's Law. YMMV.



Pairing: W/T (not precisely the Willow and Tara that we all know and love -- but close enough for government work.)



Spoilers: None (as this does not take place in the Buffyverse at all, we're all safe as far as that goes. As to Trek, this takes place mid- Deep Space Nine (call it third or fourth season).



Rating: PG-13.



Summary: A young 23rd-century Starfleet officer named Willow Rosenburg finds herself stranded in the 24th century. Guess who's there to ease her transition?



Warning: this story takes a while to get really going, so please be patient. For you non-Trekkers out there, I do ask that you give this story a chance. No, it does not involve anybody from TOS, TNG, DS9, Voyager or Enterprise, it just takes place in the Trek universe. All new characters.



Feedback: Email me at captmurdock@msn.com. Thanks.



Distribution: For God's sake, don't put this on a Trek board without asking me first! I'll lose all my street cred. :-)



*********

Prologue



U.S.S. Hannibal

Stardate 7845

Earth Year: 2280



Lieutenant Willow Rosenburg had no idea when she woke up that morning that her first solo mission was going to be her last.



"It's just a small ion storm, sir," she had said on the bridge of the Hannibal, the viewscreen showing the diaphanous, multicolored disruption. Her voice had a wheedling sound to it that she herself despised, a tone not lost on the captain and the chief science officer. Over their shoulders, she could see her best friend, Lt. Summers, sitting at the tactical station, pretending not to listen to the conversation, rolling her eyes at Willow's pleading.



Captain Francisco Cumberland gazed at the young officer, bemused more than anything else. "Oh, a small ion storm. That's like having a small black hole, or only having a small pregnancy – no offense to those crewmembers of the feminine gene," he added offhandedly. His eyes, hazel and somewhat almond-shaped, rolled in exasperation at the boundless enthusiasm of youth, ignoring the fact that he was not yet forty Standard years old himself. His nonregulation beard, just managing to cover the facial scars inflicted upon him some years ago by some nasty Kzinti, seemed to twitch as he smiled benignly at the young officer.



Commander Max Cochrane, the ship's second officer, chief science officer and Willow's direct superior, replied his commanding officer and friend with his usual nonchalance. "It doesn't appear likely to escalate beyond force three, Captain. As ion storms go, that's pretty minor-league." His demeanor would have given a casual observer the notion that Cochrane was bored; that notion would be mistaken, as this was his customary mien. Contrary to the popular notion that brilliant science officers tended to be hyperactive – like Willow Rosenburg – Cochrane bordered on being leisurely, if not entirely lackluster. An acquaintance of theirs had once remarked that Cochrane did not seem complete unless he was wearing an old raincoat and carrying a cigar in one hand. Neither Cochrane nor Cumberland had yet figured out what that was supposed to mean…



Cumberland shrugged. "Okay, fair enough. Why do we need to send out a pod? Why not just a probe, if that?"



Willow jumped in then, decisively if not prudently. "Sir, regulations require that all ion storm activity be fully investigated, that is, by qualified onsite personnel, and I think I'm qualified, sir, not that Commander Cochrane isn't qualified, no, sir, sirs! In fact, I'm thinking Commander Cochrane is really, if anything, over-qualified, I mean, this is just an ion storm, so it really makes sense to send me out in the shuttlepod instead of –"



"Rosenburg, as you were," Cumberland said in his best command tone. The young lieutenant promptly closed her mouth and assumed her best at-attention stance.



Cochrane raised an eyebrow, a sure sign he was about to make a wry comment. "You think if we hooked her vocal cords to the engines, we could do away with the warp core?"



Buffy Summers gave the backs of the two senior officers a sharp look, not feeling confident enough to voice her opinion of the unseemliness of them making fun of Willow. She glanced over at Ensign Xander Harris at the helm, Willow's childhood friend and classmate to them both from the Academy. He was looking back at her, his expression conveying his sympathy for Willow's eagerness and Buffy's protectiveness.



Cumberland mock-scowled at Cochrane, fairly certain that he was merely teasing his eager young subordinate. "Now, now, Max. Be nice. Okay, Rosenburg, you've sold me. You get to take out the shuttlepod, take all the instrument readings you like, and Summers, quit scowling, your face'll freeze that way and it's a very unattractive expression!"



Summers snapped herself forward towards her station, her eyebrows shooting up self-consciously. Looking over to Xander as much as she dared, she managed to see Xander likewise looking sidelong and trying not to get caught at it, mouthing to her, He sees everything.



In less time than she would have thought possible, Willow found herself in one of the Hannibal's shuttlepods, skirting the edge of the electromagnetic disturbance. She wasn't a pilot really; the pod's course had been pre-programmed, needing only basic instruction, leaving her free to take readings and relay them back to the Hannibal. For this type of ion storm, standard procedure dictated that piloting the starship into the highly unstable EM field would be too disruptive to provide clear readings; a short-range shuttlepod would be far less intrusive, gravimetrically speaking, and not so hazardous as to preclude sending out a lone science officer.



Let's hear it for Standard Procedure.



Aboard the ship, Buffy Summers kept an eye on the tracking scanners, charting the course of the shuttlepod as it traversed the outer edge of the ion storm. As much as she wanted Willow to prove herself, a part of her dreaded the thought of her friend being out there alone. Of course, she was barely ten thousand kilometers away from the ship, well inside transporter range. A long-range sensor sweep had confirmed that there were no vessels, unfriendly or otherwise, anywhere near them. Unfortunately, someone forgot to tell this to her palms, which insisted on sweating so much that she kept having to wipe them discreetly on her trousers.



Captain Cumberland stalked around the bridge of the Saladin-class destroyer, trying to peer at every instrument and display without looking like he was. One thing he had always loathed as a junior officer was the type of commander who felt the need to micro-manage, and he swore he would never succumb to that neurosis. Nevertheless, the thought of One Of His out there alone and possibly in danger tied his insides into knots. Yet, showing his crew that he had so little faith in his people wouldn't be good for morale, either. Whose idea was it to take this job? Cumberland wondered for the thousandth time. He glanced over at his first officer, Commander Jerald Thomas Stewart, whose helmet of thick black hair gleamed under the bridge lights. J.T., manning what was nominally an engineering subsystems station, returned the glance with a shrug and a What do you want me to say? expression. Yeah, big help.



For her part, Willow was having the time of her life. After ensuring that the pod was on course, she tapped buttons with the grace of a concerto pianist, directing the onboard sensor pallets to gather the raw data on EM distortions, quark population and subspace field stresses.



Strange. There was a large indication of graviton emissions coming from the center of the ion storm. Given that this was almost purely an electromagnetic phenomenon, there shouldn't be any significant gravimetric distortion. But…



"Shuttlepod to Hannibal," she said, keying the comm system open. "I'm getting some goofy readings here."



Cumberland's head snapped up from his reverie at the sound of Rosenburg's voice. "What did she say? 'Goofy'? Dammit, I must have been sick that day at the Academy when they taught the Goofy Protocols!"



In spite of everything, several people on the bridge, including Buffy and Xander, chuckled at the captain's quip. He let the mirth hang in the air for a couple of seconds, then indicated to the communications officer to open the ship-to-ship. "We read you, Lieutenant. Transfer your telemetry to Mr. Cochrane. Can you be, uh, more specific?"



Before she could answer the captain, Max Cochrane had read the telemetry and drawn many of the same conclusions. "Captain, the ion storm is emitting high concentrations of gravitons. Recommend we go to yellow alert, sir."



Buffy looked over at Xander, who stared back. The mutual question What's going on? flickered, unanswered, between them.



Cumberland nodded at this science officer's suggestion. "Yellow alert," he called out, watching as the bridge light subtly changed in response to the heightened state of awareness. He strode over to where Stewart was coordinating with ship's departments. "Mr. Stewart, report to Transporter Room One. Assist Chief Connelly."



The first officer opened his mouth, about to protest that the captain needed him here on the bridge; however, if it was one thing J.T. Stewart knew about, it was Cumberland's talent for spotting – if not actively seeking out – trouble. "Aye, sir," Stewart said, getting up and heading for the turbolift.



The captain's renowned early-warning system was indeed rumbling at this point, although not loud enough to drown the rational part of his mind that some people thought of as mere rumor. Gravitons in an ion storm – unusual, but hardly dangerous at this level. Not like it's a black hole… His mind tried to balance the safety of his crew and his faith in their ability to do their jobs and take care of themselves. "Shuttlepod, report status," he commanded over the channel.



"Nominal, captain. I've, uh, just finished my initial…maneuver, if you can call it that. Gravimetric stresses well within tolerances. I'm preparing to make the second pass now. I want to try a particle-trajectory analysis, sir." Typically, Rosenburg had her "eager young space cadet" voice on, which Cumberland had always found cute. All it did now was worry the hell out of him, that she would be too busy playing Junior Scientist to watch her back.



Then again, isn't that what I'm here for? Cumberland wondered.



Over at the tactical station, Buffy Summers had had enough. "Willow," she said, keying her intercom to the ship-to-ship frequency, "never mind that stuff, just get your butt back to the ship!"



"Buffy, I'm fine. Really. You know me, I'm not Danger Gal."



"Rosenburg, hold your position until further notice." The captain made a hand-signal at the comm officer to mute the channel, then strode over to Summers. She tried not to visibly gulp as he approached, knowing that she had committed a breach in protocol by speaking online without permission.



Cumberland stopped to rest his hands on the railing near her station. His voice was low, even soft, but still carried the timbre of command. "You can't hold her hand forever, Summers. It's not what's best for either one of you, and all it will do is make one of you resentful of the other."



Buffy's lips tightened as she nodded. "Yes, sir," she whispered.



Cumberland's eyes held hers a moment longer. Another beat passed, then he said, "Get a tractor lock on the pod. Anything else 'goofy' happens, yank 'er back."



Her enthusiastic "Aye, sir!" bounced off his departing back.



**************



Willow vacillated between being annoyed at Buffy's overprotectiveness and feeling loved because of it. And, yes, the excitement of being on her first solo mission. Ever since the Academy, and since being assigned to the same ship as Buffy and Xander, she had always felt overshadowed by her friends. She reveled in this chance to shine on her own.



Still…these reading were starting to worry her, at least a little. This was not your typical flash-in-the-pan ion storm. Besides the gravitons, there were indications of unusual stresses to the local subspace field that had no clear cause. She was beginning to think that this "ion storm" was actually the accidental by-product of something much more energetic, much more intriguing and probably much more dangerous.



Oh, poo. Would Buffy bug out at the first sign of trouble? Heck, no. And the captain? They don't call him "The Space Case" for nothin', ya know. She was still under orders to remain at her present position, but she could still take sensor scans of the…anomaly, as she now called it. She was setting up a preliminary scan when the general alert beeped for her attention.



The science readout caught her eye. The numbers started changing there, faster than she would have believed. "Oh oh," she said to herself. "This can't be good."



**************



Back on the Hannibal, Max Cochrane had been monitoring the telemetry from the shuttlepod, and he didn't like what he saw any more than Willow did. "Captain," his slow, even tone nevertheless conveying a sense of extreme urgency, "I'm getting high concentrations of tachyons coming from the ion storm!"



Cumberland made up his mind. " Hannibal to Shuttlepod – Rosenburg, head back to the barn, pronto! Summers, tractor beam! Transp--"



That was as far as the captain got before the universe seemingly busted a seam in the seat of its pants. A large, angry-looking maw suddenly opened up in the middle of the "ion storm," dwarfing both the shuttlepod and the starship. It swirled against the darkness of space like a lake beneath a waterfall, turbulent, unstable, violent.



The energy it released knocked the destroyer back almost ten thousand kilometers from its present position. Perversely, the dark matter microfragments at its event horizon pulled the shuttlepod in the other direction.



In spite of the best efforts of the inertial dampening field, everybody on the bridge was thrown to the deck, except for Buffy, owing to the forward-facing aspect of the tac station enabling her to basically wedge herself in place. She saw Captain Cumberland fall; only later did she find the time to be amazed at how smoothly he turned the deckward plunge into a shoulder roll to end up on his feet.



Xander was at the base of the helm console, dazed and trying to get his breath back. Cumberland managed to lunge to the helm and enabling the emergency stabilizers. Slowly, the Hannibal stopped spinning and re-oriented itself.



Xander reached up, to haul himself back into position, when he felt a hand seize his and lift him on his feet easily. Somehow Cumberland managed, without even leaning to support the load, to get him and seated back at the helm. A quick pat on the shoulder, a brief indication to the astrogation monitor, and the captain was gone. Xander forced his head to stop spinning; then, he saw how far away from the shuttlepod – and Willow – they had been thrown.



"Damage report!" Cumberland cried out.



Cochrane checked his readouts. "Structural integrity at sixty-seven percent. Main power is fluctuating but still online."



"Captain!" Buffy cried out. "I wasn't able to get a tractor beam on Wi—on the shuttlepod before we were thrown clear!"



"Max – get a visual! Mr. Harris, take us in, full speed! Bridge to Transporter Room One, prepare for emergency beam out! We're going in!"



"This may not be wise, Captain," Commander Stewart said over the intercom.



"Probably not, J.T."



"Well, it was worth a try. How soon to transporter range, sir?"



Cumberland looked over to Harris, nodded for him to answer. "Twenty-seven seconds, Commander."



********************



Inside the shuttlepod, Willow felt like a stuffed toy being shaken by a dog with delirium tremens. She clung to the console for dear life, even as she automatically made note of the wild readings still being picked up by the sensors.



The proximity detectors also noted that a large mass was heading towards the shuttlepod on an intercept course. Willow had a moment of panic till she noticed the warp signature around the object. They're coming after me? No! If anybody gets killed, it'll be my fault!



"Hannibal! Do-don't come after me! This might be a transient phenomenon anyway," she added, not believing it for a second.



"Rosenburg, be quiet and let us make like the cavalry," came the reply back from the ship. Willow would swear that she could hear the captain winking at Buffy.



Unexpectedly, a burst of energy from the center of the anomaly buffeted the shuttlepod, overloading the electroplasma conduit under the main ops console, which blew apart directly in Willow's face. Blown back out of her chair, she was unconscious before she hit the deck.



******************



The sound of the explosion carried over the comm channel before that cut off due to the shuttlepod's loss of power. "Rosenburg?" Cumberland asked, dread already draining the blood from his face. "Rosenburg – acknowledge!" He turned to the communications officer. "Get her back!" He punched one of the buttons on his command station. "J.T.! Can you beam her off?"



"Stand by – I'm trying to boost power to the emitters," Stewart's voice was tight with pre-occupation. "There! Got a lock!"



"Energize!" Cumberland shouted, unnecessarily as Stewart and the transporter chief were already initiating transport.



Max Cochrane's voice cut through the air with unexpected volume. "Captain!"



Cumberland turned towards the viewscreen, knowing in his heart what his science officer was pointing out to him. What he was not prepared to see what was happened.



The roiling, swirling mass of the anomaly, with the shuttlepod firmly embedded within its depths, suddenly collapsed in on itself…leaving nothing but empty space behind.



"Oh my God," Xander said, stunned beyond belief.



"Willow!" Buffy nearly shrieked, bolting from her station.



Cumberland blinked twice, then came to himself with an effort. "J.T. – did you get her?"



The answer was slow in coming, Cumberland about to angrily ask again, when Stewart replied, "I don't think – no, sir. We had a lock…then, uh, she was gone."



"Right. Bridge out." He snapped off the intercom, then turned to Summers, still standing, staring at the viewscreen. "Summers."



No response.



"Lieutenant!"



Buffy snapped herself around. "Uh, I, yessir!"



"Institute a Phase One search on all decks. There's a chance that – we managed to transport her back, only – something interrupted the process. She may be hurt or unconscious somewhere on the ship." He paused, knowing full well – as did she – that this was somewhere between make-work and standard procedure. He looked at her face, seeing the first signs of total shock, knowing that if he let her give into the pain now, she wouldn't be good to anyone, including herself. "Vamanos, Lieutenant."



"Aye, sir."



"Mr. Harris, begin a search pattern. There's the possibility that the shuttlepod was thrown clear. Mr. Cochrane, full sensor sweep." There were muted acknowledgements from the two of them, one contemplating the loss of an old and dear friend, the other of a bright young protégé.



Francisco Cumberland sat in his captain's chair, looking straight ahead but not seeing the infinite depths of space nor the bridge of the starship to which he was entrusted. Instead he saw the face of one of his crew, one who had come, despite his best efforts to keep his subordinates at a distance, to carve out her own niche in his heart. His heart now felt the void left as that face had seemingly disappeared forever.



"Vaya con Dios, mi hija," he whispered.





TBC.

______________________

"I love you all. I love you more than life itself. You're all f***ing mad." -- Ozzy as "The Dad," THE OSBOURNES.

Edited by: CaptMurdock at: 8/2/04 8:41 am

Can I just say this idea is nifty as heck?!!



I want more...!!!!!!!!!!!!!



I've never read any cross-over stuff before, but I saw your name and was like "must read that!" (I like your stuff)



I am very very curious to see how this is going to play out...And if you change the characters alot to fit the new environment or just slighty. Like will Tara have her stutter? Can a starfleet officer *have* a stutter...egads! I just reminded myself of Lt. Barkley! noooo!!!!!!!!!!!! (liked him in TNG, got sick of him in Voyager)



Anyway, love this start! More soon please?

-Nadine

Quote:

---

"You think if we hooked her vocal cords to the engines, we could do away with the warp core?"

---

Dude! I was laughing so hard at this that I actually fell out of my chair. And a trek-AU, that is a most amazing (and original) idea. Don't worry about losing your trek cred, cause I for one am already loving this. Can't wait to see what you have in store.



-lat-

- I need my obsessions, they keep me sane -

Thank you for your responses. Cool...I have "name brand" appeal!



I have never been of the opinion that Starfleet officers have to be perfect in every way. Smart, resourceful, brave, definitely, but I think they would have to allow a few personality quirks, within certain parameters. I see my version of Tara as someone who could speak clearly on any subject in any situation except when she's talking about herself or her family, or when she's attracted to someone.



I suppose this is a "crossover" fic, but as I said, except for Willow and Tara (and Buffy and Xander, albeit briefly) the characters in this story are all new. So all you Picard or Sisko fans are going to be disappointed.



Thanks again for the feedback! I have the first full chapter up as soon as I can.

______________________

"I love you all. I love you more than life itself. You're all f***ing mad." -- Ozzy as "The Dad," THE OSBOURNES.

Edited by: CaptMurdock at: 8/6/02 9:58:31 pm

Oh interesting, a Star Trek cross-over sort of fic. I have been thinking about that, about a WT on DS9 fic, heh, my favourite show combined with my one and only favourite couple. Seeing as I believe WT are meant to be together throughout the ages and for all eternity in this life and in any other (I think I covered all the bases now ) then why not in a possible star trekkie future.



An exciting beginning, I won't miss Sisko or Picard, but I cannot wait for Willow and Tara to meet. That is all that matters.

--------------------

Tara: "uh Willow?"

Willow: "No dancing naked, huh?...It just won't be the same."

Tara: "That's all right, we can save it for later" ----From Wilderness, the newest WT comic written by Amber Benson and Christopher Golden

"You think if we hooked her vocal cords to the engines, we could do away with the warp core?" I loved that line too. Poor babbling Willow!

Adding up the total of a love that's true, multiply life by the power of two
Indigo Girls

This is a cool idea I'm enjoying this so far and can't wait for an update



--Michelle

Boy, that "vocal cords/warp core" line is fast becoming a classic!



DrG: DS9 is probably my favorite show too, as the characters are not these flawless paragons that Crazy Gene thought humanity would have evolved into by now. Good drama needs conflict. Besides, Nana Visitor (Kira) and Terry Farrell (Dax) were hot! (Hey, I'm a man, I have needs,)



Again, thank you all for the comments! I will be posting the first full chapter as soon as I can, RL willing and the ocean don't rise...

______________________

"I love you all. I love you more than life itself. You're all f***ing mad." -- Ozzy as "The Dad," THE OSBOURNES.

Excellent idea. I love the idea of Star Trek crossover. I think I'll be okay with out Picard and Sisko. Can't wait for more.

--------------------
Too many of us live desert lives. ~Charles de Lint

another vote for the vocal chord/warp drive line it made me lol and when my girlfriend asked me what I was laughing at I explained and she told me that I was total geek-nevermind.



Great start I love Au's and I can't wait for the next part.

These five words in my head scream "are we having fun yet?"

Chad Kroeger

Ooohhh.... I really, REALLY like this *G*



I'm a sucker for sci-fi (not in a wrong way, you perves ), and, of course, W/T is always of the good.



Sci-fi W/T?



Yay!



This was an incredibly engaging beginning, and I'm really looking forward to the next part.



-Sass

Magrat70: Don't feel bad about being a "total geek." Every time Mrs. CaptMurdock and I watch Beat The Geeks on Comedy Central, she says to me, "I don't know if you should go compete on that show or work for them!"



Sassette: Being a Trekker and a sci-fi fan from wayback, I can understand. (Actually, my being a fan of BtVS is something of an aberration for me. It's really Mrs. CaptMurdock who is the big horror buff of the family. So, it's her fault.) Mind you, as someone pointed out (see above) there are some changes that are necessitated by Our Girls being in the Star Trek universe, e.g. most prominently, they aren't witches (although there just might be Wiccan practitioners, ya never know). I am trying to stay true to the 'original' Willow and Tara, though; Willow is an expert scientist and extremely intelligent. Tara...well, I'll reveal that in the next part. But I don't think you will be disappointed. Her job aboard the ship will definitely go along with the Tara we know and love.



Thank you both for your wonderful comments. Grub!

______________________

"I love you all. I love you more than life itself. You're all f***ing mad." -- Ozzy as "The Dad," THE OSBOURNES.

MORE!



Thank you. That is all.



Cheers

DW

While not a trekker, I have enjoyed it from time to time. This story is great, but I have to say your disclaimer cracked me up



"Distribution: For God's sake, don't put this on a Trek board without asking me first! I'll lose all my street cred. :-)"



I try not to read disclaimers unless I needed to. It's a good thing I did cause hello cliffhanger but I know it will be ok

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Tara's eyes once again found Willow's in the rearview mirror. "Don't worry. I've got your back.
And Jimmy Gorka's loss is my gain."         - Willow grinned.

The Wisdom of War - Christopher Golden

Now if someone could just do a W/T/trek/Dr Who crossover I would be in geek heaven.



See I told you Captain Murdock no bigger geek than me

These five words in my head scream "are we having fun yet?"

Chad Kroeger

CaptMurdock, what a cool idea for a fic. I'm not much of a Star Trek fan, but I couldn't pass up one of your stories. I love how the Scoobies have maintained some of their canon qualities. Buffy's still protecting Willow. Babbling still comes natural to Willow. When Willow said her readouts were "goofy," I laughed out loud.



This is going to be a lot of fun. Thanks for sharing!

*****

She's my everything!

xita: You didn't think I would kill off Willow so early in the story, did ya? Perish forbid...



Magrat70: W/T/Trek/Dr. Who? What, are you trying to kill me? Always good to meet a fellow Whovian. Is it playing in your area on any channels?



Tiggrscorpio: the interesting part of all this is going to maintain the balance between the sensibilities of Buffy and Trek. Given that W/T will have to wear the uniform, there isn't going to be much room for the traditional Bad Wardrobe (although there are off-duty clothes). Again, no magic, but Tara will have special gifts; Willow, for her part, will have to fall back on her genius-level IQ, her natural talent with computers and her innate curiousity.



See you real soon!

______________________

"I love you all. I love you more than life itself. You're all f***ing mad." -- Ozzy as "The Dad," THE OSBOURNES.

Capt Murdock-Uk gold still re-runs some of the old Dr Who's and I still own a load of the old Target books (putting myself up for the geek hall of fame now ) and I've some of the BBC videos too. I know too sad for words

These five words in my head scream "are we having fun yet?"

Chad Kroeger

Quote:

---

DS9 is probably my favorite show too, as the characters are not these flawless paragons that Crazy Gene thought humanity would have evolved into by now. Good drama needs conflict. Besides, Nana Visitor (Kira) and Terry Farrell (Dax) were hot!

---

I hear you about the characters, very true, though I won't miss them here, it is all about WT like I said, but hum, I would not mind my former love (Kira) to show up, heh. Anyway, still no part 2? Damn multi part fics.

--------------------

Tara: "uh Willow?"

Willow: "No dancing naked, huh?...It just won't be the same."

Tara: "That's all right, we can save it for later" ----From Wilderness, the newest WT comic written by Amber Benson and Christopher Golden

Title: Equilibration



Part: Chapter One (a prologue precedes…)



Disclaimer: The characters of Willow Rosenberg and Tara Maclay,or the reasonable facsimiles that I employ in this story, are the property of Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy productions. The setting for the story is within the universe of Star Trek, created by Gene Roddenberry and owned by Paramount Pictures, Inc. No infringement of copyright is intended. The other characters are the creation of either myself or several colleagues who don't care what I do with them. In any case, I'm a firm believer in Kasden's Law ("If you steal from one source, it's plagiarism; if you steal from ten sources, it's research.")



Pairing: W/T (not precisely the Willow and Tara that we all know and love -- but close enough for government work.)



Spoilers: None (as this does not take place in the Buffyverse at all, we're all safe as far as that goes. As to Trek, this takes place mid- Deep Space Nine (call it third or fourth season).



Rating: PG-13.



Summary: A young 23rd-century Starfleet officer named Willow Rosenberg finds herself stranded in the 24th century. Guess who's there to ease her transition?



Warning: this story takes a while to get really going, so please be patient. For you non-Trekkers out there, I do ask that you give this story a chance. No, it does not involve anybody from TOS, TNG, DS9, Voyager or Enterprise, it just takes place in the Trek universe. Yes, you may notice a distinct similarity between my Kitten board name and the name of the captain in these chapters. This character has been in my head for years. Hey, it's fan fiction; deal with it.



Feedback: Email me at captmurdock@mac.com. Thanks.



Distribution: For God's sake, don't put this on a Trek board without asking me first! I'll lose all my street cred. :-)





Chapter One



Captain's Yacht U.S.S. Leonardo da Vinci

Stardate 50247

Earth Year 2372



Lieutenant Tara Maclay had just finished braiding her long blonde hair when the annunciator piped up. "Murdock to Lt. Maclay."



She tapped the commbadge and replied, "Yes, Captain?"



"We're within five minutes of rendezvousing with the ship. Why don't you come up and see your new home?"



Tara smiled. It was a thoughtful gesture on his part. Maybe eloquent as well. "Thank you, sir. On my way." She closed the commline and took one last look in the reflected image in the closet door. Satisfied, she tapped at the control pad next to it, making it fade into dull grey metal, and exited the tiny cubicle that had been her quarters for the past two days.



While it was no luxury liner, the Leonardo was definitely more spacious than a shuttlecraft or even a runabout. Two decks deep, with accomodations for up to six passengers, by Starfleet standards it was almost swank. Tara counted herself lucky to have managed to catch such a nice ride to her new assignment.



After interning as a counselor for three years at Starbase 134, Tara had taken some leave time on Aldebaran III, waiting for the Bozeman to pick her up and transfer her to her new ship. Unfortunately, sampling the local cuisine at New Aberdeen's best seaside restaurant, Tara had become violently ill.



"What a way to find out I'm allergic to Aldebaran shellmouth!" she had muttered to Captain Murdock, during one of their conversations along the journey. He had chuckled and winced in sympathy, as had Lt. Commander Jodell DaKar, the Trill chief engineer who had gone on leave with his captain to Casperia Prime. It was on the way back from leave in the Leonardo that they had swung by the Aldebaran system to pick Tara up.



It had been two very pleasant days with the two men. Mind you, DaKar had mildly hit on her, but did it in such an offhand way that she was not offended, and seemed willing to accept a polite brush-off. His medium height and build made him rather non-threatening, and his dark hair and chocolate-brown eyes – a shade darker than the epidermal spotting that ran symmetrically down the sides of his face – apparently garnered him enough female – and probably male, too – companionship that his ego could without the "devastating blow" of her rejection.



He and Murdock seemed to be close, although the exact nature of their relationship eluded her. Her horseback judgement (to use her father's phrase) was that Murdock preferred women pretty much exclusively. DaKar's preferences were a little looser around the edges, particularly since…



"You-you're a joined Trill, aren't you?" she had asked him once, when the two of them were standing watch in the cockpit of the yacht while Murdock was asleep. Mainly he was standing watch, keeping an eye on the helm's automatic setting while Tara sat at the ops station, helping him run diagnostics.



He turned back towards her, bemusement crooking his eyebrow and the corner of his mouth. "Now, what makes you say that?"



Tara considered her answer carefully. The main reason was that her empathic senses, owing to her one-quarter Betazoid heritage, had picked up on the embedded personalities within his symbiont, something like a "halo" effect around the core of his consciousness. However, she was not entirely comfortable with letting people know that she was able to pick up the emotions and sometimes even the thoughts of other people...especially as it made other uncomfortable.



So she settled on a secondary clue to his nature. "Well, your speech patterns. E-every so often, they change unexpectedly, like—as if different people were speaking through you. Something…something like when a person is fluent in many different languages, they tend to use words from more than just one language. Y-you follow?"



He beamed at her. "Very astute, Lieutenant. As it happens, Jodell is the seventh host of the symbiont DaKar. Which makes me, the latest model!" He and Tara both chuckled. "Not to mention, the most agreeable," he added offhandedly.



"And the most modest, too," Tara stuck in, brightly. DaKar answered with a cheeky grin, giving her the courage to plunge ahead. "How long have you known the captain?"



He took a moment to consider, half a moment, in her opinion, too long. "I came aboard as chief engineer when he became captain, four years ago."



That wasn't what I asked, she thought, wondering why he was being evasive. However, she felt that this was not the time to pursue the matter.



***********



She climbed the short ladderway to the cockpit, finding Captain Ulysses Samuel Murdock in the conn position. "Good morning, Lieutenant," he said over his shoulder. "Sleep well?"



"Uh, yes, sir. You have a very nice yacht."



"Yeah, if I could fit a swimming pool in, I'd never have to leave it."



Tara laughed, overcome with the visual of the lower deck flooded halfway to the overhead and the captain diving off the ladder. While most Starfleet officers could hardly be called humorless (even Vulcans could be counted on, once in a while, for something approaching "dry wit"), Murdock had a gift for the off-the-cuff gem and a killer sense of timing. At the same time, his humor never seemed, at least to Tara, to be forced. It always seemed to come from the keen sense of observation that the captain possessed.



She found him intriguing in many ways. His curly brown hair and neatly-trimmed goatee had a few threads of gray in them, marking his transition from "good-looking" to "distinguished" (Tara's mother, long since deceased, had always remarked that only women truly get older, while men just get more distinguished). About one point seven meters tall, he had incredible physical presence, though he didn't have the constantly imposing nature that Starfleet captains seem to have surgically implanted when they get their fourth pip. Tara found him charming, personable, almost sweet. She had to repress the urge to check his ID to see if he really was a captain.



At the same time, she found it difficult to truly sense anything about him. Although Tara had long since committed herself not to rely solely on her mental abilities, she would have felt a little bit better if she could get an idea of what he was feeling from one moment to the next. Not that Murdock was trying to block her, at least as far as she could tell. There was just so much there. It was the mental equivalent of trying to walk across the floor with millions of marbles scattering hither and yon at high speed. Tara had never experienced anything near to this, so she had no frame of reference for a diagnosis. I wonder what Mom would have made of him, she wondered.



"Take the ops position, please," he said, turning back to piloting the yacht. He had already taken them down to sublight, as the stars were no longer rainbow-streaking past the viewport. "We've reached the position where the ship is going to—Ah, here they are," he amended as the proximity alert beeped.



A large, dark shape suddenly appeared nearly right overhead, making Tara flinch involuntarily. Good God, that's close! As it pulled ahead of them, she got a better perspective of the ship: it was a Nebula-class exploratory cruiser, with a huge saucer section mated directly onto the oval drive section, with underslung warp nacelles. A large pylon, rising up aft of the saucer from the very back of the drive section, supported a triangular weapons pod. The soft red glow of the main impulse engine at the stern contrasted with the bright blue given off by the plasma in the nacelles.



"There she is…the starship Hannibal," Murdock intoned with obvious pride. "Home."



Home. Tara thought that word sounded nice. After leaving the Norpin colony where her family lived, and after the Academy and her internship at 134, Tara would have liked to find a place she could call home.



Behind them, DaKar came up the ladderway and gazed out the viewport at the ship. "Hmmm. Looks like they've managed to keep it in one piece without me." Tara heard Murdock quietly snort and mutter "Engineers…"



"Hannibal to Leonardo." The call came over the speaker, a cultured female voice, which had a slight accent that Tara could not quite place.



" Leonardo here. Nice to see you here, Number One. I realize we're a little late, but we had a passenger to pick up at the Aldebaran system."



"We got your message, sir. Dr. Devereux is anxious to meet his new assistant."



Murdock smiled at Tara, then addressed the speaker again. "So, how did the coup go in my absence? Take over the ship yet?"



Tara looked sharply at DaKar, who winked back at her, indicating that this was some kind of private joke.



There was a definite hint of amusement in the woman's – the executive officer's -- voice. "The revolution was successful. All political prisoners were released, and I've just finished redecorating your ready room."



The captain's jaw – or former captain's jaw, as the case may be – dropped in shock. "You didn't throw out my original pressing of 'Hey, Jude', did you?"



"Of course not." Beat. "I'm using it for a drinks coaster."



Murdock mimed being shot through the heart, then responded in mock outrage. "Okay, that's it. I'm coming back aboard before there's anymore such tomfoolery. Match bearings, please."



The XO finished chuckling, then said, "Ready for docking, sir. Manual sequence at your discretion." A pause, then she continued in a slightly quieter tone. "Welcome home, sir. Hannibal out." A muted chirp sounded as the commline closed.



The Leonardo increased speed until it drew ahead of the Hannibal again, then decelerated as it slipped under the saucer section. Murdock prepared to dock the yacht at its dedicated niche in the ventral center of the saucer, just forward of the main deflector.



Tara was no pilot, but she understood how hazardous a manual docking was. "H-Have you done this often, Captain?" she inquired gently.



"Never had one lesson," came back the cheerful, flippant reply. Tara's eyes widened; then, she saw DaKar smiling at her. Turning towards him, she saw him mouth He's kidding. She nodded back in appreciation. "You have a class-three ops qualification, don't you, Maclay?" the captain added, his eyes intent on the conn instruments.



"Um, yessir. But, uh, Commander DaKar is here, and he can—"



"No, thank you, Lieutenant, I'd just as soon have you handle the ops routines for this, if it's all the same to you." The casual tone of his response nevertheless left Tara firmly convinced that he wanted her to run the ops station. It was true, she did have the basic knowledge of operations management, at least for routine matters and aboard auxiliary spacecraft like shuttlecraft and runabouts. She wasn't sure about her ability to help with a manual docking, though. Still, Captain Murdock seemed determine to throw her into the deep end of the pool. She quickly scanned through the ops subsystems menu to see what she needed to do.



Murdock guided the Leonardo below the saucer section, using the RCS thrusters at minimum power to make minute position and orientation corrections. He had decided to see if Maclay could handle herself in an unusual situation. After checking to see that he had the yacht correctly lined up, he called out, "Deploy anti-static baffles."



Tara ran over the controls again until she saw the proper indicators. "Baffles deployed, aye," she replied, after touching the proper buttons and seeing the readouts change. The baffles would absorb and redirect the electrostatic differential between the two hulls, to prevent any unexpected discharges. With the traveling that they had done in the last few days, there might be enough juice on the yacht's hull to light up a dozen shuttles – or a couple of unfortunate crewmen.



There we go, Murdock thought, seeing the three-dee graphic on the monitor. Starship and yacht were lined up. A quick tap with the Z-axis thrusters, and they drifted upward. With precision that Tara would have called uncanny, the Leonardo da Vinci docked into the Hannibal.



Running down the standard protocols, Tara performed the necessary steps to ensure that the yacht was docked. "Mooring clamps in place. External power on-line. Initiating warp core shutdown."



Murdock visibly relaxed as the conn panel indicated that they were fully docked. "Home again, home again, jiggety-jig."



Gathering their respective personal luggage, the three officers went to the aft dorsal hatch, the main point of egress to the Hannibal proper. After being keyed open, the hatch rose to reveal a vestibule containing an officer in sciences-blue, past middle age but still hale and hearty. Although what was once a shock of red hair had been supplanted by white, the grin and the laugh lines belonged to a much younger man.



"Why, Dr. Devereux!" Captain Murdock exclaimed. "Permission to come aboard?" he then intoned, his formality mostly for form's sake.



"Permission granted," the doctor said, a hint of a bow accompanying the return. He then held out his hand. "Welcome home, Sam."



"Good to be back, Charlie." The two men shook hands with the vigor of old friends.



"How 'bout you, Jodell? Keeping my boy out of trouble?" Devereux asked the engineer.



The Trill shrugged. "I suppose, but he has such a talent for it –"



"Oh, really?" the captain interjected with incredulity. "Who was it that had to get bailed out after—"



"Let's not be petty!" came the sharp comeback, followed with a quick "Uh, with all due respect. Sir."



Murdock favored him with a stern look for a second, then burst out with laughter. Tara giggled before she could cover it under protocol, turning it into a cough. The three men turned towards her, bemused.



"Well, where are my manners," Murdock said, smiling. "Lt. Tara Maclay, Dr. Charles Devereux, ship's counselor."



"Nice to have you aboard, Lieutenant," Devereux said, careful not to shake her hand too vigorously, although her fingers told her that he retained a large measure of his youthful strength.



"It's rea-really nice to meet you, Doctor," Tara said, unable to hide her nervousness.



The elder raised his eyebrows. "You think so, do you? Obviously I've been the victim of some rather vigorous propaganda perpetrated by these two on your trip."



"Captain Murdock and Commander DaKar've told me nothing except you're a sweetie," she blurted out before she could stop herself. The other two men exchanged looks that hovered somewhere between mortification and bemusement, just stopping short of mouthing A sweetie? to each other.



"An honest one," Devereux purred. "Refreshing."



Tara had to steel herself against impulse to duck her head and try to hide behind her long hair. What helped her keep her head up was the knowledge that her hair was braided, as per regulations, and couldn’t have hidden a mouse.



Devereux seemed to take pity on her. "Well, we better get you squared away, before you have to deal with a couple hundred lunatics. I'll show you your quarters, then we'll head to my, well, our office. Sam, our usual, uh, debriefing later?"



Tara definitely caught a flash of reluctance, which Murdock did an admirable job suppressing. "Wouldn't miss it."



**********



"Um, are-are you sure these aren't your quarters, sir?"



The quarters to which Devereux escorted Tara were larger than any she had occupied in her tenure in Starfleet, be it Academy digs or even Starbase 134. She knew Nebula-class starship had great accommodations, but man… Besides the amount of space, which was almost obscene, the quarters were on the outer skin of the ship, affording viewports with a view of the stars, which were once again streaking by at warp speed.



"No, I have quarters about as nice as this, one deck down and in-board. These used to be occupied by our former science officer, until she transferred off."



Tara had been looked out one of the ports, when she heard. "Oh, but you should have gotten these quarters yourself…"



"Nah. I've gotten my digs set up just so; the thought of moving and setting up her doesn't appeal to me. 'Sides, I know what space looks like; I've no desire to see it every time I go to bed." He crossed over to her, smiling a little and feeling (as Tara sensed) a little embarrassed. "I pulled a couple of strings, and – well, consider this my way of saying 'Welcome aboard, glad to see ya, hope your time here is a good one.'" He shrugged like a teenager asking a girl for a date, and her heart went out to him.



"Thank you," she replied shyly. "I, um, I h-hope so to." The intensity of the moment was getting uncomfortable for them both. Tara walked towards the head to break the awkwardness. Walking past the vanity-divider, she walked into the head proper to find…



"Wow!"



Devereux walked in, grin in place. He had a feeling this little surprise would go over well.



"A-A bathtub?" Tara turned to him, incredulous. How could he have known what a bath fiend she was? Maybe those Starfleet psych profiles are more in-depth than I thought… "Oh, this is too much! I can't—oh, could I? No—"



"Relax, Tara. Our former science officer liked to take baths, so she had it installed."



Sounds like my kinda lady, Tara thought naughtily. She covered by "changing the subject.": "Th-that reminds me: what about the new science officer? Didn't she, or he, have first crack at these—"



Devereux shook his head. "We haven't had a real science officer for a few months. Not that we don't have an assemblage of the best scientific brains in the Federation, but you know how Starfleet bureaucracy works: anything short of an emergency—"



"-- takes an eternity," Tara finished the old saying.



TBC

______________________

"I love you all. I love you more than life itself. You're all f***ing mad." -- Ozzy as "The Dad," THE OSBOURNES.

No WT yet darn it. Please hurry I am not a young man anymore. Btw the captain in this part sounds like a bit of a god, is that a coincidence?



Seriously, I am hooked thank you very much, don't leave me dangling too long. Pretty please.

--------------------

Tara: "uh Willow?"

Willow: "No dancing naked, huh?...It just won't be the same."

Tara: "That's all right, we can save it for later" ----From Wilderness, the newest WT comic written by Amber Benson and Christopher Golden

introduction of Tara with naughty thoughts about bath tubs



Now if we can just get W/T and the bath tub together

These five words in my head scream "are we having fun yet?"

Chad Kroeger

Just started up on this fic!! Very interesting, all star trek-y, cool!! But i need some W/T-ness soon!! And i 2nd the W/T tryin the bathtub out thing, that would be fun!! Can't wait 4 more!!

"Don't warn the tadpoles!...
I-I have frog fear."

It's great to see they are still in character. Tara especially with that half betazoid thing going on, hee, she retains that intuitive Tara thing. Oh take your time telling your story. I am intrigued.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Childie -"Not all girls are raving bloody lesbians, you know!"

George - "That's a misfortune of which I am perfectly well aware."

The Killing of Sister George

DrG., are you insinuating that the character of Captain Murdock is based on me? Heck, no.



Yes, Virginia, Willow, Tara and the bathtub will all meet eventually. It's going to take some time, however. Without giving too much away, Willow is going to find herself ninety years out of her own time. You think that's going to be easy to get over? Might as well as her to deal instantaneously with seeing the love of her life killed in front of her and brutally murdering the killer...



Anyway, there's another scene with Dr. Devereux and Tara where we find out another side of his personality, and then a scene with him and Captain Murdock, then something extraordinary happens...



thank you for the feedback and encouragement.

______________________

"I love you all. I love you more than life itself. You're all f***ing mad." -- Ozzy as "The Dad," THE OSBOURNES.

Tara as an empath, that's great. Sounds like a fun ship, but there's something missing - oh yes a science officer. Now, where can they get one of those? Its not like one is likely to just appear now is it? Heh!

Adding up the total of a love that's true, multiply life by the power of two
Indigo Girls

Title: Equilibration



Part: Chapter One (continued)



Disclaimer: The characters of Willow Rosenberg and Tara Maclay,or the reasonable facsimiles that I employ in this story, are the property of Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy productions. The setting for the story is within the universe of Star Trek, created by Gene Roddenberry and owned by Paramount Pictures, Inc. No infringement of copyright is intended. The other characters are the creation of either myself or several colleagues who don't care what I do with them. In any case, I'm a firm believer in Kasden's Law ("If you steal from one source, it's plagiarism; if you steal from ten sources, it's research.")



Pairing: W/T (not precisely the Willow and Tara that we all know and love -- but close enough for government work.)



Spoilers: None (as this does not take place in the Buffyverse at all, we're all safe as far as that goes. As to Trek, this takes place mid- Deep Space Nine (call it third or fourth season).



Rating: PG-13.



Summary (The Story So Far): A young 23rd-century Starfleet officer named Willow Rosenberg is lost to a temporal anomaly. Ninety years later, a young lieutenant named Tara Maclay assumes her new post as assistant counselor aboard the starship Hannibal. Against all odds, the two meet...



Warning: this story takes a while to get really going, so please be patient. For you non-Trekkers out there, I do ask that you give this story a chance. No, it does not involve anybody from TOS, TNG, DS9, Voyager or Enterprise, it just takes place in the Trek universe. These characters have (I think) interesting stories of their own; I tend to drop tantalizing hints of the captain's past from time to time.



Feedback: Email me at captmurdock@mac.com. Thanks.



Distribution: For God's sake, don't put this on a Trek board without asking me first! I'll lose all my street cred. :-)



********



Devereux's office was not quite what Tara expected. But then, she reflected, neither was he. The room was decorated more like a private home than a psychiatrist's office, with long couches, comfortable armchairs, coffee table complete with large bound books consisting of mostly photographs, bookcases filled to nearly bursting with old-style paperbacks, floor lamps that provided illumination rather than the overhead ship's lighting, seascapes in oil on canvas and in scrimshaw… He told her that these furnishings came from his family home in Cape Cod, on the east coast of North America on Earth.



He settled into one of the armchairs and picked up a PADD, scrolling through it as he gestured for her to sit down. "There's a small office adjoining this one, that I'm going to let you have. No sense in us knocking into each other, right?" She grinned as she sank into one of the very comfortable couches. "I've been catching up on your case record and those monographs you wrote. Pretty impressive."



"Thank you."



A slight beat, then he continued. "Do those Betazoid senses of yours get much of a workout in your therapy sessions?"



Devereux had dropped this bombshell so casually that she almost answered him automatically. Wide-eyed, she stammered back, "H-H-How did you kn-know? I-I-I…"



"Tara, your service record goes back aways, as far as family relations goes. You didn't think that the fact that your maternal grandmother was born on Betazed would escape notice forever, did you?" His demeanor, somewhat clinical if not downright harsh, softened a bit when he saw her look down towards the floor. "Look, what I really want to know is, how much do you rely on your…abilities, when you're counseling a patient?"



Tara's head snapped and her eyes locked on his. "No! I—Doctor, I only use m-my empathic abilities as, well, a tool, for diagnosis. But I try not to rely on it, as there are a lot of times when it gives me conflicting information, or if, let's say the patient is from a species that I can't read. Then, I-I have to rely on my training and knowledge to help them. In fact, I read once about a Betazoid counselor who temporarily lost her empathic abilities. She apparently relied on them so heavily that she felt useless and nearly resigned." Tara shrugged. "I'd rather that not happen to me.



Devereux was pleased that she could defend herself so adroitly, which answered concerns he had had about her at first. "Good answer. I think you're going to do just fine."



Over the next hour, the two of them went over Tara's duties for the next few weeks, which mainly consisted of performing initial evaluations of new crewmembers that Devereux had been unable to complete due to his workload.



"Good enough," Devereux said, tapping on the PADD he held. "You can start the first of these at oh-eight-hundred tomorrow. Give you the rest of the day to settle in and all that."



Tara smiled. "Thank you, Doctor."



He stood up and strode over to a handsome wood endtable, upon which rested a rather incongruous deskscreen and a framed photograph. "Why don't you make it 'Charlie' when we're in here, okay, Tara?" He gave her upraised eyebrows.



She nodded. "O-okay. Charlie. I take you prefer being called 'Doctor' to 'Counselor'…"



"Hell, yes. Never liked that term. A century ago, starships occasionally had 'staff psychiatrists' but Starfleet Medical apparently thought term was too 'aggressive' or 'off-putting.' Whatever. So I ask people to address me by my academic credentials, 'cause God knows, I earned 'em. Sent in all those cereal box-tops myself, I did."



Tara's brow furled; she knew he was making a joke, but the reference zoomed over her head at warp speed. She walked over to the table and glanced at the framed picture. The woman pictured there was quite lovely, with strawberry blond hair, light-green eyes, high cheekbones and very full lips. "Is this your daughter?" she asked him.



Devereux made a sound somewhere between a cough and a chuckle. "Ah, no. That was…my wife."



Was. Tara got the distinct impression that divorce was not what separated them. If Devereux had been about the same age as the woman apparently was in the photo, then he had been widowed a long time ago, as Tara could see no more recent pictures of her in his office.



She was about to express her sympathy when she felt a wall slam down somewhere inside him. He turned away, moving towards a cabinet of dark walnut wood. "I think this calls for a bit of a toast, don't you?" he said, masking the old grief with his usual joviality. He brought out a bottle of almost colorless liquid and two small glasses. Pouring a dram into each with the skill of the frequent elbow-bender, he offered a glass to her and held the other. "What shall we drink to, Tara?"



"Um, to a…fruitful partnership?" she offered. She caught a whiff of the drink in her hand and it made her head spin. "I-Is this alcohol?" she sputtered, feeling like a total rube.



"'Course it is. That synthehol stuff, well, drinking that's like kissing your sister!"



Tara blinked. That comment got her piqued, although she really wasn't sure why. God knows she had heard worse in her day. "I wouldn't know, Doctor, I don't have a sister."



To his credit, the older man shrugged, set his glass down, went back to the cabinet, came out with a fresh glass and a different bottle with a clear, sparkling fluid in it. "Suit yourself, I'm easy. This is Altair water," he added, pouring her a glass. "It's bubbly, but not bubbly. Guaranteed not to knock your neural net offline." He handed the water to her, took from her the glass with the booze and poured its contents into his glass. "As you said, to a fruitful partnership. And as my—" Devereux stopped himself, reached out and turned his wife's picture face down to the table. "As my Klingon friend said, to the pure life!" With that, he knocked his drink back. He then carefully set the picture back up, the finale of an old ritual.



Tara found the water quite refreshing. She then watched as Devereux explained that he had to go see Captain Murdock for that "informal briefing" he had mentioned earlier. He took a small case from the cabinet, opened it briefly to inspect the small bottle and glasses stored within, and sealed it shut.



Tara couldn't resist. "Charlie, um, is it your standard protocol to try and, uh, get your patients drunk when you counsel them?"



Devereux grinned. "A long time ago, someone once said, 'A man will often say something to his bartender—"



******



"—That he'd never say to his doctor," he finished in the captain's ready room sometime later. From the opened travel case, Devereux had poured a finger of Saurian brandy into two glasses. One glass he held in his hand. The other reposed on Murdock's desk, amongst the clutter of PADDs, computer screen, and odd knickknacks from the captain's travels.



Besides the viewport, the dominating sight of the room was the large photovisual print on the wall to the left of the desk. It depicted a castle, alien in architecture, domes and parapets melded together, reposing next to a silvered sea. A large moon, brown and cratered, bisected by the horizon, provided an otherworldly backdrop.



"You know, I've heard that before," Murdock replied to the counselor's quip. He leaned back in his chair, idling contemplating a report on his deskscreen, not truly ignoring Devereux – and the reason he was here – but not really giving him an opening either. "What do you think of Maclay? Think she'll do all right?"



"Oh, yes," Devereux replied immediately. "She's gotten high marks from all her professors, she's written some pretty good monographs on the structure of metaconsciousness, and her therapeutic records are first-rate."



Murdock nodded. "Sounds good. Only…do you think she's had some personal self-confidence issues?"



A small smile. "Picked up on the stammer, too, huh?"



The captain nodded again. "First time I've heard someone do that in a while. You think she's up to this job, Charlie?"



Devereux waved off his concern. "Oh, quit worrying. She only does that when she's talking about herself – yes, I've kept track. Personality quirks like hers can only increase her ability to empathize with her patients. And frankly, with the pesky bunch we've got running around on this ship, she'll need all the empathizing she can get."



Murdock rolled his eyes. "Tell me about it. Where does Starfleet get 'em and why are they always sending them to me?"



"Probably 'cause of the name on the outside of the ship. With every captain from George Banacek to Francisco Cumberland—"



"The Space Case Himself," Murdock intoned with mock solemnity.



"—the old Hannibal had a reputation for being the Wackiest Ship in the Army. Yes, it was also brave, courageous, saved the Federation time and again, blah blah blah…"



"Yeah, well, whenever Enterprise was too busy to do it…"



"You be quiet, I'm discoursing. But always with a reputation for getting things done in unusual ways. Starfleet didn't mind so much in those days. 'Cowboy diplomacy' and all that. They sure enough had the commendations to prove it. So is it so strange that, perhaps subconsciously, Starfleet Command is trying to generate that same, oh, call it 'eccentric synergy' that the old Hannibal had on the new one?"



"Well, it's giving me a headache!" Murdock said, a pained (and not entirely feigned) expression on his face that made Devereux chuckle in sympathy.



"You? I'm the one who has to integrate all these diverse personalities into a workable whole! See, that's why I need Maclay so bad. You, now you have a first officer who can take over for you in a pinch. Dr. Govarr has physicians down in sickbay in case he's swamped – hell, he's even got one of those Emergency Medical Holograms! Press a button, instant doctor! DaKar, plenty of technical support down in Engineering. Virtually every department on this ship has plenty of personnel – except mine. Whose to keep me from going nuts?" He drained his drink in one shot and refilled his glass. "Who counsels the counselor?"



"If Lt. Maclay's primary job is to keep you sane, she's going to be busier than I thought," Murdock quipped.



"You're hilarious. How was Casperia Prime?" Devereux asked, changing the subject in mid-stream.



Murdock shrugged. "It was great. I had a fantastic hotel, round-the-clock room service and more peace and quiet than I have had in a long time."



"Mmmm, sounds exciting," Devereux replied, taking a sip from his refilled glass. "Sitting in your hotel room all day and night. What a vacation."



"Look, if wanted wild-and-woolly details, go ask DaKar. He took enough of a sampling of Casperia Prime's, um, entertainment for both of us. Now me, when I want to relax, I relax." He paused, then leaned forward again as a memory came to him. "Oh! I did take in a show. The Karidian Players, they did The Importance of Being Earnest. In Rigellian-style garb, no less."



Devereux blew air out of his pursed lips. "Should'a gone to Risa…"



"I've been to Risa. Too touchy-feely for my taste."



"The 'touchy-feely' is part of the charm of the place. No, Sam, hold it. When you were on Casperia Prime…" Devereux hesitated.



"Yessss…"



"…didn't you meet anyone nice?" he continued in a lilting tone.



Murdock answered back in the same lilt. "Yes, I met several nice people. Charlie, cut the gas and tell me what's on your mind."



"Okay, what's 'on my mind' is that you go on leave, without my having to forcibly pry you off the ship, and on a planet with lots of people, female-type people, you probably didn't ask a nice lady if she wanted to have a drink with you! Right?" Murdock sat mute and a plea of nolo contendre was entered to the court. "I've heard of being alone in a crowd, Sam, but you take the hasperat!" he added, referring to a Bajoran delicacy.



Murdock rolled his eyes as Devereux pressed his point. "When was the last time you spent some quiet time with someone else in the room? You can't be a hermit forever, Sam." Murdock gave Devereux a blank look that the counselor had little trouble interpreting. "Yeah, okay, fine. You didn't tell me, though, that you took a vow of celibacy!"



"Aw, come on, Charlie! I was married once. I told you about that. You know…how it ended." The captain didn't quite shudder, but his discomfort about the memory still showed. "I don't want to do that again."



"So you'd just rather be lonely? Right? Is loneliness such a joyous feeling for you, that you want to just indulge in it?"



"It's a thirst," Murdock replied, his voice becoming strangely sepulchral, as if someone else were speaking through him. "A flower, dying in the desert."



"Huh?



Murdock shook his head, returning from whatever memory had briefly possessed him. "I'm not lonely, Charlie. I have everything I need here."



"Really?" Devereux replied, not buying it for a second. "Tell me this: when was the last time you had somebody—okay, you don't want a wife, girlfriend, or Significant Other. But when was the last time you had somebody in your life that you cared about? That you wanted to take care of?"



Murdock's eyebrows looked as if there were about to do a one-and-a-half gainer off his forehead. "Are you kidding me? I've got eight hundred people I have to take care of!" He waved an arm in implication of the Hannibal's complement.



Devereux shook his head. "That's not what I mean, and you know it. You work your ass off, play your ass off, make yourself the social butterfly down at the Tart 'n' Drum or at Calavicci's, display the famous Murdock wit to all and sundry, but you don't let 'em in here," he intoned, pointing to his heart.



"And why don't I?" Murdock asked wearily.



"Because you're afraid that they're all going to get taken away from you."



Devereux had chosen his words carefully. They penetrated the shields that Murdock had placed around his mind ever since the day that another had said something to that effect, someone who was the embodiment of Murdock's worst fears. The words opened a door in Murdock's mind, one he tried desperately to keep shut, releasing a terrible image that now floated in front of his eyes…an image he was terrified of ever seeing in a mirror…



"Bridge to Captain Murdock." The page from the ship's first officer shattered the moment, to Murdock's relief and Devereux's frustration.



"Go ahead, Number One," Murdock answered, leaning forward, shooting at look at the counselor who folded his arms and looked away.



"Long-range sensors have picked up some kind of spatial anomaly in sector 327, about six light-years away. It could be a wormhole, or a subspace vacuole. Shall I alter course?"



Murdock seemed to decide instantaneously. "Yes, do so. Inform me when we get in range. Murdock out." After the channel-closed chime sounded, Murdock leaned back in his chair and gazed at Dr. Devereux.



Knowing the moment had gone, Devereux chose not to pursue the topic further. "You going to drink that?" he inquired casually, indicating the glass on the desk next to the captain.



By way of answer, Murdock reached out, snagged the bottle, unstoppered it, picked up the glass and with a precise, delicate movement, poured the drink back into the bottle. He put the stopper back in, slid bottle and glass back over to Devereux, and said in a most pleasant tone, "Some other time, perhaps."



*******



Girl, you have died and gone to heaven, Tara thought as she sank back into the tub with a hedonistic wriggle, letting the warm water envelope her head and shoulders. An Aaah of pure animal pleasure escaped her lips into the steamy air.



After leaving Devereux's office, Tara had gone to Sickbay for the mandatory examination given to all new crewmembers. Upon entering the complex of rooms, she had come a cropper of the chief medical officer, Dr. Govarr. Although she had seen his name on the senior personnel manifest, she hadn't realized he was a Tellarite until…



"Oh!" she said, as this pig-bear apparition had suddenly jumped out of nowhere in front of her. Actually, she had been looking down at the floor, lost in her own thoughts, and almost bumped into him.



"You are Lieutenant Mock'lay?" he had growled at her, in a voice that seemed to come from about three decks down.



"Y-Y-Y…I, uh, yes, sir. Doctor, I mean," Great job, Maclay, now how about once more with the Universal Translator online!



"Sit. There." A large three-fingered hand pointed to a diagnostic table. Wondering if he was going to dissect her, Tara sit on the table, knees practically welded together as he gathered a tricorder and other scanners and brought them over. He looked her up and down as if choosing a cut of steak in a restaurant. His large nostrils distended for a second – he was actually sniffing her!



"You're a hybrid!"



Tara was so taken aback that she forgot to be offended by his tone, one that her father would use for his draft animals on the farm. "How did you know?" she asked skeptically. Does everybody on this ship read genealogies?



"Your scent," he replied gruffly, opening the tricorder and running the peripheral scanner over her. "It's different from a normal human. Yours is much more…tangy."



"I'm tangy?" she asked, caught in the neutral zone between bemusement and disbelief. She caught the eye of the nurse assisting the doctor, a middle-aged Bajoran woman who gave her a surreptitious smile.



"Mmmm…well, without running a genetic scan…and where's the fun in that…let's see, enlarged hippocampus, redundant substructures in the isocortex…Betazoid heritage, at least one-quarter. Classic signs."



After that, and a quick discussion about her allergy to Aldebaran shellmouth (which the doctor had a huge chuckle about, giving her a mild case of embarrassment), the doctor pronounced her fit for duty and released her. Having nothing to do for the rest of the day, Tara opted to try out her new bathtub – and the comprehensive menu of soaps and bath oils available via the replicator.



Half floating in the warm, scented water, Tara felt tension drain away from the last few days that she barely recognized that she had had. She felt good about her new posting, her new superior (his drinking might need a little looking into) and just life in general. After years of enduring the complete lack of affection from her father, the disdain of her brother and cousin, and of failing to make any friends in either the Academy or Starbase 134 (although she acknowledged that some of that might have been her own diffidence) here was the opportunity for a new start. The good first impressions that she had made with Murdock, DaKar and Devereux were very encouraging, allowing her the hope that her past poor record of relationships was due to not meeting the right sort of people.



Tara rose up slightly out of the water, feeling her wet hair gather itself up onto her scalp and neck, and reclined against the padded side of the tub. She breathed in the heady vapors coming off the bathwater as she dared to imagine meeting That Special Someone, the someone that she could spend her nights with to discuss her days, someone she could love and feel love from. A female someone, definitely.



Tara had discovered early on that she was gay, her interest in women pretty much exclusive. While it no longer carried the stigma that it had in centuries past, and given that its…practitioners had the same legal rights to marriage and family as everyone else, homosexuality was still more the exception than the rule. People like DaKar, people whom Tara thought of as "well-adjusted polymorphs," tended to enjoy more company than those who strictly preferred their own sex.



Her soapy hands moved over her legs, her abdomen, her breasts as she lay back thinking. Of course, her preferences thus far had run towards the generic humanoid model that she herself belonged to. She might find that in more alien psychologies, she might prefer males. Tara was willing to concede that possibility.



"Govarr," she said aloud, "now there was a definite spark there." She giggled in self-mockery and sank back down. All in good time, and on her own terms.



All at once a definite feeling of tension insinuated itself in Tara's consciousness. It took a second for her to realize that it was coming from outside herself, that her empathic senses had picked it up.



From where? From who?



******



"Report, Number One," Murdock commanded as he stepped out of his ready room onto the bridge of the Hannibal.



Commander Olivia Sivasubramanian Faraday was vacating the captain's chair at his approach, passing command back to him and moving to stand near the executive officer station a few feet away. The handsome Sikh woman, her long dark hair pinned up on the back of her head, was long and lithe, like the dagger she preferred to carry on dangerous missions in addition to the standard-issue phaser. "We've come out of warp in the vicinity of the spatial anomaly, sir."



"On screen." Murdock took a long look at this distortion of space hanging in front of the ship. Doesn't look like much, but these things are tricky… "Full scan, people. Tell me this thing's address and phone number."



Lt. Commander Gelfa Kolrami had lived with more than enough of the captain's strange metaphors to even comment on them anymore. "It appears to be something akin to a Kerr Loop, with dark matter at the event horizon. I'm reading a massive chroniton signature."



"Chronitons?" Devereux piped up from his own station. "Great, that means this is a express route to Getting Lost In Some Godforsaken Time Period!"



Faraday nodded. "I hate those."



Murdock rolled his eyes. "If you two don't mind…" he said in an honestly-the-things-I-put-up-with tone of voice. "Gelfa, are we safe back here?"



The Zakdorn nodded, the bifurcated cheeks on either side of her face that looked like gills undulating slightly. "Oh, yes, sir. The chroniton emissions outside the event horizon are miniscule. It's the gravitons we have to worry—"



"Captain!" came the urgent cry from the Andorian tactical officer, Lt. Thelvran. "There's an object in the center of the anomaly!"



"Confirmed," Kolrami added, slightly put out at being interrupted but putting a damper on it. "It appears to be a small craft, possibly a lifeboat or a shuttle."



"Magnify," Faraday ordered. The anomaly seemed to jump right at them as the view shifted closer. Murdock peered at what appeared to be an old-style Starfleet shuttlepod. I haven't seen one of those things in…



"Any lifesigns?" Devereux asked. He almost hoped that there weren't, for the sake of any poor soul who had to be trapped in that maelstrom.



"One lifesign, very faint," Kolrami reported a moment later.



Faraday and Murdock looked at one another, a silent communication running between them. She knew his first instinct was to go in full speed and damn the photon torpedoes. He knew she was far more cautious and might have waited for alternatives to present themselves. In a second, each knew the other's thoughts and possible responses to their arguments…



Faraday turned to the ensign at the helm. "Close to transporter range."



"With all due respect, ma'm," Kolrami said, looking partway over her right shoulder, "this might not be a good idea."



Devereux glared at the Zakdorn at ops. "Why the hell n—"



In one of Fate's supreme instances of Superb Comic Timing, a wave of graviton distortion hit the starship, slamming nearly everyone down on their respective keisters.



Not bothering to hide the irony – or the smugness – in her voice, Kolrami answered, " That's why."



**********



Tara felt herself shoot up from the bathtub about a meter and dropped down again with a resounding splash and an impressive plume of soapy water. After a few panicked moments, she managed to reorient herself sufficiently to sit up, coughing and sputtering up water. A few seconds later, she got her breath back sufficiently to ask, "What the hell was that?"



No one answered here, for which she was grateful as she still had a slight case of nudity. She scrambled – carefully – out of the tub, dripping wet and slippery as wet ice on wet ice. This would not do. Standing as straight as she could, arms from her sides, legs slightly apart, she instructed, "Computer, activate sonic shower: drying cycle!"



A second later, a burst of energy ran over Tara's exposed skin (that is to say, all of it), feeling like a cross between a mild electric shock and a hundred thousand ants tap-dancing a one-second chorus line. The process left her skin dry and tingly. It also left her tingly in a couple of places that it would not do to enumerate in polite company. Boy, that's kinda…naughty, she thought with a grin. With her hair still damp but fluffed out by the sonic shower, she was ready to get dressed.



She just stepped out of the head and gotten her uniform when the call came. "Bridge to Lt. Maclay." It was Dr. Devereux.



"Maclay here, sir, go ahead." Just don't ask me to activate the viewscreen for a another minute, she thought as she slipped on underpants and bra in record time.



"Report to sickbay, on the double! We may be transporting an injured person aboard."



"On my way. Maclay out." She jammed her feet into socks, pulled on the undertunic and practically jumped into her fatigues (she rather liked the new jumpsuit style of uniform, but it could be awkward putting it on, it being one piece). She gathered up her combadge, insignia and boots and ran out the door, figuring she could put them on in the turbolift.



***********



Murdock noted that Dr. Devereux had sent Maclay to sickbay, nodding at his initiative. Whoever was on that shuttlepod might need assistance other than medical – especially considering Dr. Govarr's bedside manner…



After the first shockwave, he'd had ordered the shields up. On the plus side, they enabled the Hannibal to draw closer to the anomaly and the shuttlepod; on the minus…



"We can't lower the shields to transport anyone aboard without the graviton waves crushing this ship like a beer can," Murdock said aloud, his mind racing for options.



Thelvran looked puzzled, as he usually did whenever confronted with human idiom. His antennae wiggled slightly, indicating he was thinking. "Beer can crush a starship? I knew humans drank many dubious liquids—"



"Hey!" Devereux said indignantly.



"I think he meant 'bear'," Kolrami supplied helpfully. "That's an Earth carnivore reputed to—"



"Bridge to Engineering!" Murdock cried, partly to cut across the soliloquy. "DaKar, I need to lower the shields without killing us all…any bright ideas would be certainly welcome."



DaKar, who had been monitoring the situation from the Engineering complex in the drive section, consulted a couple of readouts and replied. "We can divert the shield energy to the structural integrity field, in effect supercharging it. We'd have the density of neutronium, sir."



"Sounds good," Murdock said. Kolrami and DaKar coordinated the effort, as Thelvran reported that the structural integrity of the shuttlepod was starting to fail. "Gelfa…"



"Locking on and transporting directly to sickbay, sir!" Kolrami said, her fingers flying over the ops board. Murdock let a pleased smile come to his face. Wacky as they were, his people were the best in the business…



His musings were interrupted by the sight of the shuttlepod imploding. He heard Faraday whisper a prayer, and felt himself joining in.



***********



In sickbay, Dr. Govarr had directed Tara to stand to one side as he and his assistants gathered their instruments and supplies to one particular table. Suddenly the table seemed to erupt in fairy-sparkle as the transporter managed to snatch the shuttlepod's occupant from the jaws of death and deliver…



Her.



As the transport effect died down, as the young woman became solid again and Dr. Govarr could start his examination, Tara stepped forward to see this apparition made flesh. Her face was blackened and bloody from some flying debris and smoke, her red hair was slightly charred, and her outdated uniform, now being stripped off by medtechs, was grimy.



She's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen, Tara thought. All she could articulate at that moment was, "Oh, my."



TBC

______________________

"I love you all. I love you more than life itself. You're all f***ing mad." -- Ozzy as "The Dad," THE OSBOURNES.

Edited by: CaptMurdock at: 8/16/02 11:30:35 am

My dear captain -



I'm so on board for this journey!



Very creative idea to join the two universes.



I'm especially impressed with how you're translating the little ticks of Tara and Willow into this new universe. I look forward to following this story as you develop their relationship...the character's are universal enough to place into any context as long as the end result is love, forever and endless. Any creative exercise that explores this dynamic, and is written with such attention to detail, makes me long for the next update. Keep up the great work.

BM

*********

TARA: Willow and I always know how to find each other!

ANYA: With yoga?

Oh my indeed. This keeps getting better and better, and well, this was the moment I was waiting for.

--------------------

Tara: "uh Willow?"

Willow: "No dancing naked, huh?...It just won't be the same."

Tara: "That's all right, we can save it for later" ----From Wilderness, the newest WT comic written by Amber Benson and Christopher Golden

Well, I am thoroughly enjoying this now. I love the characters you have created in particular the doctor, Govarr, it tickled my funny bone. Something tells me that Willow will no doubt be finding out if Tara's really "tangy" or not

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Childie -"Not all girls are raving bloody lesbians, you know!"

George - "That's a misfortune of which I am perfectly well aware."

The Killing of Sister George