It was a rough beam-out.

Gabriel Lorca had traveled by transporter beam thousands of times, and he rarely gave it a second thought. You step on the pad; you step off on the planet, or wherever. And vice-versa. He knew people who fretted about the technology failing and beaming you into a bulkhead, or who spouted metaphysical nonsense about whether you were the same person after re-materialization. Lorca had little patience for all that. A transporter was the fastest way to get from point A to point B, and statistically one of the safest. That was good enough for him.

This time, it wasn't so fast or so easy.

The mission itself had been easy, perhaps even a bit dull: pay a friendly visit to potential Federation trade partners whose goods might be helpful in the war effort. The Buran wasn't the flagship of the fleet, and Lorca was hardly a diplomat. But the ship was impressive enough for the minor players on the planet below, and, as Kat noted, Lorca could be charming when he put his mind to it.

They came; they schmoozed; they left. Or tried to leave. The fast-approaching ion storm caused them to cut the visit short and beam up one at a time. Lorca went last. Captain's prerogative. The additional risk of beaming up ten seconds later was negligible, and little symbolic gestures like this were good for crew morale.

Lorca felt the usual tingling effect of the transporter beam take hold of him. He caught a glimpse of the transporter room. Then it was gone. Then he felt the gravel of the planet's surface crunch under his boots, but visually everything was a blur. All this was accompanied by the nauseating feeling that he was literally in two places at once—stretched thin and not quite whole in either place. When he finally materialized on the transporter pad, he felt dizzy. Puking was a real possibility. He swallowed hard and barked, "Report!"

Someone spoke in reply, but Lorca couldn't have said for the life of him what they reported. His brain was busy trying to process what he saw. This was the transporter room he'd left earlier today . . . but it wasn't. There was an unfamiliar insignia on the wall and the colors were off, as were the colors of the crew's uniforms. Chou, who had beamed up moments before him, was there—dressed in a black uniform with a silver diagonal slash—but Vlostock was gone, replaced by a tall, muscular woman, similarly attired. The Ensign operating the transporter was familiar. But while Lorca recalled him as a slightly goofy curly-haired kid named Jaxon, who tended to look upon his Captain with tongue-tied awe, the boy before him had his hair shaved close above burn scars on his neck. And the look in his eyes was more fear than awe.

As Lorca stepped off the pad, the transporter operator and the security officer standing next to him brought their fists to their chests and stretched out their arms in a gesture resembling an ancient Roman salute. Lorca looked down at his own arms, and was surprised to see that his uniform had changed too, matching the somber hue of the others, but with gold armor-like embellishment at the shoulder.

Jaxon stammered an apology for the transporter difficulties, as the guard began moving toward the kid in an oddly menacing way. Lorca brushed off the apology, "Not your fault. Probably the storm."

The ship shook violently. The ion storm? No. Lorca knew a near-miss by a torpedo when he felt it. They were under attack. And whatever the hell was going on, if the ship was under attack he needed to get to the bridge. So that's where he headed.

XXXXX

The bridge had undergone the same bizarre transformation as the transporter room, as had the corridors he'd sprinted through to get there. Status reports came at him from all sides, most in voices known to him, some not. One of the familiar voices belonged to his first officer, Commander Gupta, who had already ordered shields and evasive maneuvers.

Sensors were rendered fairly useless by the ion storm; the front view screen showed static punctuated by streaks of light. Then it cleared for a moment, revealing the most ridiculously enormous ship Lorca had ever seen. He exclaimed, "What the hell?"

Everyone else looked at the screen in stunned silence.

"That wasn't a rhetorical question, people! Get me an identification: what is it and where's it from?"

The stunned silence turned to puzzlement, with fleeting glances shot in Lorca's direction. He rounded on Gupta, demanding, "What?"

Gupta replied, as if explaining the obvious to someone who'd been bonked on the head, "That's the Emperor's ship, the Charon."

This meant nothing to Lorca, but there wasn't time to pursue the mystery of how the others recognized it. He asked, "Armaments?"

The list was lengthy. The helm's evasive maneuvers were becoming less effective as the ion storm moved away from their orbit, presumably clearing sensors for the larger ship too. Blasts of immense power grazed their shields, bouncing them around and igniting sparks on several consoles.

Lorca ordered, "Evasive pattern Delta-Twelve."

The helmsman didn't seem to understand, so Lorca went over and input the course himself, directing, "Stick with the storm so they can't lock onto us, but move around inside it in case they decide to just fire blind."

The view screen fizzed out again, and the blasts pummeling them diminished. Their cover seemed to be working, for the moment. He turned to Navigation, "Find me somethin' bigger than a planet that we can put between ourselves and that. Maybe give us a chance to go to warp undetected."

The navigator nodded, checking. "The ion storm is headed for a star cluster—bearing 122-mark-4. Time to intercept, 11 minutes."

"Alright then: stay the course. Let's try not to get pulverized."

Lorca addressed Gupta, "We need to talk." But before he could continue, the tactical officer blurted out, "Aren't we going to shoot back? . . . Sir."

"You wanna fire on that behemoth? We'd barely make a scratch, and we'd show them exactly where we are." Tactical was a guy Lorca knew; he didn't remember him being such an idiot.

There were scattered grumblings about 'weakness' and 'dying fighting'. Before Lorca could deal with that or corner Gupta, Communications announced that he was needed in the brig.

"Now? Kinda busy."

"Says it's urgent. They're interrogating our contacts from the planet, who might have tipped off the Emperor."

Lorca only understood about half of that last sentence, but he figured there wasn't much he could do on the bridge for the next ten minutes, and he might learn more about what was going on, so he went.

XXXXX

Lorca arrived at the brig to find . . . Marty? No, that couldn't be right. Lt. Martin Heller was slated to take over as the Buran's Security Chief, but he was badly injured—back broken—in combat duty before they shipped out. He never came on board. Yet here he was. Despite the craziness of the situation, Lorca felt a flicker of relief. He'd served with Marty before making Captain; though a subordinate now, he considered the other man a friend.

Warmly, he greeted, "What's up?"

Heller shrugged away the urgency of his call as they walked back further into the brig. With his familiar trace of a Germanic accent, he explained, "I was snooping on the bridge com, smelled blood in the water. Thought you could use a chance to re-group."

Again, Lorca found himself without the context to make sense of all the words. But he got that, in some way, Marty was covering for him. He was about to come clean about the confusing mismatch between what he saw and what he remembered, when they walked through the door to the holding cells.

The room had been completely transformed, expanded. Before, it was a simple affair: two small holding cells with a table and chair outside in front of them. Now there were a half-dozen cells around the perimeter of a large room, and three of what looked like clear upright isolation chambers set up in the interior.

And there was a man hanging by his wrists from the ceiling. Battered. Bleeding. His body distorted by many broken bones. As Heller approached, the man whimpered weakly.

Lorca froze.

Heller, apparently noticing that Lorca was no longer following, looked back at him. With a smirk, he commented, "Yah, I know, you think the booth is more efficient. But this is so much more fun." Not even glancing in the direction of his victim, he struck a precise blow, cracking a rib with a distinctive snap. The hanging man gurgled in distress. Heller grinned, chillingly.

Lorca felt like something in his mind had snapped, too. He'd known Heller for years. One of the best fighters in Starfleet—hand to hand, weapons, you name it. But, despite being quite good at violence, he absolutely viewed it as a last resort. He would walk away from a fight he could easily win, if it meant not having to hurt anyone. Marty taking pleasure in torturing a helpless person . . . it was just unthinkable.

Heller must have read the expression on Lorca's face as disapproval. He released the captive's wrists and let him crumble to the floor. Grabbing the man by one arm, he hauled him into one of the isolation chambers, commenting, "Okay, Captain, we'll do it your way. I'm pretty sure there's not much left to learn. They didn't sell you out, though they were careless with their communications."

Lorca nodded, backing away. He was trying to put the pieces together, but they wouldn't fit. What could possibly cause changes to personalities and clothing? Was the ship out there—unfamiliar to him, but familiar to his crew—involved, somehow? How could he put things back the way they were supposed to be?

The Buran shuddered as the shields withstood another blast . . . barely. Speak of the devil. The intercom sounded, calling him back to the bridge.

He ran down the corridor, and had just arrived in front of the turbolift, when the doors slid open and Gupta stepped out. What could have made Number One leave his post at a time like this? Lorca began, "Status? What's . . ."

His words were interrupted by a swift slash from a large knife. Lorca was quick enough to turn sideways, causing the blade cut just below his collarbone—deep, but not deadly. He grabbed Gupta's wrist and slammed his arm against the wall to disarm him. Though a little smaller than Lorca, Gupta was surprisingly strong. He dropped the knife, but rammed Lorca in the solar plexus with some kind of truncheon. Gasping, Lorca managed to land a hard punch to the other man's jaw, then slammed him up against the wall. "Anil . . . stop. Why are you . . ."

"Nothing personal, sir," Gupta said, smooth voice hardened with distaste, "On the assumption that the Emperor is after you, I'm taking care of the problem and moving up in rank at the same time."

He swung the truncheon at Lorca's ribs. Lorca couldn't avoid the blow entirely, but he was able to trap the weapon under his arm and grab Gupta's wrist, twisting it hard.

Suddenly, they weren't alone. Three crewmen approached, phasers drawn. "You didn't seriously think I would try this without backup, did you?" Gupta rasped.

Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. Before the crewmen could aim, blood spouted around small knives embedded in each of their throats, dropping them instantly. Lorca looked back down the corridor. Heller stood a few yards away, smiling slightly, eyes cold. Seems I've got some backup of my own, Lorca mused.

Heller nodded, then turned and headed back toward the brig. Lorca looked down at Gupta, who, realizing the depth of his screw-up, tried to bargain, "Let's be reasonable . . ."

Lorca decked him.

Seconds later, he was knocked to the deck himself as the ship convulsed violently. The shrieking sound of tearing metal and the roar of depressurization indicated that this wasn't just a flesh-would: their shields had been breached, and at least the outer hull. Lorca staggered to his feet, was thrown sideways against the wall, and fought his way toward the turbolift doors. He reversed course when an explosion took out the lift and at least two floors above, raining shrapnel and flames. Artificial gravity kicked off and on sporadically.

Lorca dragged Gupta away from the worst of it, but had to leave him—sheltered, somewhat, behind a pile of debris. Sorry, buddy, but I've got a ship full of people who didn't just try to kill me to think about. The warp containment field couldn't withstand this kind of structural damage. For there to be a chance that any of the crew could survive, he had to make it to Engineering fast. It was a one-way trip. He needed to . . .

Lorca's desperate planning was interrupted by a surreal sight: a meter in front of him, a transporter beam shimmered, depositing a small brown fuzzy shape in mid-air. The wiggy gravity let it float there for a moment. Lorca reached out and caught it. He barely had time to register that it was alive and that it had a metallic device attached to it, when it shimmered again, and both Lorca and the fuzz-ball disappeared.

XXXXX

Author's note: So, what do you think? Worth continuing?