Star Trek: Phoenix-X
"Transgressables, Part I"
The Norway-class U.S.S. Fusion trekked blissfully and cordially through space until coming to an elegant stop.
Commander Red of the Mirror Universe's Klingon-Cardassian Alliance, in the same full Klingon armor as the rest of the crew, sat diligently in the command chair, peering out into unknown space. "Excellent stopping, Bugh. You did this ex-pilot proud."
"Thank you, Commander," Bugh acknowledged. "But flying this Starfleet vessel gives me the creeps, even though we've been doing it for years."
Ronin jilted from the tactical station. "Even worse, we renamed it back to its original name, rather than how we preferringly had it, the A.K.S. Yarrgh."
"The best part was that you were meant to shout it," Red reminisced. "And, oh, the battles we've won against the re-asserting Terran Empire. Holding our own as a fledging Alliance for the past seventeen years has given me much Klingon-based joy."
Doctor Terek was standing nearby and turned to him. "Sir, you know how detrimental joy is, physically, to people of the Mirror Universe. It also causes aneurysms."
"I know, I know. Like the sensitivity to bright lights, it is yet another pointless idiosyncrasy of ours," the Commander acquiesced. "Sometimes, I wonder if I should have claimed Regent when I came in with this stolen vessel. I could be lounging with servants fanning and hand-feeding me gagh right now!"
Kortos, from Operations, turned. "It is better to be on the battlefield, anyway. Good for our aging hearts."
"Right! This is good. We have travelled back to the Prime Universe with a skeleton crew, under stealth, to accept our new guest for a greater purpose," Red declared. "Sorry, I didn't explain our mission to you guys earlier but, you know, Alliance pompousness and all that."
Bugh calmed him. "All good, Commander. We actually appreciate the vanity of it all. Keeps us Mirror-sane, if you will. More of that!"
"Very well. Expect a standard-class flogging, later," Red offered to an agreeable helmsmen.
Suddenly, the band-shifting Traveler known as Wayfar shifted into existence upon the thought-welcoming Bridge of the Fusion.
"Well, hello, everyone! How's about we get this party started?" he opened, enthusiastically, with added pointy-party hat and party blower in-mouth. But, upon realizing the ship was full of Mirror Universe Klingons, he vacated said blowhole in surprise-recoil.
Red held up his palm. "Allow me to explain. You see, we lured you here under the guise of celebratoriness, in order to requisition your services to that of outfitting the Klingon-Cardassian Alliance with interphase cloaking devices."
"That is so rude, bro," Wayfar accused. "Do you know how often I've been recruited to rebuild, reshape and reregister starships after the fact that I retired from that ten years ago?? Plus, how did you even know about me?"
Targon took him in. "Six years ago, you helped a Commander James T. Seifer reassemble the exploded remains of the Prometheus-class I.S.S. Phoenix-X after his failed twenty-four attempts. Such an impossible feat is well-known within our much-celebrated mirror circles."
"Ohh, yes. James was a troubled Trill who was a Prime Universe host joined with the Mirror Gotens-symbiont," Wayfar recalled. "My main objective was to simultaneously up my medical capabilities and help him get better by switching him to the Mirror Seifer-symbiont. The trade-off being that he demanded I use my starship abilities to bring the Mirror Phoenix-X back in, this time, as a success. So, a win-win from a goal-based standpoint."
Red stood up, excited. "Exactly. Now we are demanding the same post-retirement assistance, but ten-fold, in the form of Alliance fleet-wide applications!"
"No can do, Klingy-boo," Wayfar halted. "Post-retirement starship modificationing is a one-time one-off that just happened to benefit that one Mirror Phoenix-X, four years later." And then, recalling, he snapped his fingers in delay. "Plus, one more re-starshiping, three years after that, for the Prime Phoenix-X."
The Klingon Commander walked around to approach the Traveler. "Perhaps you're under the impression that this is a request? For you see, we Alliance warriors have had to become somewhat technologically progressive compared to our Prime Universe counterparts due to the consistent oppression by the Terrans. This has enabled the development of trans-dimensional outputs to our Cardassian anti-shapeshifting emitters which, assumingly, seriously hampers the powers of a Traveler from existential-plane-jumping. Like, a No Wesley's club."
"You what!?" Wayfar regurgitated. He then clenched-tried phase-banding out of there but, upon partial-transparency, was returned opaque and whole for all. "How did you do that!?"
Red reconditioned himself. "We're technology-focused now! Which is why we want the inter-phase cloak, rather than that generic Ferengi-installed invisibility screen Regent Worf went for despite some Alliance factions already having it four years earlier."
"The fact you want that Pegasus-obscenity makes the ask even more repulsive!" Wayfar retracted. "I may not be the perfect Traveler, outcasted by many of my kind for the mistakes I've made in the past and future, but I wholeheartedly refuse and believe I can get myself out of this and send all of you back to your Universe."
Commander Red suddenly perked, confused. "Wait. Mistakes?"
"Here we goooo!" Instead, Wayfar clenched even harder and force-phased himself and everyone on the ship to an even higher regard, exploding the anti-Traveler emitters throughout the ship and sending everyone and himself into a band-shift, out of the Prime Universe, until the U.S.S. Fusion was left abandoned and adrift.
---
Now, in the Mirror Universe, Commander Red's entire skeleton crew, plus Wayfar, were phase-shifted onto the Bridge and lower decks of the Vorcha-class A.K.S. B'Cnah.
"What is the meaning of this!?" came the outrage from Captain Menchez, as he stood off his command chair to the presence of Red and the others. "We didn't escape the confines of the Terrans to be interrupted so abashedly!"
Wayfar sat up, trying to shake the disarray from his head. He then pulled up his palms to examine the state of himself. "Meaning? I believe I've run that completely out of me, as well as purposeful intrusions. As in, I no longer have my abilities??"
---
Meanwhile, out in the vastness of deep, vast, Mirror-space, the Prometheus-class I.S.S. Phoenix-X trekked upon itself a galactic unit and so on. Commander James Seifer sat in the command chair, observing a cluster of giant green tentacles in space displayed on the view screen.
"Should we shoot it? I mean, it's not like we're an exploratory vessel or anything?" queried Seifer.
Kayl turned from Operations. "Well, we'd better initiate some differing purpose. There's no way we were brought out of time before our deaths, by some anomalous omnipotent half-breed, only to live for the same old, same old."
"You know what? Let's dust off the old scanner. I'm into it," perked the Commander before a minor alert klaxon went off.
RaeLuna tapped at her tactical console. "We're picking up the same energy spike, several sectors away, that the Traveler Wayfar gave off almost six years ago when he helped us."
"Were you just always looking for those like some kind of constant positronic signature scan some Prime Universe Enterprises used to do?" Seifer squinted.
The woman deadpanned him. "We are allowed to have hobbies."
"If the Traveler reading is from Wayfar, he may be in trouble, and we owe him for putting this ship back together," Kugo added. "You know how obsessed with action-based debts we hardcore ruffians are."
Seifer focused. "We're at the height of Terran dominance in this Quadrant, so knowing things is a luxury displaced by our complacency. No. We stay here with the wiggly things!"
