Unadecal Arado
Part 2 The Relliketh years
Arado watched as the Tal-Shiar operative de-materialized next to him. He then turned his gaze to the full glass of cold, crisp and blue Andorian Ale that had been placed before him without him needing to order. As he stared into it, he inhaled deeply, then exhaled and downed the drink in one go, replacing the empty glass on the table. He winced slightly at the sharp, bitter aftertaste, but the synthohol content in this facsimile made it devoid of the punch that the occasion demanded. He needed something stronger.
He stood up slowly and headed for his quarters. Once there he changed his clothes and then sat at his desk. He hesitated for one fleeting moment before opening a drawer and retrieving the hidden bottle of real Andorian Ale with real alcohol, strong enough to fuel a runabout. He poured himself his first glass of the evening. As he drank, his fingers fidgeted with the communicator he had just been given. He placed it next to the tall, thin glass, poured himself another drink and opened a different drawer. He took out a box, placed it carefully on the desk top and opened it with reverence. Inside were a few carefully arranged items from what was now the distant past, another lifetime even: his old comm badge, phaser and tricorder from the Carolina, as well as other mementoes he had collected since joining the Bajoran Militia. He sat there, motionless, staring at the objects for a few moments as the memories flooded in and then drank another glass of Andorian Ale, and another. And another...
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The distinctive round doors of the airlock rolled open with the characteristic high pitch of the mechanical actuators to allow the passengers and crew from the transport that had just come through the wormhole to disembark onto the Cardassian-built space station, which, since the end of the Cardassian occupation of Bajor had been run by the Federation. The transport brought the usual mix of traders, holidaymakers, returning exiles and, of course, the odd shady character. This transport was special, for it was carrying someone who should have not been there. Or to be more precise,…then.
He had been ejected from the ship where he was Science Officer by the ship itself, and had landed in the Gamma Quadrant, several years in his past. It had taken him six months of star hopping bartering the skills he had acquired while serving as a Starfleet Officer for passage and a modest income that allowed him to reach the Bajoran wormhole. By then he had realized just how far back in time he had been sent. He immediately realized that he would have to go underground. He would not be able to make himself known without risking irrevocably contaminating the timeline in this reality and making himself a target for 29th Century Starfleet Temporal Officers. But that would not be so bad. They may put him in prison, or maybe return him to his own time, but in order to attract their attention he would have to significantly alter this timeline by approaching Starfleet and warning them of forthcoming events such as the Dominion War and the fall of the Romulan Empire. And if he did that they would surely place him in a most secure facility and keep him there for all eternity, debriefing him of all the knowledge he had acquired through his posting on the Carolina. That would not be pleasant. Even less pleasant would be to become a target of every single intelligence organisation in the galaxy. No. He had to go underground, start a new life and bide his time. But first, he needed a new identity. The chaos in which the Bajoran administration had been left after the Cardassian occupation ended and its subsequent links with the Federation provided him with the ideal opportunity to start over while keeping his finger on the pulse, so to speak. He had found someone who altered his appearance to look Bajoran, and he had studied Bajoran culture and history as he approached the wormhole hop after hop.
And now he was finally here. He felt the surge of adrenaline course through his body as he disembarked and set foot on the Promenade. So far, so good. He rented short-term quarters and began to access the Federation and Bajoran databases designed to reunite former prisoners and exiles with families. He was not looking for a new family. Instead he was looking at patterns and reading up on events as related by those who had lived them. That enabled him to build a back story which was plausible enough to be believable and could be corroborated to a certain extent as far as general details were concerned. Any lack of evidence could easily be ascribed to the chaos created by the occupation.
After a few months he had settled on Bajor, joined the Bajoran Militia, attended the newly established training programmes where he had to disguise and play down the knowledge and skills he had acquired through his Starfleet training and years of active service. It was difficult but he succeeded to the point of being offered a bridge station on the newly commissioned USC Relliketh, the flagship of the fledgeling Bajoran Fleet without ever giving himself away. It was then that he had met a much younger Mimps Masala, almost fresh out of the Academy and on secondment to the Relliketh as a Science Officer (his own station). She was on an exchange programme designed to assist Bajor in preparation for formal inclusion in the Federation. She was young, she was beautiful, she was brave and, above all, she was resourceful. It was torture to sit next to her almost every day for over a year and share the atmosphere of the bridge, the frequent dangers, the workload, the excitement, without revealing himself but he just could not chance that or he would put himself, the ship, and, worst of all, Mimps in grave danger. He often asked himself if now that they had met in this new reality of his, would she remember him as the Bajoran Science officer she served with on the Relliketh or would their meeting as Starfleet officers on Raisa remain their first ever encounter in her own reality. One day he may yet find out.
A few close encounters with randomly-appearing wormholes in the Gamma Quadrant, spurred him on to study the phenomenon and research ways to not only create artificially stable wormholes but also predict and determine where and when they may lead to. It is true that his efforts had not met with much success, but it is also fair to say that his research was never a priority for a war-ravaged Bajor who was struggling to rebuild itself. Of course, he could not approach the Federation or other powers better able to fund and resource his research, so he retired to this isolated rock on the Gamma Quadrant to continue on his own.
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As the wake-up alarm went off the following morning, he slowly emerged from his alcohol-induced stupor with a very dry mouth, a splitting headache and side order of nausea, but he also had the seedling of a plan....
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