The eight of us beamed down into a secluded alley, which only left Filigree and Nyka onboard the Fae Dragon, but the benefit of Fae being sentient meant that she would be the one in control, and as she was trustworthy, we didn't need to leave anyone else behind on the ship. Our sensors could only reduce the search radius to a few hundred meters as something kept throwing off Fae's targeting sensors, further increasing my suspicions about this mission. Still, when it came time to split up into groups, I said nothing as Katye and Raven left with Tuvok and Tom, while Echo and I accompanied Janeway and Chakotay.
"Well, Kathryn, you got us home," Chakotay remarked with a smile.
"Right place... wrong time," Janeway sighed. "But it is good to be back, nevertheless."
"Maybe I should look up a few ancestors. As I recall, one of them was a schoolteacher in Arizona," Chakotay replied.
"I don't know what my relatives were doing this far back in history... "
Janeway was cut off as a roller skater pushed her way between Chakotay and her as she said, "Coming through, sorry!"
"For all I know, she could be my great, great, great... great-grandmother," Janeway continued.
"She does have your legs," Chakotay chuckled.
"Have you ever been to southern California, Chakotay?"
"No."
"After the Hermosa Quake of 2047, this entire region sank under two hundred meters of water and became one of the world's largest coral reefs, home to thousands of different marine species," Janeway explained.
"Some... interesting species in this century," Chakotay commented as two tattooed punks walked in front of them.
Echo and I were a bit behind them while we scanned the area with our senses. Echo's 'Eye of the Hunt' had advanced during Sancu's game and now dyed both of her eyes icy blue, allowing her to see traces of mana similar to Katye's Mana Sight, though her 'sight' would only allow her to see one form of mana at a time. Thanks to the rift that brought us here, she had enough experience with Time mana that she could track it now, though it was still a slow process as it had been years since Braxton had landed on the planet, and the traces he left behind were thin.
"The readings are coming from over there. Ten meters," Janeway said, motioning towards a group of people outside a concession stand.
"The unkempt one, there are still traces of Time mana emanating from his body," Echo said.
"That can't be Braxton, right?" Chakotay asked.
"I certainly don't think he's the time ship in disguise," I retorted, making Janeway and Echo smirk. "He looks homeless, which, without having an identity and likely knowing little about this time, is the most plausible outcome for Braxton."
"It's too crowded here to confront him. Watch him and I'll call the others over to us," Janeway instructed then moved away from us.
"You've never had a corndog or soda before, right, Echo?" I asked, pulling out my wallet.
"No, I haven't," she replied.
"We do have a mission, you know?" Chakotay reminded.
"Standing around, staring at a homeless man, will only draw more attention to us," I retorted and took out a couple of twenties. "I'll be right back, or catch up if he moves."
I walked over to the concession stand and ordered some food for everyone. Braxton was digging in the store's trash, but not for food, rather a piece of cardboard. In the episode, he had a habit of putting up "End of the Future" signs which was a crude trope of the time period to illustrate the homeless population, but seeing it in 'real life', knowing that he had spent decades here, I could not help but pity him.
The clerk delivered my food before Braxton was done, so I walked back to the group with four sodas, a couple of corndogs, and a soft pretzel for Chakotay since he was vegetarian. Janeway looked lightly amused when I returned and passed out the food and drinks. Echo took a bite of the corndog, and her eyes widened with surprise before she took a few more bites.
I took a long drink and sighed with a smile, saying, "It has been so long since I've had a real Coke."
Janeway and Chakotay chuckled while Echo took a sip of the soda but grimaced immediately.
"It's too sweet... and bubbly," she complained.
"Grounders; you all hate coffee and now soda too… how did you guys get your caffeine?" I asked with a smirk.
"If you had been trained properly by Indra, you would not need such vices," she retorted, throwing the soda in a nearby trashcan.
"And if it wasn't for your temper, you'd be a Vulcan, you fun-nazi."
Janeway and Chakotay chuckled at our banter, since it was clear by our tone that neither of us were serious. Braxton finally found a couple of pieces of cardboard that fit his needs, so he packed them away into his cart and started shuffling away. The four of us followed him discreetly, keeping fifty to a hundred feet away, but always in eyesight. Eventually, Katye's and Raven's group rejoined ours, but no sooner had they joined us than Voyager paged us.
"He appears to live on the street. That pushcart seems to contain all his belongings. From what we can tell, he spends most of his time putting up literature about the end of the world," Janeway explained to the others as we slowly followed Braxton.
Before she could continue, her comm badge gave a soft beeping sound, so we all moved to the side of the walkway and circled her slightly, so that she could pull out the badge.
"Janeway here," she said.
"Captain, we've got a problem. We received a signal from the surface. It looks like a standard greeting designed for extraterrestrials," Harry explained.
"We've been detected," she sighed.
"It looks that way," he confirmed. "We tracked the signal to an observatory about twenty kilometers from your location."
"Beam Tuvok and Tom to those coordinates," Janeway instructed.
"Captain, people would notice if someone just disappeared off the streets," I interjected.
"I can't do that right now without going into a lower orbit, anyways. The main pattern buffer is offline. B'Elanna says it could take a couple of days to repair," Harry said.
"Do you have an idea of how they can get there?" Janeway asked, looking at me.
"Katye, can you and Raven go with them? One of the restaurants around here should let you call a taxi with a bit of compensation. It's going to be the Griffith Observatory that you are heading to," I asked.
Katye nodded and agreed, "Sure."
"Find out who sent that message and get more information… Have we been detected? How many people know about us? We cannot risk contaminating the time-line," Janeway instructed.
"Aye, Captain," Tuvok agreed.
"See you later," Janeway said.
{Protect Rain when you meet her, and be careful. This can't be as simple as it was in the episode, and you should be attacked by a goon of the jackass causing this problem.} I sent telepathically to Katye and Raven.
{We will be, mother hen.} Katye teased.
I rolled my eyes at her remark, but I knew that she would take this seriously. The four of them split off from us and headed towards the main road that led to the boardwalk. Braxton was wandering off, so I could only afford a moment to watch them before we had to go in the other direction.
Slowly, he led us to a secluded alley. The walls all had graffiti on them, but with most saying 'The End of the Future', it was obvious that he was the one who wrote them. There was a tarp strung up over a broken down car, also tagged with his favorite message, along with a lot more junk in the alley. It was kind of sad that a captain from the twenty-ninth century did not have the skills and cunning to make a place for himself in the twentieth century.
"Who the hell are you?! This is my stuff!" Braxton snapped once he became aware of us following him into the alley.
"It's all right. We don't want your stuff. We just want to ask you a few questions," Janeway said, trying to calm him down.
"No! No, no no! No more questions! No. No more surveys! Damn social workers coming around all the time! No, I don't need your advice! I don't need your…" his words died as he truly looked at Janeway. "Voyager… Oh, I knew you'd show up. This is all your fault. This is all your doing!"
"Captain Braxton?" Janeway asked.
"I told you to turn off your deflector pulse, but you wouldn't listen to me! Voyager! Fools!" he snapped.
"We're the fools when you didn't account for basic sentient reaction to protect themselves from danger? Did you even realize that none of this could have happened if you had not come to our time-line and try to destroy us?" I asked with annoyance, since it had always bugged me in the show that someone who monitors Time as the Voyager monitors the space around them could have made such a stupid mistake.
"And who are you to think you understand my mission?" Braxton growled.
"Captain Rebecca Cox of the USS Fae Dragon, Vazukuru vessel," I retorted.
"Vazukuru?!? No wonder this whole mess happened. Your race is nothing but trouble when it comes to Time! If you weren't so valuable to Starfleet, they would have booted your whole race after the Chaos Storm that engulfed half of the Gamma Quadrant!"
My brow twitched with annoyance since I knew that was a jab at my instability, courtesy of Tori.
"Captain, what happened to you?" Janeway asked. "The last time we saw you…"
"I was a younger man, confident in my mission! But you wouldn't listen to me. No! You were too concerned with yourselves!"
"Again, you were trying to destroy us," I reminded.
"I was trying to save billions of lives… to stop a chain of reaction that started with Voyager! It's too late now. All things are set in motion. The temporal explosion will occur. The end is coming! The Future's end!"
"Captain, how long have you been here in the twentieth century?" Janeway asked.
"Oh, too long. Thirty years too long."
"We want to help you, but you've got to give us more information. You said that Voyager causes the explosion."
"Yes. No… and yes," Braxton replied. "That's a paradox, my dear. A leads to B leads to C leads to A."
"That's what you were telling me, Rebecca," Janeway remarked.
"Of course! A Vazukuru can break a time paradox with ease!" Braxton exclaimed, before he started digging in a nearby box and pulled out a large, folded sheet of paper, that he then spread out across the car's hood. "When the explosion first happened, my sensors recorded a wide variety of chronometric data. The pulses were highly chaotic. At first I thought that it was a warp core implosion, but then I found debris from the Voyager, and my theory seemed to be confirmed. It was you. But then, someone here stole my time ship. Then it started to dawn on me. If someone were to fly my time ship into the future without recalibrating the temporal matrix then that could cause the kind of explosion that I witnessed in the twenty-ninth century."
"So, it really wasn't the Voyager after all," Janeway said.
"No. No, no, I reconstructed all the chronometric data as best as I could remember it, and it proved that I was right. My ship causes the catastrophe."
"Which raises the question, who has your time ship?" Chakotay asked.
"Starling," Braxton spat, walking around to the back of the car and popping the trunk. "Henry Starling, C.E.O. of Chronowerx Industries. Philanthropist, entrepreneur, outstanding citizen. Ha! Before I crashed in the year 1967, I made an emergency beam-out, but he found my ship before I did, in some remote mountain range. I've been following this corrupt little man ever since, tracking his movements, but he has become too powerful. I can't get close to him. Of course, you can't accomplish anything in this wretched century. Nobody here listens. Did you know that they once put me in a mental institution, and filled me with primitive pharmaceuticals?!"
"Maybe we can help you find Starling and your ship, and get us back to where we belong," Chakotay suggested.
"No, you shouldn't, but you," he said, turning to me, "you could prevent this disaster. If Voyager interferes with this, they will be destroyed along with Earth's solar system, ending and restarting the temporal paradox. The fate of the future rests on your shoulders!"
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes at the melodrama of his statement, but a cop car pulled into the end of the alley, saving me from saying something sarcastic. Janeway took the newspaper from Braxton and tucked it under her arm as the four of us moved off to the side.
"Hey, Captain. How you doing?" a police officer asked as he got out of his car. "I understand you've been putting these signs up around the city again."
"No. No, no, no. Not me. I… I would never do that," Braxton lied unconvincingly.
"Why don't you walk over here, and we can talk about it?" the cop asked.
"You stay right where you are, you quasi-Cardassian totalitarian!" Braxton yelled.
"Look, no need to get upset about this. We just want to talk to you about the signs. Now, there've been a few people complaining."
"Captains… Tell them I'm not crazy. Tell them I'm from the future," Braxton said, but we remained silent. "They come from the future, too, you know. Yeah, they came in on a starship."
"Okay, all right," the cop said with a nod, clearly not believing a thing he said.
"Traitors!" Braxton snapped, before rushing past us at the police officer.
The cop and his partner did not bother with us, and started chasing after Braxton. I sighed, watching him flee, and pulled out my wallet. I took out the rest of the money that I had and stashed it inside the car in hopes that he would find it later when he got back. Janeway spread the newspaper over the hood of the car and started reading the article about him.
"Henry Starling, huh? I guess that's what happened to him," I remarked, staring down at the news paper with his face on it.
"You've heard of him?" Janeway asked.
"Kinda… he was the tech master of the twentieth century, but disappeared around this time," I lied since he did not exist in my past on Earth. "I was six at the time, so I don't really know much, but his company slowly collapsed after he vanished. Braxton was right, though. If he is the one with the time ship, it would be nearly impossible for an average person to get near him. Money buys a lot of power in this time frame."
"We need to find him and that ship," Janeway said.
"Then the best place to start looking is at Chronowerx's building downtown. Traffic is going to be a pain in the ass at this time of day, but we should have enough cash to cover the taxi there," I said.
"Well, we'll follow your lead then, Captain," she replied.
A/N: Thanks for waiting, readers! I didn't get as much writing as I wanted on vacation, but that's life. I'll have Part 3 out at normal time with my schedule since it's half written. Again, thanks for your patience!