Time After Time
"TIME AFTER TIME"
A Mission After-Action Report
USS FEYNMAN · SILVER FLEET · TEMPORAL INTERVENTION
Initial Situation Report
During the Change-of-Command era at Zinderneuf, a Fajurian-backed assault on the base and DEFENDER serves as cover for a temporal strike: travel back to a winter resort decades earlier and prevent Lt (jg) Azariah Nicholas from testifying at a crucial court-martial. The FEYNMAN, guided by Temporal Division officers Flint and Stone and aided by an older James Cardiff, uses the Guardian of Forever to insert into that past, where they play an extended game of cat-and-mouse with Fajurian assassin cells, a resurrected Xanthandi enemy, an infiltrated bodyguard, and a traitorous FEYNMAN officer while keeping Nicholas alive long enough to reach the hearing.
Mission Objectives
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Determine the true purpose of the attack on Zinderneuf / DEFENDER.
Outcome: Successful. The crew confirms the assault was a diversion to make DEFENDER fire and supply power for a Fajurian temporal jump aimed at the past court-martial of a younger Lt (jg) Azariah Nicholas. -
Travel back in time and protect Lt (jg) Nicholas from assassination.
Outcome: Successful but messy. Multiple attempts are foiled (viral device, power-conduit sabotage, sniper, hacked sled run, and ground assault), culminating in Nicholas reaching the trial alive. -
Identify and neutralize temporal intruders, spies, and collaborators.
Outcome: Partially successful. A Fajurian “Captain Garret,” traitorous FEYNMAN officer ENS Jevadi Davon, and several Fajurian operatives are exposed and neutralized, though some external allies (e.g. the Xanthandi station master) escape justice. -
Ensure the court-martial proceeds with Nicholas’s testimony intact, preserving the CINCSILVER timeline.
Outcome: Apparently successful. With carefully seeded safeguards and a last-ditch intervention by Lt Cardiff, the impostor Nicholas is eliminated, the trial proceeds, and the “Nicholas-as-CINCSILVER” future remains in place.
Significant Events Beyond Mission Scope
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Bat Durensten leaves the FEYNMAN and starts a new life on Zinderneuf.
Removed from the temporal mission as “non-essential,” Bat signs a lease with casino boss Nabil and becomes bartender of a small high-roller bar, establishing him as a recurring civilian presence on the base. -
A long-standing Xanthandi enemy resurfaces as a Fajurian ally.
Loren Landers overhears the former Xanthandi station master coordinating with Fajurians to kill Nicholas and later strike at the FEYNMAN, expanding the web of hostile powers in the region. -
Loren Landers faces personal temptation to alter his own past.
The opportunity to go back forty years forces Loren to wrestle with the idea of investigating or changing the fate of the merchantman PURUL; he consciously refuses to tamper with his own timeline, but the desire is not fully resolved. -
A darker possible future is revealed: Zane’s death and Garret as CO.
The Fajurian “Garret” claims to come from a future where Zane never returns from this mission and she later commands the FEYNMAN, creating emotional stakes and an unresolved question about whether that branch has been erased or merely diverted. -
Exposure to advanced Fajurian temporal technology.
The crew encounter forearm-mounted “time-step” units and a DV (“Deja Vu”) device that can replay brief time segments, hinting at both the strategic potential and the existential danger of such tools to Starfleet and its enemies.
Major Guest Characters
- Vice Admiral / Lt (jg) Azariah Nicholas – Target of the Fajurian temporal plot; survives multiple assassination attempts and still testifies at the court-martial, preserving the “Nicholas-as-CINCSILVER” future.
- Major Flint (Temporal Division) – Field temporal officer who uses a DV device to replay the final approach to the trial repeatedly until he reaches a branch where the impostor is exposed and the mission can succeed.
- Major Stone (Temporal Division) – Flint’s partner and strategist who seeds younger Cardiff with a concealed phaser as a last-resort safeguard and tracks overall timeline stability.
- Lt James Cardiff (younger) – Resort-era pilot who carries the shielded phaser into the courtroom and fires the crucial shot at the impostor Nicholas, allowing his own life to continue into the “known” future.
- Lt James Cardiff (older) – Temporally recruited version who helps iterate the DV loops, briefly slips “outside time,” and is eventually pulled back by the Guardian into the restored timeline aboard DEFENDER.
- ENS Jevadi Davon – FEYNMAN science officer and half-Bajoran/half-Betazoid traitor who aids the Fajurians and his Fajurian lover; exposed by Jerran and killed when he falls off a cliff after being stunned.
- “Captain Garret” (Fajurian impostor) – Poses as future-CO Jeanine Garret with accurate future details to manipulate the crew, eventually unmasked as a Fajurian and left sedated and bound among the prisoners.
- Lt Jeanine Garret (real aOPS) – Remains aboard FEYNMAN in the present, rides out temporal “waves,” and answers Zane’s hail from the Guardian, confirming that ship and core timeline still exist after the mission.
- Xanthandi station master – A prior FEYNMAN adversary now working with the Fajurians; overheard plotting Nicholas’s death and future strikes on FEYNMAN but never captured, remaining a loose-end threat.
- Bat Durensten – Former FEYNMAN rec officer forced off before the temporal op, who reinvents himself as bartender of a select casino bar on Zinderneuf under Nabil’s patronage.
Brief Overall Summary & Loose Ends
Through a mix of covert action (including briefly kidnapping Nicholas for “protective custody”), neutralizing multiple assassination attempts, and enabling younger Cardiff to expose and shoot an impostor Nicholas inside the courtroom, the crew preserves the core timeline in which Nicholas survives and becomes CINCSILVER. In the restored present, FEYNMAN is still in orbit, the “real” Garret is at her post, and Nicholas’s career appears to match the history the crew remembers.
However, several threads remain unresolved: the Xanthandi station master’s fate is unknown, the ultimate disposition of the Fajurian prisoners is not shown, and it is unclear whether the dark “future” described by the Fajurian Garret has been erased or spun off into a divergent branch—leaving temporal and political repercussions for future missions.
