Alternate History (Artemis): Difference between revisions

Ensign_Chevalier.png|<small> [[Jaseb Chevalier|Ensign Jaseb Chevalier]]<br>Operations Officer</small>

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Ensign_Chevalier.png|<small> [[Jaseb Chevalier|Ensign Jaseb Chevalier]]<br>Operations Officer</small>

  |quote =''Do you know how long I waited? Do you know how long I kept my promise and stayed in guard? I still have troops posted before that window, with the sole order to shoot dead anyone or anything that were to come through it. [...] I finally have you surrounded, Genkos. Drop your shields and prepare to be boarded. I wouldn’t want to give the order to destroy you; my fleet that surrounds you would be more than happy to oblige. And I wouldn’t want you to jump through yet another window either.''|source = [https://groups.google.com/g/sb118-artemis/c/g4WouE7qlZU MSNPC Empress Tevet - He promised] - SD 240103.19}}

''CloQ: Oh why so glum? You didn’t have a choice, did you? I created this world, I forced your hands, there was nothing else you could do, was there? You had to kill that senator, didn’t you? [...] At least, that’s what you want me to say. The truth is that Betazoid doctor of yours has all the imagination of a Ferengi tube grub, and about half as charming. There were any number of things that you could have done that wasn’t murder an innocent man… But ::they raised a slender finger:: if you can figure out what really happened in your timeline, I will reset this.''|source = [https://groups.google.com/g/sb118-artemis/c/pFu7EhKrKp0 MSNPC CloQ - Time's Running Out For Sisko] - SD 240103.22}}

 

When the group comes to after their worlds go white, they stand in CloQ's domicile - a pocket dimension filled with timepieces from every culture in the universe - before their host. CloQ reveals that the efforts of [[Jovenan|LT Jovenan]] and [[Gila Sadar|LtJG Sadar]] in setting the timeline right by assassinating Senator Vreenak has backfired in the most spectacular of ways, and their fellow crew is now stuck in alternate reality far worse than the one CloQ had originally created for them. However, in all their grace and charity, CloQ offers to put the timeline back to how it's supposed to be, if the assembled team can accomplish ''one'' thing: discover what originally was supposed to happen to Senator Vreenak.<br>

 

In order to accomplish this, CloQ moves the team to Deep Space 9 in 2374, the main staging ground for the Dominion War and the command of one Captain Benjamin Sisko - venerated war hero and the Bajoran religious figure known as the Emissary of the Prophets. Allowed free reign of the station thanks to CloQ having frozen time around them, the team get to work hacking into the Captain's terminal and accessing the multitude of PADDs in his office, trying to find out what role Deep Space 9 has to the Senator's assassination. While the team finds no evidence that Senator Vreenak's shuttle ever made it to Deep Space 9, they do find a peculiar individual aboard the station at the behest of Captain Sisko - Grathon Tolar, a criminal that Captain Sisko went to significant trouble to have extricated from a Klingon prison. In attempting to learn why this criminal is of such great importance, the team tracks Tolar to a holosuite belonging to the Ferengi-run bar onboard the station. Using his omnipotent capabilities, CloQ easily overrides the lock that Captain Sisko places on the holosuite, to reveal what is occurring withing.<br>

'''''Sadar''': ::deadpan:: He needs someone to believe it’s a real recording.''|source = [hhttps://groups.google.com/g/sb118-artemis/c/U8oKAGXqM8k LtJG Gila Sadar - A Warhead of Information] - SD 240103.28}}Within the holosuite, the team sees Grathon Tolar and a Cardassian Tailor known as 'Elim Garak' in the process of programming a Cardassian Datarod with a recording of a meeting between Cardassian and Dominion officials, planning a coup against the Romulans. As [[Talos Dakora|Lt.Cdr. Dakora]] - an experienced Intelligence officer - reveals how extremely rare these datarods are, the group starts considering exactly what this implicates. Putting together information that [[Jovenan|LT Jovenan]] and [[Gila Sadar|LtJG Sadar]] had from their time in Ki Baratan, the group arrives at a shocking conclusion: Captain Benjamin Sisko set up the Dominion in order to bring the Romulans into the Alliance, and turn the tide of the Dominion War in the Federation's favor. The real question that remains is, who killed Senator Vreenak? Was it the Dominion, when they realized that the Senator was heading home to bring his people into the war on their enemies' side? Or was it someone else?<br>

 

CloQ moves them forward in time to when Senator Vreenak is aboard the station, and the team is placed inside the wardroom itself, where the Senator is stuck mid-rant, holding the datarod up high. "It's a fake." [[Jovenan|LT Jovenan]] accesses the terminal to ascertain the locations of the various players in the scenario, and realize that the tailor is nowhere to be found. Realizing that Captain Sisko is now caught in a situation where a venerated politician is going to go home to his people and get them to join the war on the Dominion side, the team has to face the uncomfortable truth that Benjamin Sisko - a man that [[Vitor Silveira|LT Silveira]] has looked up to as one of the greats of Starfleet - was at least partially responsible for the Senator's assassination. He might not have pulled the trigger himself, but he enabled the murder and allowed it to pass by undetected for the sake of the Federation's war effort...<br>