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    Department of Temporal Investigations: The Collectors
    Department of Temporal Investigations: The Collectors
    Department of Temporal Investigations: The Collectors
    Ebook149 pages2 hours

    Department of Temporal Investigations: The Collectors

    By Christopher L. Bennett

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    An all-new Star Trek e-novella featuring the Department of Temporal Investigations!

    The dedicated agents of the Federation Department of Temporal Investigations have their work cut out for them protecting the course of history from the dangers of time travel. But the galaxy is littered with artifacts that, in the wrong hands, could threaten reality. One of the DTI's most crucial jobs is to track down these objects and lock them safely away in the Federation’s most secret and secure facility. When Agents Lucsly and Dulmur bring home an alien obelisk of incredible power, they are challenged by a 31st-century temporal agent who insists they surrender the mysterious artifact to her. But before they know it, the three agents are pulled into a corrupted future torn apart by a violent temporal war. While their DTI colleagues attempt to track them down, Lucsly and Dulmur must restore temporal peace by setting off on an epic journey through the ages, with the future of the galaxy hanging in the balance...
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPocket Star
    Release dateDec 8, 2014
    ISBN9781476782591
    Department of Temporal Investigations: The Collectors
    Author

    Christopher L. Bennett

    Christopher L. Bennett is a lifelong resident of Cincinnati, Ohio, with bachelor’s degrees in physics and history from the University of Cincinnati. He has written such critically acclaimed Star Trek novels as Ex Machina, The Buried Age, the Titan novels Orion’s Hounds and Over a Torrent Sea, the two Department of Temporal Investigations novels Watching the Clock and Forgotten History, and the Enterprise novels Rise of the Federation: A Choice of Futures, Tower of Babel, Uncertain Logic, and Live By the Code, as well as shorter works including stories in the anniversary anthologies Constellations, The Sky’s the Limit, Prophecy and Change, and Distant Shores. Beyond Star Trek, he has penned the novels X Men: Watchers on the Walls and Spider Man: Drowned in Thunder. His original work includes the hard science fiction superhero novel Only Superhuman, as well as several novelettes in Analog and other science fiction magazines.

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    Reviews for Department of Temporal Investigations

    4/5

    38 ratings4 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Holy crap. This was so amazing. So awesome. It was up there with Q-Squared because it was so mind bendingly crazy (huh, I don't think that in the actual book there was anything about Q-Squared in there though, although there was almost every other temporal Star Trek thing in there, from both media and books).It was about the DIT (Department of Temporal Investigations) and the Agents who try to fix the temporal problems of the current time, that either anomalies or Starfleet officers caused. We meet Lucsly, Dulmur, Shelan, Teresa Ortiz, and Clare Raymond amongst so many others.I have to admit that I wasn't quite sure what the point/theme of the book was supposed to be, but, the two main stories in the book were cool (and super super mind bending as I said above). Also, if I wasn't so familiar with the media/book Star Trek universe I probably would have been totally lost.Still. Taking this department that was only barely seen in the TV series and expanding on it so much and so awesomely. I can't wait for the next book.
    • 3/5
      Christopher wrote one of the most well thought through time-travel books that I have read. He successfully tied it in with most of the time travel incidents from the StarTrek universe. Gave a nod to some writers and smirk to others. Everything regarding time-travel: in-universe and IRL is very well researched and even referenced at the end of the book. Thumbs up for proper referencing!

      Now on to the downsides. The book has very poor interleaving of the chapters. Although it makes the story more dynamic. After the initial fork in the storyline, the subplots converge with no significant contribution to each other. And they are quite weak; mostly providing space for essays on temporal mechanics and interspecies relations. Characters were surprisingly solid most of the time with a few unexpected aberrations here and there.

      Overall, the author provides great attention to details, but could also keep in mind a little bit more of the global overview.
    • 5/5
      Time travel and the possibilities it represents is one of the coolest aspects of science fiction, a genre that celebrates possibilities. Star Trek has dealt with some madness and has created a pretty mess tapestry in it's canon, with loose threads dangling that would bring hours of joy to a whole pride of domestic cats. Enter Trek literary technician, Christopher L. Bennett and his ability to tighten those loose ends and connect dots that many fans may not have even noticed. Even make sense out of that Temporal Cold War nonsense. He's the man. This is a good read.
    • 5/5
      I really enjoyed reading this book. I have been a fan since the sixties, though mostly original series. Yes, there is a lot of back story in this book tieing a lot of episodes, books, etc. together, but I feel it did not get in the way, but added to the story.

    Book preview

    Department of Temporal Investigations - Christopher L. Bennett

    Prologue

    Stardate 61263.6

    April 16, 2384 CE (a Monday)

    The obelisk was a work of art. Its sinuous, vaguely conical form was in fact a bundle of dozens of separate plates, each as thin as a butterfly’s wing yet rigidly holding its shape, each enmeshed with the others in an intricate, mazelike spiral—with none of the plates touching one another at any point. Tricorder scans showed that the pattern continued fractally, each visible plate itself consisting of thinner, unconnected layers that were themselves made of thinner layers, down to the thickness of single molecules. The gaps were narrow enough to exploit the Casimir effect, excluding most of the constant storm of virtual-particle formation and annihilation that gave the cosmic vacuum its baseline energy levels, creating a localized negative energy field within. The sheer surface area of all those microscopically entwined layers meant that the obelisk was charged with the densest concentration of negative energy that Kyeera Janyl had ever seen. By all rights, said the Tormandar science officer, it should’ve collapsed in on itself from vacuum pressure alone.

    Yet here it stands, Lieutenant. Captain Bazel of the U.S.S. Rhea gazed up at the obelisk with his bulbous eyes. The Saurian closed his nictitating membranes, filtering out all light but infrared, but this revealed nothing beyond the subtle warmth that emanated from the structure. Although what he saw was nothing compared to the emanations Janyl’s tricorder had revealed: that characteristic, disquieting mix of negative energy, Hawking radiation, gravitomagnetic fields, and exotic-particle decay signatures that Starfleet science officers shorthanded as temporal energy—and Starfleet captains simply called trouble.

    Reopening his membranes, Bazel cast his gaze across the surrounding wilderness. They stood at the narrowest point of a valley limned by craggy sandstone peaks, the dusty soil of the valley floor adorned with patchy purple grasses and diminutive, twisty shrubs. The question is, why does it stand here? Who was it made for, let alone by? Any sign that this planet has ever had sentient life?

    Not a trace, sir, Janyl replied, shaking her reddish-furred head. Evolution here hasn’t advanced far enough yet, and there are no geological or genetic signatures suggesting any past alien tampering in this world’s development. And the way things are going, it’s not likely to evolve any intelligence in the foreseeable future.

    The clouds of volcanic ash looming on the horizon reinforced her words. This still-nameless planet had recently—that is, within the past ten thousand years—undergone an orbital shift due to a chaotic gravitational interaction with its neighbor worlds. The resultant tectonic upheavals were bringing about a global extinction event. Few of the planet’s impressive megafauna still survived, and the planet’s future orbit would be too erratic, shifting annually between ocean-boiling heat and atmosphere-freezing cold, to support the evolution of any future sapient forms. Which ruled out the other possible direction from which an object with temporal properties could have originated.

    So somebody from some other world, perhaps some other time, has placed this here, Bazel remarked. But why here? Why now? Some kind of survey probe?

    I don’t read anything that I recognize as sensor emanations, Janyl replied. It could be a passive sensor, but why go to all the trouble to send a probe such a distance through time—especially one as potentially powerful as this—and limit it to that?

    Such a distance?

    Janyl shrugged. I can’t be sure, but the quantum dating readings are off the tricorder’s scale. It’s from a more remote point in time than I’m equipped to determine.

    "Unfortunately, we don’t have much time to evaluate this thing in situ, Bazel told her. Unless the forecast has changed."

    No, sir. The herd will reach this valley within three days. It’s a natural bottleneck, and they’ll be packed shoulder to shoulder. The six-legged, blue-skinned ungulates were the largest and most socially complex species still surviving on this world, and though their numbers were greatly diminished now, each one was larger than a Type-11 shuttlecraft.

    Do you think the obelisk can survive that?

    I’m not sure how it holds its form as it is, so I can’t rule out the possibility. But subjecting it to that much of a pounding could damage it. Or . . . trigger it.

    When dealing with a powerful and advanced temporal artifact with unknown properties, neither of those was a gamble worth taking. Very well, Bazel said. "Coordinate with Commander Blair. Make arrangements to move this thing to Rhea—very delicately."

    Um, with respect, Captain, I’m not sure it’d be any safer to keep this thing in our hold for the five weeks it’d take to get back to a starbase. And we’re still not done with our survey of the biosphere. Captain, she went on with passion, this may be our last chance to document many of these species before they’re gone forever. The loss to science—

    Easy, Lieutenant. I’ll contact Starfleet—they’ll probably be willing to divert a slipstream ship our way for something like this. They’ll want to get this into the hands of Temporal Investigations as soon as possible.

    The young Tormandar frowned, her sensitive pheromonal receptors perhaps registering his own wariness toward that civilian agency. Or maybe she could just hear it in his voice. What do you think they’re going to do with it, sir?

    I know nothing beyond rumors, he told her. But by now, I think the DTI must have a fair collection of items like this hidden away somewhere.

    I

    May 2, 2384 (a Wednesday)

    Dwarf planet 136199 Eris, Outer Solar System

    So are you going to take the job?

    Marion Dulmur stared at his fellow special agent, surprised by the question. In the eighteen years, nine months, and sixteen days since he had first been partnered with Gariff Lucsly, he had rarely known the older man to initiate a conversation that wasn’t in the line of duty. Normally it would have been Dulmur who’d feel compelled to break the long silence at a time like this. They had spent the past three hours and fourteen minutes in a maglev carriage, descending via orbital tether from Eridiosynchronous orbit. Stretched out below them, drawing rapidly nearer in the final minutes of their descent, was the snowy-white yet dimly illuminated surface of Eris, a lifeless ball of ice on a wide, lonely orbit through the outer fringes of the Sol system, well removed from civilization or public attention. Here was where the Federation Department of Temporal Investigations maintained the Eridian Vault, the top-secret storage facility housing the most sensitive and dangerous temporal artifacts known to the Federation—or at least those that could be safely moved here. The artifact discovered sixteen days before by the crew of Rhea had so far fit into that category, but given the delicacy of the obelisk’s structure, no one was willing to risk sending it through a transporter, and thus it had to be delivered to the surface the old-fashioned way, gingerly lowered down a superstrong cable thousands of kilometers long. Dulmur and Lucsly had spent the past twelve days aboard a Starfleet slipstream courier, securing the obelisk and shepherding it back to the Vault; and now, after so much time aboard the fastest spacegoing conveyance the Federation had yet mastered, they had to spend the final leg of the journey on the slowest one still in use. It allowed the anticipation to build as they neared the moment when they would have to secure this powerful alien object in the Vault and pray that it didn’t have some unpredictable interaction with one of the dozens of other artifacts therein, artifacts with the power to rewrite reality. So most people would feel the need to indulge in small talk to avoid having to contemplate the immensity of it all.

    Not Lucsly, though. The lanky, silver-haired, stone-faced special agent was a stalwart of the DTI, largely because he was simply too prosaic and unimaginative to be troubled much by the existential anxieties of temporal investigation. Normally it was Dulmur who carried the brunt of the conversation between them, for he’d never been able to achieve quite the same level of stoic professionalism as his partner.

    But today, he’d been more subdued than usual, his thoughts about the recent offer preoccupying him. Now that they were almost home, he knew he couldn’t put the decision off much longer, so it weighed more heavily on his mind. Thus the conversational void that Lucsly was now unwontedly attempting to fill.

    I’m tempted, sure, Dulmur finally replied. Just like I was tempted the other three times they offered.

    The Denobula branch office is an important addition to our facilities. It needs a capable assistant director.

    I agree. We need a stronger presence out that way. The growing tensions between the Federation and the more aggressive members of the Typhon Pact—the Breen and Tholians in particular—created a delicate situation where temporal security was concerned. In the two years and eleven months since the Pact had gone public, its members had generally adhered to the Temporal Accords, for any sane government understood that tampering with time could backfire in unpredictable ways. But just over five weeks ago, the increasingly erratic and belligerent Breen government had attempted to capture a derelict starship from a parallel quantum reality with the intent of using its extratemporal technology to gain a strategic edge. The derelict had been destroyed and the Breen leader deposed for his failure, but the incident had created uncertainty about the Pact’s reliability as a partner in temporal regulation. Thus a stronger DTI presence toward the Federation’s spinward border, where the Pact’s more bellicose members were concentrated, was very much worth having. The new office at Denobula Triaxa would also allow closer coordination with the nascent temporal management agency that the Ferengi Alliance was in the process of establishing at the behest of Grand Nagus Rom, whose prior personal experiences with transtemporal and allohistorical displacement had left him sympathetic toward the DTI’s goals. Rom had done the Department a great service the previous year by drawing on his personal fortune to purchase an ancient yet functional vortex manipulator that the Redheri had discovered and auctioned, whereupon he had bartered it to the Federation in exchange for fairly reasonable trade concessions—which, by Ferengi standards, was effectively a donation. The manipulator had been the most recent addition to the Vault’s inventory, until today.

    So you’re considering the job? Lucsly asked.

    I always consider it. But it’s like I’ve said before—I can do the most good out in the field with you.

    "You said that ten years, six months, and twenty-five days ago, when we started to get warning signs that a new front of the Temporal Cold War was

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