Fear is one of the most important motivators for any person.
Interphases
Background
Furthermore, in this very short story, I used this rather particular and unpleasant motivation in order to get two rather disparate people to connect.
Plot
During the E2 timeline and more specifically during the events of The Three of Us, Lili is required to take a shuttle flight test. Actually, everyone has to do it. While the pretense (on paper, as it were) for this is a need for the characters to cross-train and understand more about the overall workings of the ship, my true motivation was to get Lili alone for a moment and then get her and Jay alone in order to have the Imvari capture them.
As a result, this little scene is absolutely necessary. Travis tests Lili on how to fly a shuttle. And she fails the test. Hence the scene accomplishes its task. But I wanted more, so I ended up making it also about Lili’s fears. Furthermore, I was able to make it about Travis and him missing his family. This also gave me something I was able to use later in Everybody Knows this is Nowhere. It can be kind of funny how some small, seemingly throwaway scenes can help out a writer at a later date, eh?
I liked this little scene so much, it became a part of the far bigger book. Lili’s fear is directly used to showcase a certain level of vulnerability. Travis shows the fear his mother had and, by extension, his fear that he will never see her again. For both of them, this powerful (and powerfully negative) motivator rules the scene.
Love may make the world go ’round, but we all share fear.
The idea was to cross over, and I am pretty sure that was the original prompt. And so I decided to cross over between the Original Series and Enterprise. However, the twist would be to add the Mirror Universe in for some spice.
For both men, so long as the switcheroo holds up, their lives improve, although Sulu ends up doing better. In the Mirror Universe, any advantage is a good one. Sulu finds someone who interests him – Preston Jennings. This establishes, in my fanfiction universe, that Hikaru Sulu is bisexual is not gay, which was a deliberate call out to Takei’s well-known homosexuality. Travis sees an immediate improvement in his life as he gets away from Empress Hoshi. It feels like it is going to be a win-win all around. But we just can’t have that. There has to be some reason it all happened.
And then, of course, it’s time to undo it all and pull the rug out from under them. Sorry, fellas.
The idea of shifting bodies in time is always a fun one, although I confess it isn’t always so easy to figure out a plausible explanation for the trade. I am running out of ideas here!
Portrait of a Character – Travis Mayweather (Mirror)
Origins
This character is canon, and he is one of the only people unambiguously left standing at the end of In a Mirror, Darkly, Part II (Hoshi is also alive but it’s somewhat unclear about the other main characters).
Portrayal
Anthony Montgomery as Mirror Travis Mayweather (image is courtesy Memory Alpha)
I think the actor did a bang-up job and, since he’s improved as an actor, I would love to see him pick it up again.
Personality
Ruthless, nasty, irresponsible, and more than a little dumb, Travis is an interesting choice of henchman and lover for Hoshi. She continually corrects him and puts him down in public, but he provides a huge public service for her. Because no one wants him in power, Hoshi remains safe. As for Travis, he remains fairly safe as his relationship with Hoshi is non-exclusive and she actively seeks other fathers for her elder children. As a result, there are few rewards to replacing him, and men like José, Frank, Chip, and Aidan do better to remain more subservient. Travis is the one with a target painted on his back.
Relationships
The Empress Hoshi Sato
The Mirror Travis, while he is dying for some fun times with women like the Mirror versions of Melissa Madden and Shelby Pike, is beholden to the Empress. In Coveted Commodity in particular, he is essentially led around on a leash. His only hope is to pass on his genes to Izo and work to assure his son’s survival. This he does by blackmailing Dr. Morgan into agreeing to help Izo, even after Travis’s death. This Morgan more or less does (although, like most denizens of the Mirror, Morgan’s word isn’t worth much).
Theme Music
Everybody else in Temper seems to have gotten a theme song except for Travis!
In Temper in particular, I really got a chance to let Travis have it with both barrels. He dies in three separate timelines. Once is by Jun Sato; the other two times, he’s fragged by his own troops. An ignominious end, no matter how you slice it, for an evil man who was ‘only following orders’.
Promise works as, like a lot of other stories, a play on words. For that is because it means both vow and potential. It covers a meaningful moment during a kick back in time.
Background
I was asked several times, “When are you going to show Travis and Julie?” Well, here they are.
Plot
Taking place wholly within The Three of Us and the E2 timeline, the story covers the very beginning of their relationship.
The Three of Us
So Travis is ready to ask the lovely MACO out. But Julie is skeptical. She knows that being asked out is practically a marriage proposal in that generational ship. An with so many limitations, she wonders if she is compromising. Is she settling?
Well, she is, and so is he. But that is the nature of that particular beast. The timeline does not permit the picking up of too many passengers.
However, Travis is not only very good-looking, he’s also sweet.
I’m not so sure that I fully captured Julie’s reticence as well as I had liked. Travis is basically the happiest canon character on the ship, and I wanted Julie to share in his enthusiasm and optimism. But I also wanted her, at the start, to be cautious. However, I wanted her abundance of caution to spring from doubts as to who would be the best possible mate for her. They do not come from the characters’ differing races.
I do hope that fans liked what I wrote. I always hope that, but I particularly do here, as the story was written in order to satisfy an ongoing request.
For Reversal in particular to work, there had a to be a number of people ready and able to go to war.
In particular, as the Mirror Universe is so different from the prime universe, a lot of people would be soldiers there who wouldn’t be so here. Or they would be more violent and less disciplined than in our universe. As it is explained to Lili, the percentage of military personnel is deliberately kept very high over there.
There are more MACOs in particular than the group listed here, but these people are seen the most.
Appearances of Soldiers
Aliwev
This Calafan recruit drills directly under Doug and, in the Mirror, in one of the alternate timelines, assassinates the Empress Hoshi Sato during Temper.
Douglas Jay Hayes Beckett
Doug, a trained killer, spends much of Reversal trying to leave the practice of making war. When he can’t find anything else to do with himself in Together, he eventually becomes the captain of a defense unit on Lafa II, and instructs recruits.
Daniel Chang
Chang, a canon character, defends the Enterprise but, in the E2 timeline, commits crimes.
Tristan Curtis
Curtis is another E2 timeline criminal. In the Temper alternate timelines, he’s named Craig.
Brian Delacroix
In the prime universe, Delacroix is a security guard who becomes a chef. In the Mirror, he nearly kills Doug.
Tommy Digiorno-Madden
Unlike the other five kids, Tommy joins Starfleet and goes into Tactical.
Thomas Grant
In the deep future, Tom is assigned to the Breen homeworld before he joins the Temporal Integrity Commission.
Deborah Hadden
Deb works in Security in both universes. In the Mirror, she kills Brian before he has a chance to off Doug. But her victory is short-lived, and she perishes when he leaves that universe.
Jay Hayes
The consummate soldier, Major J. Hayes is so committed to defending the ship that he has nearly no time for people.
Gary Hodgkins
Yet another E2 criminal, Hodgkins often pairs with Curtis, particularly in the Mirror.
Chandler Masterson
Chip is wasted in Security and moves over to Communications. This isn’t possible in the Mirror, so he stays in Tactical. In the prime timeline, he escapes the Empress, but in one of the alternates, he rises to become captain of the Defiant.
Travis Mayweather
Travis is a soldier in the Mirror Universe only. He’s a poor soldier, though, and an even worse leader. In the alternate timelines, and in the prime timeline, he is fragged by his own troops.
Andrew Miller
Like Travis, Andy is only a soldier in the Mirror. When the Empress taps him for somewhat earthy duties, he manages to get himself reassigned to Science.
Malcolm Reed
The other consummate canon career soldier, Malcolm is more ambitious and tries for a command as soon as he can get one.
José Torres
José is another person who is only a soldier in the Mirror. He is not cut out for command at all and, in an alternate timeline, destroys his ship, the Luna, and everyone on board is killed.
Upshot
Star Trek fanfiction will always have a place for men and women (and other genders) in uniform.
In order to cover a fuller spectrum of sexuality, I decided to bring in someone who would be on the asexuality end of things. When I first wrote Doug, there was an early victim named Harris. Plus I needed an extra pilot for the E2 timeline, as Melissa isn’t a part of those stories. And so Chris was born.
Portrayal
Chris is played by actor Hunter Parrish. I really liked the idea of a good-looking guy who would have no interest in anyone.
Hunter Parrish as Christian Harris
I like that this is a young actor trying to take some risks with his career. Being a part of a show about dope dealing is sure to offend someone. But it does not seem to have made an affect on Parrish’s career or his appeal.
Personality
Hunter Parrish as Christian Harris
Pleasant but kind of aloof, Chris is more of a background player than almost anything else. He fills in when others, such as Travis Mayweather, are ill.
He is somewhat self-sacrificing, and is well-aware, particularly during the E2 timeline, that a guy like him is somewhat valuable. After all, as a guy not interested in any of the limited women on board, he’s not a threat. As a skilled pilot, he’s in some demand. When suicide missions are on the table (in both timelines), he’s selected to go. He doesn’t object to this.
Relationships
Chris has no known relationships, in any timeline or universe.
Mirror Universe
The Mirror version of Chris, also asexual, is Doug’s second victim, killed by an illegal below the belt hit during an impromptu boxing match. I barely show him, and he does not speak.
Mirror Chris (Hunter Parrish)
Quote
“Next wannabe pilot!”
Upshot
I really never got a chance to give Chris a lot of depth, although I’d like to. He’s one of those characters that hides from the writer.
So We Meet Again – Just after the NX-01 is decommissioned in 2162, Travis heads to Philadelphia to mourn Tripp Tucker and think about his next career move.
Plot
In canon, there is virtually nothing shown about anyone’s recovery from Tucker’s untimely demise.
In Between Days
It is as if it never mattered in the first place.
In response to a Star Trek fan fiction prompt about entertainment, I made the decision to go dark and most decidedly not fluffy.
The story begins with Travis feeling a little lost. Very briefly, I mention that the final movie night has been held on the NX-01 prior to its decommissioning, and that the film Chip chose was the first James Bond movie, Dr. No.
He has little to do or think about, and his family is on the freighter, anyway. With no one to visit and just a little bit doubtful as to whether Captain Archer wants him back for the DC-1500 USS Zefram Cochrane, Travis goes to a nearby station and visits a ticket agent. He gives her an undisclosed amount of cash and just asks, “Where can this take me?” She gives him a few options and he chooses Philadelphia.
8th and Market Street, showing the Strawbridge and Clothier department store, 1910s. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I did not choose Philly for any particular reason. I just like the city (I lived outside it for a few years as a child) and it is a readily recognizable place which would still exist during that time period.
However, Travis has no ties to it whatsoever. For him, it’s just a means of getting away from it all.
Where is it that the wind comes sweepin’ down the plain? Why, it’s Oklahoma, of course. Yet if stories about terrorism trigger you, you might want to back out now.
Background
To continue Richard Daniels and the Temporal Integrity Commission’s investigations in time, I decided the Perfections would prevent a truly horrific act, and then the commission would have to, sadly, put it back.
Where the Wind Comes Sweepin’ Down the Plain
9/11 was (and still is) too close in time, and felt wrong. But this event isn’t too much better, and I can understand if a reader finds it a distasteful topic for Star Trek fanfiction, still.
For anyone who does not know the musical, the title of the piece refers to Oklahoma! And so the story line can only be about one thing.
A lot of writers, when tackling a subject like this, focus on the Kennedy assassination. But I wanted something more contemporary. And this particular terrorist act is even worse, given the high number of lost innocents.
This is the last of the stories in the Complications subsection of the HG Wells timeline (the first part is Repairs; the last part is Unravelings).
Plot
As Rick recovers from meeting Milena (and falling for her), the Perfectionists, an opposing faction, pull off their most audacious act so far. But preventing the Oklahoma City bombing means that a number of people will live who aren’t supposed to. And this includes several preschoolers. Hence the timeline becomes horribly damaged.
At the same time, in an effort to distract musician time traveler HD Avery, the Perfectionists avert a 1977 plane crash that killed half of the rock group Lynyrd Skynyrd.
And as a third piece of the temporal shenanigans puzzle, the Perfections prevent the 1983 assassination of Benigno Aquino.
Temporal Issues
So as a result of these changes, the NX-01‘s pilot is not Travis Mayweather; it’s Shelby Pike. She works as the ship’s Botanist in the Prime Timeline. In this alternate, she and Tripp Tucker have a relationship, and Otra D’Angelo sees Pike pregnant with Tucker’s child.
Yet another temporal alteration concerns Wesley Crusher‘s death from a plague. So this causes the destruction of the Enterprise-D by a Borg cube because Jean-Luc Picard cannot stop playing a game and Robin Lefler cannot save the crew by herself.
Hence due to the ever-present Borg threat, the Federation obtains rather expensive help from Dawitan, Otra’s home world. The Federation pays tribute every year. However, the masses are kept appeased with generous daily rations of fortified wine.
But protesters, including Anthony Parker, break into the USS Saint Eligius in order to destroy the wine casks (they’re behaving a lot like real-life temperance advocate Carrie Nation).
However, in the largest of the crates they smash open, they find an emaciated Otra. She has been kept imprisoned by the Perfectionists. Upon the eventual restoration of the timeline, Otra ends up back prison but retains a phaser that Anthony has given her.
The end of the story also prods a horribly distraught Tom Grant to confess his love to Eleanor Daniels.
Music
first of all, Hugh Jackman and company’s Oklahoma!
I liked putting this one together, as it ended up quite a puzzle. Daniel Beauchaine‘s actions have to be accounted for. In addition, I had to research and write dialogue for Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. As a piece of the Complications subsection of these stories, the book lives up to the idea of being complicated all right. But it sometimes seems overly so.
Hence numerous strands, from the three temporal alterations, to all of the consequences, need correction. But it ends up a lot for a reader to follow, and I admit I probably rushed through this one too much.
At a much smaller Star Trek site that I really don’t go to anymore, they celebrated once I’d hit a certain number of posts. As a thank you for that, I posted this little party story. It’s only meant to be a bit of fluff. However, I was able to add a bit to my lore. For a long time, this was the first story in my saga.
Plot
In Between Days
Hence as a fill in for the canon episode Two Days and Two Nights, I wrote this story in order to give a little depth to Travis. After all, in the episode, about all that happens is that he suffers an injury while rock climbing on Risa. But he didn’t start off rock climbing. At least, I didn’t want him to.
Hence, the little bit of fan fiction.
One thing I was able to do with this small story was to bring in Witannen a lot faster and earlier than before. With no statement of the name of the species (and Travis leaves quickly, plus in Star Trek: Enterprise canon he’s knocked out not too long after that), there’s no real first contact. However, for sharp-eyed readers, the stage is set for this species. Hence when the Witannen show up in Together, he really should have remembered them. But with him losing consciousness in canon, it fits that he would either not remember or maybe even suffer just a tiny bit of amnesia.
The character, of course, is Star Trek: Enterprise canon, and is the Mirror Universe counterpart to Hoshi Sato.
Declaring power
However, the Enterprise series only showed her declaring her power, and never actually consolidating or wielding it, as the show was cancelled far too soon. I have tried to rectify that, and I recognize that the official books have done so as well. But I think Star Trek is a big tent, and there’s room for all sorts of fanfiction interpretations of what happens next.
Portrayal
As in the series, the Empress Hoshi Sato is played by Linda Park.
Personality
Empress Hoshi Sato on the Bridge
Suspicious, nasty and ruthless, Hoshi makes a perfect Mirror Universe Empress and all-around villain because she will stop at nothing.
She’s just a bit campy in canon, but I make her truly dangerous. In Throwing Rocks at Looking Glass Houses, she violently takes charge, beginning a bloody reign by first killing off Phlox and Ian (Malcolm‘s counterpart), and then moving onto the Emperor Philip IV (counterpart to Colonel Philip Green) and, eventually, T’Pol.
Machiavellian
As a true Machiavellian, she eliminates the Emperor’s entire family, in order to prevent the people from perhaps, in the future, rallying around a successor. This includes the Emperor’s infant daughter, Anastasia, a reference to Princess Anastasia of Russia, killed when the Bolsheviks came to power. This also establishes Hoshi’s reign as having the potential to become totalitarian, which is confirmed with later stories. But that’s nothing new. In The High Cost of Dissidence, her predecessor has proven to be just as immoral.
In Paving Stones Made From Good Intentions, Hoshi pits Doug, Aidan and Chip against each other, in order to get someone new to run Tactical, as she has had Ian killed. However, rather than eliminate or emasculate his rivals, the victorious Doug decides to have them work under him, in a more cooperative type of venture. This continues to the time of Reversal. Aidan repays Doug’s kindness by cuckolding him and trying to take his girl, Jenn Crossman.
By the time of First Born, Hoshi has decided that she wants an heir. When Rick Daniels goes to the Defiant on a mission, they hook up, and she becomes pregnant. She proves to be a horrible mother, having Beth Cutler care for her son with Rick. By the time of Coveted Commodity, her childbearing years are coming to an end.
And by the time of Shake Your Body, Milton Walker seizes an opportunity and comes calling.
Relationships
Maximilian Forrest
This canon relationship is shown in the two ENT Mirror Universe episodes.
Forrest’s Captain’s Woman
Both actors have said they believe she loved him. However, he may or may not have loved her. I go with this, that his love for her is ambiguous, if it exists at all.
Further, she is ambitious. Even if Forrest had survived, it would not have been enough. She would have left him, at some point, unless he could go a lot further, a lot faster, in their careers.
Even then, I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t have stayed for long.
Jonathan Archer
Another canon relationship, Hoshi cheats on Forrest with Archer. But when Archer proves to be too slow to get ahead, she offs him.
Travis Mayweather
MU Hoshi and Travis
The final canon relationship, Hoshi turns to Travis for help in dispatching Archer.
The way I write them, they stay together, but she is dominant in every single way. In Coveted Commodity, this becomes all-too clear, as he reminisces about how, every time she’s had a child from someone else, she’s told him that it’s for her security.
Travis is mainly interested in his own security, so he goes along with it. And, in Commodity, he comes to understand that he’s better off where he is, rather than to try to usurp her.
Richard Daniels
In January of 2156, Rick goes on a temporal mission to the Mirror, to fix the Defiant. With poor cash flow and no money to pay him, plus an urge to make it with a time traveler (he foolishly reveals that detail about himself to her), they hook up. Nine months later, Jun is born, and the Temporal Integrity Commission has to scramble. Because Rick wants his temporally paradoxical son to live, Jun has to be sterilized, and Rick is forbidden from returning to the Mirror at any time during Jun or Hoshi’s lives, not even long before conception or after her menopause or even after her death.
Rick’s boss, Carmen Calavicci, fakes Rick’s death by arranging for wreckage to be left on Daranaea. She also applies delta radiation in utero and Jun is thereby sterilized.
Aidan MacKenzie
Aidan, her second baby daddy, is seduced at the end of Reversal, an act that Doug wisely resisted. Hoshi makes it very clear that she does not care at all for Aidan, but he’s got good genes. By the time of the alternate timelines in Temper, Aidan is the designated babysitter for the royal brats.
José Torres
By the time of Brown, José is already trying to make time with the Empress, following up some small flirtation during Throwing Rocks.
Francisco Ramirez
At the same time that she is involved with Torres, Hoshi is also involved with Ramirez.
The Perks of Being in the Inner Circle
Chandler Masterson
Chip is next in the passing parade, and is thrown over when Hoshi has his children.
Andrew Miller
After Travis’s death, Hoshi goes after Andrew, who is stuck with her until he leaves via suicide. He is, in this instance, cheating on her, with Melissa Madden, who dies, pregnant by him, in a shuttle crash. When he refers to MM in his suicide note, Hoshi changes the note in order to favor herself and gratify her ego.
Milton Walker
After Andrew’s death, Milton shows up, as he is on the run from the authorities. This former Eligian Order monk hasn’t been with a woman in decades, but Hoshi is older and less attractive, so she grabs onto him anyway.
Theme Music
Offspring
Jun Daniels Sato
The first born ends up running the Empire, with Kira, after Hoshi’s death, in Who Shall Wear the Robe and Crown?Prior to that, Jun runs Communications on the Defiant.
Kira (Kirin) MacKenzie Sato
Kira (sometimes called Kirin, which means giraffe) is the tallest of the children and, by rights, was supposed to be the eldest. He runs the Tactical station before becoming co-Emperor with Jun, but predeceases his elder brother.
Arashi Sato
With a head for business, Arashi is the only of the children of the Empress Hoshi Sato who is born without the Y Chromosome Skew. His parentage is allegedly unknown, but Torres does not have the skew, whereas Ramirez does. Therefore, it’s a lead pipe cinch that the head of the treasury is Torres’s son.
Takara Masterson Sato
Takara, the only girl, is the elder of a pair of twins, and eventually becomes the forebear of the successor to Jun and Kira – Charles Tucker VI, AKA the Emperor Charles I. She is removed from the Empress’s influence at an early age.
Takeo Masterson Sato
The younger twin, Takeo is a gay man, and is rescued from a life with the Empress by his father, Chip, and Chip’s wife, Lucy Stone, taking him away at a young age.
Izo Mayweather Sato
The youngest, son of Travis Mayweather, almost dies in utero, as Izo has a hole in his heart. Travis’s sacrifice suffers Izo to live; he grows up to run the Empress’s (and, later, his brothers’) Secret Police.
Quote
“Get me my ships! Get me my legions!”
Upshot
Empress Hoshi Sato is just the character that goes on and on, the gift that keeps on giving. I love writing her, putting her into difficult and easy circumstances, and generally giving her evil some buffoonish tendencies as she inevitably misses the mark in some areas as she all too accurately hits it in many others. I guarantee her return.
