"History's Pawn" Fiction Excerpt

I'm posting for the heck of it the opening 400 some words of my SNW 10 sub "History's Pawn."

Storyline: Captain Braxton, a Starfleet temporal enforcer trapped in a repeating time loop, sets out to avenge himself on the man who set the loop in motion.

Gary Seven, a human time travel agent for unknown aliens.
-----------------------------------------------------------------

History's Pawn
by Boris Layupan


NEW STARDATE 1789.49.3.135
EARTH STANDARD: MAY 2866

Captain Braxton's two future selves gazed at him. He caught the deranged glints in their eyes. Thrills of fear corkscrewed up his spine.

Is this what the future holds for me? He couldn't let that happen.

On the bridge’s upper level, Lieutenant Ducane, the young, spare-framed first officer, sat in the captain’s chair. Ducane draped his hands over the arms in a manner befitting a judge.

“Release me, Lieutenant,” said Braxton. “We’re in a Pogo Paradox causality loop: actions taken to forestall an event will trigger it. Reintegrating me with my doppelgangers and arresting me for their crimes ensures I will commit them.”

Apprehending Braxton’s older self at the end of a circus-like pursuit across different periods of Voyager’s journey through the Delta Quadrant hadn’t satisfied Ducane. In his zeal to clean up the timeline, the rigid officer enlisted Voyager’s Captain Janeway to apprehend Braxton’s older self again at the instant his older self first set foot on that blasted ship. Trying to keep the temporal mechanics of this farce straight gave Braxton a headache.

Ducane steepled his fingertips together. “I’m sorry, Captain. The longer the three of you remain separated the greater the resulting temporal psychosis will be. And regulations require you stand court-martial for violating the Temporal Prime Directive.”

Braxton drew on his emotional reserves to keep his composure before the pitying looks of the Relativity’s bridge crew. But his mood was as somber as the dark tones of his blue-gray uniform. Security Chief Haran'asar stood by Braxton, a full head taller. The bony spikes along the Jem'Hadar’s jaw gleamed in the bridge’s illumination. Lieutenant Kalrynn Oyama, the assistant security head, was all business too. Her Japanese features, fused with her Klingon skin tone and intensity, gave her an air of exotic beauty and danger as she guarded Braxton’s doppelgangers.

Intolerable! thought Braxton. Not only was he relieved of his command over the Timeship Relativity, but he faced two manic versions of himself from the future. Years of rehabilitation from being lost in time had just gone out the airlock. This was Gary Seven’s doing, but his situation was only a byproduct of some larger scheme he knew Seven had to be orchestrating.

Braxton had to wrest back his freedom and stop Seven. If left unchecked, there was no telling how that menace would disrupt the established timeline even further....

-----------------------------------------