29
"Fascinating." Shran said as he watched the viewscreen.
It really was. Even in the visual spectrum, the spacetime anomaly was amazing to look at. A kind of pulsing, glowing white dot.
"It is." Captain Mason agreed. "Star?"
"It is a powerful fluctuation in the fabric of spacetime. It extends through subspace further can I can scan. It's something like a wormhole but... different. It gives off gravitons and chronotons in high quantities." I said, crossing my legs as I leaned back in the chair. For once my actual avatar was on the bridge. "As for what it looks like to me... similar to what you can see, just in three more dimensions."
Mason slowly nodded, drumming the fingers of his right hand on the armrest of the chair. A habit he picked up trying to get his fingers working again. "What is astrophysics's opinion on this?"
I rolled my eyes. "They want me to get closer, but thirty thousand kilometers is plenty close for me. For all I know, any second that thing is going to go off like some kind of subspace supernova. I want enough range to be able to jump into warp at the first sign of trouble."
Shran rubbed his chin. "Run a full power active scan, let's see what we are dealing with here. Give it a poke."
"Aye, sir. Reading my poking device." I said with a grin as I started to run full active scans on the anomaly.
Hmm, it was reacting to gravitons. Interesting.
That made sense, it was giving off a powerful gravimetric signature. Like that of a large gas giant. It... shivered, vibrating with the gravity pulses.
Quite pretty, actually.
None of the other active sensors were having an effect.
"Sir," I reported, "The anomaly is reacting to gravitons. Should I give it a stronger pulse?"
Mason nodded. "Give it another poke. Let's see what we can learn. Careful so you don't collapse it."
Pulse.
The anomaly whirled and started to expand, showing a black void behind it and between the edges.
Oh shit. I immediately regret this decision!
Swinging around, I hit full impulse.
"Star, get us out of here!" Mason ordered a full second later.
"I'm at full impulse, Captain." I reported. "But I'm not moving. Stepping it up to warp five."
My warp field didn't happen. It just collapsed as soon as I tried to form it. Subspace was too turbulent.
...That's not good.
Shran looked over at me. "Star..."
"I can't form a stable warpfield. The anomaly is sucking us in. Redirecting warp power to shields, structural integrity and internal inertial compensator. Shutting down and isolating shuttle AI cores in case of catastrophic AI collapse." I quickly reported before I glanced at them and switched to shipwide. "All hands, brace for impact."
At the last second, I turned around so I went into the vortex front first.
XXXXXXXXXX
"Star, Damage report!"
"Warpdrive, offline. Shields at twenty percent. Hull integrity at forty percent. Hull... intact-ish. I think. Phasers, offline. External sensors... mostly offline." I quickly reported, looking around. If I had any, I would have been holding my breath.
Behind me the vortex collapsed until it was barely visible like a knot of subspace.
Okay, that went both worse and better than expected. For one thing, I'm not a tiny little ball of neutrons right now.
That was always a plus.
"Causalities are being reported." I said after several seconds of checking my systems and stations. "No dead. Mostly broken bones. One case of cracked exoskeleton. Some internal bruising. I know how they feel. Permission to speak freely, sir?"
"Granted."
"Fucking. Ow."
That got a snort from Shran as he undid the belt of his chair and stood up. "Where are we? Can you get the hologram back online?"
"Hologram is fine, I just don't have more than the most basic of external sensors to give you a picture." I explained and brought the screen up. "Engineering is on it, but so far this is basically what I see. I have some subspace, but that's about it. Low resolution only."
The screen showed a number of fluctuations, like waves on the surface of a pond after dropping a rock in it.
"What are we looking at?" Captain Mason asked as he got up as well, rubbing his right knee before standing up straight.
"Those major fluctuations are nearby stars. The smaller ones are planets. That little glowing spot is what remained of the vortex behind us. It is currently really unstable but is stabilizing. I estimate that sometime during the next week or two it will reach the same strength as it had when we found it."
Shran nodded. "So we can use it to go back."
"Maybe?" I said with a shrug. "I don't even know where we are and until I get visual sensors online, I don't even know when we are. I need to get an eye on the pulsars."
"What about the comm system? Do you have a connection to Starfleet?"
"No, sir. I only have basic subspa-" I started to explain before I frowned as something tugged at my mind. "Wait." I said and pointed at the viewscreen, zooming in and magnifying one tiny little ripple on the screen. "I think that might be a ship. It will reach us within five minutes. Captain, I'm blind as a bat. I can't fight like this!""
I couldn't even run.
The next couple of minutes were very tense, spent directing damage control teams and worrying.
We had no idea where we were. For all we knew, it had been some kind of super wormhole that tossed us a couple of galaxies away.
Eclipse Phase and Dreamwalker were functioning and could stream me their gravimetric and subspace sensors, but I refused to let them launch in case it became too dangerous. Better to stay on board. Besides, the Poking Stick was blocking the way. We really needed to shuffle them around so we could get the Runabouts out. Damn it, we should have done that ages ago!
I did however launch a shuttlecraft to have a bit of a look around.
"Sir, I have located the approaching craft. Bringing it up now." I reported as I swung the unmanned shuttlecraft around to get something on that thing so I could try to identify it. Shuttle sensors were not the best, but they were better than what I had right now.
Huh. What in the world..
Saucer section and nacelles. The shape was very... familiar. Last I saw one directly like that, it was in a museum.
Federation design.
I zoomed the view in as I brought it onto the screen, showing the name and registry number.
U.S.S. Enterprise. NCC-1701.
We all just stared at it for a very long moment before I slowly sat down my avatar in my chair. "We are so fucked."
AN// A bucket of thanks to Grey Rook for betaing this section.
It really was. Even in the visual spectrum, the spacetime anomaly was amazing to look at. A kind of pulsing, glowing white dot.
"It is." Captain Mason agreed. "Star?"
"It is a powerful fluctuation in the fabric of spacetime. It extends through subspace further can I can scan. It's something like a wormhole but... different. It gives off gravitons and chronotons in high quantities." I said, crossing my legs as I leaned back in the chair. For once my actual avatar was on the bridge. "As for what it looks like to me... similar to what you can see, just in three more dimensions."
Mason slowly nodded, drumming the fingers of his right hand on the armrest of the chair. A habit he picked up trying to get his fingers working again. "What is astrophysics's opinion on this?"
I rolled my eyes. "They want me to get closer, but thirty thousand kilometers is plenty close for me. For all I know, any second that thing is going to go off like some kind of subspace supernova. I want enough range to be able to jump into warp at the first sign of trouble."
Shran rubbed his chin. "Run a full power active scan, let's see what we are dealing with here. Give it a poke."
"Aye, sir. Reading my poking device." I said with a grin as I started to run full active scans on the anomaly.
Hmm, it was reacting to gravitons. Interesting.
That made sense, it was giving off a powerful gravimetric signature. Like that of a large gas giant. It... shivered, vibrating with the gravity pulses.
Quite pretty, actually.
None of the other active sensors were having an effect.
"Sir," I reported, "The anomaly is reacting to gravitons. Should I give it a stronger pulse?"
Mason nodded. "Give it another poke. Let's see what we can learn. Careful so you don't collapse it."
Pulse.
The anomaly whirled and started to expand, showing a black void behind it and between the edges.
Oh shit. I immediately regret this decision!
Swinging around, I hit full impulse.
"Star, get us out of here!" Mason ordered a full second later.
"I'm at full impulse, Captain." I reported. "But I'm not moving. Stepping it up to warp five."
My warp field didn't happen. It just collapsed as soon as I tried to form it. Subspace was too turbulent.
...That's not good.
Shran looked over at me. "Star..."
"I can't form a stable warpfield. The anomaly is sucking us in. Redirecting warp power to shields, structural integrity and internal inertial compensator. Shutting down and isolating shuttle AI cores in case of catastrophic AI collapse." I quickly reported before I glanced at them and switched to shipwide. "All hands, brace for impact."
At the last second, I turned around so I went into the vortex front first.
XXXXXXXXXX
"Star, Damage report!"
"Warpdrive, offline. Shields at twenty percent. Hull integrity at forty percent. Hull... intact-ish. I think. Phasers, offline. External sensors... mostly offline." I quickly reported, looking around. If I had any, I would have been holding my breath.
Behind me the vortex collapsed until it was barely visible like a knot of subspace.
Okay, that went both worse and better than expected. For one thing, I'm not a tiny little ball of neutrons right now.
That was always a plus.
"Causalities are being reported." I said after several seconds of checking my systems and stations. "No dead. Mostly broken bones. One case of cracked exoskeleton. Some internal bruising. I know how they feel. Permission to speak freely, sir?"
"Granted."
"Fucking. Ow."
That got a snort from Shran as he undid the belt of his chair and stood up. "Where are we? Can you get the hologram back online?"
"Hologram is fine, I just don't have more than the most basic of external sensors to give you a picture." I explained and brought the screen up. "Engineering is on it, but so far this is basically what I see. I have some subspace, but that's about it. Low resolution only."
The screen showed a number of fluctuations, like waves on the surface of a pond after dropping a rock in it.
"What are we looking at?" Captain Mason asked as he got up as well, rubbing his right knee before standing up straight.
"Those major fluctuations are nearby stars. The smaller ones are planets. That little glowing spot is what remained of the vortex behind us. It is currently really unstable but is stabilizing. I estimate that sometime during the next week or two it will reach the same strength as it had when we found it."
Shran nodded. "So we can use it to go back."
"Maybe?" I said with a shrug. "I don't even know where we are and until I get visual sensors online, I don't even know when we are. I need to get an eye on the pulsars."
"What about the comm system? Do you have a connection to Starfleet?"
"No, sir. I only have basic subspa-" I started to explain before I frowned as something tugged at my mind. "Wait." I said and pointed at the viewscreen, zooming in and magnifying one tiny little ripple on the screen. "I think that might be a ship. It will reach us within five minutes. Captain, I'm blind as a bat. I can't fight like this!""
I couldn't even run.
The next couple of minutes were very tense, spent directing damage control teams and worrying.
We had no idea where we were. For all we knew, it had been some kind of super wormhole that tossed us a couple of galaxies away.
Eclipse Phase and Dreamwalker were functioning and could stream me their gravimetric and subspace sensors, but I refused to let them launch in case it became too dangerous. Better to stay on board. Besides, the Poking Stick was blocking the way. We really needed to shuffle them around so we could get the Runabouts out. Damn it, we should have done that ages ago!
I did however launch a shuttlecraft to have a bit of a look around.
"Sir, I have located the approaching craft. Bringing it up now." I reported as I swung the unmanned shuttlecraft around to get something on that thing so I could try to identify it. Shuttle sensors were not the best, but they were better than what I had right now.
Huh. What in the world..
Saucer section and nacelles. The shape was very... familiar. Last I saw one directly like that, it was in a museum.
Federation design.
I zoomed the view in as I brought it onto the screen, showing the name and registry number.
U.S.S. Enterprise. NCC-1701.
We all just stared at it for a very long moment before I slowly sat down my avatar in my chair. "We are so fucked."
AN// A bucket of thanks to Grey Rook for betaing this section.
