10 Million BC
Commander Kinichi's Engineering Log, Circa 10 Million BC, Aga Carmide
Damn!
Damndamn!
We did not blow up today. It was close. It would have been nice to have some warning that the ship was heading through an unstable temporal rift, and the energy spikes from combat fire after did not help at all.
I told the captain it would take a week at a shipyard to get us to warp after all of that, and now that I've had a chance to check, I was right. The Excelsior class is more sensitive than it looks. That gets us our legs, but it means my Enterprise is not as easy to patch up as the one out our window. The dash-A refit should help there, but that is too late for us.
Anyway, things are as stable as I can get them in the engine room for now. Lt. Bekaru is off prepping a worker bee so she can fly me for eyeballs on the warp coils. Not that many people are willing to brave getting that close to a shorted energized warp coil. We have an entire field theory team working on plotting us an approach so I can do the manual shutoff.
Commander Kinichi's Engineering Log, Circa 10 Million BC plus one day, Aga Carmide
We did not blow up today. Both warp cores are de-energized, but the polarization and misalignment are as bad as I thought. I think we can use the tractor beams to get the alignment fixed once we expose the coils, but the polarization... I mean, if I had the prototype phased polaron invertor from the Vulcan Academy of Sciences, and the portable subspace shunt that the Abatt Institute on Gaeni are testing, I could do something, but we don't get to stock toys like those on an explorer quite yet.
Commander Kinichi's Engineering Log, Circa 10 Million BC plus one day, Aga Carmide, Supplemental
Great Scott!
No really, Chief Engineer Scott, of the... classic unlettered Enterprise is great. His ship is in much better shape, and now that we are stable and not likely to blow up in the next few days, we are focusing on getting his ship in shape enough to go join the chase. From everything I know, his is the only ship that has a chance of putting up a fight, then again, never count out an Enterprise.
The man's hunches about his ship are as good as our computer models, and a lot faster. He not only knows the specs of just about every part, but can tell a story about getting the designers drunk. Even if we were going to try to cheat and send him future parts, it would be less effective because he would not know them as well. That said, I do have some fabrication tricks up my sleeve that will make him swallow the 'laddies' he throws at me.
I wish Bazeck was here. The two of them would have gotten along great, though the rest of the crew might not see that.
Commander Kinichi's Engineering Log, Circa 10 Million BC plus four days, Aga Carmide
The classic Enterprise is dashing off. Time for a full night of sleep, then to focus on my ship in the morning. Most of the crew has been helping out, though stellar dynamics have been busy taking every reading they can. I don't blame them, its not every day you get access to 10 million year old anything, and they can't do anything to get us unstuck. Stol got one of the shuttles rigged to use as a station keeping drive. One less thing to worry about for now, but that won't get us home.
Commander Kinichi's Engineering Log, Circa 10 Million BC plus seven days, Aga Carmide
The Science officer had me testing out some deflector dish modifications based on our anomaly transit, and the anomaly shifted. It looks like we may be able to store some of the anomaly change.
Oh, and it looks like we found the research colony as we reshaped the anomaly.
Supplemental
Er, we did not quite find them as soon as we hoped, its been twenty years for them. We are going to meet a delegation of them tonight.
Commander Kinichi's Engineering Log, Circa 10 Million BC plus eight days, Aga Carmide
Long night, long meeting. T'arth and Sader, a married pair of Vulcans who had joined the research colony after long careers at the Academy of Science to discuss how to get us home, assuming the other Enterprises succeed in their mission. They have some ways of tuning the anomaly that they are not willing to discuss, but admit is it possible. However, two problems remain: targeting our return trip, and surviving the return trip. Passage through the rift in its decaying state is going to create a continuing wave of space-time noise, more than our ships can handle. They asked me if we could adapt the warp engines with some kind of subspace stabilizing device.
Did some preliminary analysis, and a pure damping device is not likely to work, the issue is the changes as they cascade through the ship. We would be better off if we could smooth that energy with some kind of temporal flux storage, a battery or capacitor...
A Flux Capacitor?!?
Supplemental
I had Lt. Vokrek run a simulation for me. Tezra is the best mathematician on the ship, and is always excited to tell me that my ideas stink worse than Cardassian Booze, but this time she game me a grudging maybe. The trilateral symmetry prevents phase instability, and the taper of the flux conduits will create a damping effect.
I should be able to build a module to attach to the main deflector dishes of all of the ships, and rig them to self-destruct to none of the past ships have the design. The main issue is that they require a very large power spike (of course) to establish the subspace shield, and the larger the ship, the more power. The -B will need to burn up almost all of the reserve anti-matter to kick it off. Good thing we have reserves, or we would need to know when a star was going nova.
Commander Kinichi's Engineering Log, Circa 10 Million BC plus eleven days, Aga Carmide
Apart from trying to destroy history and the Federation, I am not fond of Mentat Betarre. We the only reason we got the trick to match temporal wavelengths was so at least our secret files held records that the time-rift machine worked. Ego almost destroyed us, but at least it will save us, and get us home. I'm off to work on repairing the device with the Mentat so we can get the anomaly tuned for all of the trips.
Supplemental
That is one... two... three Enterprises on their way home, now its our turn.
Wait a moment, the wormhole, its... Frak!
Commander Robert Kinichi's Final Log as Chief Engineer, USS Enterprise NCC 1701-B
It took 87% of the stored anti-matter of the Enterprise to re-energize the wormhole enough to get a ship through. There was not enough to energize the Flux Capacitor to let us survive the trip. Not even if we cannibalized from the Lion. The smaller ship was our only chance. The scientists from Aga Carmide managed to use that to give us time to transfer everyone over, but not by much margin.
I helped blow up my ship. I know it had to be done, but I guess Bazeck was right, "some damn fool idea of your Rob is going to end up with that ship blasted apart, and I'll be the first to say I told you so."
The bridge of the Lion was packed. We were through, the rest of the ship just as packed. The rift was decaying, we only had a few minutes left before we lost contact, and the navigation officer had just let us know we were clear.
Commodore ka'Sharren leaned forward, as if she was going to say something, then looked at Captain Mrr'shan, who seemed to be worrying a scrap of fabric in her hand, not a habit I had seen before, then stopped.
"Enterprise, Self destruct, 5 minute delay, Captain Samhaya Mrr'shan Authorization A-1 Destruct." All of the senior officers followed her. We were not all needed, but if we had to say goodbye, this was it. This was our ship.
The portal closed, and Enterprise was consigned to history and oblivion. I need a drink.
Apocryphal Coda:
Something not entirely unlike a Runabout appeared in a crackle of light and energy between a glowing distortion in space, and the dark hull of a derelict Excelsior Class Starship.
The characteristic glow of three columns of transporter energy lit up the bridge beyond the blinking red light.
"Self destruct in one minute." The computer declared to the no longer empty bridge.
"Abort! Abort! Authorization Omega-Zero Abort!"
"Self destruct aborted." The lights returned to normal.
A figure wearing pink Intel collars but with no visible rank or assignment patches breathed a sign of relief. Speaking to a similarly attired companion "I'm glad that worked. We were lucky the whole command crew authorized the destruct or we might not have gotten someone who could stop it."
"It was worth the risk, there are so few ships that are lost by the records that we can get to, and if we are going to be operating in secret, we need every one we can get."
The transporter energized again, leaving more people, and a small stack of cases with the logos of the Vulcan Academy of Science and the Abatt Institute.
Several weeks later, the vessel surged forward, faster and faster, till it vanished, leaving behind a trail that looked like
a streak of flames.
]
