Hmm?
Posted on 15 Oct 2015 @ 12:00pm by Commander Andreus Kohl & Lieutenant JG Cyrin Xanth
2,323 words; about a 12 minute read
Mission:
Episode 09 - Empires
Location: USS Galileo - Deck 1, Main Bridge
Timeline: MD 06 - 2125 hours
Previously on "Terran Crucible (Part 3)"...
"Ok that's enough!" Holliday called out, taking a moment to digest the information himself.
"I want to know exactly what is out there - high energy sensor sweeps of the belt and surrounding area. And I want the science labs crawling over every single bit of data we got from the singularity that opened when our deflector malfunctioned. I'd bet my command that explains how the hell got here."
"Captain," Cyrin spoke up again, this time more confident in his delivery despite how shaken he was about their situation. "I have been studying the singularity f-for the past five d-days; much of our d-data was l-lost during the transit but I have b-been over everything we have d-dozens of times to run s-simulations. It had transdimensional properties, reaching through not just normal s-space and subspace, sir. I th-think the odds of a uh, an uncontrolled burst f-from the secondary deflector that c-creating such a passage randomly is extremely low, sir. M-maybe s-s-someone uh, someone w-wanted us here."
"You heard the captain, Ensign Xanth," Stace cut through with a sterner lilt to her voice than she usually expressed. She cut a sideways glance to Holliday and widened her eyes in a knowing fashion.
"Very well people you heard our orders. We have thirty minutes to get off the surface. I expect us ready in twenty. Do what you have to do. Admiral Saalm, Commander Stace - would you join me in my Ready Room for a moment?"
The Orion nodded prudently. After just witnessing what could no doubt be Holliday's alter-ego, she realized that everything had now changed. No longer were they within the safe confines of Federation space, and their mission had now just become much more volatile. The Terran Empire was well-documented and studied by members of Starfleet's admiralty but there had not been an encounter with the alternate faction for many years. What new developments had occurred in their timeline remained a mystery, one which gave Lirha a very uneasy feeling considering the Empire's historic hostility towards their prime universe counterparts.
The Trill, with a knowing and stern nod, also took to her feet and followed behind the admiral and captain around the railing and towards the ready room.
As soon as Kohl heard the ready room doors close behind Admiral Saalm, Kohl locked out the science station controls. He got to his feet and sprinted back to the clutch of secondary science stations along the aft of the compartment. To the science officers stationed there, Kohl said in a hurried undertone, "Before Security commandeers our entire department, I need analyses of those ships out there, and if they're a match for anything in our databases..."
And now, the continuation, concurrent with "Terran Crucible (Part 4)"...
[ON]
The bridge seemed to have gone quiet with the departure of the command staff. Too quiet perhaps. The crew had just experienced a huge shock finding out they were no longer in their own universe. On top of that, they were at the mercy of the ships out there and their own leaders had been short and terse, no doubt as deeply affected by this as everyone else. Now the rest of the crew that staffed the bridge was left to their stations and their own thoughts.
When Commander Kohl approached the station he stood at, Cyrin gave him a stony-eyed look, and the faint colour in his cheeks was for once not from embarrassment. "Aye, sir," came the tight response as he turned his attention back to his console, so flat and devoid of emotion that it meant the complete opposite of being stoic. The Trill was angry, more upset than he could remember being in a long time, and his hands shook a little as he directed the ship's sensors to scan the vessels that threatened them nearby. At least if he was angry there was little room for him to be afraid.
Cocking his head to one side in an open expression of confusion, Kohl took a step back from Cyrin. It wasn't that Kohl had noticed any anger in Cyrin's tone, but, rather, the terseness of Cyrin's answer surprised him. In Kohl's experience, any bit of scientific curiosity he lay at Cyrin's feet would result in nervous enthusiasm from the Trill scientist. A simple aye, sir wasn't like Cyrin at all. Kohl rounded Cyrin's chair to give them some little privacy from Jaana, at the next science station over. Crouching down beside Cyrin's chair, Kohl brought his eye-level in line with Cyrin's. "How are you feeling, Cyrin?" Kohl asked with concern. "I can understand how finding oneself in an alternate universe can be..." Kohl just breathed out, struggling for the right word.
"What?" Cyrin didn't flinch away from the sapphire gaze of his superior this time. "It makes perfect sense now. All my research pointed to a transdimensional singularity but I couldn't confirm it till now."If anything Cyrin sounded satisfied that they were in an alternate reality, strange as that may be, but it validated everything he'd worked on. "You would've seen if you reviewed my report-" The Trill shut himself up, surprised at the accusation. There was still a tight control over his voice though, and a roughness that wasn't usually there. Usually Kohl's eyes alone were enough to make him stammer, let alone this direct attention. Cyrin's stormy grey eyes had a plain look of anger and exhaustion above the dark, bruised bags beneath. He spoke clear enough in a low voice that wouldn't carry. "But if I have to spend another minute studying the same data that I've been over hundreds of times already, I'll...I'll...I tried to tell them but..." In that instant Cyrin looked like he was holding back a whole lot more.
The light of concern behind Kohl's eyes turned flat. He was typically an emotive man, and so the change in his voice wasn't coldness so much as an absence of feeling. "Walk with me, Ensign," Kohl ordered, as he rose to his full height. Kohl cast a glance back at the Operations station to say, "Lieutenant Nicholas, you have the Bridge." By the time he gave that order, he was half way out the door and into the deck one passageway. He only just waited for Xanth to follow him into the passageway, and for the doors to close behind him, when Kohl said, "I read your reports, Ensign. Perhaps not in the time and place of your choosing, but I read every one. I thought most of your conclusions were hypothetical presumptions. I thought you didn't have the data to back it up."
The chastisement worked, but only to a point. Cyrin averted his eyes, but he still had a look of defiance about him. The Trill's chin was up, his cheeks flushed not with embarrassment. His chest rose and fell quickly as he breathed through his nose. Yet when he spoke there was no accusation there, just weariness. "I'm sorry, sir, I sh-shouldn't have um, assumed that you didn't read the report. It's just now that we nuh-know, it all fits." He turned his eyes to his superior's once more. "I have the data. It isn't theory anymore. But what the hell does the Captain expect me to do?!" By the end of it, he was shouting.
Cyrin paced in front of Kohl, growing expressive. His hands gestured as he talked, his face animated with his frustration and his exhaustion. Yet his voice was fast, loud but not shouting, "I spent five days, five days going over it all till I could tell you the equations of how it did what it did in my sleep! And he wants me to do it again, orders me to do it all over? What am I supposed to find, some magic Tribble that wasn't in there the first three hundred times?! I tried to tell them what I had. That's my job right? That's what I'm here for. Then I get told to be quiet when I'm trying to explain I already had what he was ordering!" Finally Cyrin paused long enough, stared Kohl in the eyes, asked plaintively, "What am I supposed to do?"
"You're supposed to wait, Ensign. When you're on the Bridge, unless you're the first to notice Klingon torpedoes coming straight for us, you're supposed to wait until the Captain asks for your opinion," Kohl said in a kindlier manner than before. He spoke slowly, so as not to be misunderstood. "And more likely than not, he's never going to ask for your opinion. Which means you're supposed to wait until the Captain asks for my opinion, and then I ask for your opinion. For the next five minutes, all the Captain cares about is the number of phaser emitters and torpedo launchers we have pointing at us. Your research into the anomaly is important, but it's not going to save us in the next five minutes. Maybe it will save us in the next five minutes after that, but it's not going to save us now. So you're supposed to wait."
The astrophysicist let out one final burst, throwing his hands up in the air and cursed loudly, "Shit!" Then he seemed to be spent. His shoulders slumped, his head drooped, and his whole body went slack. Cyrin looked so tired and worn out, his skin ashen, hair a mess, cheeks gaunt. The curse had surprised Xanth as much as it might have surprised Kohl; he couldn't remember a time he had ever said anything like that before. Cyrin breathed deeply, closed his red eyes, and nodded his head, "I under-um...understand, sir. I will uh, I won't do th-that again. I'm I'm mm, s-sorry." The old Cyrin was back, the agitated and expressive - perhaps even confident - young man was gone. He looked resigned now to staring at his computer screen and the data that he'd worked through again...and again.
"Don't be sorry; behave differently next time," Kohl was quick to say. He took a breath and he held it for a time, as he put consideration in what he had to say next. His gaze wandered the ceiling and then he fixed Xanth with a plaintive look. "You told me before that a guiding force must have been involved in creating the anomaly that transported us to a parallel reality," Kohl said. "...I'm going to need you to be that guiding force. Maybe not in this five minutes, but in another five minutes soon. I'd like you to start thinking about what you need to get us home. If you need 85% of the computer core's processing power, I'll crawl in myself and hotwire it directly to your interface. If you need forty scientist's mates, I'll start kidnapping Operations officers and dressing them in science teal. But I need you to tell me what you're going to need. I can't do what you do."
The words and floored Cyrin. His mouth was open but no words came out, not even jumbled ones. What Commander Kohl had just said to him was possibly the first time he'd ever heard a superior officer have so much confidence in him, the one who had little confidence in himself. The Trill's shoulders lifted then, his mouth closed, and his expression became serious as the wheels in his mind began turning again. Perhaps he would begin by analysing the data they had on the secondary deflector. This wasn't some game, it was deadly serious what his commanding officer was talking about.
For the first time since he had come on board, Cyrin felt like he was needed.
"No matter what happens in the next five minutes, sir, I won't let you down," the young scientist said. He couldn't promise anything like results but he was going to do what he could to be worthy of the trust Kohl had just given him. Though he was no engineer, he could get some help with things, and combine it with his research to see if there were anymore gaps he could fill. His theories were solid now, except perhaps the paranoid notion that this all had not been an accident, but further confirmations could only make his coming effort slightly easier. He had just been asked to come up with a transdimensional portal, one they could survive the trip through and return to their own exact universe out of an infinite number. Two minds within him were thrilled by the prospect. "And, thank you." Those two words were loaded with much emotion behind them, shone in grey eyes as they gazed into blue.
As the palpable tension between them diffused, Kohl breathed out a heavy breath. Funny to imagine how air could feel so heavy in his chest cavity. "You're welcome, Cyrin," Kohl said, with a wink. He nodded over his shoulder, back in the direction of the Bridge. "Are you feeling ready to take your post, Ensign?" Kohl asked.
For the first time since coming out here, Cyrin noticed that he hadn't been the only one pent up. The relief that Kohl showed that he'd calmed down, the exhaled breath, he must have been worried. Maybe worried that Cyrin was about to not just crack but break. With pale cheeks blushing slightly at the wink - why would a wink make him feel all quivery? Probably just a coincidence, this lack of sleep? He definitely needed to go to Sickbay, see if they could give him a stimulant. With a blush he nodded, "Yes, sir."
Together the headed back to face the next five minutes.
[OFF]
Ensign Cyrin Xanth
Astrophysicist
USS Galileo
Lieutenant Commander Andreus Kohl
Chief Science Officer
USS Galileo
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