Through the Paces (Part 5 of 5)

Posted on 16 Nov 2023 @ 9:28pm by Rear Admiral Lirha Saalm & Commander Morgan Tarin & Commander Scarlet Blake & Lieutenant Commander Ryan Alexander & Lieutenant JG Rafe Caradec & Lieutenant JG Zara Ghemora & Lieutenant JG Sofie Ullswater & Lieutenant JG Montgomery Vala & Ensign Mimi & Ensign S'Ers-a M'Lyr'Zor & Master Chief Petty Officer Toren Vral

3,581 words; about a 18 minute read

Mission: Episode 18 - Cold Station 31
Location: USS Galileo-A - Various
Timeline: MD 19, 1327 hrs

Previously, on Through the Paces (Part 4)...

When the g-forces hit, Vansen had heard the pop before the pain of the bruised cartilage and dislocated shoulder hit him. He had been forced against the wall, grimacing as he collapsed onto the floor. He breathed hard, blinking, reaching for his hypo and pressing it against his neck. The squeezing weight against his organs eased and he felt the wetness on his upper lip. Nosebleed. Too quick acceleration into more than normal G.

"Vansen..." Amul frowned as he moved to his side, kneeling and helping him up. When Vansen grimaced he shook his head. "I'm taking you to sickbay. Ubax, you keep the fort..."

"Not much to keep," she said lightly, watching with mild concern. The emergency lights had kicked in and she watched the blank screens. "And it is hold. I believe.

"Hold, keep...build...whatever," Vansen said and looked around with something close to annoyance. "I can stay..."

"You'd be in the way, sickbay for you," Amul said firmly, but with a smile as he helped him out of the room.

And Now, the Continuation...

[ON]

In space, the tiny Nova-class USS Galileo slowly spun sideways and without helm control, directly into the center of the growing turquoise anomaly which had manifested in front of the vessel less than five minutes ago. Several thousand kilometers behind the Federation starship, the much larger and robust Klingon battlecruiser IKS Praxis also tumbled toward its inevitable fate, its dark green hull slowly flipping end-over-end vertically as it, too, succumbed to the gravitational forces at play.

Galileo was the first to enter the anomaly and vanished as it was consumed by a most beautiful cosmic spectacle. Praxis was not too far behind, and within a matter of seconds, both starships had entered the event horizon then disappeared. The spacial phenomenon's colorful presence suddenly collapsed in on itself with a bright flare then faded, soon leaving no trace of its existence.

Within Galileo, a bright white curtain of light cascaded across all decks as the vessel and its crew entered the anomaly. Then it disappeared, and unexpectedly, the gravitational forces stressing the hull vanished. The deck plating ceased its trembling and aside from some minor micro-fractures to the outer hull, the starship appeared fully intact and operational. Overhead conduits continued to spark within the bridge but the multitude of previous engineering and operations console warnings were now silent.

The captain blinked her eyes several times then squinted while her retinas re-adjusted from the blinding sheen of light. Ever so slowly, she relaxed the tight grip she held on her chair's armrests then began to look around and assess the situation. "...Report," she ordered, her heart slowing its pumping pace within her chest.

"Hull stress and temperature returning to normal, structural integrity holding, primary IDF generator is offline." Mimi reported after a few moments, her own eyes had narrowed to slits trying to filter out the blinding light and were slowly dilating back to something like normal. "Minor casualties reported."

It was a sensation of pain that jarred Sera out of whatever daze that had hold of her. It was her hands. Her hands hurt. They had all but curled into claws to maintain her hold on the console. Forcing her muscles in her arms to relax, she began massaging her hands to work out the cramping digits while staring down at the engineering station.

All of the engineering alerts had cleared; although minor structural damages were being reported, the system outputs where rapidly returning to nominal status. "All major systems reporting inexplicably green, Captain."

Even through her forcefully closed eyelids, Ghemora had taken note of the bright flash that would have certainly blinded the Cardassian if she hadn't been entirely focused on bracing for the impact with the anomaly. It wasn't until the call of the Commander that she noticed the relative calm the Galileo had settled in and slowly opened her eyes to turn and take a glance around the bridge. While there was some damage, it seemed everyone had made it through the encounter. Though she wanted to be quick to answer Tarin's call, it was apparent others had more pressing information to present.

Caradec's station intact, he quickly assessed helm control. All thrusters were operational with the helm responding as it should. But nothing could explain them being stationary. "Captain, helm control is restored, but I don't know how. Additionally, we should not be stationary but somehow we have come to a full stop and in a slightly different location.", Rafe stated with frustration. "Working on the possibilities."

In the sudden stillness that followed the anomaly's embrace, Toren remained motionless at his station, his hands still gripping the console, his eyes still closed against the brilliance that had engulfed them moments before. After a few moments he slowly opened them, allowing them to adjusting to the ambient light. He blinked a couple of times before scanning the readouts in front of him, confirming the reports from the others that the ship was, against all odds, in stable condition. His thoughts raced, trying to make sense of the event they'd just survived. He remained silent, yet his mind was far from quiet, already cataloging and analyzing, ready to lend his expertise where it would soon be needed.

Blake rubbed a tense hand over the back of her neck to ease the radiating pain. Her other hand lifted in an impatient gesture and a sharp breath escaped her lips, as if to say 'of course' when she saw just how fritzed the screen at the arm of her chair was. She wasn't getting more than a few fragments of information from varied sources. "So what the hell happened?"

Vala loosened his grip from the console then rubbed his eyes. The calm was so... incongruous with the storm of moments before. He glanced over to the viewscreen around around the bridge. It was... normal, apart from the odd spark. The ever familiar starfield had resumed. One might assume they had made it through the anomaly unscathed. But... a pang of suspicion grabbed at his insides. He knew what a chronometric field could do, he knew what chroniton buildups led to. That flash of white light. He had seen it before. After a stretch of his fingers he began tapping on his console.

Typically a starfleet ship's chronometer used two metrics to ascertain the current stardate. One was a realtime examination of the field of stars. Astral bodies moved in generally predictable ways through the cosmos, so their positions relative to fixed points in Federation space and the galactic core allowed the computer to calculate the time and date to a high degree of accuracy. In addition to this a small amount of Bismuth-209 was stored in a sealed container in the labs, its decay upon installation noted both in the ship's computer and physically on a small plaque nearby in case of system failure. This was the constant that any variations could be checked against.

A simple set of tests quickly revealed a very peculiar picture to Vala. The stars were not as they should be, but the bismuth decay was as expected. It showed an hour and twenty nine minutes since the start of the system test. Yet, the asteroid he had a lock on for target practice had... moved, and now had evidence of additional impacts on its surface. It's mass had also changed. He cleared his throat, "Lieutenant Ullswater," he said as calmly as possible in a soft tone, "I have sent over a few readings. Can you confirm?"

"I'd estimate somewhere between twenty four to twenty nine years." Ullswater's reply came quickly, before even taking a look at the readings he'd sent. There was no doubt that the star that was in front of them was the same as before and their relative distance to it was almost the same. Whatever kind of anomaly this had been it was trapped in the same gravitational patterns that formed the trojan group. But what gave the game away was their relative position to everything else on their sensors, that was where the changes quickly became visible. "Vala, let's get an exact number on that and update the chronometer."

After handing off that job she turned in her chair to face the captain. For such a dramatic turn of events Sofie didn't look concerned at all. "Sir, we have exited the anomaly, position relative to the star is largely unchanged but we suspect a temporal displacement of at least 20 years." After briskly delivering her report she turned back to her console with a voracious eye to all the data they had collected so far. She didn't want to waste another moment in uncovering the truth of what had just happened.

Tarin's mouth opened to reply but the revelation from the science officers left her momentarily speechless. Her thin lips closed before swallowing a dry lump in her throat and her hazel eyes stared at the viewscreen which seemed to portray a similar starfield of the Pleiades Cluster. But the mention of a temporal displacement, the 'anomaly' they'd encountered... "Time travel...20 years..." she incredulously whispered to herself. The captain glanced over to her first officer with a questioning look before her expression turned severe and she refocused on their current predicament. "When? What's the exact stardate??" she demanded from Ullswater and Vala.

Silently acknowledging Sofie's request, Vala focussed in on the readings. He began with due diligence - diagnostics of the sensor array and chronometer. No issues there. Then he began running astrometric evaluations of local star charts, first systems that had been physically visited then remotely charted areas. He ran spectroscopic analyses of the local star, then branched out to as many as were within range. All the data poured back painted a picture stroke by stroke. He shook his head slowly and almost smiled - the number of probes and pieces of equipment he'd seen smashed by the same forces the ship had experienced moments ago and yet... here they were. Same place. Different time.

He turned to face Tarin, giving Sofie a small nod as he did so, "Sir, based on all relevant data, the current stardate is 94519.3. I have requested a longer form analysis but I suspect we will see confirmation."

'2417,' Ghemora's brain identified at Vala's reading of the adjusted Stardate the Galileo now found itself at. Though she had little knowledge of the mechanics of time travel, it wasn't a phenomenon that was unheard of in Starfleet. With this new bit of information, and having gathered her senses, the Tactical officer turned to her console to run the necessary checks and scans to make a report.

After doing several sweeps, Ghemora called out, "Captain, the Praxis has followed us through the anomoly and is aft-starboard at a distance of approximately seventeen thousand kilometers. It's showing as having a loss of main power. But…" The Cardassian's voice dropped away as she seemed to pause to double-check what her station was reading before she turned in her chair to face the commanders.

"Sirs, I have a starship within visual range ahead of us at bearing 021-mark-328. It's reading as a Federation vessel, but is of a class design I have never seen before and the computer is not able to identify. It certainly appears to be of Federation design, though," Ghemora reported, glancing back momentarily at her station, but focusing all of her attention on the Captain as she asked, "Orders, Sir?"

"On screen," Blake ordered without hesitation, pushing herself out of her seat as she folded her arms, watching with slightly narrowed eyes. Future, present, past...some things didn't change. What mattered was securing the ship in this moment...whenever that moment was.

The main viewscreen blinked and shifted its projection to now display a new vessel in close vicinity to Galileo. Tarin leaned her torso forward in her chair with narrowed eyes, scrutinizing the shape and layout of the silver-hulled vessel. Its two glowing nacelles angled up and to the sides near the aft third of the secondary hull at a 42-degree pylon angle, just like the Nova-class. Its forward profile displayed a semi-bulbous primary hull also similar to that of the Nova-class, including a distinctive secondary deflector array at the fore of its bow. But there were several structural dissimilarities. Where the bridge module should have been recessed into the dorsal superstructure, a small bulbous projection was instead present, more akin to Starfleet's traditional design philosophies. And where the forward secondary deflector array should have been recessed within the vessel's nose between the Nova-class' distinctive prongs, all forward hull sections were uninterrupted and possessed a smooth, rounded quality. And the shape of the escape pod housings lining the saucer section - they weren't rectangular in shape, but rather triangular in nature. Like those of a Sovereign-class.

"Tactical analysis," Tarin sharply ordered, wanting to know as much about this new starship design as possible.

Given her previous scans, it didn't take long for the Tactical officer to evaluate the data to give Tarin what she asked for, though what she learned did have Ghemora letting out a slight, "Huh?" before she turned. "The ship appears to have eleven arrays arranged similar to the Nova-class, as well as dual fore-facing torpedo tubes and one aft-facing. I cannot equate the arrays to a specific type as the ship's main power is down. Their primary deflector array shows significant damage, but…" She paused as she glanced back momentarily at the readings on her console, "But if it were to regain main power and prove to be hostile, I assume we'd be out-maneuvered and out-gunned, Captain."

Tarin listened to the entirety of the brief tactical report in silence while her eyes scanned the silhouette of the new starship on the main viewscreen. It was...another Nova-class, yet somehow different. Perhaps the result of the time displacement anomaly? She shook her head in an attempt to make sense of it all, and then her discerning gaze caught an important detail on the vessel's outer hull. "Magnify the forward hull, just in front of the bridge wings," she ordered.

Rafe brought the forward hull into focus under magnification, yet it wasn't quite enough to be legible enough to make out.

The main viewscreen zoomed in by large factor, but not quite enough to clearly make out the unknown starship's registry printed on its hull. "Again," Tarin commanded.

Again Rafe magnified the forward hull of the enigma, tying in additional lateral sensor arrays for the needed magnification. His draw dropped at the image. No, it couldn't be..."NO!", Rafe yelled.

The captain's breath caught in her throat and she stared at the viewscreen with unnerving intensity. Slowly, she pushed herself up from her chair and walked forward to stand just behind Caradec at the helm station as if her eyes were somehow deceiving her. "N-C-C," she read out loud, "8-0-0-1-0...B. USS Galileo..."

Vala simply shook his head. Time travel. The universe certainly had a sense of humour.

"It would be a logical next choice in naming conventions. Starfleet must have designated the GalileoA as...lost." She tilted her head in thought. She didn't feel lost.

"That's important." Sofie mused aloud, still seemingly unfazed by the whole situation. The mechanics of time travel were often bizzare and and inscrutable but if they were present in this future then maybe that means there is a way back. "I can't imagine it's a coincidence that they are here."

"Danielle, Alexia...", Rafe looked like his world had shattered. He continued mumbling as he stared at the image in disbelief. No, in denial.

Blake stared at the screen with disbelief, moving absently to the helm. She gripped the back of Rafe's chair, leaning forward against it as she shook her head slowly. "This is absurd..." she murmured as she watched the pretender ship, almost with an edge of exasperation. She gave a sharper shake of her head - as if to literally shake the moment off - and immediately regretted it as the throb of pain in her neck grounded her. "Mimi, hail them."

"Aye Sir." Mimi replied tapping at her console to send a comms ping to the other ship, she deliberately added more starfleet identification markers than was necessary to the request so the other ship would know for certain it was friendly.

After a short delay, the main viewscreen blinked and the likeness of the other Federation starship's external hull was replaced by a dark and static-distorted image. Wavy lines flickered across the projection but in between the bouts of EM interference, the makeup of a starship bridge could slowly be discerned. Pulsing red ambient lighting bathed the deck plating and scintillate consoles in crimson hues and revealed several humanoid figures quickly moving back and forth across the command center in the background.

As a comms connection was initiated, Ghemora turned her chair back to face her console to check the status of not only the ship's shields but also to equalize power levels to ensure the Galileo-A would be ready if it needed to defend itself suddenly.

Tarin lifted her chin high and stood tall next to her first officer before speaking, uncertain to whom, or what, exactly. "Unknown vessel, this is Commander Morgan Tarin, captain of the Federation starship USS Galileo. Please identify yourself immediately."

Almost ten seconds - a micro-eternity of silence - passed with no reply as the visual comm distortion appeared to further deteriorate. "Mimi, boost our comms buffer and subspace receivers."

"I am working on it." Her nail-less digits tapped at the screen trying to filter out the distortion; it was hard work. One adjustment cleared the image but distorted the sound to a level even she found unbearable, the other dampened a squeal of distortion but made the image even more blurry.

The static-laced image of the foreign bridge quickly cleared up and now the totality of its configuration could be seen. Flickering blue and yellow LCARS consoles dotted the expanse while a dangling piece of the overhead bulkhead occasionally sparked and produced electrical smoke. The distinctive red glow of Starfleet emergency power lighting strobed throughout the room at precise repeating intervals while several personnel appeared to be diligently working on repairs and exchanging urgent requests in Federation Standard. They appeared to be a mix of known species with at least one Vulcan and Trill discernible among several Humans. The uniforms they wore were...different; solid-colored departmental configurations distinguished one from another similar to those Galileo's crew donned, but no uniform jacket was present. One of them looked up from their work to briefly observe the viewscreen and incoming transmission, but their attention was suddenly occupied by a distinctive light voice.

"I just rebooted the auxiliary EPS trunk. Try it again now, Ryan," called out an unseen woman.

"Copy, standby." Ryan called out as he working on getting power routed to the appropreate systems. Several long moments passed as nothing seemed to appear to be working. One-by-one a few status light flashed indicating power, however much of his console remained inoperable. "I have some systems coming online. Standby for system report." He announced as he typed in a few commands. "We are on back up power, will push update to damage report here shortly."

In space, the unknown starship's backup generators came online and the external windows flickered then illuminated. The same occurred within the bridge as the overhead lights powered up and back to life. A new red-uniformed woman suddenly revealed her presence after crawling out from beneath one of the consoles at the aft engineering station. A head of jet-black hair with light skunking contrasted sharply against her emerald skin and light green eyes. Her curvy body filled out its fabrical confines, and as she quickly walked down into the command well in front of the viewscreen, her identity finally revealed itself.

Lirha Saalm came to a stop then clasped her green hands professionally behind her back. Dark patches of electrical soot were smeared across the side of her cheek and neck, and the dark shadows beneath her lower eyelids revealed a healthy dose of sleep deprivation...but it was her. "Commander Tarin," she acknowledged before shifting her irises to the first officer and nodding to her. "Scarlet. ...It's been a long time. Welcome to the 25th century."

To Be Continued

[END EPISODE 18]

--

CMDR Morgan Tarin
Commanding Officer
USS Galileo-A

RADM Lirha Saalm
Commanding Officer
USS Galileo-B
[PNPC Tarin]

Lieutenant JG Rafe Caradec
Senior Conn Officer
USS Galileo-A

CMDR Scarlet Blake
First Officer
USS Galileo-A

Lieutenant (JG) Montgomery Vala
Deputy Science Officer
USS Galileo-A

Master Chief Petty Officer Toren Vral
Chief of the Boat
USS Galileo-A
[PNPC Vala]

LTJG Zara Ghemora
Deputy Security Officer
USS Galileo-A

LTJG Sofie Ullswater
Science Officer
USS Galileo-A

ENS Mimi
Deputy Operations Manager
USS Galileo-A

ENS S'Ers-a M'Lyr'Zor
Deputy Engineer
USS Galileo-A

LCDR Ryan Alexander
Operations Manager
USS Galileo-B

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