On the Shores of Darkness
Posted on Fri Jun 28th, 2024 @ 2:42pm by Captain Mrazak & Lieutenant JG Ryland Dedeker & Lieutenant Commander BaoJun Qiao & Lieutenant Commander Finley Chu & Lieutenant Sophie Xiong & Ensign Rozreell Purr & Gunnery Sergeant Roderik Kos & Ferrofax & Lieutenant Commander T'Bela & Lieutenant Commander Leonora Wolf MD & Lieutenant Teejay
3,480 words; about a 17 minute read
Mission:
S1E6: Where Skies End
Location: Stygian Traverse | Gamma Quadrant
Timeline: MD 4
When the Phantom dropped out of warp, the bridge was bathed in a low, ominous glow from the array of consoles and displays.
"Engage MARS," Mrazak ordered. It was the closest thing to a cloaking device they had. While at full-stop, they would be completely invisible. "Silent running while we perform a full spectrum sensor sweep. I want to know what's out there and how long we'll have to wait for this Charon comet."
The atmosphere felt tense, with crew members stationed at their posts throughout the ship, eyes fixed on their screens or the star-strewn void displayed through the main viewer. They were on the edge of a notoriously dangerous sector of space, seeking the path of a comet known for its unique ability to traverse this treacherous region safely at greater-than-impulse speeds—a feat that should be impossible. It was not without good reason that Dominion patrols circumvented this region of space.
Suddenly, the sensors pick up erratic subspace vibrations—unidentified and sporadic, suggesting the presence of something unknown reacting to the comet's path.
"This reads exactly as it was described." Leah thought as she looked over the readouts. "From the data packet you got from Sunny, sir, this matches the description of the Archons and their intersecting of normal space." She said aloud, leaving the floor open to the resident scientists, LtCmdr Bao and the new girl on the bridge, the young Trill...Purr, was it? Leah had only had the briefest chance to glance at the new crewmember files before they were called to the Bridge.
Bao monitored the readouts as well. "As reported they seem to react to the comet's path, clearing the space around it. I recommend we enter the tail at a distance of 750 kilometers. That appears to be the best balance of giving Mr. Dedeker room to maneuver while also staying clear of any unwelcome attention. From all reports, the 'Archons' are predatory and are drawn to warp signatures. If we bathe one in neutrino radiation it will take a more visible form, but I would strongly suggest we politely sneak in like proper criminals and not piss off the cosmic horror lifeforms."
"Agreed, Captain. We're not here to make noise, as it were." Leah concurred from where she was sat. "Hold on..." Her console beeped further. "Something's happening...Commander Bao, please confirm space-subspace collision?"
"Yellow Alert," Mrazak ordered with an aloof disposition. He wouldn't give the benefit of showing apprehension in this shadowy expanse of space. "What is it?"
"I think we caught an Archon's attention, sir." Leah said.
"On screen," Mrazak ordered.
In the void of space, a startling sight took shape. Between the edge of the Stygian Traverse and the incoming comet Charon whose anomalous corona allowed it traveled at FTL speeds relative to the Phantom's position was a ripple. At first it appeared like a mirage in a desert oasis.
After a moment, though, space unfolded in a wormhole large enough for a cosomozoan cephalopod to breach it into standard space. The indigo carapace gave off ultraviolet flashes that the ship's sensors strained to convert. Large limbs not unlike arms jutted out on each side of its frame, but what was of greater concern was the barbed tentacles that shot out of its mouth which stretched open as wide as its body.
Even from a distance, the speed and trajectory of the tentacles defied conventional physics. The view screen itself was overtaken by the large fanged puffer at the tip of the lead tentacles. Others were already following behind.
"Shields!" Mrazak shouted as the ship rocked from impact. "Red Alert! Evasive maneuvers! And shields!"
Moving faster than flesh, Ferrofax activated the shields. Coils built into armoured bunkers in the hull energise, wrapping the Phantom in a protective bubble. A bubble that began to spark and flicker, with strange colours pooling in wells and dimples that seemed to be melting into the energetic barrier.
"Shields are holding but local sub-space topography is producing orthogonal distortions I can't correct for," Ferrofax reported. "The added stress is burning through their operational lifespans. Suggest running like literal hell is following us!"
"I have coordinates for the comet, feeding them to you now, Ryland," Leah announced.
Ryland thumbed a few presses against the helm and punched in the final coordinates with a slap. "Got it, baby girl."
The Phantom juked one way and then the other as it fought to shake off the infernal subspace creature that appeared to be confused as to whether it wanted to dismantle or devour it. Tentacles with barbed spines burned away from friction against the shields, but the cephalopodic head elongated as the maw stretched ever larger to devour the ship. Within what resembled a mouth was not teeth as such, at least not in the physical state of matter typically associated with dental biology. They were more like sunspots that burned with black light from which the sucker-tipped barbed tentacles took form.
While the evasive maneuvers were enough to prevent the Phantom from becoming the creature's chew toy, it was near impossible to shake off the grip of the tentacles which seemed to be composed of ultraviolet light as much as the slimy carapace of the rest of the body.
Wolf then scanned the creature itself. "Running a xeno-physiological analysis of the creature." Fingers danced across the console. "What the...? Ensign Purr, Commander Qiao, looping you in."
The dimensions of the creature in essence had no definable dimension, it expanded in all dimensions all at once. What their sensors were seeing was a coagulated, powerful, angry version of an ultra-dimensional entity. The mere existence in this universe would cause these creatures extreme pain, as if they were being pulled apart and stitched back together.
The question that sparked in Leah's mind though was, the computer was managing to quantify its readings. How? The only possibility was...it had come across these readings before. Leah input her access codes into the computer and entered search parameters.
"Oh fuck!" Leah muttered as she read out the search results. Starfleet had come across little brother before.
Ensign Purr raised her index finger up into the air in an impetuous request for more time and another moment to finish what she was reading. Her dark eyes finished one document before transitioning to the next, the real time readout from Wolf’s scans already discarded.
“Let’s walk through this together then...” Purr finally responded to the red alert and growing tension. If they weren’t going to give her enough time to think about this she would have to voice it out loud. “Archons are solanogen-based life forms that normally reside in a tertiary subspace manifold. That level of subspace doesn’t have the same rules for atomic coordinates. They are more… fluid… infinite… in their composition which is why the Archon is so ‘wobbly’. Our rules for molecular folding and composition are extremely rigid compared to those of tertiary subspace. So when their solanogen-based matter travels to this level of space it is torn apart into its smallest subatomic components until it’s eventually squeezed into the required singularity of existence. It’s like pushing gel through a strainer; it gets stuck so you force it through only for it to become liquid in order to pass.” She scrunched up her nose thanks to her own mental image. “What I’m getting at is that the confines of our atomic structures are too restrictive for them. It hurts them to stay here, so the Archon should willingly return to the tertiary level of subspace once our warp signature is hidden.”
"Yes!" Mrazak cleared his throat and stood up straight. "That's exactly what I was just about to say. Thank you, Ensign."
"Enterprise-D encountered a similar life form on Stardate 46154.2. Some crew members were kidnapped by the life forms and experimented on, they had created pocket of 'normal' universe within their universe where they conducted the experiments." Leah added. "They were on a mission in the Armagosa Diaspora. I'm unlocking the files for us, to see if we can use anything they've used."
"Yeah, like any ideas how to get this bitch the hell off my ass!" Ryland shouted from the helm.
"Can we still penetrate the spatial anomaly surrounding the comet without warp speed?" Mrazak said. The new specialist had posited a sound theory.
Ryland shook his head. "Hell no! We need warp to catch the comet!"
"I see..." Mrazak scowled at nobody and everybody at the same time. "Any ideas?" he asked in a low, impatient tone.
“Give me 30 seconds to disable the all-stop built into turning off the warp engines,” replied Sophie, fingers already flying over her console. “Then we cut the engines, but continue on at our current speed to intercept the comet. Once we’re caught in its gravitational pull, we manually adjust until we’re along side it or behind it or wherever you want to be.” She finished her input and her finger hovered over the button labeled ‘execute.’ “Just give me the command and we’re ready to go.”
According to regulations, Ryland as the helmsman should be raising an immediate objection to anyone tampering with the inertial dampeners, especially as Sophie described. However, if this writhing bat out of hell managed to get its plasmoid fangs on the ship, there might not be any coming back from it. "For what it's worth, Cap, I say let her do it!"
"Nobody asked you!" Mrazak snapped at Ryland. After a few seconds of finger math, he swiveled his command chair to face Sophie. "Do it, Lieutenant. But make sure our warp drift puts us on an intercept course with Charon. Impulse speeds will be insufficient to make up lost distance."
Sophie quickly double checked the ship’s trajectory and took a deep breath before punching the big red button. “Warp engines shutting down,” she said.
The Phantom fell out of warp like a blurry streak gaining crystal clear definition. Glowing blue nacelles turned inert as the warp field dissipated into oblivion. Ultraviolet solanogen tendrils evaporated into smoke, freeing the ship to lurch forward with the surge of the impulse engines adding to the warp drift. The bulging maw from the raging cephalopod faded away like a hologram, having been pulled back into subspace where its tortured existence returned back to its native state.
"Magnificent." Mrazak sat back in his command chair with one leg crossed over the other and his hands steepled over his chest as if he had pulled off the feat single-handed. "Let that be a lesson to one and all."
"Intercept course locked in to the comet," Ryland reported. "Speeds are good, best I can tell. Wonky readings are no guaranteed, though, so someone who can calculate spatial distortions on the fly might want to double check that."
"Ensign Purr seems to be up for that kind of thing." Leah chuckled, "I'll keep monitoring for other surprises."
“Punished for being smart…” Rozreell muttered under her breath to absolutely no one. She opened up the computer’s readings so that she could run them through the Virial Theorem.
“Yes, Ma’am.” Ensign Purr said loud enough to confirm and acknowledge Leah’s request. “If you give me a few minutes I can set up something with a Doppler map to watch for Redshift-spatial distortions.”
Mrazak raised his fingers like a musical conductor. "Excellent! I do not want another one of those sneaking up on us." He looked back to Ryland. "Helm, are we on course to intercept the comet?"
"Lookin' good, sir." Ryland squinted one eye while he focused on the plotted trajectory. "Compensating warp drift with RCS thrusts... and..." He threw both hands in the air and let out a hoot. "Ha! Lady Luck was spreadin' today because I got us straight up Charon's tail."
The entire ship didn't rattle so much as shimmy with microvibrations that went down to the very struts of the hull. They had entered the comet's tail and the spatial anomaly that contained it.
“That’s disgusting, Dedeker,” sneered Sophie.
Whether Mrazak noticed the innuendo or simply didn't care didn't matter. "How long before Charon's circuit nears the Limbo system?"
"Not sure," Ryland said. "Should be soon. I don't have a spatial relativity calculator in front of me so that's a question for someone who does."
Mrazak sighed with growing impatience. "Someone qualified to determine the temporal coefficient for the comet's anomaly relation to standard spacetime, please do so!"
The ship buffeted from an explosive collision. Ryland went slack at the helm out of reflex which allowed his body to wobble without displacing him from the pilot's seat. "Direct hit!"
"What the lek was that?!" Mrazak clung to the arms of the command chair as he tried not to slide out of it. "Who is firing at us?!"
"Oh, you're going to love this, boss." Leah piped up again. "It's a Jem'Hadar battleship. A little old on the age range, so unlikely to be Dominion, they would have updated with the times, like we have. It's hull composite holds some non-Dominion materials and systems. A proper patchwork as it were. I suspect this might be a 'Cutter' ship. The break-away Jem'Hadar faction we've heard about in the area. These guys are worse than the Dominion Jem'Hadar we encountered during the War." The norwegian reported from her console. "They reject the Founders and they reject order so we should expect brutality and chaos."
"Shields! Evasive maneuvers!" Mrazak ordered as before with the Archon.
"Shields holding," Ryland said, "but we're in the tail of a comet. Where do you want me to go exactly?!"
"Find something big and dense between us and them," Mrazak said, "other than your head."
Ryland returned Mrazak's scowl but said nothing direct in reply. "Somebody better think of something quick," he muttered.
“I solved the last problem,” said Sophie. “It’s someone else’s turn.”
Bao's hands moved over the console as he ran a series of calculations. "Sir Isaac, still the deadliest king of eight eggs* in space," he muttered as he used his implants and the Phantom's computer to run multiple simulations at once on what he had in mind. It was absolutely crazy, but it might well work. His eyes flashed twice as he got the result he was looking for. "Lieutenant, in 11 seconds, execute starboard 10 degree turn, bow pitch down 25 degrees below orbital plane for 3.2 seconds, then execute z-axis rotation of 332.2 degrees before resuming present course. Lieutenant Xiong, can you pulse the deflector at full power at quarter-second intervals for the duration of the manoeuvre," he said. "The resulting debris shotgun will hopefully convince them to back off, but if not it should still buy us a bit of time by confusing their targeting sensors and putting a micro-debris field between them and us."
"It'll counter our targeting too." Rodi stated rather calmly from the tactical station. "I have a solution. Permission to execute?" He had keyed up full spread of Quantum Torpedoes. But instead of designating a specific target for the torpedoes to home in on, it had instead been given a more vague description of the target. It's self-destruct timer, used for ordnance that had missed its target, had also been extended. Eight such torpedoes were now ready to hurled out into the void, eager to find Jem'Hedar prey.
"Fire at will!" Mrazak shouted.
The might and strategy of the combined maneuvers had more than the desired effect. As the Phantom pursued the pitched trajectory laid out by Bao, the fluctuating deflector array along with the quantum torpedoes turned quantum flak sent a wall of debris carried on a disruptive shockwave that swept away the attacking battleship along with two more that were decloaked by the volley of impacts. Their visuals blurred as they passed through the bubble of the spatial anomaly and were pulled back into the stagnancy of standard spacetime.
"Scopes are clear," said Ryland, using old wayfaring parlance.
"Well and good," Mrazak said, barely acknowledging the stellar teamwork that went into getting out of the deadly ambush. "Now how long until—"
The power flickered several times until the bridge lighting went out. Emergency lighting came on a second later, but it was still enough to bring Mrazak's hand to his forehead in exasperation. "Will one of you tviokhs give me a qezhtihn damage report?! Why is main power down?!"
“Gee, I don’t know,” snapped Sophie, crawling under her console to tap it into auxiliary power. “It couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the beings from the other dimension, shutting off the warp engines, slipping into the tail of a comet, and then getting attacked! No, it must be something else entirely!” A grunt came from under her console and it suddenly lit back up. Sophie reappeared and tapped a few buttons. “So it looks like something triggered an inverted pulse interference, which knocked out the power. The bad news is there is nothing we can do to fix it. The good news is that the system will reboot itself in a few seconds. Then I can get to work fixing whatever else is wrong.” Her eyebrows rose as she watched the reports scroll past. “And it’s a lot.”
"Do we have propulsion?" Mrazak asked.
"That's a big negative, Captain, Sir," Ryland quipped. "We're dead in the water."
"And how long until the comet makes its perihelion to the Limbo system?" The look on Mrazak's face showed anticipation that he wouldn't like the answer.
"It's what?" Ryland asked. He shot a half wink at Sophie.
"How long until we need to exit the comet's tail in order to reach the Limbo system?!" Mrazak's patience had long since burned out.
Ryland ran some quick calculations now that the navigation console was back online. "Reckon we got four hours, give or take a few minutes. If we miss the jump off point, it'll be maybe a week or two until we swing back around. Navigational estimates being what they are can't pinpoint anything exact from inside this here bubble."
"I want engines back online immediately!" Mrazak stood up from his command chair and yelled as if the hired help hadn't refreshed his drink. "Fusion take us all if we're stuck orbiting this abysmal nexus of death for a week!"
"We've had some casualties." Leah piped up from her station, "I'm going down to Sickbay to help T'Bela," she said as she got up and headed for the Turbolift.
"Damage high lights..." Fin spoke from the rear of the bridge. She had been seated at an auxiliary console. "Control units for the impulse engines are in a reboot-loop. Primary weapon targeting sensors are down. Deflector array is running on reserve power. And our always reliable Slipstream Drive might as well be considered a lump of inert carbon until further notice." Fin's eyes turned to Sophie, "Where do you want me?"
Sophie beckoned Fin to follow her away from the bridge and down to engineering.
"Just see it done," Mrazak ordered after them, as if the matter had awaited his say so.
As far as desperate repairs on the drift went, the crew of the Phantom acquitted themselves rather respectably. It was no overhaul, but it would do. It would have to. Mrazak had already made it clear that he would be insufferable if they missed their target.
When the countdown reached the point of no return, Mrazak ordered an update.
"I don't know about the other systems—" Ryland began to say
"I don't care about the other systems at the moment," Mrazak said brusquely. "Do we have propulsion?"
"Well, yeah, but..."
Mrazak held up his hand. "That's all I care about. Chart a new course straight to the Limbo system and get us there as fast as we can."
"The thing about that..." Ryland tried to say.
"Just do it!" Mrazak bellowed, his eyes bulging in anger.
"Fine." Ryland swiveled back to the helm and punched the impulse drive into quarter speed until they were clear of the debris field.
"See? Nothing a little clear thinking could not resolve." Mrazak canted his head and gave his chest a haughty scratch.
Ryland said nothing. Instead, he just quickly counted down to the inevitable. Should be any minute now.
Fate did not disappoint. This time when the power cut out, the emergency systems didn't activate as they had before. There was a deadly silence that indicated a loss of every ship function. Engines. Artificial gravity. Life support.
"Lekk my life," Mrazak cursed into the darkness.
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