Chapter Two
Darian Parker groaned softly as consciousness returned. There was a dull pervasive ache throughput his whole body making it hard to think. Slowly he became aware of far more than just the faint, but pervasive, pain as the mental fog over whatever had just happened to him began to dissipate and he became more aware. He became aware that he was lying flat on a hard metal deck and that there was something lying across his back, something hard and metallic if not particularly heavy.
Sound returned and with it came quite the cacophony. From all around him he could hear the soft moans and groans of other people as they too started to recover from whatever it was, they had just been through. He could hear the harsh snapping, hissing crack of sparks and the crackling of a fire. Over it all though was the constant wailing of various different alarm klaxons. As the last of the mental cobwebs dissipated allowing him to think clearly again, he remembered everything that had happened. From there arrival at the site of a previously unknown quantum spatial anomaly and beginning to investigate it, to the unprovoked and utterly reckless Klingon attack upon them – really what had the Klingon commander been thinking when he committed his ship to the attack? Did he really think that his dinky little Bird of Prey, even if it was one of the newest model, would be able to stand against let alone defeat a Sovereign-class starship a vessel nearly ten times his size and with a corresponding increase in both shield strength and firepower? – to the errant Klingon photon torpedo – it's weapons lock on the Resolution having been completely scrambled by the modern descendant of electronic countermeasures – had impacted the anomaly field and detonated.
And in the process transformed the anomaly from a fairly placid thing into a raging maelstrom.
My crew I need to check on my crew, he thought urgently and stood up, feeling, and hearing, broken bits of composite ceiling tiles slide off his broad back as he did so. For a moment he swayed and his head spun alarmingly as a wave of nausea swept through him, he just managed to keep from falling back to the deck. To clear the disorientation he closed his eyes for a few moments and took a few deep breaths and let them out slowly, it was a basic form of meditation that a Vulcan classmate had taught him back in the academy. Feeling the nausea fade away to nothing he opened his eyes…
…to be greeted with a scene from every captain's nightmares.
The normally bright, spacious bridge of the Resolution was gripped with a smouldering semi-darkness. Thick acrid smoke, the result of a bank of auxiliary consoles that were burning merrily indicating that the automatic fire suppression system was offline, filled the air cutting the visibility to almost nothing. Something that wasn't helped by the fact that the main lights were off, the only illumination coming from pale blue emergency lights, the red flashing of the alert status bars and the flickering yellow-orange glow of the flames.
Thankfully there was just enough light to see that the bridge crew had survived and we're all, like him, picking themselves up from where they had been slammed to the deck by the convulsions of the ship. Before he could open his mouth to both check that everyone was alright and to request a status report a faint thrum of power ran through the entire ship. The overhead lights flickered momentarily, then came back on at the reduced intensity required of a red alert. Three things happened almost simultaneously after the restoration of main power.
First lights a number of consoles lit up as power once again began flowing through the EPS power taps. Second a fire containment forcefield appeared over the burning consoles, instantly snuffing the flames out as the presence of the field broke one side of the triangle that all fires needed to burn. Finally the environmental control systems whirred back to life quickly evacuating the smoke-filled, contaminated atmosphere from the bridge and replacing it with fresh, clean air.
"Is everyone alright," he asked and was relieved when he got a hubbub of assurances back that everyone was fine if a few were clearly a bit battered and bruised. "Right then status report. What the hell happened?"
"Sir sensor records indicate that we impacted the edge of the anomaly field after the impulse engines shut down," Lieutenant Ashton reported from operations immediately frowning as his hands danced expertly across his console. "The moment we impacted all our sensor readings went completely berserk, I cannot make heads or tails of them. Sensor systems are currently inoperative, I am resetting them now."
"Captain we are receiving damage and casualty reports from all decks," Commander Urlet reported from the first officers' station as Darian went back to his command chair and sat down.
"How bad is it?"
"Damage control reports minor damage to the outer hull, looks like some of the quantum energy we were exposed to was able penetrate the ablative armour matrix and cause some minor outer hull breaches. Repair drones are already at work, the hull will be repaired very shortly though the armour matrix will take several hours to completely restore. There were electrical fires burning on decks two, five, six, nine and fourteen but have since been extinguished by automated fire suppression.
"Commander T'Lar reports that the warp core is online though currently at reduced power output while they run diagnostics on the primary containment field generators," Urlet continued. "All fusion reactors have gone to full power to make up for the energy shortfall until they're done."
"Casualties?"
"Sickbay reports one hundred and twenty-three injured, sixteen seriously. No fatalities so far."
"Let's hope there aren't any," Darian said softly as he absolutely hated having to write letters of condolences to the loved ones of deceased members of his crew. He never knew what to say as somehow just saying that he was sorry for the loss never felt right, felt like a hollow thing to say to someone whose heart had just been broken. Urlet nodded in agreement, her commanding officer was not the only one who loathed that particular duty in fact she doubted that there was an officer anywhere in Starfleet who liked to write those kinds of letters. Not even Vulcans – who like all Andorians she instinctively somewhat distrusted as the centuries of bad blood that had existed between Andorians and Vulcans before the formation of the Coalition of Planets and later, after the end of the war with the Romulan Empire, the Federation had entirely gone away – could be that callous or cold.
"Mr Beach what's the status of our tactical systems," Darian ordered shaking off the somewhat melancholy thoughts that he always experienced when thinking about writing condolence letters.
"Sir shields and primary weapons are currently inoperative," Beach reported checking his screens, inwardly scowling as he saw the red lights on the shield, phaser and torpedo systems indicating that the systems were damaged and offline. "Point defence systems and ECM are however working normally. Damage control estimates we will have phasers back in about an hour, torpedoes within three."
"In other words, we're currently sitting ducks if anymore Klingons come along," Urlet said exchanging a concerned look with Darian. They were both aware of the fact that in their current condition even something like a Bird of Prey would have little difficulty in destroying them. "Try and speed up the repairs as much as possible Mister Beach."
"Aye sir."
"Ensign Querr what's the status of our propulsion systems," Darian asked the Katarian helmswoman.
"Sir our impulse engines are just coming back online," Querr reported. "However the warp drive is currently inoperative, the warp matrix has become completely depolarised. Engineering is working on it but estimate it will be several hours before we're capable of warp travel."
"Damn," Darian muttered, "alright keep me informed."
"Yes sir."
"Sir sensors are coming back online," Lieutenant Ashton reported. "Running scans now… what the hell?"
"Lieutenant?"
"Sir our sensors are detecting a massive shift in the quantum resonance signature of the space around the ship," Ashton reported sounding confused and prompting a concerned frown to appear on Darian's face as his knowledge of advanced subspace field theory said that it shouldn't be possible to change the quantum frequency of matter, that everything even antimatter and the most exotic dark matter resonated at precisely the same frequency. It was one of those few quantum physical laws that had so far proven immutable.
"Confirm that," he ordered.
"Confirmed sir the quantum resonance signature of the surrounding space is off by two point six seven megahertz."
"How can that be and what does it mean," Urlet asked.
"I believe that I may have an explanation for that commander," Lieutenant Rakan reported from the science station. "As you know the anomaly we were sent to investigate was filled with a number of different quantum anomalies that were destabilized by the detonation of the rogue Klingon torpedo."
"Yes," Urlet said slowly not quite sure where the Trill was going with this, though out of the corner of her eye she could see a frown starting to appear on Darian's face along with a suspicious look. Sometimes it was quite easy to forget that Darian Parker was a lot more intelligent than you realized, that behind his larger than normal muscles – the legacy of both a lifetime of physical training and being from a high gravity world that had been settled centuries earlier by one of humanities first generation warp one sleeper ships - was a man who had the equivalent of doctorates in advanced subspace field theory and quantum mechanics. Clearly he was beginning to suspect what was going on, what had happened to them and their ship.
"As you know we were hit by a number of quantum discharges after the explosion," Rakan continued, "I believe that those discharges somehow shifted the quantum signature of the space-time envelope that they formed around the ship which then pulled us into the anomaly with a corresponding quantum signature."
"What does that…" Urlet started to say only to be interrupted.
"…it means we could be in another universe commander," Darian said grimly, "and by that I don't mean the mirror universe either but somewhere completely different if the quantum resonance signature is anything to go by. Mister Rakan can you detect any differences in the space around us compared to our own reality?"
"I can sir," Rakan replied sounding as grim as he did as he delivered a potentially devastating sentence, the sentence that they were further from their home than even one of the most famous Starfleet vessels of modern times the USS Voyager had ever been. "Astrometric sensors confirm a number of differences in stellar positioning compared to home as well as several anomalies that weren't there in our own reality. For example Bajor is missing in its place is a Mutara-class nebula, there's a black hole where Cardassia should be."
"So we're really in another universe," Urlet asked interrupting him.
"It certainly appears that way yes."
Damn, Darian thought with an inward wince. He had hoped that the conclusion forming in his head from the moment the quantum resonance frequency change had been detected was wrong. Now it appeared that he was right and they were a very, very long way from Federation space and home.
"Lieutenant Rakan begin mapping the area around us," he ordered at last, "search for any sign of the anomaly that brought us here. With luck it won't be far away and we'll simply be able to fly back through the damned thing."
"Aye sir."
"And if it's gone?" Urlet asked him softly. "What do we do then?"
"The only thing we can commander. We survive and try to find another way home."
"Understood sir."
---///---
Sometime Later
Captains Log: Supplemental
It has been twelve hours since the incident with the Klingon ship and the quantum anomaly. Twelve hours since the ship and everyone aboard was, through a mechanism that nobody yet understands, thrown into a different quantum universe to our own. All attempts to find the rift that transported us here on our sensors have failed, there is simply no sign of it to be found anywhere.
With no current chance of getting back home, though I am hopeful that with time and analysis of all our sensor data we will find away, I find myself considering what we are going to do now. Senior staff are gathering in the briefing room hopefully we will soon have a plan on what to do next.
Darian was careful to place a calm expression on his face as he arrived in the briefing room behind the bridge. The rest of the senior staff were already present in the room, most of them with masks of real concern on their faces. Indeed the only one who showed no concern was Lieutenant Commander T'Lar but he was willing to bet that the calmness was only skin deep, that beneath that cool traditional Vulcan exterior she was as worried as the rest of them were.
Seeing him enter everyone stood up respectfully, but he waved them back to their seats before moving to his own and sitting down. Once everyone was in position he began what was probably going to be quite an… ugh interesting… meeting.
"I'm not going to sugar coat this people," he said in his usual down to Earth and direct manner as he was never one to beat around the bush in these meetings, "we're in trouble. As you know none of our sensors show any sign of the quantum spatial anomaly that brought us to this universe, not even a remnant trace of its existence. It's like it has simply vanished into thin air."
"Are we sure it was a spatial anomaly that brought us here, wherever it is," Colonel Masters, the head of the small contingent of Starfleet Marines assigned to the Resolution due to the rapidly degenerating political situation with the Klingons, asked. "That it was not instead the act of someone like Q?"
"While I would not put it past a Q, especially The Q, to do something like this it is most unlikely that they were behind it. All our sensor data confirms it as does all telemetry recovered from ship instrument records during the transition between realities," Commander Urlet replied. "That information coupled with the increasing number of differences in stellar patterns and structures being detected by the astrometric sensors confirms that as impossible as it might seem we are in a completely different universe to the one we belong in."
A brief grim silence met that as everyone present digested just what that meant. The Resolution had some of the most advanced astrometric sensors in the entire fleet, sensors that were directly inspired by the sensors the crew of Voyager had created during their cruise through the delta quadrant. Only there's were even more advanced, their improved designs the brainchild of a team at the Starfleet Corps of Engineers that had been directly headed by the ex-Borg Seven of Nine herself. With access to the latest Federation technology on top of her own knowledge they'd been able to both boost the range and efficiency of the sensors to the point that they could now measure the flux of up to four billion stars simultaneously compared to the three billion that the first-generation astrometric sensors on Voyager had been able to scan and measure.
"Analysis of the sensor data not only confirms that we are in a different universe to our own but that the very structure of subspace is slightly different here," Lieutenant Rakan added, "based on our current analysis it shouldn't negatively affect any of our systems in fact in all probability some systems will work even more efficiently than they do at home."
"Fascinating," T'Lar commented raising an eyebrow to intrigued 2.1. "Based on the information I have so far seen the difference in subspace strata in this reality should make our warp drives work with greater efficiency allowing us to achieve higher speeds with less power requirements and no danger of causing any of the weakening in subspace barriers that can occur at higher warp speeds."
"While interesting that doesn't really help us right now," Beach commented scowling, "what exactly are we going to do about our little predicament. How are we going to get back to our own reality? I don't know about the rest of you but I don't fancy spending the rest of my life in another universe, never to see home or family again."
"We will look for a way back home," Darian answered, "unfortunately that might take a considerable amount of time. We here need to determine just what we are going to do in the meantime."
For a few moments nobody spoke then Urlet spoke again. "Whatever we do we will accomplish nothing by just having the ship float here in interstellar space," she commented, "we should begin properly surveying some nearby star systems both for useful supplies, such as dilithium, as well as potentially habitable worlds where we could, if it comes down to it, set up a new home for ourselves."
"There is something that we could look into almost immediately if we start exploring," Rakan said leaning forward slightly some of the youthful enthusiasm of both host and symbiote showing.
"Oh?" Darian asked.
"Sir our long-range sensors have been picking up intermittent but highly coherent verteron particle emissions," Rakan answered, forcing himself to calm down even as both parts of him were practically chomping at the bit to get started investigating this. Between him and his symbiote he was only a hundred and twenty-two years old, still very young by Trill standards and thus extremely eager for new experiences. Still he forced himself to be professional about this.
"How coherent," Urlet asked interested knowing that there were very, very few things that could produce highly coherent verteron particles and all of them were potentially very useful.
"Completely coherent commander," Rakan answered. "They have also been accompanied by small subspace distortions consistent with wormholes, artificial wormholes."
Surprised silence greeted that announcement. Ever since the discovery of the Bajoran wormhole, and the revelation that it was a completely artificial construction made by extradimensional lifeforms that had long been considered gods by the Bajoran religion, the Federation had been attempting to develop the ability to create and sustain stable wormholes. It would usher in a whole new era of interstellar travel, getting around the very real limits that came with warp technology. Despite their best efforts they had so far not succeeded in creating a stable wormhole that lasted more than a few seconds before violently collapsing, usually causing considerable damage to anything nearby.
To learn that someone in this reality could actually do that, multiple someone's even if what Rakan was saying was correct, was thus both surprising and very interesting.
"It is worth looking into," Urlet admitted at last.
"It is," Darian agreed. "Where's the nearest source of the intermittent emissions?"
"A system two-point six light years from here," Rakan answered. "Long range scans confirm that it's a binary star system with several planets with the fourth planet being class m. We have not detected any sign of spacecraft or civilization of any kind. Which is most puzzling."
"No really," Lieutenant Ashton pointed out, "whoever is there could be shielding themselves from detection somehow or could be a kind of life form that our sensors are not designed to detect. This is a different universe to our own after all we cannot assume that life will follow the same kind of patterns and templates that it does in our reality."
"Good point still it will be worth investigating," Darian answered. The younger officer had a very good point, this was a different universe to their own so the laws and patterns of evolution in this reality could be very different to those that they were familiar with. Especially if there hadn't been an ancient alien race long ago who had seeded the genetic soup of numerous primitive worlds in the way the Preservers had in their own reality.
"Before we do this though there is something else that we need to discuss," Beach said calmly, "our Klingon prisoners in cargo bay four. We need to decide what exactly we are going to do with them. We cannot keep them unconscious forever."
Inwardly Darian grimaced slightly at that even as he acknowledged that Commander Beach had a point. He had had the survivors of the Klingon ship transported over because it had been the right thing to do, he couldn't have in good conscience left them aboard a dying vessel. And the Klingon ship had been dying after they were finished returning fire leaving the Bird of Prey spinning out of control helpless and burning with weapons and impulse engines destroyed by phaser fire. Had they still been in their own reality he would have simply kept them unconscious until he reached the nearest Federation starbase and turned them over to his superiors giving them the headache of what to do with them.
Unfortunately there situation now meant he would have to deal with that particular headache. Klingons were never easy to deal with at the best of times – not that they were ever able to physically intimidate him as he was every bit as strong as they were due to his heritage as a heavy gravity worlder – and this particular lot promised to be even more difficult than normal. Especially given that they had been boneheaded enough to challenge a Sovereign-class starship with a tiny Bird of Prey, something that most other Klingon commanders – even those commanding the powerful Negh'var-class battlecruisers which could actually match the Resolution's firepower though they would have the advantage in shield strength and agility over the Klingons – would think carefully about before committing to the battle.
"Transfer them all to holding cells," he said at last, making his decision. "Once they're all awake identify their commanding officer, if he or she is among the survivors, and bring them to me. What happens after that will depend on how the officer behaves. If they're reasonable then I might be convinced to let them have a little bit of freedom – though no weapons – here in non-restricted areas but if they're not… well we will leave them on an uninhabited planet somewhere with just enough supplies to get started."
"Maybe we should just maroon them somewhere and be done with it," Colonel Masters commented.
"Don't tempt me," Darian answered and he was tempted to do just that. "I'll try to make them see reason first but if they don't well then I'll leave them to their own devices somewhere where they cannot pester anyone else."
"Understood sir."
"Is there anything else?" Darian asked looking at the officers, wanting to know if any of them had anything else that they wished to say. "Very well then meet…"
"Bridge to Captain Parker."
The voice from the intercom breaking into him about to dismiss the meeting caused more than one of the other officers to chuckle slightly and exchange amused looks. You could always count on the comm to go off at the most awkward or inopportune times. It seemed like one of life's little annoyances. Darian for his part glared slightly at those chuckling, prompting them all to shut up and look more than a little sheepish, before tapping his commbadge.
"Parker here go ahead."
"Sir we're picking up a distress call on all subspace bands. It's coming from a system eight light years away."
"Station's everyone," Darian ordered to his officers before answering. "I'll be right out."
"Yes sir."
Standing up Darian quickly made his way out of the conference room/observation lounge at the back of the bridge and back onto the bridge itself. The other senior bridge officers moving a few paces behind him, and automatically moving back to their stations. Darian for his part moved to the command chair and sat down.
"Put the distress call on screen," he ordered.
"Aye sir," Lieutenant Ashton acknowledged and entered the command on his console. Immediately the holographic view screen came to life showing the face and upper torso of a stately, middle aged human woman. She was wearing a sleek peace coloured dress and had hair grey hair done up in an extremely elaborate bun arrangement. She was backdropped by what was clearly a control room of some kind, with people in grey uniforms running back and forth between various consoles, and everything was periodically shaking violently.
"To anyone who can hear me," the woman was saying, "my name is High Chancellor Travell of the Tollan. Our planet is under attack by the Goa'uld, our planetary defences are failing and we are sustaining massive damage and casualties. If anyone can hear me please assist. Repeat this is High Chancellor Travell…"
"Can we respond to them," Darian asked.
"Negative sir the transmission appears to be one way."
"We have to help them," Urlet said as the Tollan leader continued with her desperate calls for assistance for her embattled planet.
"I know," Darian replied. "Red alert, all hands to battle stations. Ensign Querr set course for Tollan maximum warp."
"Aye sir."
Immediately alarms began wailing throughout the Resolution summoning the crew to their battle stations. Moments later the great starship came around and leapt into warp on course for the Tollan homeworld…
…and their first encounter with the Goa'uld.
---///---
Authors Note: Well another chapter bites the dust I hope you all enjoyed it. I apologise for this chapter taking so long to be ready hopefully the next one won't take as long. Until next time.