by David Smith
The next question was what to do. If they kept transmitting, they’d give their position away and potentially leave themselves open to attack. On the other hand, stopping transmissions might be construed as making the attempt appear to be some kind of trick.
They had to be seen as clearly non-aggressive.
‘Ok Crash, we’ll have to throw ourselves on the mercy of the court. I want to take us in closer and see if they’ll let us approach the flag-ship . . . ‘
The Red Alert klaxon interrupted again and over the cacophony ASBeau shouted ‘Too late!! They’ve opened fire!’
‘Evasive Crash!’ Damn thought Dave, it was going to be really hard to recover from this.
The ships fresh-faced Helmsman threw Tiger into a series of complex turns, but replied ‘Don’t need evasive sir, I still don’t think they can track us: That first shot missed us by a thousand klicks, and the other ships are still firing at roughly the same point in space.’
‘Shall I return fire, sir?’ asked ASBeau, his fingers already poised over the phaser controls.
‘NO!!’ shouted Dave, ‘Do not fire under any circumstances! Comms, keep transmitting friendship messages and add that we wish to open dialogue with their leader.’
ASBeau sighed and added ‘They’re not listening sir. The smaller vessels are still firing pretty much at random.’
Crash altered course again, but Dave realised that every phaser shot that missed was on the outward side of the ship, encouraging them to head back towards Hole. The four larger ships had spread themselves out into a giant tetrahedron and Tiger was inadvertently heading for the centre of the formation. They were being herded into a trap.
Dave sighed. Again, this was probably what he’d have tried in the Sha T’Als position if he was sure the unidentified ship was hostile. Given the nature of what they’d learned on Hole, it was possible the Sha T’Al may have been tricked before by Empire forces and were erring on the side of caution.
Unwilling to risk a confrontation, Dave decided to bug out until they could find a way to make peace overtures safely.
‘Shearer, stop transmitting. Crash, alter course, get us out of this system and into deep space. Everyone shut down anything that’s going to make us visible. I guess we’re better off not attracting any more attention.’
Crash altered the ships trajectory and Tiger swept down towards the formation of heavier Sha T’Al ships, but sliding past them on their port side.
As they closed the range, they could see the Sha T’Al ships more clearly. Tiger herself was a triumph of form and function, a paragon of technological achievement housed in a supremely elegant body.
But the Sha T’Al ships were breath-taking. Like their architecture, style was everything. Sinuous curves seemed to make them almost like living creatures, elegant but deadly, like predatory animals poised to strike.
ASBeau discreetly scanned them as Crash took Tiger past in a higher orbit to stay lost against the blackness of space. He spoke in a whisper almost as if they might hear him if he spoke too loudly. ‘They’re well-armed sir, can’t tell much about their propulsion other than what we already know, but I’m glad we’re hard to see. Reading multiple large weapon clusters; phasers, torpedo tubes, possibly some kind of fusion cannon too. Their shields are up and look to be at least on par with our own. The Sha T’Al are obviously well prepared to fight.’
So much for being geared for self-defence only, thought Dave. He was glad that Tiger wasn’t going to have to engage the enemy fleet this day and she slipped silently away, drawing only desultory and very inaccurate fire from the four cruisers as they realised their prey had avoided their trap.
Crash continued to accelerate, taking them out of weapons range, and looking backwards, they could only watch as the Sha T’Al returned to their original mission, raining destruction on the now deserted colony.
The origin of the glassy craters on Hole’s surface became apparent as the Sha T’Al cruisers unleashed a weapon Dave had never seen before. Huge pulses of energy like giant ball-lightning tore through the tenuous atmosphere, ionising the thin gases before striking the ground in a blinding flash that threw up a mushroom cloud of debris.
ASBeau watched with professional detachment. ‘Wow. They mean business! That’s definitely a fusion cannon of some sort.’
Dave remembered from Fleet history lectures at the Academy that before phasers and torpedoes had become the weaponry of choice for Starfleet vessels, other forms of armamments had been tried. Fusion cannons could produce huge amounts of energy, far more than phasers, but were hard to focus over the great distances involved in ship-to-ship combat. At the shorter distances involved in an orbital bombardment, this was clearly less of a handicap, and the Sha T’Al fusion cannons were horrifically efficient in destroying everything of consequence on the surface.
They were clearly targeting the transmitting arrays, but after blasting them into their constituent atoms, they took the opportunity to flatten everything else they could see on the surface.
Dave sighed. Hole was such a complete dump that the rain of destruction was probably improving the place. But it was still the place they tended to refer to as home, and it hurt to abandon it to its fate.
Quietly, Tiger drifted out of weapons range. Tired of watching the Sha T’Al ships raining destruction on the surface Dave turned the rear-view off.
With barely a word spoken, they reached the edge of the tiny system and engaged warp drive, proceeding at minimal speed to avoid travelling further backward in time.
Chapter 3
When they were clear and away from the star that Hole orbited, Dave called the ship’s senior staff to the Officer’s Mess.
Once they had assembled, Dave gave a brief re-cap of their findings to date.
‘Ok, here’s the situation. There is no Federation, only something called the Terran Empire. The Empire seems to be locked into a war with both the Tana and the Sha T’Al and seems to be losing. We don’t know how it all started or what’s been happening, but the Empire seems to be getting desperate and there were hints that they’re resorting to strategies that we might consider unjustifiable.’
‘We couldn’t establish dialogue with the Sha T’Al, and their reaction to our signals was to shoot first. There was no sign of anyone at Hole and no immediate indication of where the residents had gone. What information we did recover from Hole is encrypted and we haven’t unlocked it as yet.’
‘What we don’t know is how we got here or really even where ‘here’ is.’
He leaned back in his chair and looked across the table at his Science Officer. ‘Has anyone in the Science Department come up with anything that might shed light on that?’
Lieutenant-Commander O’Mara cleared her throat before replying. ‘We haven’t had enough time to really be sure at this stage, but our initial thinking was that there are only two possible explanations. The first was that somehow we’ve altered something in our own past which has resulted in a change of what we perceive in the present. We’ve had a lot of discussion about that, but eventually had to rule it out as a near impossibility, as the effect was undoubtedly caused by our own warp-field, which is localized. We could operate it forever and a day, out here in Sector 244 or in that dust-cloud, but it would be practically impossible for that to have any effect on Earth’s history, hundreds of light years away.’
‘When we’d ruled that out, the only possible explanation was that we’ve somehow translated through an additional dimension in space, putting us into one of an infinite number of universes that exist in parallel.’
There were worried murmurs from all around the table, but O’Mara continued. ‘Because we’ve only translated a little bit, this universe is very much like our own, but it’s clearly diverged over the last two to three hundred years, with some social change leading to a more aggressive expansion by the human race and the formation of a dictatorial Empire rather than a co-operative Federation.’
‘We’ll be going through the
data we have from the experiment we did on the warp-drive and cross-referencing that with data from historical records and the latest theories on extra dimensions. We think we should be able to calculate the degree of movement quite easily, but working out how to navigate backwards will take some really serious thinking.’
‘So who's our expert on extra dimensions and parallel universes?’ Dave asked.
O'Mara looked startled and Dave caught a distinct flush on her face. She clearly hadn't been expecting the question. ‘Ah. Well. It's . . . er . . . sort of a team effort . . . really.’
Dave could feel the hairs standing up on the back of his neck. ‘You asked Susan, didn't you?’
The room went completely silent, and O'Mara went a shade of crimson that seemed impossible given her normal incredibly pale complexion. There was a deep pause before she answered in a very high-pitched and barely audible voice: ‘Yes?’
Pandemonium broke out as everyone in the room gave the poor Science Officer their opinion of the ship's Computers ability. Dave banged his forehead repeatedly against the surface of the table, completely ignored by everyone else.
The ship's Computer (who insisted on being called Susan) should have been the next evolutionary step in computer technology. The memory engrams of fifty of the Federations greatest living thinkers were linked through a self-programming organic neural network that could learn and combine different thought processes to create intuitive leaps of logic.
The Programmable Intrinsic Logical Organic Component Computer (or PILOCC, as it was usually known) should have represented the most powerful computing technology anywhere in known space. In reality, the computer seemed to reflect all of the worst personality traits of the donor scientists, and its inability to establish control over fifty distinct personalities had left it clinically schizophrenic to boot.
Arrogant . . . condescending . . . argumentative . . . rude . . . all facets of a personality Dave would gratefully accept if (just once in a while) the computer actually got anything right.
Dave rubbed his throbbing temples and realized this wasn't getting them anywhere and raised his voice and his hands in an effort to restore order. His voice was lost in the chaos and with his pulse pounding audibly in his ears he resorted to standing and shouting loudly to try and restore order.
When this too failed, a red mist descended. He picked up his chair, and smashed it down on to the conference table, leaving him with a shredded tangle of fabric, padding and wood, and a mad-gleam in his eye. Strangely, he felt much more calm in himself, having invested in some wanton and pointless destruction.
Every eye in the room was now focused sharply on him, and silence had descended like a curtain. Taking a moment to gather himself, he addressed the team: ‘We may not be in Federation space, but I would remind you that you are all Starfleet officers and I expect you to behave as such.’
There were sheepish glances among the team and they sat down like thoroughly chastised children. Dave continued forcefully. ‘I shouldn't have to remind you that we are in deep, deep trouble. Shouting at Lieutenant-Commander O'Mara is neither productive nor helpful. We are dependent on the science team to find a way to return to our own universe and I expect you to understand that and support the science team regardless of whether or not you like their methods. IS THAT CLEAR??’
There were small silent nods of compliance all around, and Dave continued, remembering just in time that he couldn’t sit down.
‘Our first order of business is survival, but that's likely to become more difficult with each passing hour we spend in hostile space. ASBeau, I want the ship at continuous yellow alert status. Helm, Navigation, Comms, Tactical and Engineering stations are to be manned twenty-four seven, no exceptions.’
'I realize that we’re still short handed, but we must maintain an alert state, so adjust duty rosters accordingly and back-fill slots with free-hands. I know that means longer hours for everyone, but just now we can’t risk being caught napping.’
‘Shearer, I want Comms to monitor and record continuously on the most active frequencies for Starfleet, the Sha T’Al and the Tana. But don’t transmit anything without my express permission.’
‘Also, liaise with Lieutenant-Commander O’Mara to set up a permanent cryptographic team: I want the memory cores we recovered from Hole unlocked and we need to decode some of the encrypted signal traffic to see if we can get any more clues from that. Who’s the best fit for that task?’
Shearer frowned, still managing to look gorgeous as she did so. ‘Ahm thinken Cruman Suzi Chong wud be bes ta pryoretize tha incumen signels and Peeyaw Carvah wud be bes for the decrypten. He’s dead good wi’ al that sorta stuff like, y’naw? An id’ll get that bloody dog owta tha Comms Office. I canna go anawhair neeret withow the liddel sod try hoomp me liek! Ah naw he’s only tryna be frenly, but a goorlz gotta draw a line. An he’s roond a coopla me frox en all. That dog jizz dozen wash out eezee y’naw!’
Dave thought he heard PO Carver’s name in there somewhere. Danny Carver had been born blind, an inherited genetic defect leaving him with no optic nerves to connect his eyes to his brain. A neural transcoder allowed him to interface directly with computers allowing him unequalled access to AI systems. He could read code better than anyone else in the fleet.
Unfortunately, Danny had never been comfortable with artificial eyes and insisted in relying on a seeing-eye dog as his family had done for generations. His dog, Biff was . . . extremely friendly . . . and had an uncontrollable habit of trying to mount any female (and most males) he met. Dave could always tell when Shearer had been in the Comms Office with Danny and Biff: it was the only time she wasn’t immaculately turned out, and she’d come to the Bridge looking flustered, her skirt or jacket hitched and sometimes showing suspicious ‘snail-trails’.
‘Good. Thank you Lieutenant.’
‘Lieutenant Dolplop, we need some breathing space. Plot us a course to whatever the hell is left of Federation space but go off-track: I want to minimize chance encounters with anyone until we know what’s going on. Speak to the Stellar Cartography team to get a best guess of where the nearest un-contested Feder . . . uh . . . Terran Empire system is.’
‘Commander Romanov, assist Lieutenant-Commander O’Mara in unravelling what happened when we blipped the warp-drive. We need to make sure that we can replicate that event if we need to, but also that we can stop it happening by accident. One crazy universe is enough.’
Dave looked around the room. The faces still looked worried, but at least he could see that they had focus and were keen to be doing something. ‘Ok. To recap. We’re lost. Again!?! It’s not even our universe, and we’re about as welcome here as bacon sandwich at a bar mitzvah.’
‘Science team will work to find us a way home, but in the mean time we need to stay safe. That would be easier if we can fathom out what’s happening in this version of the universe. You all know what you’ve got to do. We’ll reconvene in forty-eight hours for a progress update. Dismissed.’
--------------------
Dave wandered back to the Bridge and found Yeoman Jalani waiting for him. The young Kuwaiti seemed agitated but Dave thought it polite not to mention the large damp patch clearly visible around the crotch of his trousers. ‘The Captain sent this message, sir.’
‘Thank you, Yeoman.’ Dave took the pad and opened the content. It was written in the Captain’s uniquely economical style:
‘What’s happening?’
‘Ps. You have the Bridge.’
Sighing, Dave attached the status report he’d already sent to the Captain earlier that morning, followed by the last seven daily reports, a week’s worth of logs recorded in his role as First Officer, and the summary of the away team’s findings from Hole.
He’d done this many, many times before and still wasn’t convinced that the Captain even knew who he was. Just for the sheer hell of it, he decided to try some reverse psychology to see if he could stir Tiger’s Commanding Officer from his incessant shagging.
>
He passed the pad back to the Yeoman and said ‘Thank you, Jalani. In case the Captain doesn’t find time to read the reports, would you be so kind as to tell him the situation is perfectly normal as always and there’s nothing of concern that merits his attention.’
‘Aye sir’ responded the Yeoman, turning away to reveal an even larger stain on the back of his trousers. He waddled to the turbo-lift and disappeared, leaving Dave alone with his thoughts.
Dave had become accustomed to having command of the ship as the Captain hadn’t graced the Bridge of USS Tiger in Dave’s nine months aboard. Even when he’d been the Executive Officer, and effectively third in the chain of command, he’d pretty much been in charge.
He was reminded of the old saying: ‘some people are born to greatness. Others have greatness thrust upon them.’ He was essentially in charge of the ship because the Captain was permanently engaged in thrusting upon others.
The responsibilities of command weighed heavily at times, and he often wondered if he should have heeded his dear old grannies advice: ‘Davey, eagles may soar, but weasels don’t get sucked into jet engines.’
The ship was currently heading towards Sector 212 as they assumed it would be largely uncontested if the Sha T’Al had not yet completely over-run the adjacent Sector 244. Dave had considered heading towards what they knew as Federation Treaty Exploration space. Barely explored at all, this expanse of space was a completely unknown factor. If it was still unexplored, it would be a relatively safe haven and remove the necessity for a permanent Yellow Alert status.
This would reduce the strain on the crew. They were down to three hundred and eighty-nine staff, and that included eighteen Yeomen and the Captain who were of no practical value. Worse still, most of the forty-odd shortfall fell in the Operations Department, and it would be them who felt the strain of the Yellow Alert status.
However, if they did hide in Treaty Exploration space they’d have no opportunity to find out more about this supposed parallel universe. Whilst Sector 212 would offer them a lesser degree of safety, there was a decent chance of finding out what was happening within this universe, especially if they risked making contact with Terran Empire forces.