And Back Again

Posted on Mon Mar 22nd, 2021 @ 12:20am by Administrator LordeEmp

Mission: Heroes of the Hov'hurgh
Location: I.K.S. Hov'HurgH
Timeline: Exiting Anomaly into 2409

Another violent shudder rocked the ship and more systems lit with damage and injury reports that poured in from all over the vessel. Looking to Sthilg, VaQ’taj shouted, shortening her orders to necessary words only, “M-e-d-i-c-a-l t-e-a-m-s, n-o-w!”

The big Gorn had a stomach that he thought could handle anything but even he was having to struggle to stop his last few meals from exiting his mouth. His eyes were also struggling to process the bright colors. He tried to move his hand, but it was like moving it through tar. “M-e-d-i-c-a-l t-e-a-m,” Sthilg yelled into the console, his normally deep voice coming out coarse with a lot of phlegm.

The ship’s First, Hov’qIj, soon realized that this was not how the ship was designed to react. Some issues could have been expected. Conduits exploding to this extreme seemed to show the jump was not going as planned in more ways than one. The white haired Klingon chuckled to himself wryly, wondering if any of the science team had majored in temporal mechanics, and that they might need to pioneer a new area of science. Maybe call it temporal mapping, cartography or navigation.

He sent messages to the various departments trying to get a feel for how quickly the damage and injuries were being taken care of. His station was filled with blinking red lights showing that almost every area of the ship had some kind of issue. It seemed to take forever for anyone to answer. There was no way for him to know if it was due to a temporal Doppler effect, if the communication system was down or simply not functioning through the jump. Or worse yet, if there was no one to answer back.

While stroking his long white Fu Man Chu whiskers, another worry suddenly came to the first officer; what if the Time Dilation Drive was not designed to be taken off line in such a manner?

Everything stopped dead; all movement ceased. Even the shower of sparks had become crystallized, hanging in the air as though mimicking the stars that burned in the void of space. VaQ’taj fought down the wretched sensation of helplessness that crept up on her as she watched in mute, paralyzed horror, the chaos that had been frozen in time. Fresh sparks lept from consoles all around her and she could already see that at least one was going to give out.

The view changed to space where a star erupted suddenly from the darkness, like an infant breaking free of its mothers womb, with all of the violence and wonderment that incurred. The barrier between temporal dimensions flared brilliantly before finally disgorging the great war beast Hov’Hurgh from its gullet. Streamers of strange energy crackled across the ship’s hull, seeming almost alive. Seen from another angle it might have appeared as if a super nova had just erupted from nowhere. Just before congealing with normal space and time, the great ship seemed to distort , then snapped back into place in the timestream.

Though the Colonel fought with all of her might to shout warning, she could not force the words past her lips. When their world suddenly shifted back into normal motion, she barely resisted the rolling sickness in her stomach, and all that she managed to get out was a hoarse croak as the Chief Engineer’s station exploded, lifting Nahlet off of his feet and slamming him back into the walkway behind him. Even as he slumped to the deck, a containment field sprang to life around the station, isolating and immediately suffocating the flames within.

Doctor Sthilg moved faster than he thought possible, even if he was having to resist the urge to vomit. Before he got there he could smell burnt Klingon and one of the bridge crew was lying on her side, blood pouring from a deep wound on her forehead. Worse was the chief engineer who lay on his back with blood pouring from a wound on the back of his skull.

Kneeling beside the downed officer he didn’t even need a scanner to tell that he wasn’t going to be needed. Reaching out to feel Nahlet’s burned neck, he could feel the skin crumbling as he tried to find a pulse. “He’sss gone Colonel.” he said before turning his attention to the other crewman.

Nahlet wouldn’t be the last in giving his life to bring this great technology to his people. Though he had been able to see the fruits of his labor come to life, his domain was no longer in the realm of the living and while he would be celebrated later with the others, there was no time to dwell on the loss at that moment.

Pulling her attention away from the blackened engineering station, and the work being done on the wounded, Colonel VaQ’taj barked orders as her fingers moved hurriedly across the console, taking control of the bridge’s engineering functions, “Route fire teams four through ten to main engineering, we have fire containment failures on the Dilation Drive levels! Engineering teams five through eight to racks four Alpha and five Delta! All stations, report! Priest, where and when in the name of Gre’thor are we?”

As senior navigation officer, cHoQ tHc would not delegate the responsibility for the duty of making certain that their fiery Colonel knew exactly where her ship was during the vital test of the new drive system. Even if the scene on the bridge was absolutely confusing chaos, “Captain, preliminary scans show we have moved only minimally in distance. Our location in the temporal stream has changed drastically. The stardate is now approximately... 901432.2?”

“cHoQ tHc!” The white haired first officers smile widened after hearing the assumed date and time. “For having aged twenty six years, I don’t feel a day older. Isn’t that right, Priest?” Hov’qIj knew the man of philosophy and faith would have many extra duties to perform in the name a Kahless.

“Science, can you verify that?” The red-braided Klingon woman asked with slight surprise in her voice. The test was only supposed to have been a small jump and in the opposite direction. She could feel the ire already rising to the surface and she stretched her neck causing a loud series of cracking noises.

Major Daj’Ral looked a little startled that the navi-comp was being questioned, but bent to his instruments and poked at a few buttons. “Stardate confirmed by standard Cepheid variable star pulse rates. Redundant check of index star identities reports positive.”

Before anyone else could speak up with their reports, SoS’ voice rose sharply, “HoD, two incoming distress calls. One from the station, the other from a Miranda class Federation vessel. They are being attacked...” the older woman paused, tilting her head to the side briefly, “...by Klingon ships.”

TBC