Marching Resolutely Into Danger
Posted on Tue May 28th, 2019 @ 8:48am by The Narrator & Lieutenant Commander Meilin Jiang & Lieutenant Francesca Ricci
Mission:
S1E3: Moments Of Consolidation
Location: USS Resolute, In Pursuit
Timeline: MD9 12.015AM
The Norway class light cruiser Resolute ploughed on through space, doggedly pursuing the warp trail laid down by the escaping alien ship. For a day and half the crew had been speeding along at high warp, pushing deeper into the uncharted map of Messier 4.
They had sped past the dead star system known as Xilos, their first true expedition in this strange land, and without slowing had moved on. Meanwhile, the crew of Canopus Station sifted through the wreckage of the small battle that had taken place. And also, as befit the moment, prepared for what might come to call in response.
On the bridge the crew held their court, anticipating every possible situation that might come to pass. A call from Canopus Station, and from its commanding officer no less, was unexpected.
Benjamin Ingram's face appeared on the main view screen, the operations centre laid out behind him from the vantage point of his office.
"Our long-range sensors detect you've nearly arrived at your destination. How goes preparations for the hostage rescue?"
Meilin scrunched her nose at the sensor suites. "We're still trying to make sense of our readings," she said without looking up at the main viewer. "It appears the suspect vessel is on a collision course with a collapsing neutron star..."
"Our own stellar cartographers agree with that assumption, though there is a level of interference that suggests it is not a typical neutron star. Its mass index is too high for starters, and the gravitational pull on local stellar bodies is too weak. It could very well be you are heading towards a unique spatial phenomenon," Ingram said with a nod. "We have also completed the first rounds of investigations into the wreckage of the fighter shot down over Carpathia. The missile fired was a simple enough antimatter motor and guidance system from spectral analysis. Though we did find a complete unit of one of the submunitions released when the missile separated in its attack phase. From what we can tell the fighter was not destroyed by a typical explosive of a special material warhead."
Though Meilin's first love was Science, she did have tenure in the Security and Tactical divisions--even heading up research along those lines in her last post. She nodded her head at Ingram's words. "So, we have potentially Delta level ordnance with a primitive delivery system. Scavengers, then, feasting off the remains of a more advanced civilization." She briefly chewed her lip in thought, putting the pieces together. "I surmise one of two possibilities: in the first, we may be on approach to a hideout for a local band of raiders and scavengers; in the second, we may be following them into a black market location of some kind. If the first, we should expect a hostile sortie to sally out to meet us, but if the second, we'll probably receive some kind of challenge-authentication protocol." She looked to the others. "I don't think a guns-heavy approach would be effective in that scenario."
Ritter leaned back in the central seat, steepling his fingers as he considered. "Either one is an invaluable source of intelligence on the local area. But neither one can be allowed to think that Starfleet is here for them to take chunks out of. There are methods to baring our teeth; they were bold enough to take our people from under their nose and I don't expect them to give them up lightly." He looked at the viewscreen. "Security teams are prepared for boarding parties under hostage scenario protocols. We're going to approach from a distance and engage in negotiation first, firm as it needs to be."
"Being so far removed, I can only offer distant counsel. But know that our guard ships have begun the laying a minefield on a reciprocal bearing to your current course. Should you return with a companion, they will find us prepared to make a good show of it. To that end, Starfleet is unable to deliver reinforcements to us for another 4 weeks. Expedition 3's long jump led to some mechanical oddities appearing in the Alpha Accelerator. Until the catastrophic failure rate is below 3% it will remain unpowered in safe mode. We're on our own," Ingram said from the safety of station ops. "I trust you all to act as your station and uniform demand. We are Starfleet and by extension the might of the United Federation Of Planets. Bring our people home, Commander."
The comm line cut off, and was replaced by the streaking brightness of warp speed.
"Commander Ritter," Meilin said coolly, "permission to join the boarding parties."
"We'll see, Commander," Ritter replied, expression impassive. "If circumstances work out so the boarding party needs to go in hard and fast, I want a well-oiled security team without any of us underfoot." He looked over at her. "But don't worry. I know the value of having a Science Officer to hand if this is a problem that needs more than a phaser rifle to solve it; perhaps the boarding team would benefit from some lateral thinking. Your request is noted."
Meilin smirked at that. As a former Chief of Security, she knew her way around boarding party protocols. But she wasn't one to boast. Boasting led to downfalls. If her request was denied, at least she wouldn't be put in the position of being expected to use a weapon on another sentient. "Thank you, Commander."
The USS Resolute dropped out of warp as close as it could to the gravitational anomaly that pretended to be a neutron star. What appeared on the viewscreen looked like nothing anyone had ever seen before. It looked like an over-inflated tyre made of withered grape skin. Purple, bloated, flickering with energetic discharges, a pair of dimples opened up its interior at either pole. From those opening a bright beam of light shone through.
Each opening was a hundred miles across, with the tortured wrap around bubble engulfing a space a million miles across. And at its centre, like a dense stone in the heart of a diseased fruit, was the unmistakable gravimetric pulse of a neutron star. But even that assured meter was subtly off, like hearing a clock ticking slightly slower than was normal. But then again, what was normal about this?
After all, strange spatial anomalies don't usually hail.
"Greetings, Honoured Sentients. This is a message broadcast on behalf of the Harbour Master. You are welcomed to the Sleepers Bazaar, to take part in trade, or in observation of the Order Of The Sleepless. Navigational data is imprinted in this message, to help you find safe passage through either the zenith or nadir openings of the tortured space. It is highly recommended that you do not deviate from this course, as passage close to the boundary of tortured space will result in permanent and non-reversible neural death of all Sentient life aboard or possible transtemporal or cessation of the laws of thermal dynamics....Greetings, Honoured Sentients-"
The voice was pleasant, a salesman's voice, and had the rote dictation of a machine without any sort of cognition happening in its speech. It was being broadcast from a pair of beacons, orbiting quickly the strange wrapped up neutron star. Simple tech, centuries old, but hardy and robust.
Francie’s console beeped and she tapped a couple of buttons. “Receiving navigational data,” she announced. “Should I de-encrypt?”
"Proceed," Meilin said preemptively. "As I strongly advise taking the warning to heart. The sensors are getting lost in there. We will need to be extremely vigilant, as there will be no way to know what we're flying into."
"De-encrypting," replied Francie with the tap of a few buttons. "Got it. Whew! These are some very specific instructions. Shall we feed it into the computer and just trust them to get us there?"
Meilin arched an eyebrow. "Forgive me, but isn't that essentially what setting a course into the conn does?"
“Well, yes,” answered Francie, “and no. I can allow the Computer to just do its thing, but an experienced pilot typically keeps an eye on the course and makes minor corrections for any number of variables. However, the recording said not to deviate. I was simply questioning whether we are to trust them enough to not make course corrections for any reason.”
And this course would require a great deal of trust. For no sooner had the Resolute began to enter the nadir opening into 'tortured space' that half a dozen alarms went off. Strange radiation readings peppered the hull, sudden temperature fluctuations. The sensors could detect the boundary of the tortured space they were flying through, but the walls were reported to be 40'000 meters away and then 4 inches. But the view screen never savoured, the tunnel into the blinding light shining up from its depths never shifting, even as the autopilot performed hairpin course corrections and rolls according to its programming.
It was like flying through an Escher painting.
Mamá!"
Francie blinked around the bridge. She knew that voice. But, what was he doing here?
Mamá! the voice called again, more insistent this time. Mamá! Sálvame!
"Paolo," Francie breathed. Her son. He was out there! Just beyond the violet light. She was sure of it now. A simple course correction would-
MAMÁ!
But, Francie hesitated. Something was wrong with his voice. She couldn't quite put a finger on it, but there was something... off about it.
Mamá! Por favor!
And then, it hit her. The voice she heard was Paulo as a child- when she had first met him at the age of ten. Paulo was now a grown man with a much deeper voice. "What trickery is this?" she whispered, eyes narrowing at the view screen as if it had somehow personally wronged her.
Mamá!
Now it was Paolo as an adult. But, that cinched it for her; this was trickery! Something out there was trying to make her change course. Quickly, while she still had her head, she hit a few keystrokes to lock herself out of her console. "I'm voluntarily locked out," she told Meilin. "There is something out there imitating my son. I want to change course to find him- very badly, in fact. I thought it would be safer this way."
Qian Jin...
Meilin snapped her head up from the sensor readout. What... was that?
Meilin xiǎo jiě zài nǎ lǐ?
"Sifu..." No, it wasn't possible.
Was it?
"Something... is very wrong." The words rang hollow, though, as the voice of Sifu Pan called to her from the void. "We..." She looked toward the main viewer which failed to translate the sensor data into any meaningful visual image. "We are on the edge of Diyu..." The Taoist purgatory for punishing/renewing souls between incarnations. "We should not be here..."
And yet Sifu called. "It is inevitable," Meilin whispered. "All things return to one. Wu wei has brought us to the Tao, to the very threshold." She stretched out her hand toward the white light that she could not be sure of seeing.
Ritter had leaned forwards at the reactions from the rest of the bridge crew. "Give me better than that, Commander," he instructed curtly. "Your sensors aren't telling us we're in purgatory. Keep your head and -"
Wolfie...
It was his turn for his head to snap around, thoughts snatched away mid-sentence by the voice, the whisper that had long been enough to send a shiver trembling up from the base of his spine. Lucy - Lucy, the only one that could match him vicious thought for vicious thought, their partnership like some doubles' sport where occasionally the teams turned on one another just to prove they could.
You can come back, she insisted, sultry and demanding and with that particular note that told him she knew she was right. Back to me..
His eyes went to the output on the command chair's armrest, the navigational data flooding through, and the answer was clear as day to him. The slightest course correction, then he'd find her, come back to her across light-years, galaxies; reach across the threshold of the birth and death of stars and there she'd be.
Ritter clenched and unclenched his fist, and lifted his head to the bridge. "Hold course," he said, a muscle twitching in the corner of his jaw. "We ride this out, and if you can't stop your ears against these sirens I'll tie you to a damned mast myself."
Even as he said this, he turned in his chair and fixed his gaze on a seemingly empty spot on the bridge. "Sorry, darling," he drawled, loud enough for others to hear only if they strained and tried, and despite the tension knotting his brow, his shoulders, he still spoke with the glimmer of a dismissive sneer. "But you know better than to expect me to come when you call."
And as suddenly as the whispers of enticement had come to one and all, tempting them to steer into the rippling grape skin veil of the boundary to tortured space, the voices ceased. Instead, a cold malevolence hunkered down for the long wait in the back of their minds, the sort of creeping dread you only find in doctors waiting rooms when the results need to be discussed in private without you present. It was the feeling every mammal gets once it's high enough up a tree.
That something with a lot of teeth and a stomach in need of filling was willing to wait you out and make a meal of you.
With that, the alarms ceased blaring away, and the Resolute entered the heart of the terror-filled space. Ahead of them, as sensors and science predicted, a neutron star resided. The ultra compacted star was a fraction of its size, seemingly keeping itself from becoming a black hole by being angry and petulant about the whole ordeal. Its silvery light should have fashed out everything, even the advanced sensor suite of the Norway class cruiser.
But the light hid nothing. The neutron star was imprisoned in a cage of milk-white ivory spars. From a distance, they looked minuscule, fragile. Fish bones holding back a bowling ball. But even the smallest connecting spare was thousands of kilometres long, and hundreds thick. And at every connecting point, a barb-like protrusion arose, firing off a pulse of flickering violet energy that fed into the constraining grape skin of tortured space.
Was the cage tapping the immense power of the neutron star to keep the monsters and minds within Tortured Space from escaping, or was it like a hammer gently tapping on the surface of an icy lake. Tap, tap, tap...crack, and up comes the polar bear. Questions for another time, another mission.
The navigation instructions had not run their course yet, and the little ship sped down to meet the caged star. Close to one of the spare connectors, the sensors soon detected numerous ships. Some were of a size on par with the Resolute, but of strange and quite frankly unexpected design. Others were whales of ships, a thousand meters and change from bow to stern. Of these sharks among minnows, one ship was highlighted by the Starfleet targeting computer.
Tree-like, with a thicket like tail of engine spines leading to a narrow, needle-fine point of a nose, and horrendously barbed like a rose fit for slaughter, the Starfleet targeting computer gave it a 89% match to being of a kin to Starfleet's first Messier 4 encounter. A Myriad Thorn Ship.
And next to it, seemingly standing watch, a very functional if aesthetically lacking vessel. A skyscraper on its side, triangular in profile, with crude turret shrouded weapons studding its three flanks. It was a brutish club of a vessel, the sort of thing that you sat in orbit over a world you wanted to stop existing.
"Greetings Honoured Sentients, to the Parking Swarm. Please follow your navigational data until you have reached your allotted location within the swarm. A ferry craft will be dispatched to bring you to the Sleepers Bazaar, and an audience with the Harbour Master. This is a requirement of all new trading partners within the Sleepers Bazaar. Failure to comply with any and all instructions will result in permanent nonreversible neurological death."
"Nonreversible," Meilin repeated aloud. "Is there any other kind?" In the heart of a dying neutron star whose death throes were arrested into a perpetual limbo, that might be a question best left unanswered.
"Ma'am!" came from the Op's station. "I have an open combadge channel. It's marked as Chief Ricci's! Putting it on now."
A garbled sound filled the air, like someone being stranged and drowning at the same time.
Followed by heavy breathing and then-
=/\=This is chief Ricci. Who's out there?=/\=
Mara! For a brief instant of unguarded glee, Meilin grinned like she hadn't since she was a girl. Practiced stoicism returned by the time she reached the Ops station, though she couldn't hide a faint smile. "Chief Ricci, this is Commander Jiang. The Resolute is inbound to your location. Please advise."
Ritter looked to the bridge crew; Meilin could be thrilled about a reunion if she wanted to be and he had no interest in wasting precious time explaining who he was. "Keep us at three-quarters impulse to follow the navigational guides; we'll buy time without dragging our feet," his voice was loud enough for his orders to be clear, low enough to not talk over the conversation whose information could change their entire situation. "I want as full a sensor analysis as we can get on these ships, starting with that triangular craft." He didn't voice that if they had to flee, if they had to abandon the missing crew, the mission wasn't a total failure so long as they had gathered valuable intel. It was a bit early to be that cut-throat about people the bridge crew probably somewhat cared about.
=/\=We've been taken prisoner,=/\= came the response. =/\=To be sold into slavery, if I take their meaning. Spires and I have been attempting to relieve two of them of many of their vital organs and I only hope the others have been doing the same.=/\= A brief scuffling sound ensued. =/\=When you beam us out, if you would be so kind as to beam the two life forms with us into the void, it would be much appreciated.=/\=
On the main viewer, a wireframe of the triangular vessel appeared, as the tactical sensors began to paint a lavish picture of it. Layers of ablative armour, with ice-filled honeycombs beneath to bleed off thermal energy from a phaser hit. Launchers for torpedoes dotted the hull, and at the bow was highlighted the focusing lens of a massive coaxial Xray laser that seemed to run the length of the ship. And set into a pair of turrets on all three facing's were rail gun barrels.
In old wet navy terms, it was a battleship.
In space faring navy terms, it was a battleship made of rice paper.
No active shields, a weak graviton defector array for navigational purposes. The few high tech pieces of equipment that seemed in evidence looked like upgrades, things lashed to an old and ageing frame. And all of the ships power generation needs were being met with a staggering sixteen fusion reactors dotted through the hull, some of them appeared to be running at a worryingly high chance of overload. And highlighted by the Resolutes sensor suite was a symbol that matched to 90% with a similar icon etched to the wall of a black pyramid.
"Er, Commander Ritter, Commander Meilin? Transporter control detects five distinct life signs in range of Chief Ricci's combadge. Two human, two none human, and a...biomass of some sort. I could try and grab them all if you like?" The op's tech said from his station.
The Starfleet light cruiser edged ever closer towards a Myriad thorn ship, and a Concordance battleship.
Ritter's jaw tightened as he did quick maths and came up short. "Beam them in. Have the non-humans transported to separate holding cells and the biomass to a secure quarantine in the science labs. We'll transport nobody straight into space." Not, he didn't elaborate, when we still have bargaining to do. "For the moment, our hosts haven't yet deigned to tell us it's rude to transport our own people back onto our ship. Let's see if this makes them more forthcoming with explanations."
"Aye aye, Sir." The Op's tech reported. "Biomass has been beamed to Quarantine Room One, Mister Spires and Chief Ricci have been beamed to sickbay. The other life forms have rematerialised in cargo bay 4 with active security measures in place. They're not going anywhere. Also, a small craft has detached from the structure enclosing the neutron star, it originated from a station anchored to it. It's on an intercept course with us."
The ferry from the Harbour Master.
"I'm also detecting scans from both the Myriad vessel and the Concordance battleship. Light scanning mostly," the Op's tech did not sound at all happy to be under the observation of either party.
"I recommend raising shields," Meilin said. "If the reports of the Myriad's ability to circumvent our cybersecurity suites are accurate, it will at least give us prior warning to network intrusion."
"Do it," Ritter confirmed. "But don't power up weapons, and maintain present speed and course. I want a word with our people in sickbay before we have to meet the Harbour Master." He got to his feet and looked at the bridge crew. "We may need a little time. Delay them by the book - communicate with the ferry clearly and openly on how we are abiding by every safety and security protocol before allowing a new, foreign ship to dock. Be the most pleasant obstructive bureaucrat you can." He had no intention of pushing this if their new hosts turned prickly, but every second they weren't faced with the expectation they would board the ferry was a second they could gather information.
"You can count on me, sir." Meilin nodded. "Implementing redundant bioscan diagnostic protocols now."
"Marvellous," Ritter said. "You have the conn, Commander. I'll be in sickbay for debriefing. Keep me posted on how much time we have."
