By Alan Tripp
–
2402
”What in the hell is that?” Allen called out from the command chair of the Fenrir.
“Level 12 shockwave originating from …”
The science officer had no chance to finish his report as the shockwave seemed to pounce with blinding speed striking the gathered fleet like a brick wall against a car only in this case it was the wall moving and not the cars parked before it.
Fenrir was but one of several ships dispatched to investigate the spreading anomaly.
They’d arrived together just moments before when suddenly said anomaly … attacked.
Allen Ironforge had seen many days in his life but never something like the beast before them.
The starfield spun in a dizzying array on the main viewer as the Excelsior II variant moved like a billiard ball when the pack spread across the table following the initial break of the balls at the start of a game.
“Helm,” he called out … climbing back into his chair. “Get this fucking ship under control NOW!”
On the screen, two starships closer to the epicenter exploded into bristling fireballs while another had a nacelle sheered off completely.
“Turn us into the wave,” he added.
As the ship slowly began to right itself and turn back towards the anomaly, said special anomaly had transformed into something of a maelstrom, complete with plasma lightning and shockwaves at random intervals.
Sensors showed the positions of the various ships in the task force as they began to fall towards the epicenter of the storm before them.
Ironforge wanted to issue another command to his crew even if to tell them all that maybe they should kiss their collective asses goodbye, but before another word of command or reassurance could be spoken, the storm magnified its intensity, grabbed all of the fleet and sucked them into the maw of its mouth before resealing the rupture to the fabric of time and space like the windows of a hurricane might suck shut a door it had just moments before kicked up with the bruital force of its deadly winds.
After six months of searching, Starfleet Command would have no choice but to report them all missing and presumed killed.
—
Hidden in Time
Capt. Brianna Llewellyn drummed her fingers on the arm of her command chair.
It had all been building to this.
She watched events playing out in what seemed realtime via a holo-display of the timeline that floated before her in the heart of the command well of Temporal Storm’s main bridge.
They were currently tracking the convergence of several fleets currently traveling through …. Or maybe tumbling through would be a more apt description … unstable conduit or temporal wormhole that seemed to reach out like an octopus to snatch more prey as it hurled towards the final destination.
Her fingers drummed on the arm of her chair.
It was almost time. … Almost.
—
Another Time, Another Reality
Shallana had been given command of the operation, guiding the fleet from the vantage point of the Highlander’s bridge.
“Initiate deflector beam …. NOW!”, she called out over an open fleet channel.
The floating tactical display showed each ship positioned at various points surrounding the spreading pool of the anomaly. Including above and below.
[“How long do we have to maintain the beam?”] Alan Sollace asked over the open channel.
Hearing his voice caused Shallana’s eyes to drift to the position of Alan’s command, the U.S.S. Beowulf.
“For as long as it takes,” she replied.
After several seconds, two sets of readings appeared right and left in the display above her.
One in blue and one in red.
The readings in blue showed that the beams were having an effect in the stability of the anomaly.
The ones in red showed that instability was causing a rippling effect.
And as the rippling effect spread, everything … every object … seemed to shimmer as if visually vibrating.
That visual vibration grew to a point it seemed that her human eyes had taken on double vision as there now seemed a two of everything.
The second of all at first seemed as a growing shadow that vibrated around each person, each object.
But with each passing second, the effect grew more and more pronounced.
[“What in Grethor’s name is happening?”] a Klingon voice called out over the channel.
Ka’nej Hauk’s voice didn’t sound so much shocked, surprised or even irritated so much as … curious.
But Shallana had no answers as she herself had no frakking idea.
Yet as everything finally began to settling back down into singleness, the display now showed twice as many ships with dublicate readings of the fleet now appearing around the anomaly.
There were now two of all ships.
[“OUR DEFLECTOR IS STARTING TO BURN OUT!”], the voice of of Capt. Draqarys aboard the Thalesia. [“WE CAN’T MAINTAIN THE BEAM!!”]
“HOLD ON AND KEEP THOSE BEAMS ON THE ANOMALY!” Shallana called out to the now doubled fleet. “IT’S WORKING!”
The anomaly was beginning to shrink.
And the more it contracted the faster it went.
Also the more turbulent as waves of what seemed like tornadoes and lightning spawned all along a raging hurricane seemed to erupt.
But it was over in mere moments as suddenly the anomaly seemed to collapse on itself and snapped closed like a door slamming shut.
And with the slamming of that door, the newly formed twin fleet disappeared with it.
It wasn’t long before the fleet was able to stand down with Shallana passing command back to the Admiral.
—
Meanwhile …
Shallana witnessed the anomaly snap ship via both sensors and her tactical display and with it she and the fleet ship commanded for this operation were sucked out of known space/time and hurled down a rabbit hole of a temporal storm / conduit that had dragged through through the anomaly and then slammed it shut behind itself.
And with it, she realized the twin copies of themselves had disappeared, most likely safe and sound on the safe side of the now closed doorway.
The Highlander groaned under the stress of her passage along these unknown turbulent pathways they were being dragged along against their will.
In her display, three ships imploded into buts of shrapnel that spread across the wake of a fleet flung across who knows what to who knows where …
“HANG ON!” She yelled, consoles exploding around the bridge.
They would be lucky to survive to reach their destination … wherever THAT might be.
—
Hidden in Time
Brianna continued to watch the display when certain events in the timeline shifted out of temporal alignment.
“No No No No NO!”
She came out of her seat for a better look.
One apparent new pebble tossed into the river prepared to uproot everything they’d worked to achieve.
But who tossed the pebble?
The timeline continued to shift along new pathways, leaving but one choice.
They had one more thing to do.
—
2408
The U.S.S. Sam Houston drifted alone through the void when all of a sudden alarm klaxons began sounding all across the Shangri-La II-class starship.
Capt. James Draljo Henry held firm to his chair, resisting the urge to rise.
When facing the unknown, the half Rigellian / half human captain had learned the hard way that rising during an alert klaxon tended to known said commanding officer onto his arse.
So he held his chair.
“Tactical, what have you got?”, his voice calm and measured despite the background wail of the alert klaxon.
“Vortex opening ahead of us, captain,” Sollace reported just as calmly.
This wasn’t their first rodeo dance with the unknown.
However, when the forward view zeroed in on the anomaly and that anomaly began spitting objects out with increasing speed and force, one could feel the tension levels begin to rise around the bridge.
“Objects coming out with increasing velocity,” S’Rasian called from the science station.
At first, the caitians tail maintained a steady swish behind the Chief Science Officer, however that quickly changed to rigid and still.
“Now reading metallic debris consistent with hull materials common to starships,” the feline continued.
“Captain, I’m registering whole starships coming through …. Starfleet, Romulan, Klingon …. BORG!”
“Battlestations!” The captain yelled, unable to keep himself from rising out of his chair.
On the monitor, the anomaly spread outwards like a shockwave with blinding speed.
No one had time to react as it plowed through the Houston’s shields and tossed the ship backwards like an angry kid tossing a ragdoll.
James Henry knew he should have stayed in his chair as he felt himself flying through air with his command chair passing beneath him.
He made a grab for the chair. Really, he did. But it was just out of reach or his timing was a second too late as it was gone as soon as it was seen.
And then the world went black.
—
Lt. Cmdr. Ahlayna Sollace dragged herself back up to her feet from where she lay on the decking.
Tactical station was smashed beyond repair.
Seeing this, her eyes quickly scanned the rest of the bridge, assessing the damage like a seasoned tactical officer.
Then her eyes found the mutilated body of her captain buried in the debris of what had been the aft station at the very back of the bridge.
A quick glance told her all she needed to know.
He’d been hurled over his command chair, over her tactical station (herself included) and plowed with incredible force into the station behind her own.
The impact had most likely snapped his neck as it pulverized bones and twisted the man’s body into impossible angles.
Captain dead, she looked over towards where the first officer normally sat.
First Officer had faired better than the captain, but only in that her body had not been broken and pulverized.
No, she’d received shrapnel to the back of the head, most likely from flying remains of the console destroyed by the captain’s body.
The first officer likely didn’t even know what hit her.
Ahlayna took a moment to figure out who to look to … who was in command now … when she realized … she was.
Those members of the bridge crew still able to do so climbed back into their seats or back up to their stations.
Considering her own station was non-existent and considering the captain and first officer were both dead, the chief tactical officer / second officer slipped into the center seat, pushing the thoughts of grief and horror from her mind as she had a ship to tend to.
She looked to the forward monitor just in time to see the remains of a Borg cube spiraling through space like an out of control freight train that had jumped the tracks.
First thought was amazement as the Borg had been eradicated by Picard and his people aboard the Enterprise D a few years ago.
But those thoughts were short loved as that runaway freight train of a cube was on a collision course with their ship and no time to get the hell out of its way.
“EVASIVE MANUVEURS!!!!”
She yelled the words anyway even as she steeled herself knowing they were all about to join the captain in the afterlife.
From the top of the view screen front of the bridge, a shadow descended from above with torps and phasers dancing even as Ahlayna herself felt a shimmer in the core of her existence begin to shift and change.
It was a strange sensation to say the least and not quite what she’d been expecting her last moments to be like.
A captain for all of one minute and twenty-two seconds she through to herself, yet that shifting sensation magnified just everything began to ripple.
It was of course a fraction of a second we’re talking about here but then when one faces death, things sometimes seem to slow down.
Do they not?
—
2408
“Fire!”
Captain Llewellyn held firm to the armrests of her command chair even as her commands were carried out.
Torpedoes and phasers lanced out and danced their way towards the out of control Borg cube even as the view on the viewer slowly rotated 180ish degrees.
On her exist from the temporal vortex generated by the temporal core of the U.S.S. Temporal Storm, they’d been forced to rotate the ship to both avoid incoming debris and to shift into a position to save their version of the timeline.
Or at least save it enough so that they pieces remained on the board with a chance of preserving it at the very least.
Torps and phasers ripped into the hull of the cube, shattering it a big cube crafted from the LEGO toy blocks she’d played with as a kid. Said cube being smashed by a massive sledge hammer at any rate.
The cube broke apart but only into still massive pieces that were still much too big to accomplish the goal they set out to accomplish.
On top of what was looking like failures, a large chunk of cube smashed into the temporal core located normally above the primary hull of the Premonition-class starship causing said core to rupture, causing a ripple effect with unknown consequences to be unleashed on the timeline.
“Shite,” the Brianna said from her chair, helpless to do anything but watch events now unfold as the temporal cruiser spun off on a new course in an uncontrolled tumble across the path of the incoming fleets of ships, debris and who knew what else.
—
The changes Ahlayna and the Sam Houston were already in motion before and when the the temporal wave from the unknown starship that had tried to save them, colliding with one of the large chunks of cube in the process.
The shimmering and shifting was now within her very existence as suddenly new memories began to find their way into who she was as an individual and person.
She was now remembering events and part of a life that differed from the one originally lived … at least from her original point of view.
Around her, the existence of the Sam Houston shifted and changed as the bridge took on a mirage effect and for a moment seemed as if two different designs trying to superimpose themselves over one another … trying to coexist in the same moment of space and time.
One finally won out over the other, however, as the bridge she’d originally known faded from existence to become one different and slightly smaller.
On her collar the black / hollow pip of a lieutenant command became the full gold of a commander with herself sitting more firmly in what was most definitely HER command seat.
A chunk of Borg cube tumbled towards them with force and course that would surely have destroyed the Shangri-La-class version of the Sam Houston along with what remained of her crew.
If it were still the Shangri-La class.
Just as Ahlayna had shifted and changed, so had the Houston along with those aboard her.
The smaller, experimental Okinawa II-class frigate rolled lengthwise hard to port with incredible speed as the quickstep thrusters worked as designed, moving the ship with speed and grace most starships lacked.
The tech was cutting edge via Daystrom Spaceframe Industries and being tested for the first time in the field with Sam Houston as the testbed for it … and other newer more experimental tech.
The ship’s captain gripped the arms of her chair harder than normal, fighting down waves of nausea as she came to terms with her new set of memories and all that came with it.
Looking behind her, she noted there was indeed no body of one Capt. James Henry as James Henry was not the commanding officer of this version of the Sam Houston in the current / altered timeline.
She was.
—
Even as the U.S.S. Highlander cruised through normal space on its way back to its home port in another year / another reality, a temporal copy of that same ship and crew came erupting from the space time breach with incredible speed and force … along with what remained of their fleet.
Shallana Ironwolf couldn’t keep herself from coughing from the acrid smoke as the bridge filled with smoke.
Only when fears of being tossed around subsided did she bolt from her chair to see to injured crew and ship.
The monitor had moments of static, but eventually stabilized into a relatively clear image of volcano like rupture spewing starships … both somewhat intact like hers as well as debris.
It also spewed large chunks of rock that the back of her mind speculated might have been pulled from an asteroid field somewhere, sometime.
She stepped over a member of her crew with the vacant eyed stare of death to reach another living member even as she tapped her comm badge.
“Bridge to sickbay. We have wounded most like everywhere on the ship, but send a team to the bridge as well as we definitely have them up here.”
“Don’t move til we can get you scanned,” she ordered. “If you have a spinal injury, last thing we want to do is make it worse.”
—
The Borg Queen watched the displays floating around where she was in the queen’s chamber aboard her ship.
She saw many of her ships damaged or in pieces, but also saw many fully intact.
Their fleet had been sucked into the same phenomenon that resulted (as far as she could determine) from when Species 3783 fired a new yet unstable weapon that impacted in the vincity of one of her Borg’s new exit aperture’s.
The resulting explosion of both weapon and aperture caused a 1 in a million eruption in space time that sent spread across the timeline snatching everything in its path and depositing all here in what for her was the future.
And there was something strange about this future. … There were no Borg signals present here that she as queen could tap, connect and interact with.
As far as she could tell, they were all that existed of the Borg Collective in this so called future.
Not that it mattered, she was here now as were several others of her collective.
They would simply assimilate and rebuild … using the echoes she could find that proved there were elements of a former collective left intact.
They just needed a new queen … her … to reawaken them.
She sent her thoughts out to her collective as it surrounded her, ordering those ships intact to follow her now and those who could not follow to repair what of their ships they could, assimilate the surrounding species and ships … and then join her after having done so.
—
Brianna watched as the Borg Queen’s ship left with those ships of the Collective able to follow her, realizing in that moment that the flaw in her calculations had been in not considering Borg involvement.
And now a new Borg Queen was being unleashed on a timeline and galaxy that had worked hard to irraticate them just a few years before this one.
—
Down deep in the belly of the U.S.S. Sam Houston, a humanoid figure dressed in black packed up the last of his gear and gave the room (and ship) a final look before activating the device that would transport away and back from whence he came.
He’d come here with a purpose and that purpose had been successfully done.
Accomplished his goal in helping it … her … to survive.
It was all that could be done in this particular time, in this particular place.
The rest was up to them now.
May the gods be with them. … With them all.
A press if his thumb, the recall devise hummed to life, winking him and his gear away and back him.
—
Ahlayna Sollace listened as a new voice erupted over her speakers.
It was a voice heard by her previously only in recordings and one that even then had radiated a chill up and down her spine.
Something thought buried deep so as to never be heard again.
[“We are the Borg. … You will be assimilated. … Resistance is futile.”]
—
Respectfully,
— Ka’nej Hauk
Out of Story
At long last, the past (and future) catches up with the present as I’ve brought all the players to the same time, the same place.
Next story is already being written.