Star Trek: Odyssey: Confessions
Chief Engineer's Log: Stardate: 57750.0. Commander Sato and I are heading towards the Briar Patch in response to numerous reports of radiation similar to the type found in the Talos Star System.
Dustin and Hoshi piloted the shuttlecraft Curry through the vast openness of space. It had been a few years since Dustin had been to the Briar Patch. He remembered when he was still on the Enterprise and they were sent to the Briar Patch to retrieve Commander Data and ended up uncovering a plot to remove the Ba'ku from their world and relocated them someplace else.
Dustin was a bit weary of traveling by shuttlecraft while in the middle of a war. The last time he traveled by shuttlecraft was when he had an alien creature wrapped around his neck and the shuttle was crippled by a Mirror starship and everyone aboard almost died. It wouldn't have been an issue if he wasn't incapacitated, allowing him to help Commander Merriell with the repairs. Hell, they probably wouldn't have had to wait for the Alexandria to beam them out if he didn't have that alien creature around his neck.
"We're within sensor range." Hoshi said. "I'm picking up small traces of radiation. The same radiation we picked up on Stardate: 57645.8."
"Any signs of interspatial anomalies?"
"No. It's completely devoid of Mirror activity."
Zofchak suddenly felt whatever trepidation he had over the mission go away as their good fortunes continued. Given, everything the crew had been through recently, Dustin was almost expecting a fleet of Mirror starships to be waiting for them.
Dustin looked at his instruments. "At our present speed, we should reach the radiation in a few hours."
During their trip to the Briar Patch, the two officers shared their Enterprise stories. Naturally, one found the other's stories more fascinating than their own. Hoshi talked about when Jonathan Archer recruited her to be one of his officers on the Enterprise and all of the exciting missions they went on up to the point when Archer was no longer able to make any long term memories and Tucker had to take command once Archer and T'Pol left. Then she talked about the never ending battle with the Xindi and how many times they came close to dying.
Dustin talked about when he was assigned to the Enterprise straight out of the academy. He mentioned the dealings with the Borg, when they found the Pegasus in the Devolin system, when the Enterprise-D was destroyed, when the crew went back into time to stop the Borg from preventing First Contact and even his last mission aboard the Enterprise when they fought Shinzon.
Hours later, they arrived to the coordinates of the radiation. The sensors picked up something and they didn't hesitate to let the two officers know about it. Hoshi pressed a few buttons on her side of the console.
"The radiation is beginning to create an interspatial anomaly. If we don't stop the radiation then it will create another doorway to the mirror universe." She said.
"I'm going to reconfigure the phasers to emit a phased anti graviton beam." Zofchak said.
Once finished, Zofchak joined Hoshi at the front of the shuttle.
"And…fire." He said.
After tapping a short sequence into the computer, sending it all the targeting and dispersion data it would need to complete the task at hand, Sato touched the firing button and then sat back in her chair as the beam did its thing.
The beam didn't look like the standard phaser fire. It was a terribly luminescent shade of jade and force Hoshi to temporarily shield her eyes from it until they could adjust to the intense light. They never completely adjusted; however, as each time she looked away Sato found an annoying spot in her vision where the beam's rays had temporarily stunned the rods and cones in her eyes.
Still, spots and all, it was an incredible sight to witness. The swirling beam drove into the source of the radiation like a hot knife through ice, generating a hurricane like maelstrom around its shrinking perimeters.
"It's working." Sato said as she glanced down at the sensor display. "the radiation's perimeter is down to ninety-five percent. Ninety. Eighty-five."
The two officer's successful thinking was cut short by the computer's annoying urgent beeping.
"What is it?" Zofchak asked.
"The radiation is collapsing too fast. The energy that it has inside doesn't have enough time to dissipate."
"I'm raising shields." Dustin said. "And pulling us back five thousand kilometers."
Instead of moving away, the shuttle lurched forward. Sato gritted her teeth as she realized what was going on.
"The beam is fluctuating. It's knocked navigation offline."
Turbulence began to slam into the shuttle. The two officers grabbed the sides of their stations, bracing for impact.
"If we don't get out of here, we're going to be pummeled by a level three shockwave."
More turbulence slammed into the shuttle. Sato briefly lost her grip on the edge of her station. She tried reaching for it but she couldn't grab hold. She fell back and crashed into the tactical station behind her, feeling the displays go dead as the force of her impact destroyed their interfaces. A brief surge of pain soared through her back.
The turbulence died down for a brief moment, long enough for Hoshi to return to her position beside Dustin and see the shuttle aimlessly pivoting about. Moments later, the entire bit imploded in upon itself and then it was gone. The calmness lasted only a moment before the rest of the storm hit. Dustin and Hoshi didn't even have time to react. The level three shockwave launched outward and slammed into the shuttle like a raging tsunami.
The last thing Hoshi remembered seeing before the shuttle's inertial dampers could no longer compensate for the extreme conditions was the sight of one of their warp nacelles disintegrating as it flew across the view screen. After that, everything went dark.