The rest of the senior officers walked on to the bridge took their stations. Even Doctor Plumley and Counselor Nycz had walked on to the bridge. Commander Sparhawk was not yet fit for duty so Commander Merriell was still acting first officer. Allensworth was standing between Ops and Navigation.

"Lifesigns?" Allensworth asked.

"I'm reading one." Kell Perim said.

Allensworth sighed. "Alex, I would like you to begin an investigation. I'll be in my ready room."

Allensworth began to walk towards the ready room doors.

"Sir? I thought that..."

"JUST DO IT!" Allensworth snapped as he entered his ready room. Merriell was a bit taken back by the captain's tone. Counselor Nycz watched with a concerned look as the captain disappeared behind the doors of his ready room.

A thin blanket of smoke hung in the cold, clammy air, eerily illuminated by the faint red hue of the flashing alert lights. Fiery embers still glowed hot on many of the workstations, and were littered with dust, chunks of debris and dead bodies.

They were dead; there was no doubt in Amanda Plumley's mind about it. Michelle Trinn was hunched over the helm in a pool of blood, tainted black in places by the charred station. Most of her face was scorched black, and her left arm was gone entirely, still oozing blood.

One the floor behind the Trill was Alex Merriell, also dead; his head was turned nearly ninety degrees, and was barely attached to the rest of his body. Plumley compressed her lips and looked to the living Merriell, who stood in silence over his dead self.

Her gaze slowly meandered from the floor the Captain's chair, where Jermaine Allensworth was still seated. His face was bruised and bloodied, and his right arm was missing, apparently ripped right out of the socket. Plumley gulped, and turned back to Merriell. "What the hell happened here?"

"Doctor, I very much wish I could answer that."

A moment later, McKenzie and Zofchak joined Plumley and Merriell in front of the command chair. McKenzie saw that her counterpart was slumped over the tactical station, burnt so badly that it was practically reduced to ashes.

"This ship is damaged beyond repair." Zofchak said.

"Do we have any idea how this happened?" Merriell asked.

"None." McKenzie said.

Zofchak sat down in the first officer's chair and used the tricorder's power cells to activate the terminal next to the chair. Zofchak was summarily granted limited computer access; he tapped away at the controls for a moment, and then came back with some information. "Most of these files are fragmented. I can't access them here."

Obviously disappointed, Merriell expelled a long sigh. "Save them to your tricorder. We will have to analyze them when we get back to the ship."

"Do you have access to internal sensors?" Plumley asked.

McKenzie gained access to the Ops station by carefully moving around the body of Kell Perim. "Barely." She said. "The ship is running on reserve power, and it is rapidly failing."

"Can you tell where the lifeform is?" She asked.

As McKenzie went to work on the sensors, Plumley closed her eyes to the atrocities around her and waited for a response, the entire time wondering what had happened…or what was going to happen if they couldn't solve this mystery. Plumley didn't really want to imagine that reality, not that she had to, since it was staring her in the face.

The computer beeped, and McKenzie looked up from Ops. "It's on deck eleven, section three."

Immediately, the first officer slapped his communicator. "Merriell to Plumley. Beam us to deck eleven, section three."

"Acknowledged." The transporter chief said.

Seconds later, the away team materialized in the dark, murky corridors of deck eleven. There were no emergency lights or workstations to provide light, so the entire deck was wrapped in a blanket of pure darkness. Plumley activated her wrist light, revealing the hollowed out remains of the deck in front of them.

Everything was scorched black; most of the walls were reduced to ash and slowly crumpling to the soot-laden floor. If there was still somebody alive here, they were undoubtedly in pretty bad shape. Plumley wasted no time in pulling out her tricorder to seek out their sole survivor.

Within moments, the tricorder started beeping as it located the lifeform. Plumley glanced down at the display, which indicated the survivor was about ten meters ahead of them. She started walking, the soot and debris crunching under her boots with each step.

"It looks like we're headed to deflector control." Zofchak noted as they drew nearer to the life sign.

They walked down a few additional blackened corridors before coming up to deflector control. Both Merriell and Zofchak flashed their lights in the general direction, revealing two bodies, both of which were clearly dead. Plumley recognized them as Lieutenant Commander Megan Czambel and Ensign Jamie Kirby, or what was left of them. Both were missing limbs and appeared to have been severly bludgeoned. Plumley gulped, and shook her head indicating for the others to continue moving their lights.

They followed and moments later, the motionless body of Jason Sparhawk stood starkly amidst the beams of light. His jaw dropped slightly, his eyes widened, and a half second later, he fell to the deck. Instinctively, Plumley rushed to his side with her tricorder in hand, running the instrument over his body.

"He's in a state of hypertensive shock. We need to get him back to the ship at once."

She moved to tap her communicator but Plumley was cut off by Lieutenant McKenzie.

"He's not the lifesign we were looking for."

Plumley's jaw dropped. "What?"

He shined his own light down the corridor a few meters behind Sparhawk. Slumped on the floor, but clearly alive, was Lieutenant Commander Hoshi Sato. Quickly, Plumley rushed to her side and scanned her. "She's the same as the Commander. We need to get them both back to the ship."

"Those two survived…there still may be others." Merriell said after a moment.

"Unfortunately, the high levels of chronoton radiation interferes with our sensors. We can't pinpoint life signs from the Alexandria." McKenzie said.

"We'd have to a deck by deck search of this Alexandria." Zofchak said. "And that could take days we don't have."

Merriell sighed. He didn't like the idea of leaving people to die, but then again, back on their Alexandria, everyone was alive and well; if they were successful in saving themselves, saving the dead on this damaged Alexandria would be pointless. "Those two will have to be sufficient." He decided before tapping his communicator. "Merriell to Alexandria, six to beam up."

Jermaine Allensworth stood in his ready room staring out the window to the darkened version of his ship. There were multiple things on his mind. The terminal illness he had acquired was slowly eating away at him. Each and every day, a part of Allensworth died, and there was nothing he could do about it. He tried to ignore it, but the thoughts were always there, lingering in the back of his mind. For Jermaine, the end was near no matter what.

Suddenly his thoughts were interrupted by a chime at his door.

"Come in." He said.

The doors separated to show Counselor Nycz standing there.

"Counselor, what can I do for you?"

"Well, I was hoping I could ask that question. I noticed you were a bit aggravated on the bridge. I was just wondering if everything was okay."

"Yeah everything is fine."

Christine nodded unconvinced. She looked around the room hoping to see something that could give her something to talk about and maybe get the captain to talk about what is bothering him. Then she remembered that they were taken out of warp on their way back to Earth.

"Captain, why were we on our way back to Earth?"

The captain sighed knowing that the Counselor was notorious for getting answers out of people and he was no different even if he was the captain.

"The Terran Empire attacked Earth." He said.

"How bad is the damage?" The Counselor asked.

"The southeastern seaboard of the North American continent was almost completely destroyed. The second and third fleets were able to fight off the Empire but by then the damage was done." Christine heard Allensworth's voice slightly weaken. "Most of the crew knows but they are doing what they can to put it aside to do their jobs until we can handle that situation when we get to it. To be honest, they are handling it better than me." He said as he turned back to the window.

"Captain, what happened?" She asked as she approached him.

"Most of my family is from New Orleans. The entire state of Louisiana was destroyed. My father moved up to Maine after my mother's death. So it's just him and I."

Suddenly, the intercom kicked on. "Plumley to Allensworth."

"Go ahead, Doctor."

"I would like you to report to sickbay."

"On my way."

The captain entered sickbay and walked up to Alex merriell who stood near the center biobed in the center of sickbay, quietly observing Amanda Plumley working on the two new patients.

"It would seem that we are in quite a catastrophe."

"Not only us." Allensworth said.

"Oh?" Merriell said with a curious face.

"While you were gone, four more Federation starships emerged from the chronometric distortion. They were all in worse shape than the Alexandria. We've got more and more junk and debris emerging with each passing minute. It would seem that the Terran Empire will conquer us some time in the future."

The curious look on Merriell's face slowly faded into something that was more indicative of concern. "Commander Zofchak is going over each and every piece of data we located on the other Alexandria. Hopefully, we will have some answers soon."

"Folding his arms across his chest, Allensworth sighed. "Hopefully, I would feel a hell of a lot better if I knew when this was going to happen. I mean, I'm going to be afraid someone's going to come and yank my arm out every time I sit down in my chair."

"I could sit there if you'd like, sir." Merriell said with a slight grin.

The captain raised a hand to halt any further discussion. "Why don't we not talk about how we died or going to die or…this is going to make me go insane."

Plumley approached both of them causing Allensworth to turn his gaze upon the chief medical officer. "Amanda, what's the situation?"

She slowly turned her gaze to the two occupied biobeds. They appear to be in hypertensive shock, but they're close to being comatose. They haven't responded to any treatment we've tried."

"It's always something with this crew. It's never easy. Always some damned adventure." Allensworth said.

When he set out to examine the data collected on the other Alexandria, Dustin Zofchak had the distinct impression that the task would be relatively simple. Though the data was fragmented, the computer was generally good at sifting through the remaining data and putting it together.

However, none of the recursive algorithms in the Alexandria's database seemed to be able to construct more than a few sentences out of it. Half of if it was nonsensical. Perseverance, however, would do Zofchak little good with his other problem called interference. Ever since he sat down with the data, it seemed that a continuous line of other engineers stood at the door of his office with a continuous line of questions. This time it was Lieutenant Commander Hilary Kazarick, which told him that there was something actually important going on.

"Yes, Hilary?" He asked.

She tucked a lock of her brown hair behind her ear as she spoke. "We have a problem. I've discovered a microfracture in the warp core and it appears to be expanding."

"How the hell did that happen?"

He wasn't expecting an answer from Kazarick, which was a good think, because she certainly was not inclined to provide one. Instead, she stood wincing in pain as she rubbed her temples.

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah. It's just a headache that I've had all day. Do you want me to repair the microfracture?"

"Yeah. I'll be here if you need me."

The moment Captain Allensworth and Commander Merriell walked onto the bridge, Lieutenant Trinn immediately felt a wave of relief over her body, not that she disliked Commander Sato or distrusted her but with her pregnancy, Hoshi was a bit moody and sometimes feral. It simply felt reassuring to have Allensworth back on the bridge.

"Report." Allensworth said.

"Two more ships and a lot more debris came through the distortion."

"Do you think we should try collapsing it?" Sato asked.

The thought had occurred to Trinn as well. Not that closing the rift would solve their problems, but it would prevent anything evil from coming through without warning, not to mention keep the general vicinity clear of a massive debris field bigger than Wolf 359. However, Allensworth was not inclined to agree.

"We need all the clues we can get, Hoshi. Something of consequence as to stroll through there eventually."

Ironically, it was at that moment when Trinn saw the sensors light up with activity. "Bloody hell. I am detecting something on consequence, sir." She said.

Allensworth walked over to the Lieutenant. "What is it?"

"Sensors have picked up a new vessel that is not of Federation design. They are having difficulty locking onto it because of the…" Her voice trailed off.

"What is it, Lieutenant?" The captain demanded.

"It reads that the vessel is cubed shaped."

"Red alert. All hands battle stations." Allensworth said.