Missing Day 3 Continued
Chapter Ten
Bree Davis sat down on the couch under the window in Janeways Ready Room. She looked around nervously between Janeway, Chakotay, Tuvok, and Grant.
"Well?" Janeway finally broke the silence of them all staring at each other. Grant looked at her, then sat down next to Bree.
"I'm not sure where to begin." He replied.
"The beginning is a good place to start." Janeway said as she leaned against her desk.
"The beginning. Well, from my perspective that would be about seven hundred years ago." Grant said, remembering back into the past.
Aranova Space Complex - Orbiting Meritu Vandi
Command Center
"Sub-Commander, I am reading a massive distortion on the 12-band coming in from the subspace transit network." A tactical officer said from his post. The Command Center was laid out with nine computer stations forming a large ring in the middle of the room, and a full 360 degree wall screen that wrapped around the entire room.
Grant Reev was the second in command at the time, and with the current absence of station commander, he stood from his chair and walked over to the tactical post. "Show me." He replied.
A map appeared on the screen outlining the subspace transit network.
"This isn't one of our ships, sir. I can't identify them. It looks like they entered the network from this buoy here." The officer said, pointing at the screen.
"Venretti!" Grant cursed under his breath. "They are traveling twice the speed those corridors can withstand! Can you project their exit point?"
"It looks like they don't have one, I would guess they entered it by accident." The officer replied.
Grant turned around and raised his voice to the room. "Tactical alert! We have an unidentified vessel entering our space at a dangerous speed! Have two warships at standby."
The lighting in the room turned from pure white to a deep amber. Everyone begin securing their systems and preparing for a possible attack.
"See if you can raise them."
"Your on." The officer replied after he tapped a button.
"This is sub-commander Grant Reev of the Indovian Empire. You have entered our space illegally, disengage your engines and prepare to be escorted in by our warships." The response was a large burst of static. "See if you can clear it up, then retransmit."
"This is Ca… Dorian Yates of t… …ederation stars... …rprise, we request immediate assis... …drive malfunction, our hull… …buckling and cannot withstand more str…" Grant watched the dot on the screen for a moment after he heard the reply.
"Dispatch a warship and a rescue ship. Send a signal to the next buoy in their path to eject them from the transit network." Grant said, and covered his mouth with his hand for a moment.
"The next buoy in line is in this sector…" Replied the officer.
"Do it anyway. I don't want them breaking apart inside the transit network."
"Done." He watched the sensor readouts as the ship approached the next buoy. A few moments went by, and he saw the rescue ship Trunlv and the warship Krelin take positions outside of the Aranova.
There was a sudden burst of light on the wall screen, as a ship appeared. It was leaving a flaming trail of plasma exhaust in its wake, and traveling at a very unstable speed. An alarm sounded in the command center.
"Sir, they came out super-accelerated. In less than a minute they are going to collide directly into Meritu Vandi!"
Grant slapped a button on the panel next to him, activating a communication line to the Krelin. "Can you use your stabilizer to alter their course?"
"Already on it. I'm going to try to force them into a high orbit of Pell." Came the response through the speakers. Grant walked closer to the wallscreen and watched the Kerlin surge foreword, and attempt to correct the alien vessels trajectory. The stabilizer beam locked onto the ship, inadvertently causing its reactor to breach. Grant gasped and shielded his eyes as the alien ship exploded. The Krelin got caught in the blast, and exploded as well.
The Aranova space complex shook violently for a moment, knocking Grant to the floor, and most of the crew out of their chairs. He stood back up quickly, and snapped his fingers.
"System access: Temporal Reverse. Time: 45 seconds, enable!"
The command center flashed blue for a moment, the only room protected from the time reverse. Time jumped backwards 45 seconds. The screen suddenly flashed, and the alien ship blasted into visual range.
"They just came out again!" An officer notified him.
"Raise the Krelin, quickly!" Grant yelled. "Don't use your stabilizer, it didn't work!"
"Understood. Can we use a velocity-decrease transport here?" Came the response from the commander of the Kerlin.
"It looks like our only option. Back off to a safe distance and standby." Grant replied. He leaned down to the officer manning the station he was standing over. "Try to put them on Pell."
"Ill try sir, but they are going so fast this may not work." He replied, punching commands into the panel.
"I know, but it's our only option. Initiate when ready." He walked up to the screen and watched the alien ship burn through space, nearing Meritu Vandi. "Bring up a view of the target coordinates."
A new image appeared on the screen, a bare field on the surface of the moon.
"Initiating!" The officer said sternly. A pink-blue flash of light engulfed the ship, and it vanished from the screen. A few seconds went by, when an outline of the ship appeared on the moon. The pink and blue sparkling of the velocity-decrease transport system filled the outline, taking much longer than it was supposed to.
"Work, yaratu!" Grant cursed quietly, watching the image. There was suddenly a bright flash, and the ship fully appeared. It skidded across the surface a few yards, and came to a stop in one piece. "It worked!"
There was a large sigh of relief around the room, when an officer spoke up.
"They are hailing us."
"Put them up." Grant replied.
The speakers crackled slightly, although the quality was much improved from the previous communication.
"I don't know what the hell you people just did but whatever it was… it worked. Thank you." Came the grateful voice on the other end.
"Your welcome, and welcome to the Indovian Empire. We are dispatching a rescue ship immediately." Grant said, pointing towards an officer to dispatch the Kerlin.
"Much appreciated. Are you the one in charge of all this?" Grant cocked his head slightly at the question.
"That's correct…"
"Well when you get down here, and assuming its not broken, you and I are going to have a bottle of Romulan Ale together. Looking foreword to meeting you, Yates out."
--
Grant looked up at Janeway and smiled.
"I remember thinking how odd it was the he wanted to share a beverage with me after they had crash-landed." He said.
Janeway put her cup of coffee down and sat on the couch next to him.
"Not to pry… but how old are you? You said that happened over seven hundred years ago and you were the commander at that station? You don't look a day over 30."
Grant chuckled slightly. "By your calendar, I am nearing 800. I was young then, my military days have long gone. Dermal regenerators maintain my outside appearance. Bree here is a little over 200."
"Incredible." Janeway said, thinking.
Tuvok stepped foreword. "You said that the Enterprise accidentally triggered one of your subspace transit buoys and got transported to your sector of the universe?"
"That's correct." Grant replied.
"Could the same thing have happened to us?" Chakotay asked, joining the conversation.
"Well that's where the mystery begins," Grant started, "our buoys reside in the 49th layer of subspace, and the Enterprise triggered them because of their Torsion Helix drive. You, however, do not have access to that layer of subspace yet. It doesn't make any sense. There is a possible explanation. The Enterprise damaged the subspace transit network by traveling in it so fast. We have been repairing it for a long time, but I'm afraid that there was damage to some of our temporal hardware that was overlooked. It's possible that if you encountered a damaged temporal buoy that is residing in normal space, you could have triggered it."
"But from our perspective, all of this happened in the future. Our future. How could it be affecting us in the past?" Janeway asked.
"Hence the word temporal. I'm afraid that it created reverse-shocks, damaging the buoys in the past as well. When you have damaged hardware in many timelines, it takes a lot of time to repair the damage." Grant replied.
"I hate time travel." Janeway groaned.
"Captain, may I speak with you alone?" Grant asked, as he stood up to look out the window. Janeway nodded at Chakotay and Tuvok, and they all left the room. Grant looked back at her and sighed. "I have already told you too much Captain Janeway, but this is all information you must know." Janeway frowned, and sat back down on the couch.
"I have a feeling you are about to deliver bad news." She spoked softy.
"That is correct. In your future, my past, the relationship between Starfleet and the Indovian Empire did not go well. Once the two discovered each others existence, peace talks followed. The Federations values did not match that of the Empire however, and eventually war broke out." Janeway covered her mouth, already seeing where it was going. "It ultimately ended in the complete conquest of Starfleet, and the United Federation of Planets. They fell within a year to the Empire."
Janeway sat in silence for a moment, and then spoke. "Why are you telling me this?"
"Because it is up to you to change it." He replied.
"As much as I don't like the outcome, I cannot change the future. It goes against everything…" She stopped when he held up a memory chip.
"This will tell you how to modify a shuttlecraft to get past our sensors. There is something you must see."
"What?"
"The Enterprise."
Her jaw dropped with shock. "The Enterprise is here? Over seven hundred years later?"
"It was secured several years after its crash. Its now in a remote sector of our space. The coordinates are also here on this chip." He stood up, and handed it to her. "I cannot tell you any more now. The rest you must discover for yourself." He turned and walked out of the room. Kathryn Janeway sat there for a few minutes, thinking and staring at the chip. She finally reached up and softly touched her comm badget.
"Janeway to Paris."
"Paris here."
"Remember those warp core reinforcement modifications you talked to me about before we crashed here?"
"Yes Ma'am."
"Have you had a chance to complete them?"
"No, I've had my hands full with some other stuff."
"Well drop what your doing and report to the shuttle bay. After you have made the modifications let me know, because we are going on a little ride."
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