Chapter 2: The Trojan Ship

Originally posted to the Star Trek Photomanipulation Archive forum on 25th April 2011.

"What is it?" Kathryn asks, pulling on her sleeveless leather jacket as she settles back into the pilot's seat on the slightly cramped bridge of the Raider class vessel that has become her home these past few months. She'd only been asleep for ten minutes before the call came down.

"Thought you'd want to know, we've got another derelict," Mariah Henley tells her with a smile. "They should place a beacon: Abandon hope, all ye who enter here."

"Then where would we get all our salvage from?" Kathryn grins, returning the expression. Not for the first time, she appreciates the easy camaraderie they have in the Maquis over the strained formality of Starfleet. God, she can't believe she ever used to act so rigidly. "Good work, Mari. Have you got an ID on it yet?"

"Transponder code's coming through now." Mariah's eyes widen slightly. "USS Mercury... it's Starfleet, Constellation Class."

B'Elanna whistles from her engineering board. "I haven't seen one of those in a long time."

"Same," Kathryn agrees, setting a course for it. "Any transmissions from it?"

"No signals, no beacon, nothing," Mariah confirms.

"Then it's not our problem. Get your team together, 'Lanna, it looks like we might hit the jackpot with this one."

"Way ahead of you!" B'Elanna exclaims, excitedly jumping out of her seat and leaving the Bridge down the flight of metal steps at the very back.

After a couple of minutes, the wrecked vessel hoves into view. Kathryn blinks, then furrows her brow as she takes in its design. "I've never seen a Constellation look like that before."

"Maybe Starfleet ordered a refit after you left?" Mariah wonders, albeit skeptically.

"I haven't been gone that long," Kathryn tells her. She has an uncomfortable feeling about this. "Any detectable lifesigns?"

When she doesn't reply, Kathryn turns to her friend. "Negative," Mariah eventually says. "But I don't know if that's what I'm supposed to be reading."

Kathryn leans over her shoulder at the display. "You're seeing the same spike I am in the terahertz range," she states rhetorically as she quickly checks over the data.

Mariah nods. "I almost didn't spot it. There seems to be some sort of masking effect in operation, but it's leaking in this spot here." She points to a section roughly where Main Engineering should be. "At a guess, I'd say there's something still running over there. But I'll be damned if I can work out what."

Kathryn twists back to her own console and pulls up a historical database. It takes a couple of minutes to make sure, but the facts are clear. "I don't like this. There's no mention of the USS Mercury in the Constellation's construction history. Its registration doesn't even exist."

"It's sitting right in front of us, Kat," Mariah argues. "Maybe the database is corrupted. It was never A-1 to start with."

Kathryn stares at it. "Scan the leak again, see if you can get past that masking field. I want to know what the hell's on that ship before I send anyone over."

Mariah sets the controls for a more invasive scan of the area in question. But as soon as she initiates it, something shoots out of the supposed derelict at incredible speed.

Michael Ayala at Tactical only has time to shout out one word: "INCOMING!" Then a blinding white flash floods the bridge as the ship is slammed backwards through space. The inertial dampers struggle to keep up and everyone is thrown to the floor, sliding to the back of the room.

Kathryn crawls blindly to a comm-unit, her eyes screwed painfully shut against the light. "'Lanna, get us out of here." There's no reply though. "'Lanna!" Her voice sounds strange to her ears, like an echo reverberating around her. The echo grows louder and louder until she's forced to jam her hands over her ears. Effectively blind and deaf, Kathryn Janeway can do no more. No one can. And around them all, the light continues to intensify until the ship itself dissolves into a pure mass of white.