Hoshi shook her head sure she had heard him wrong. It had to be some kind
of mistake.
"Pardon me?" Trip asked politely. Obviously he to was disbelieving of what had just been said.
"We believe it may have been a natural phenomenon, due to the particle residue left in its wake." Tuvok clarified.
"A natural phenomenon." Hoshi said almost to herself, catching everyone's attention. "I think it was a natural phenomenon. I found some anomalous readings and was analyzing them, that's why I was late."
"And what did the readings say?" Trip asked.
"That there was a tear in space-time at the bottom of the abyss." She said chagrin.
"A tear in space-time?" Trip didn't so much ask for clarification but more in the way of 'and you wait now to tell us this'.
"I was going to double check the readings and the math, which I'm not very good at, and bring it to your attention. But then I overheard the locals talking about the sacrifice and how great it was to have visitors this year to do the honors instead of locals. I wasn't quit sure what they meant but I figured anything with the word sacrifice in it couldn't be good." She shrugged. "And I still didn't make it in time."
Trip was rubbing his forehead with one hand by this point, the sudden victim of a headache, which arrived unannounced.
"Well if its natural, then there's really no one to blame for it, no one to track down to demand an explanation, or reversal for that matter." Malcolm commented, he seemed almost dejected about it.
"Well there may be a bigger problem." Janeway said. The three of them looked at her astonished she was still there. In their private conversation and assessment of their situation they had almost forgot the others were there.
"Bigger then this? This I'm not really sure I want to hear." Trip said, he didn't bother to look up but continued to rub his head.
"I second that." Malcolm said forcibly laying back in defeat.
"You see, in our history we have no record of you disappearing in the year 2152." Paris supplied for his captain.
"How is that possible?" Hoshi asked. Then she held up her hands as if to ward off a blow. "This doesn't have to do with time paradoxes dos it. Because honestly we recently dealt with one of those and all talking about it accomplished was to give us a large headache and more questions then I started with."
"I can easily sympathize with you," Janeway said, her brow creasing as if to prepare herself for future pain. "But there has to be an explanation, and I'm afraid we need to discover that before we can proceed any further. The last thing we need is to disrupt such a vital timeline in history."
"If you have records of our missions, which since you know we didn't disappear I assume you must have at least a limited record, I would like to see the mission to Climara. That was where this incident occurred. Or perhaps your information on the Climarians and their rituals." Trip suggested. He was falling easily in to the problem solving mode most engineers found second nature.
"I could help with the translation." Hoshi piped up, the last thing she wanted was to be useless.
"We will see what we can find." Janeway promised.
"In the meantime you are under my care and I must insist on rest and recovery." The doctor chimed in. he came around and scanned Hoshi again. " You have injuries consistent with a fall from a height, mixed curiously with heatstroke like symptoms, fatigue, nausea, dehydration. All in all you have a recovery period ahead of you which I plan to enforce." He wasn't the most pleasant doctor Hoshi ever encountered.
"You wont get an argument out of me." Hoshi said, feeling he needed an answer of some kind. Why anyone would choose to walk out of sickbay with that gruesome list she couldn't imagine. Talk about a workaholic.
"I would like to ask permission to help with the research if possible, sir?" Malcolm said to the captain.
'I rest my case' Hoshi thought to herself.
"I think in this case I concur with the doctors recommendation. We'll keep you apprised of the situation at every turn I assure you."
"How could you even think of work feeling like this?" Trip asked as he gratefully lay back with his arm over his eyes. "I'm just going to take the vacation offered and be glad for once it isn't my problem at the moment."
Janeway was smiling at them, but it had a childlike quality to it. The kind of smile one gets at age four when one looks with amusement on the antics of their grandparents and realizes for the first time how human they are. It was kind of creepy to Hoshi. She wasn't sure she was ready to be history quit yet.
The doctor was the one who caught her uneasy and possibly even sick expression.
"Are you feeling worse?"
"Suddenly, yes." She said closing her eyes to the calculations her brain was making. How many hundreds of years now had she been dead and buried?
"Hoshi, you ok?" she heard Trips voice ask, she opened one eye to see both he and Malcolm leaning forward waiting worriedly for her answer.
She smiled softly at them, men were such excitable creatures. "I'll be ok." Inside she wasn't quit so sure though.
"I'm going to give you something to help you sleep, the rest will do you a world of good." The doctor said a moment before she heard a hissing noise and stared to feel darkness close in around her. Her last thought was of how welcoming that darkness was. Then she fell in to a dreamless sleep.
Janeway noticed they way the two man visibly relaxed when put at ease by there crewmate. Hoshi was soon blissfully unconscious and the doctor was moving to the other beds ready to send them in to the same state.
"Like I said, we will keep you appraised of the situation." She said as way of reassurance, before the doctor gave Lieutenant Commander Tucker his injection.
"Thank you captain." He managed to say before sleep over took him as well.
"If there is anything I can do captain." Lieutenant Reed left the open- ended question hanging as the doctor came around to his side.
"I will keep it in mind Lieutenant." She assured him with a nod before his head to hit the pillow.
"Tuvok, call a meeting of the senior staff." Janeway said as she left the sickbay. "This is something we need to figure out ASAP."
"I agree, this could have very far reaching consequences." Tuvok said with a nod.
"At best." She murmured.
"Gather all the information we have available about this mission to Climara. I want to be as informed as possible." Tuvok nodded and they parted ways at the intersection as Janeway made her way to the turbolift and then the bridge.
In the turbolift, with that time to herself, she allowed herself to feel the awe that had been plastered all over Tom's face. These three people were living legends. They had ventured out in space on the first warp vessel to carry on of the most notorious name in federation and indeed earth history. They had truly boldly traveled out in to the stars with little more then a sketchy knowledge of the area at best.
Their time had been one were history was made with every mission, new discoveries with every away mission, new dangers around every bend.
It was much like what she and her crew were facing now, the fist humans in the delta quadrant. Seeing the unknown and uncharted everyday. They had a lot in common.
When she thought of what these people had already witnessing it was staggering. The first contact with the Klingons, the first records of temporal occurrences, the mysteries long standing they had solved.
Would people hundreds of years from now, on ships routinely transversing the delta quadrant, remember her crew, her ship, in such a light?
And if she suddenly found herself there among those future generations, would she be able to handle it? Maybe that was the most important question. How were these pinnacles of history going to stand in the future?
The turbolift doors opened interrupting her thoughts.
The members of the bridge crew were all looking at her expectantly.
"It is them, as far as we can tell." She answered the unspoken question.
"Wow." Harry Kim said from his station at ops. Everyone else seemed to quietly be pondering both the implications and honor their presence on the ship presented.
Janeway nodded her understanding to Harry for his observation on the situation and then silently made her way to the briefing room.
TO BE CONTINUED…
*I wish it would have been longer, im having a bit more trouble writing in two time periods viewpoints then I thought, bare with me.
"Pardon me?" Trip asked politely. Obviously he to was disbelieving of what had just been said.
"We believe it may have been a natural phenomenon, due to the particle residue left in its wake." Tuvok clarified.
"A natural phenomenon." Hoshi said almost to herself, catching everyone's attention. "I think it was a natural phenomenon. I found some anomalous readings and was analyzing them, that's why I was late."
"And what did the readings say?" Trip asked.
"That there was a tear in space-time at the bottom of the abyss." She said chagrin.
"A tear in space-time?" Trip didn't so much ask for clarification but more in the way of 'and you wait now to tell us this'.
"I was going to double check the readings and the math, which I'm not very good at, and bring it to your attention. But then I overheard the locals talking about the sacrifice and how great it was to have visitors this year to do the honors instead of locals. I wasn't quit sure what they meant but I figured anything with the word sacrifice in it couldn't be good." She shrugged. "And I still didn't make it in time."
Trip was rubbing his forehead with one hand by this point, the sudden victim of a headache, which arrived unannounced.
"Well if its natural, then there's really no one to blame for it, no one to track down to demand an explanation, or reversal for that matter." Malcolm commented, he seemed almost dejected about it.
"Well there may be a bigger problem." Janeway said. The three of them looked at her astonished she was still there. In their private conversation and assessment of their situation they had almost forgot the others were there.
"Bigger then this? This I'm not really sure I want to hear." Trip said, he didn't bother to look up but continued to rub his head.
"I second that." Malcolm said forcibly laying back in defeat.
"You see, in our history we have no record of you disappearing in the year 2152." Paris supplied for his captain.
"How is that possible?" Hoshi asked. Then she held up her hands as if to ward off a blow. "This doesn't have to do with time paradoxes dos it. Because honestly we recently dealt with one of those and all talking about it accomplished was to give us a large headache and more questions then I started with."
"I can easily sympathize with you," Janeway said, her brow creasing as if to prepare herself for future pain. "But there has to be an explanation, and I'm afraid we need to discover that before we can proceed any further. The last thing we need is to disrupt such a vital timeline in history."
"If you have records of our missions, which since you know we didn't disappear I assume you must have at least a limited record, I would like to see the mission to Climara. That was where this incident occurred. Or perhaps your information on the Climarians and their rituals." Trip suggested. He was falling easily in to the problem solving mode most engineers found second nature.
"I could help with the translation." Hoshi piped up, the last thing she wanted was to be useless.
"We will see what we can find." Janeway promised.
"In the meantime you are under my care and I must insist on rest and recovery." The doctor chimed in. he came around and scanned Hoshi again. " You have injuries consistent with a fall from a height, mixed curiously with heatstroke like symptoms, fatigue, nausea, dehydration. All in all you have a recovery period ahead of you which I plan to enforce." He wasn't the most pleasant doctor Hoshi ever encountered.
"You wont get an argument out of me." Hoshi said, feeling he needed an answer of some kind. Why anyone would choose to walk out of sickbay with that gruesome list she couldn't imagine. Talk about a workaholic.
"I would like to ask permission to help with the research if possible, sir?" Malcolm said to the captain.
'I rest my case' Hoshi thought to herself.
"I think in this case I concur with the doctors recommendation. We'll keep you apprised of the situation at every turn I assure you."
"How could you even think of work feeling like this?" Trip asked as he gratefully lay back with his arm over his eyes. "I'm just going to take the vacation offered and be glad for once it isn't my problem at the moment."
Janeway was smiling at them, but it had a childlike quality to it. The kind of smile one gets at age four when one looks with amusement on the antics of their grandparents and realizes for the first time how human they are. It was kind of creepy to Hoshi. She wasn't sure she was ready to be history quit yet.
The doctor was the one who caught her uneasy and possibly even sick expression.
"Are you feeling worse?"
"Suddenly, yes." She said closing her eyes to the calculations her brain was making. How many hundreds of years now had she been dead and buried?
"Hoshi, you ok?" she heard Trips voice ask, she opened one eye to see both he and Malcolm leaning forward waiting worriedly for her answer.
She smiled softly at them, men were such excitable creatures. "I'll be ok." Inside she wasn't quit so sure though.
"I'm going to give you something to help you sleep, the rest will do you a world of good." The doctor said a moment before she heard a hissing noise and stared to feel darkness close in around her. Her last thought was of how welcoming that darkness was. Then she fell in to a dreamless sleep.
Janeway noticed they way the two man visibly relaxed when put at ease by there crewmate. Hoshi was soon blissfully unconscious and the doctor was moving to the other beds ready to send them in to the same state.
"Like I said, we will keep you appraised of the situation." She said as way of reassurance, before the doctor gave Lieutenant Commander Tucker his injection.
"Thank you captain." He managed to say before sleep over took him as well.
"If there is anything I can do captain." Lieutenant Reed left the open- ended question hanging as the doctor came around to his side.
"I will keep it in mind Lieutenant." She assured him with a nod before his head to hit the pillow.
"Tuvok, call a meeting of the senior staff." Janeway said as she left the sickbay. "This is something we need to figure out ASAP."
"I agree, this could have very far reaching consequences." Tuvok said with a nod.
"At best." She murmured.
"Gather all the information we have available about this mission to Climara. I want to be as informed as possible." Tuvok nodded and they parted ways at the intersection as Janeway made her way to the turbolift and then the bridge.
In the turbolift, with that time to herself, she allowed herself to feel the awe that had been plastered all over Tom's face. These three people were living legends. They had ventured out in space on the first warp vessel to carry on of the most notorious name in federation and indeed earth history. They had truly boldly traveled out in to the stars with little more then a sketchy knowledge of the area at best.
Their time had been one were history was made with every mission, new discoveries with every away mission, new dangers around every bend.
It was much like what she and her crew were facing now, the fist humans in the delta quadrant. Seeing the unknown and uncharted everyday. They had a lot in common.
When she thought of what these people had already witnessing it was staggering. The first contact with the Klingons, the first records of temporal occurrences, the mysteries long standing they had solved.
Would people hundreds of years from now, on ships routinely transversing the delta quadrant, remember her crew, her ship, in such a light?
And if she suddenly found herself there among those future generations, would she be able to handle it? Maybe that was the most important question. How were these pinnacles of history going to stand in the future?
The turbolift doors opened interrupting her thoughts.
The members of the bridge crew were all looking at her expectantly.
"It is them, as far as we can tell." She answered the unspoken question.
"Wow." Harry Kim said from his station at ops. Everyone else seemed to quietly be pondering both the implications and honor their presence on the ship presented.
Janeway nodded her understanding to Harry for his observation on the situation and then silently made her way to the briefing room.
TO BE CONTINUED…
*I wish it would have been longer, im having a bit more trouble writing in two time periods viewpoints then I thought, bare with me.