Wanderers (Pt. III)



by Darrin Colbourne





"We're in position." Mayweather called out.

"All stop." Archer said. "Thrusters at station-keeping."

"Aye, Sir." Mayweather said. "Holding station."

The bridge crew regarded the empty expanse of stars on the screen, looking for anything out of the ordinary. "We should be approximately one light second away from the 'Null Pocket' in our current position," T'Pol said, "as indicated by the warning message."

Archer approached the screen. "You'd think we'd be able to see an energy field that nullifies subspace," he said. "Malcolm, is the probe ready for launch?"

"Just say the word, Cap'n." Reed said. The trip had taken a few hours, and the crew had used the time to prepare Enterprise's offboard probe. The small sensor craft was waiting in one of the torpedo launch bays.

"The word's 'Go', Lieutenant." Archer said.

"Launching probe." With the touch of a button Reed ejected the probe into space. It activated on its own and sped away, following a preprogrammed course as it transmitted telemetry data which was displayed on T'Pol's console. The bridge crew watched as the device closed the distance to the "Null Pocket" without wavering, scanning away as the minutes ticked by until it reached the invisible boundary.

As the probe crossed into the zone, the area of space ahead of Enterprise erupted into a massive light display. Arcs of bright blue light twisted and coursed across the entire field of vision, drowning out the light of the stars. After several seconds the effect disappeared, as quickly as it had come.

"Captain," T'Pol said, her tone slightly altered, "I've lost contact with the probe."

Archer stared hard at the view screen. "Full magnification." He said.

"Full magnification." Mayweather said as he complied. The probe was nowhere to be seen.

"Long range scan." Archer said. "See if you can get a fix on it."

"Already tried, Sir." Reed said. "It's gone."

Archer frowned. "Distortion of subspace wouldn't turn something invisible, would it?"

"I do not have enough data to give you an appropriate answer, Captain." T'Pol said. "Perhaps we misinterpreted the message."

"I didn't misinterpret what I translated." Sato said. "The message didn't say anything about objects disappearing."

"Then where did the probe go?" Archer said softly. The question was rhetorical, but T'Pol answered anyway.

"That is unknown at this time, Sir."

He looked back at her when she spoke, then looked back at the screen. "Starfleet's not gonna be happy. That was our only probe, and it wasn't cheap."

"There is little that we can do about it." T'Pol said.

"Actually, there is one thing we can do about it. We can go get it."

"Are you suggesting that we enter an energy field that may deny us the ability to go to Warp and take us out of contact with our homeworlds?"

Archer answered as he returned to his chair. "I'm not 'suggesting' anything. Those are my orders. We'll advance to within one light-second of the boundary. Even if the Warp engines become useless we should be able to get back on impulse. Besides, I'm beginning to wonder just how valid that message is. Take us in, Mister Mayweather, one-quarter impulse."

"Aye, Sir." Mayweather said. He manipulated the controls and piloted the ship toward the Null Zone. Archer counted the seconds as Enterprise closed the distance on impulse power. Everyone on the bridge watched the viewscreen, anxious to see what passage into Warp-less space would feel like.

"Crossing boundary in ten seconds." T'Pol said. Archer took a deep breath.

Ten seconds later, the bridge was filled with searing blue light patterns, like the ones they'd seen when the probe crossed the boundary. Then the ship was buffeted again, much more violently. This lasted for about a minute, shaking loose objects to the deck and throwing crew members around.

Finally, just when they thought the ride couldn't get worse, everyone suddenly felt an enormous rush of speed that threw seated people into the backs of their seats and threw standing people to the deck. Archer kept his focus on the screen. They were barreling through a massive expanse of green energy that looked like a stretch of thin clouds.

"All stop!" He grunted, straining against the inertia. Mayweather acknowledged, and the crew was thrown forward as the engines cut off.

"I thought I said 'one-quarter impulse'!" Archer said.

"That was one-quarter impulse, Captain." Mayweather said. "That acceleration came out of nowhere!"

"T'Pol, how far are we from the boundary?"

The Vulcan, who had just picked herself back up, checked her display. "We are approximately 15 million kilometers away from the boundary."

Archer stood up and glared at the swirling green mass on the screen. "Any sign of the probe?"



Reed started scanning. "Yes, sir. Now tracking the probe, bearing 130-mark-7, 60,000 kilometers away."

"Confirmed." T'Pol said. "We're receiving telemetry again. The data we're receiving is...fascinating."

Archer needed to get his bearings. "Hoshi, have Commander Tucker report to the Situation Room. Malcolm, T'Pol, I'll need you there as well. Let's figure out what's happening."





"The Warp engines were rendered useless as soon as we crossed the boundary," Tucker said in the Situation Room minutes later. "The machinery is working just fine. We're just not producing any Warp energy."

"None?" Archer said. "Is that possible?"

"It's not supposed to be, but that's what's happening. We had to shut down the core before the matter/antimatter reactions burned out the Warp coils."

"Well, at least that part of the message was true. Any idea what's causing it?"

"The same disruptive energy that interfered with our subspace field when we first entered this area," T'Pol said, "only much more powerful." She manipulated some controls on the briefing table and the screen in the center displayed a graphic representation of the Null Pocket. "This area is inundated with neutrino clusters, packets of energetic particles that interact like nanoscopic star systems. The clusters form into thousands of elliptical bands, which revolve and precess throughout the whole area. Under normal conditions, neutrinos can have a debilitating effect on a subspace field. Under these conditions, they are strong enough to turn any subspace field completely off. The race that left the message must have discovered this phenomenon, possibly by accident, then set a up a neutrino field around the perimeter to warn off unsuspecting travelers."

"Maybe," Archer said, "but I still want to know more, like what about that burst of speed we experienced?"

"A lensing effect. The polarity of our impulse emissions attracted the neutrino clusters, causing several of the energy bands to collapse in our wake. The scissoring of the bands distorted the energy output of the plasma exhaust, creating a much more dynamic propulsive force."

"I get it," Tucker drawled. "So instead of one-quarter impulse taking us the distance from the Earth to the Moon in four minutes..."

"...it took us 50 times the distance in about four seconds." Archer finished. "Aren't our inertial dampening systems supposed to compensate for such accelerations?"

"Accelerations at Warp, yes, where we're in a state of reduced mass. There is no reduction of mass at impulse speeds. There you're following Newtonian Physics, not Subspace Theory. It was too much for the dampening fields to beat at their current settings."

Archer looked at the display a moment longer and let that sink in. "I don't buy it." He finally said.

"It is the only logical conclusion." T'Pol said.

"I don't mean the science of it. I don't buy that anything about this was accidental. I mean, how likely is it that a pocket of space like this would come about by chance?"

"The odds against such conditions occurring randomly are approximately 67,354,272.53 to one."

The other officers looked strangely at the Vulcan for a moment. "I didn't know you could do that." "Trip" said.

"It is simply statistical analysis." T'Pol demurred.

"Well, okay," Archer said, "given those odds, do you honestly think that somebody just blundered into a phenomenon like this?"

It was the first time he'd ever seen T'Pol at a loss for anything to say. The happy circumstance only lasted a moment. "It is possible. We blundered into it."

"No we didn't." Reed said. "We blundered into the lighter effect surrounding it. That message and the neutrino ring were probably meant to scare off the curious, not potential lost souls. I'll wager whoever left it didn't expect anybody to go further. We did, and now we're in a place where the speed advantage given by Warp travel is nullified, but where the best impulse drive can dominate any engagement."

"Your suspicious nature is getting the better of you."

"Then so is mine." Archer said. "Malcolm, have the scanners picked up any ships or artificial constructs in the area?"

"Not so far. The energy field is also doing a number on the sensors. I'll have to adjust them to compensate."

"Do that. And 'Trip', while he's doing that I want you to adjust the inertial dampening systems to deal with the impulse accelerations. T'Pol, until we know for sure that this 'Null Pocket' is a natural occurrence I want you to try and figure out what kind of technology someone would need to construct it. We'll conduct an area wide search when 'Trip' has finished making the adjustments but until then I want the probe to do a sweep of the sector as far ahead of us as possible. Dismissed."

The other officers went about their duties as Archer resumed his place on the bridge. He couldn't take his eyes off the energy field on the screen.

"What's really out there?" He muttered to himself.



It took some getting used to, but after some fits and starts Archer and Mayweather got used to navigating Enterprise under the current conditions. With the new accelerations all of the impulse power commands took on a whole new meaning, but between the Captain and the Pilot a new set of operating procedures had been worked out. Mayweather smiled as he flew, enjoying the new sensation of thrust that came with the enhanced motive force. Everyone could feel it. Tucker hadn't managed to adjust the inertial dampeners to completely blank it out, but at least now it felt less like a rocket ride to the moon and more like a fast car on an open road.

The ship was executing a thorough search of the "Null Pocket", crisscrossing the sector along with the probe and stopping at intervals to do full power, long-ranged scans. They had been searching for twenty minutes when the probe turned something up. T'Pol looked at the readings through her magnascope and gave commands to the probe to adjust its systems, then reported what was found.

"There is a debris field bearing 327-mark-80, 5.6 million kilometers distant." She said. "Possibly the remains of a ship, configuration unknown. The materials are alloys made of known elements, including traces of materials for warp coils." She paused for a moment, then turned and looked directly at Archer. "There is evidence of weapon impacts."

As Archer let that sink in, Reed spoke up. "Captain! Sensors are picking something up, bearing 084-mark-2, range 2 million kilometers."

"Is it a ship?" Archer said.

"More like a construct. We're too far away for details."

The Captain thought a moment, then decided. "T'Pol, keep the probe by the debris field and get as much data as you can. Mr. Mayweather, head for the construct, slow impulse."

At "slow impulse" the trip only took seconds. Suddenly the forward view screen was filled with the image of what appeared to be a space station. Archer ordered "All Stop", and the Ensign slowed and used the maneuvering thrusters to keep the ship in one spot.

The construct was a giant ring, dark grey in color and tapered so that the outer edge appeared sharp, while the mass was built into the inner edge. There were no position lights or marker beacons, so that only the light from the surrounding energy defined its form.

"The object is 1000 meters in diameter." T'Pol said. "Exotic alloy construction, no sign of propulsion systems."

"Any bio signs?" Archer said.

"Unable to determine that. Something is interfering with my bio-scans."

"Same for weapons." Reed said. "No way to tell if the thing is armed."

"Try to hail them." Archer said.

Sato acknowledged and took a minute or two to try and contact whoever had built the ring. "No response. Actually, I can't detect any communications signals at all."

Archer had a grim look on his face. He didn't want to let this mystery go unsolved. "Do you think there might be a way in?" He asked.

"One moment..." T'Pol said.





It was a moment they didn't have. The strange ship shadowing Enterprise dropped its distortion fields just as it crept to within 50,000 thousand meters of the Earth ship. The occupants opened fire, slashing an energy beam across the stern part of the saucer.





The entire ship was rattled by the impact. Consoles on the bridge sparked and exploded as excess energy surged through the power transfer systems. Some more of the crew were wounded by the frying equipment.

"Polarizing hull!" Reed called as another beam lashed at the starboard nacelle strut. "There's a hostile ship on our stern!"

"Evasive maneuvers, full thruster!" In this area of space, the thrusters would work just as well as the impulse engines in normal space. It would allow them to evade without flying away too far and fast to fight back. As Enterprise moved, the alien ship followed, still firing. "Put the ship on the screen!"

An image of the hostile ship came up. It was small, about the length of one of Enterprise's nacelles, and had a slim fuselage with inlaid warp nacelles. Large, bayonet-like prongs were mounted on either side of the fuselage, and half their length protruded beyond the end of the main body of the ship. The energy beams were being generated between these two extensions, expanding and lancing out at the Earth ship.

"Where did it come from, Lieutenant?" Archer said.

"It must have some kind of stealth technology, Sir!" Reed said. "I didn't detect it until just before it fired!"

"Wonderful! Mayweather, bring us about! Reed, load torpedoes and energize the pulse cannons. We're going to engage!"





Aboard the attacking craft, a secure signal was being broadcast to a distant relay station. "Report this to the viiratu'chann!" The commander of the craft transmitted. "Watch Mission Cho-Lok is now engaging the Earth ship inside the Shroud Zone of Station 457, in the proximity of the base! Repeat, we are engaging Enterprise! The Humans have found our Armory!"





TBC...