Hi-ya, all.  This part is actually the prolog – it's just a little bit of expository detail to fill in a couple of the blanks.  The language is real, and by real, I mean Klingon.  This is not a Star Trek crossover, and these aliens have nothing to do with Star Trek or any of it's derivatives.  They just speak Klingon, that's all.  And fly ships that look like the hospital ship and Klingon cruiser from the last episode of "Star Trek: The Next Generation."  So don't get all huffy.  In fact, why don't you just skip this chapter?  It was the prolog when I first published this – it's not very important, and you won't miss much.  So just skip on to the next chapter, which has the digidestined, and some scuba diving, and a naval captain with anger issues.

5


"I repeat, we are a medical ship on a mission of mercy. We do not--"

The captain was cut off as another bolt of energy cut across the bow of the tIq, slicing into her draining shields. She looked across the bridge at her first officer, who briefly shot her a 'what are you waiting for?' look before turning back to the tactical board.  There was really no question about using the burrower, but there was always a nagging bit of doubt.  What if this was the one time in a hundred it went wrong?  Sure, it could dump that battleship behind them in the middle of some ancient sun – and good riddance – or somewhere equally dangerous.  But what if the enemy ended up crashing into some innocent planet?

There's always plenty of time for regrets after it's all over.  "Prepare the burrower," she said aloud.

"Captian?" asked the first, "Are you sure?"

"Duj tlvoqtaH," she replied.  After the look that little worm had just given her… She made a mental note to have him beaten later. "Launch it and go to an emergency deceleration. Activate as soon as that cruiser gets within ten thousand kilometers of the epicenter."

"jlyaj," the first replied, and began making the calculations on his board. Moments later, "Ready."

"Do it."

The tIq slowed suddenly, and the angular green battleship shot past her.  On an interstellar scale, it was an extremely fast maneuver, but that only meant it took three minutes instead of thirty.  Four hundred and thirty seconds after the captain had issued the launch order, as the cruiser began to turn back towards the tIq's rounded hull and long nacells, a bright white flash shook the fabric of space and time. It began to become unweaved, as a bright rip opened up in space, long plasma tendrils sparking and flashing around it like the corona of a star.  The epicenter of the rift was directly between the enemy cruiser and the tIq, and moving toward the cruiser at a rate of 450 kilometers per second.  The rip quickly swallowed up the battleship, pulling her through time and space. The bridge crew aboard the tIq breathed a sigh of relief – for the moment.

"Captain.  Something's wrong."

She quickly strode to her chair, pulling up a nav plot – there was something wrong, indeed.  The rift wasn't closing up on itself.  The burrower technology was designed to create an unstable rift that collapsed in upon itself.  Specifically, they were designed to collapse after an object had made the journey through.  That wasn't happening, which was bad.  First, there was the possibility that the suQ battleship could come back through the rift.  Worse, the rift destabilized the gravitational fields in the nearest areas of space.  The destabilization was so minute, it would only seriously affect extreme gravity fields that had to be kept in a precise balance to be stable.  Fields like that of the tIq's propulsion system.

"Keep sensors locked on that rift – I want to know the second it looks like anything might be coming through.  Get engineering, and find out what shape our impeller drives are in."

"Captain," the sensor officer's voice was shaky.  "That rift is moving toward us.  Fast."

"ghobe'" the captian slowly whispered to herself. And then it was upon them.

The ride to the event horizon was much to slow, and rough.  Gravity waves washed over the tIq, breaking her shields and buckling her hull along the port nacelle.  The nacelle burst, spewing plasma and containment field generators across the tIq's wake in a blue-green cloud as she crested the edge of the rift and

the universe collapsed around them, exploding into possibility…

And they were through.

The tIq shot through the rift, it's hull, incredibly, intact, and almost undamaged. But it was clear to anyone who was looking that the tIq was dying. It's right nacelle was dragging a hole in space, pulling part of the rift away in a white streamer of unreality that trailed the ship as she coasted toward the SuQ battleship, and the planet it was orbiting.

Behind her, most of the rift folded into itself and out of existence. But a small portion of it remained, being dragged along by the tIq. The small, sinuating line of unreality the ship pulled was slowly abiding by the laws of our universe, the tear in space slowly closed until it was no more than a line of light stretched in five or so dimensions across the tIq's port nacelle.

With her nacelle, the ship had lost all her engine capability.  Her almost-a-kilometer-long hull was unable to settle into a stable orbit like the SuQ battleship, and she began her fall into the sea of a small, blue-green planet.