Chapter Two
Captain Darien Parker groaned as he picked himself up off the deck. His left arm was throbbing from where he'd hit the deck. He guessed that it was probably broken. Around him the bridge was in smouldering semi-darkness lit by the red haze of emergency power. Thick acrid smoke from three burning consoles filled the air. Sparks occasionally spat from shorting relays. There was just enough light to see that most of the bridge crew had survived.
"Damage report," he ordered moving over to the operations console where Ensign Q'rra lay motionless on the deck. Lieutenant Commander Beech picked himself up off the floor and staggered back to his station.
"Shields are down. Ablative armour integrity down to twenty percent," he reported as Darien checked Ensign Q'rra – it took only one look at the odd angle of the Katarian's neck to know that she was dead. "We are venting plasma from both nacelles. Fires are being detected throughout the ship. Automatic fire suppression off line. Fire control crews are responding. Environmental control systems are out. Artificial gravity has failed on all decks below deck seventeen. Engineering is responding. Casualty reports are coming in from all over the ship. Sickbay responding." Darien tapped his combadge.
"Bridge to engineering. T'Lar what's your status."
"This is Lieutenant Barrett sir. Lieutenant Commander T'Lar is dead an EPS conduit next to her exploded. We're in bad shape down here captain. We've had to shut down the warp core to avoid a breech. Impulse engines and thrusters are gone too. I am trying to restore main power using the fusion reactors on deck twelve but it will take some time. I'll have the fire control system back operational in a few moments. The same for environmental control. The plasma leeks in the warp nacelles are going to take awhile though. It's still to hot up there to get anywhere near the breach's. We've closed off those plasma conduits the venting will cease once there empty."
"Understood keep at it. Bridge out."
"Captain," Commander Urlet said. "You should get that seen to." The female Andorian gestured to Darien's broken left arm. She wasn't an expert on Human physiology not by a long shot but she knew enough to know that a Human arm, twisted in such a fashion midway down the forearm wasn't right. It was also obvious that her captain was in some pain though it was dampened at the moment by the adrenaline that would be coursing through his system. Darien looked reluctant to leave the bridge so she walked over to him and met his intelligent grey eyes with her own having to incline her head to do so, Darien was unusually tall for a Human and had a physique that could have been lifted from a Klingon warrior.
"You cannot help you're crew captain if you are incapacitated or distracted by pain," she reasoned. Darien sighed. He knew Urlet was right. The Andorian had more experience than him having been in Starfleet for nearly twenty years where as he'd only been in the fleet for thirteen years. In the year that he had known her he had come to value her council.
"You're right. You have the bridge commander. Keep me appraised of our situation. I will be in sickbay."
"Aye sir." Reluctantly – but secretly relieved – Darien moved to the turbolift and got cradling his arm the whole time.
"Sickbay," he ordered as he got into the lift. The doors closed and the turbolift started moving.
Lieutenant Rakan looked up just after his commanding officer had left the bridge.
"Commander sensors are picking up something strange," he reported frowning at the display. In the three lifetimes he had lived he had not seen anything like this. Urlet looked over at him.
"What is it?"
"Sensors are picking up something very strange. You should see this." Frowning Urlet walked up to the science station. "The quantum signature of the space surrounding us is completely different to ours. We're no longer in our own universe." For a few seconds there was silence on the bridge save for the soft wail of emergency sirens and the soft crackling of the fires.
"What do you mean," Urlet asked at last. Rakan turned to face the Andorian.
"Everything in the universe resonates on a quantum level. That quantum signature is a constant. For example the quantum resonance signature of a star is the same as say a Human quantum signature. The signature cannot be changed by any known process; the only material in the universe that doesn't resonate on a quantum level is antimatter. Everything else even the most exotic dark matter resonates at precisely the same frequency."
"Like a universe finger print?" Beech said from tactical.
"Exactly."
"So what your saying is that the quantum signature of the surrounding space is different to ours," Urlet said.
"Very different. And there is another thing. Astrometric scans confirm that we are still at the coordinates we were at in the Alpha Quadrant when we collided with the quantum fissure. But the space around us is completely normal. The fissure that brought us here apparently closed behind us. The stars are also different to what we know. Only one star is where it's supposed to be according to our charts."
"And that is?"
"Sol. The other stars are all over the place. For example Proxima Centauri is a little bit closer to Earth than it should be. Vulcan doesn't exist in its place is a black hole. Andoria doesn't exist in its place is a dark matter nebula. Bajor is at the coordinates that Cardassia is supposed to have. Romulus and Qo'nos have swapped places. And that's just to name a few." Again silence reigned on the bridge of Resolution. After a second a hissing sound replaced it as the automatic fire suppression systems came back on line and douched the three burning consoles in retardant. Environmental control came back on line at the same time and began clearing the smoke from the bridge.
Urlet considered what to do now. This was a turn of events that they had never expected when they left Starbase 314 to come here. Then there was the question of how in the universe they were going to get back to their own universe if they could. After a moment she came to the same decision that Captain Parker would have made if he'd been on the bridge to here this.
"Run astrometric scans to map the area surrounding us. I'll inform the captain of your findings."
"Aye sir."
*****
Sickbay
A Few Moments Earlier
Darien Parker walked into a sickbay that was filled almost to overflowing with wounded crewmembers. Though he wasn't a doctor he could tell just by looking that the majority of the injuries were blunt force traumas caused by people being flung into bulkheads and decks when the ship had been in the grip of the quantum fissure. But a few of the more serious injuries were burns caused mainly by plasma escaping from ruptured EPS conduits but some from electrical fires that were still burning at some places throughout the ship.
"Captain," a familiar voice said sounding tired and concerned. Darien turned to find himself confronted by his chief medical officer Dr Simon Tarses. "Are you hurt?"
"I took a bad spill on the bridge," Darien explained. "My arms broken."
"Yes I can see that," the Human/Romulan hybrid said softly. "Come over here." Darien followed the doctor over to the main bio bed. A crewman in engineering uniform lay there being cared for by one of the medical staff. The young mans face, torso and arms were covered with horrendous plasma burns from that EPS conduit that exploded in engineering killing the chief engineer outright.
Tarses picked up both a medical tricorder and a regenerator. First thing he did was scan his captain with the tricorder.
"You have a nasty fracture of the radius," he said after a moment. "Nothing I cannot deal with." He closed the tricorder and put it down before running the regenerator up and down Darien's forearm several times. After the first pass Darien felt the pain diminish, it had almost faded entirely by the seventh pass. "They're all healed. It will ache for a few days but it'll be fine provided you don't put to much stress on your arm. That means no weight training or rock climbing for a week am I clear?"
"As crystal," Darien replied covering a sigh at not being allowed to do either of the two things that calmed him the most.
"Good."
"Now then doctor. What are our casualties like?"
"Most of the injuries are blunt force trauma's. Broken bones, punctured lungs that sort of thing. The worst is Ensign Mallory he's broken both legs and sustained internal injuries to his abdominal area. Everyone will make a full recovery in a few hours. The burns are another matter. We have a lot of burns mainly from engineering – three engineering crewmen in addition to Lieutenant Commander T'Lar have died I am afraid. The others the burns vary in severity from five to thirty percent burns. Everyone will make a complete recovery but its going to take awhile."
"Keep me informed doctor."
"I will don't worry."
"Urlet to Parker," came the familiar voice of Commander Urlet over the comm. Darien tapped his combadge.
"Yes commander?"
"Sir we have a very serious problem."
*****
Ready Room A Couple Of Hours Later
Darien Parker sat quietly in the ready room trying to think of what on Earth to do now. At the academy and in command school they'd not taught anything about coping with suddenly having your ship flung into another universe with no known way of getting back. He supposed he was fortunate that so few of his crew just four had died in the transit and that the Resolution herself was still intact and thanks to the repair efforts of his engineers fully operational again. But he was still stuck in this universe. Rakan had the whole science division working on finding a solution to their current predicament but the Trill had already confessed that they had little change of success.
"Bridge to captain," Commander Urlet's voice said over the comm. Now what? Darien thought as he tapped his combadge.
"Yes commander?"
"Captain we're picking up a distress call on one of the higher subspace bands coming from a nearby system. Sir you're going to want to see this."
"Put the distress call on screen," Darien ordered standing up and walking round his desk towards the door. "I'll be right there."
"Aye sir." The doors to the bridge opened just as Urlet was signing off.
A stately middle-aged Human woman was displayed on the view screen. She looked very scared, the air around her was filled with smoke, other Humans could be seen running back and forth, or manning consoles. The whole image shook periodically as if wherever she was transmitting from was under attack. Static kept rolling across the transmission in time with the shocks.
"To anyone who can here me," the woman said in a frightened, desperate tone. "This is High Chancellor Travell of the Tollan. Our planet is under attack by the Goa'uld. Planetary defences failing. Please assist. I repeat this is…"
"Turn that off," Darien ordered. The signal vanished. "Helm how long would it take us to get to the Tollan planet?"
"At maximum warp five minutes."
"Take us there. Commander Urlet inform Doctor Tarses to prepare for emergency medical aide to a planetary population."
"Aye, sir." Darien moved to the command chair as the warp engines engaged.
"Red alert," he ordered calmly. "All hands man battle stations." Klaxon's wailed throughout the ship sending the crew hurrying to their stations.