Star Trek: Babylon
Andrew J. Talon
"Our own Astrometrics confirms the MIDAS report," Lieutenant Kim reported, his hands tightly clasped behind his back in front of the Astrometrics lab's primary control console. Above him, on the raised platform below Voyager's main astrometrics screen, Commodore Koroshiya and Admiral Janeway stood, observing the sensor-enhanced image of the Sojourner's final moments before entering the anomaly.
"Navigational error, perhaps?" Asked Tal Ceres, the operations manager. Nervously, she looked up at the two flag officers next to Kim.
"Doubtful… They dropped out of slipstream and kept on going on impulse right into it," Koroshiya stated. Janeway nodded, and pointed to a speck of light coming from the side of Sojourner's hull.
"Look here though. Their RCS thrusters were firing wildly, while their impulse engines were at full burn. More than likely, they were hijacked."
"By whom, is the big question," Captain Chakotay, his arms crossed as he scrutinized the main screen darkly. He turned to Harry at his console. "Borg?"
"How? When?" Janeway asked. "All communications to the three slipstream vessels were conducted personally. By me. No one else could know."
"Borg sleeper agent?" Suggested Koroshiya. Immediately he felt the glares of everyone else in the room.
"Someone had to say it, Admiral," he continued flatly, meeting Janeway's icy gaze with one of his own. "Miss Hansen reported that the Borg Queen made contact with her before you came back home."
"The Borg Queen was too arrogant for such thinking. The Borg don't care about stealth, or subterfuge, or backup plans. They never thought they needed them," Janeway snorted. Koroshiya did not avert his gaze.
"… We will, of course, consider every option," Chakotay interjected, hoping to keep the two flag officers from tearing into eachother. Their arguments at the academy had been infamous. "Every option, Kathryn." He put a hand on her shoulder. She stiffened, before relaxing at his comforting touch. She nodded.
"Right now, I think our priority should be to get to that anomaly. Sooner we're there, the sooner we can start to figure this out. Commodore?" Koroshiya nodded stiffly.
"I've got it." The commodore turned, and headed out, the doors to the Astrometrics lab sliding shut with a hiss behind him. Kim frowned, and looked at his captain quizzically. Former captain, he corrected himself.
"Admiral?"
"TellVorik to get ready for slipstream. Miss Celes, alert the fleet."
"Aye sir," both officers reported, before turning and heading out as well. Janeway sighed. Just Chakotay and her. Just as it had been. Before…
No. You got over that a long time ago.
A month ago. Hardly a long time. And since he broke up with Seven…
"Kathryn?" The admiral broke out of her ruminations, offering a small, self-deprecating smile at her former first officer.
"Sorry… It's been a while. Since it was just the two of us, I mean." Chakotay nodded, his face thoughtful. He still hadn't moved his hand.
"Yes. It has been." Janeway didn't move. She waited. Chakotay still hadn't moved his hand. She coughed.
"Chakotay?"
"Yes Kathryn?"
"Your hand?" Chakotay's eyes went to his grip on the admiral's shoulder, and released it, gently, reluctantly.
"Sorry." Janeway sighed, shaking her head, before offering her former XO a sad smile. He smiled sadly back in return. But neither moved.
This is ridiculous, Janeway thought irritably, as she stepped to the right. Chakotay, however, had followed the movement exactly. Both stared at eachother. Chakotay moved to the left just as Kathryn tried it as well. They blinked at eachother… before they both started to laugh, shattering the tension.
"Admiral, I--" Kim had come in, to see the admiral and captain laughing hysterically, leaning against each other for support on the Astrometrics platform. The lieutenant blinked awkwardly, before slowly stepping out, and walking back down the corridor. He had the haunted expression of someone who has just seen their parents playing a kinky sex game.
Don't want to know. Really don't want to know…
The doors to Main Engineering exploded inward, shattering into flaming debris. Through this litter of destruction stalked Lieutenant Wyn, a wicked-looking weapon held out before her. This was no mere phaser rifle—an isokinetic mini-cannon was the ultimate in blowing up those things that simply refused to blow up. Wyn wielded it about, carefully looking through the darkness of Main Engineering. Only the warp core provided illumination. Wyn raised her hand, and pointed twice to her left. Two of her fellow security officers darted into the darkness, phaser rifles ready. She double-pointed to the right, and the other officers with her went as well. She herself continued forward, the rest of her security team following her.
As her eyes adjusted to the dim light, they widened in shock. She rushed forward, weapon still up, and knelt down next to the prostrate form of the ship's doctor.
"Dr. Kes? Kes? Can you hear me?" The doctor did not answer, her long blonde hair rustled only by the breeze of the engineering section's environmental systems. She looked up at the console above the unconscious doctor, and began to feel sick.
"Take the doctor to the brig. Activate the EMH in sickbay," she said flatly to two of her guards. They obeyed without question, thought she saw the confusion in their eyes. They carefully picked the doctor up with one of the emergency stretchers stashed in a nearby bulkhead compartment, and carried her out of Main Engineering. Wyn's frown deepened as she looked the console over. The Shutterbug-enabled processor in this console had been locked out to all but Dr. Kes. And the controls to the propulsion system were clearly online...
"Gah… Status?" Haro clumsily pulled herself to the conn console, and tapped in a few commands. The Bolian's cheek had a gash that bled bright blue, but she ignored it in favor of the captain's pained request.
"Inertial dampeners are at 50 percent. Good for us, otherwise we'd be paint." Haro grimaced, typing through a few more readings, as the dog pile of bridge crew slowly got up from their collected state underneath the viewscreen. The captain was at the bottom of the pile, and looked the worse out of all the other crewmembers. But, he still managed to get to his feet, shakily at best. Twee, having his anti-grav harness on, had been able to stay air-borne and away from the crunch, but the violent passage of the Sojourner had rendered him quite dizzy.
"Ew… Twee!" Griped Lieutenant Saffron, wincing at the partially-digested fish sitting in her lap. "Commander!"
"Sorry," Twee murmured softly, clicking as he floated drunkenly above the deck. Lee had managed to pull himself over the conn station, and started running systems diagnostics himself.
"Mitena, can you get a navigational fix?"
"Our primary sensor arrays are down… I'm switching to auxiliary now," she reported. The viewscreen, dead before, now crackled to life, static filling it's silver frame.
"Oh, much better," Saffron grunted. Lee managed enough energy to smack her in the back of her head.
"OW! Que'DAH'kuroch!"
"Language, Ensign," Lee reprimanded her with a wheeze. He winced as he moved and agitated an injury, before resuming tapping out commands into the console. His eyes narrowed.
"Shutterbug's running. Someone used it to take direct control of the engines and lock the rest of us out." His eyes then widened, and he froze. A minute ticked by, before Haro poked him in the shoulder.
"Ow!"
"Sorry sir, I thought you might have, I dunno, gone into some kind of hibernation. Who can tell with humans?" Haro shrugged. Lee sighed. The Bolian looked at the data on his console and blinked.
"WHAAT!"
"My thoughts exactly," Lee noted dryly. He tapped in a few last adjustments, hopefully getting the sensors back online…
"… Ree!" Twee squeaked in his native language, combined with a rather intricate tail movement. Lee didn't remember exactly what that expression meant (something about erectile dysfunction, jellyfish, and whales), but he didn't bother to strain his brain on recalling cetacean curses.
"… Since when was Earth's oceans red?" Saffron, a native of the border colony Setlik 3, asked. Lee grunted.
"Since when were Earth's oceans red, Ensign. Were. Speak the goddamned language correctly," Lee muttered, unable to put the bite into that remark it deserved.
Filling their viewscreen was the continent of North America, on Earth, located in Sector 001 (it was the capital world of the Federation, after all—why shouldn't it be number one? The big question was why the Borg called it that too). It orbited a main-sequence, yellow star called Sol, and was the birthplace of mankind.
And right now, it looked rather like a photo-negative.
The once yellow, green, and gray continent was a uniform black, with wide inner seas and rivers as red as the seas surrounding the shores. The icecaps were melted; all land seemingly scorched into lifeless oblivion, with the seas as blood pouring from numerous gashes in the dead world. The clouds that ran here and there were stone grey, flashing and crackling with lightening, but shedding no rain.
"Sir… The oceans are 60 percent iron oxide." Lee turned awkwardly, to Ensign Lessing, sitting at his science station with haunted eyes. "Atmosphere is a combination of methane, carbon monoxide, and pockets of fluorine. Geological processes have stopped. The core's dead. All of the land masses have been leveled, by some kind of-"
"Stop. Just stop." Lee sighed. "Lifesigns?"
"None, sir," Lessing whispered, thought everyone heard it. Haro hit a few keys on her nav station next to the conn, and swallowed audibly.
"I'm picking up a transponder… It's sending an automated message, sir."
"What does it say?" Lee murmured. Haro worked her jaw.
"'Thus lies the tomb of infidels, the fate all whom challenge the Lightgiver, our mistress Tu'Rai. So speaks… the Raii Empire.'"
To be continued…