Chapter Two: Along Came the Spider

Captain Payne promptly studied the status of his fleet. Although he had lost the Hanoi and Repulse, he was glad that the rest had made it back given the ferocity of the battle and the overwhelming odds they had faced. The turbulent passage through the wormhole had only made matters worse. Every ship had sustained various levels of damage with the Kidd and the Udaloy having fared the worst. They were so severely mauled that they would have to be put into dry dock for repairs. It'd be weeks before they could be brought back to fighting form again. A distressed helmsman interrupted his train of thought. "Sir, I think you should take a look at this."

"What is it?"

"It's DS9 sir, it's gone."

"What?" He quickly scanned the sensor readings and realized that Sato was right. There was no sign of DS9. It had to be the sensors. He ordered engineering to check their sensors and scanned the area again but it still came up negative. Believing that their sensors were faulty, he ordered the rest of the fleet to follow suit. Nothing! Fearing the worst, he ordered astrometrics to run a detailed scan of the area. He needed to know what was going on.

After what seemed like hours, they got their answer. Not only were they lost, it seemed that they weren't in their own universe at all. Somehow, their journey through the wormhole had deposited them into a different universe. To make matters worse, there was no sign of the wormhole that had brought them here.

Captain Payne promptly held an impromptu meeting with all the captains to assess the situation. Once seated around the table, Captain Payne asked his science officer Lieutenant Tagget to explain to the gathered what had transpired. "As of now, we only have a working hypothesis," he started. "My staff is currently going over all the sensor logs to paint a better picture but that could take a while. The prevailing theory is that when the dominion torpedoes exploded in the wormhole, it caused an energy spike; temporarily displacing the end coordinates of the wormhole from DS9 to our current position. Where this current position is, we aren't sure. We haven't been able to get an exact fix yet." There was a stunned silence for a while. Finally Captain Puchenko broke the silence, "Has this ever happened before?" He had wanted to ask if they could get back but decided to hold that question for a while. "Yes it has, on several occasions Captain. There are a number of recorded incidents in which starships have found themselves transplanted to a different universe. Even Captain Kirk had one such incident. They all occurred under different circumstances though." "What does that mean?" "Well, although Starfleet has records of temporal and universal displacements, it has always happened under unique circumstances. Therefore, that knowledge may or may not help us in our present situation." "I see." This went on for quite a while as the apprehensive captains asked many question. Few got satisfactory answers.

Next on the agenda was to determine their game plan. They were in a strange universe cut off from the rest of Starfleet and had to come up with something if they were to survive this ordeal. After a lengthy discussion they finally arrived at an accord. Their first order of business was to get the repairs completed as best as they could under the circumstance and take care of their wounded. Once this was done they would start looking for ways to get back.

Several weeks had passed since their arrival in this strange universe and most of the repairs were complete. They had been busy trying to figure out a way back to their own reality but so far had had no luck. This was starting to take a toll on crew morale. After another meeting to address this problem, the captains decided to look for help from the natives. Maybe they knew something about the phenomenon that that transported them here. It was a shot in the dark but still better than nothing.

At first, only the Mindanao and the Tarantul were assigned to this duty. Being Defiant-class ships, they lacked the advanced science labs and sensors of the bigger ships so they would serve better as scouts. They were soon joined by their sister ships the Harbin and the Udaloy. It was during one of these scouting trips that the Mindanao and the Tarantul ran into trouble.

The pair was surveying a star system about 10 light years from the main fleet when they ran into a heavy localized asteroid field surrounding a gas giant. There was something strange about this asteroid field. It seemed as if a small moon or asteroid had been attacked and reduced to rubble. The presence of debris of numerous vessels scattered throughout the asteroid field seemed to support this hypothesis. Something terrible had happened here. However, an even more interesting find was the carcass of what seemed like a gigantic spider. Although its life signs were very faint, it was still alive. This finding fascinated Captain Narayan. He had encountered lots of life forms during his distinguished career in Starfleet but had never seen something as large and sinister as this. Stating it as large was something of an understatement as the creature easily dwarfed the 170m long Mindanao. Even in the current state, the creature easily measured some 1000m across from tip to tip. A voice in the back of his mind told him to leave the creature alone but Captain Narayan couldn't bring himself to do so. Something was pulling him closer. Being the senior Captain, he instructed the Tarantul to carry on surveying the rest of the system while he studied the creature.

She woke up to a pounding headache. No, it felt more like her whole body was on fire. For a while, she couldn't figure out why, but as her senses cleared up she started to remember what had happened. There had been an intense fight and she had been in the midst of it. Her masters had sent her to accomplish the job and she had done it. It had been awfully painful but she had carried it out nonetheless. Her masters were going to be proud of her. But first, she must get back. Slowly she looked around to get her bearings and then she noticed the small ship that was scanning her. It was like no ship she had encountered before. Nonetheless, they were poking and prodding her with strange sensors. She didn't like being invaded like this. She was a ship of the line and they need to show her respect. She was going to teach them to fear the wrath of the shadows. Having decided on her course of action she struck out.

Tarik was on duty at the weapons control. The moment he had laid eyes on the menacing creature, he knew it reeked of trouble. His first instinct was to turn and head the other way but Captain Narayan had other ideas. Why anyone would want to be so close to such a vile creature, he simply couldn't understand. But orders were orders. So instead of putting distance between themselves and the creature, they were up close and studying it. But being the weapons officer, Tarik never let his guard down. The moment he noticed a power surge in the creature, he raised shield without even being ordered to do so. It was this quick reaction that saved their lives. The creature emitted a powerful beam that slammed into the shields. "Shields down 30 percent," he yelled out.

She couldn't believe what she saw. The little ship had actually withstood the blast. Some sort of energy shield had stopped the beam dead in its track. Given her present condition, dispatching this little ship was going to be harder than she had anticipated.

"Evasive pattern Alpha 2," Captain Narayan barked out. "Lock weapons on target and return fire." The Mindanao burst into action like a bat out of hell. Before the Shadow Battle Crab realized what was happening, she came under fire.

She yelled out in pain as beams of energy licked her dark skin. She had been shot at before but nothing had come close to hurting like she now felt. She tried to fight back but the little ship was moving fast, too fast. In her present state she could not track the ship effectively and most of her shots missed their mark while theirs did not. Again and again it lashed out at her. Every time the orange beam hit her, it clawed at her armored hide with devastating results. The last shot tore off one of her arms and blood spurted out into the coldness of space as her amputated arm slowly drifted away. She had to get away. If she did not, she knew she would die. She had to get back and warn her masters. She tried to flee but the little ship was right on her tail. She then tried to phase into hyperspace but just as she was phasing out, a pair of glowing balls of energy that simply tore her apart struck her. Oh, the pain... She was loosing control. Mercifully, darkness enveloped her as she was hit again.

Captain Narayan let out a sigh of relief. The Mindanao had taken a good beating. Any more hits from that energy beam and it would have been the end. He wondered how much damage they had taken. "Damage report!"

"We have 3 wounded, sir. There's also hull damage on decks 2 and 3, section 12, forward shield emitters have taken a beating and the warp drive is offline. Engineering is already working on restoring warp drive. It will be at least an hour before we have it back online."

"Good work everyone. Number One, contact the Tarantul. Let them know of our situation."

"They're already on their way sir. Here she comes."

Captain Ahmed on the Tarantul had been on the other side of the star system when the skirmish started. She raced to aid the Mindanao but she feared they wouldn't make it in time. Luckily for the Mindanao, the Shadow battle crab was already heavily damaged. And although it put up a stiff fight, they prevailed in the end, albeit with quite a bit of damage. "Captain Narayan, good to see you made it through. Do you need any assistance?"

"No thanks. Were on top of the situation. We took some damage though and won't be going anywhere soon. I suggest you cover us just in case there are more of those things around."

"We will. I'm going to cloak and hang around. Oh, there's something else Jason. While you were playing around here, we were doing some research and guess what we found."

The two Captains were close friends having served on the same ship on numerous occasions. They always poked and jibed at each other, "Something interesting perhaps..."

"You can say that. Anyway, we found this strange device by the 2nd gas giant." she said transmitting the image of the strange looking device. "What do you think it is?"

"Looks like some kind of communication device, like the Midas array."

"Probably, we should have one of the bigger ships take a look at it. They better equipped than we are."