25

Captain Yates paced across the bridge deck of Diversion in complete frustration at the current situation and his total lack of ability to do anything about it. It was not for lack of trying on his or the crew's part, however. For the past three days, Diversion's engineering staff had been trying to repair a broken hyperdrive with no success so far.

I should have seen this coming, Yates mused. Jumping around in an uncharted galaxy, relying on starmaps of dubious quality made by local civilizations. How could that possibly go wrong?

Yet go wrong it had. Horribly so, in their case. The Comm-Scan analysts had found some sort of data recorder among the wreckage and junk that they had bartered for in the Ocampa system. The recorder, interestingly enough, had come from a Federation ship named Val Jean. What their connection was to Outbound Flight and Voyager, of course, Yates had no idea. But it was a lead, however tenuous it might be.

So, after several weeks of analysis, they had managed to deciper navigational data contained on the recorder. After cross-referencing it with starmaps taken from the Kazon and Hirogen, his navigators had concluded that the most likely position of this Federation was on the other side of the galaxy. To make matters worse, they had realized that the Ocampa system was actually farther away from the Federation than the wormhole system they had started in!

When faced with a choice of reporting back to the Commodore that no, while they had not found Outbound Flight they did have a good lead on where it was, or actually following that lead even if it meant navigating blindly across the alien galaxy, Yates had immediately gone for the latter option. It was a snap decision he was now regretting, but with any luck his engineers could rig up something that could get his beloved ship back home. At least they were still in one piece.

"Captain?" a voice inquired from the Comm-Scan station.

Yates continued for a few paces, still lost in thought.

"Captain? I'm picking up some strange readings on the scanners," the voice continued.

The captain paused. "Define strange, Ensign."

"Sensor ghosts, Sir. Navigation reported a number of gravity wells surrounding us. When I try to run a passive sensor focus on their position, it always comes up negative."

Having walked over while the ensign was talking, Yates bent over to look at the readouts. "Can you highlight them on the tactical display?"

"At once, Sir."

The tactical display flared to life on the holoprojector, with a wireframe representation of Diversion holding position in the middle of emptiness. As he stared at the display, Yates could see several points around Diversion fade in and out, and suddenly a cold knot developed in his gut.

"Sound general quarters," he snapped out the order to the crew chief. "Comm-Scan, switch to active scan mode. I want those 'ghosts' lit up like a Life Day tree."

The general quarters klaxon began blaring as the crew chief began his announcement.

"Active scan results are negative," the Comm-Scan tech announced with a resigned tone. "Hang on... We're picking up some low-power subspace carriers. I can use that..."

The map suddenly lit up with over a dozen amber markers.

"Gunnery," Yates spun around, "can you get me targeting solutions on the contacts?"

"Tracking system will not maintain target lock, Sir," the gunnery officer reported back.

"Find a solution," Yates snapped back. "Whatever they are, we have to be able to fight back if they are hostile."

"Target lock-"

"Contacts are-"

The gunnery officer and Comm-Scan tech spoke over each other, paused, and then the Comm-Scan tech continued.

"Sir, the contacts just resolved. Thirteen ships, unknown armaments, about one kilometer long each. They must have used some sort of cloaking device."

Captain Yates grimaced as an invisible hand gripped his stomach and twisted. Here they were, stranded without hyperdrive and surrounded by unknown, apparently aggressive ships.

"Gunnery, your report?" he asked.

"Targeting solutions confirmed. Awaiting your command."

"Incoming transmission," the Comm-Scan tech reported a heartbeat later. "Language is not Basic. Waiting for translation..."

"Send our standard query in the meantime," Yates replied. At least that might keep them guessing instead of shooting at us.

"Query sent. Sir, the translation system is saying there is insufficient data to proceed."

"Any more transmissions from any of the ships?"

The tech frowned and turned back to his monitor. "The low-power subspace carriers are still active, but they appear to be encrypted."

"Get Cryptanalysis working on it immediately."

"Yes, Sir."

Several more tense minutes passed as Diversion and the unknown ships held their positions, motionless relative to each other.

"They've opened a channel," the tech finally reported. "Video and audio."

"Put it on the holo," Yates replied.

The communication holo formed a screen as before to reveal another near-human figure with straight-trimmed black hair, a deeply furrowed forehead and pointed ears.

"What is it with the facial mutations here?" Yates muttered under his breath.

"You infringe territory of Romulan Empire," it came out in the computer's robotic voice. "Make time and die. Your base or belongings are us. Give up."

"Romulan Commander," Yates resisted the urge to facepalm at the terrible translation, instead replying in the most proper Basic he could muster under the circumstances, "we were unaware of your government's claim to this region of space and apologize for the misunderstanding."

There was pregnant silence for several long moments as the Romulan muted his end of the link.

"You are Confederate spies," the Romulan began, the voice sounding somewhat more natural as the translation system learned, "Give us your mothers or it gets it."

Yates sighed. Whoever these Romulans were, they weren't about to take no for an answer, and he had no idea why the translation system was struggling so hard. Without the hyperdrive, Diversion was a sitting duck. So how could he get his ship-and crew-out of this one?

It took several seconds for him to come up with what he hoped was a believable story.

"Romulan Commander, this is Captain Yates of the Imperial diplomatic ship Diversion. We are unaware of any confederation. We have traveled from the far side of the galaxy to ask for an audience with your Emperor."

"No immunizations for spies," the Romulan responded a short time later. "Surrender your weapons and lower your garments."

Somebody snorted in one of the crew pits. "If you take action against us, we will defend ourselves," Yates warned. "We only wish to speak to a representative of your government."

"Do not insult my respect. I am representative of Romulan Star Empire. Your barge is surrounded," the Romulan replied. "Surrender or die."

"I would be careful in your position, Romulan," he said in a flat monotone. "Have you heard of a race called the Kazon? They told us the same thing and they also had numerical superiority. Yet we are here, not them."

The Romulan snorted. "Do not think your hidden threat will intimidate us."

"If you prefer," Yates shot back, "I could arrange a live fire demonstration. Would you care to volunteer a target?"

.

.

"They are either crazy, brave, suicidal or stupid. Quite possibly all of the above," Subcommander Ro'cena remarked off-screen once she was sure the channel was muted. "I would suggest we act with caution. They may be human, but they do not act or look like the cowards of the Federation."

"Subcommander, have we been able to get a good scan of their vessel yet?"

"No, Commander," Ro'cena replied. "Their hull is blocking most of our scans. However, from our visual survey it appears that there are at least 100 small turrets spread across the ship."

Commander T'laro shook his head. "I wonder what the Federation is playing at here. I also doubt their story about being from the other side of the galaxy. They already lost a ship there."

"Their ship does not match any known Federation designs, Commander," Ro'cena pointed out. "And the fact the Federation was able to send a ship there, even if it was stranded, proves it to be possible." She paused. "But if they are telling the truth about their background, why didn't they mention the Borg or Dominion? I've never heard of these Kazon."

"This does not make sense," T'laro agreed. "Open a channel to High Command."

. . .

Yates watched with a mixture of amusement and trepidation as the channel changed to a screen with the symbol of some sort of double-headed bird. The alien commander was likely going to talk to a superior due to the apparent outside context problem that Diversion represented.

No shots fired yet at least, he mused.

While he had been conversing with the Romulan commander, his Comm-Scan crew had been analyzing the alien ships. One of them handed him a datapad with the written analysis, and he began paging through it while he waited.

The first part of the report dealt with the Romulans' power profile. The analysts' best guess was that the gravity distortions observed by Navigation had to do with their way of generating power. Based on the energy conversion potential of a singularity of the size observed, it gave them an a theoretical limit that exceeded Diversion's reactor output.

That said, theoretical limits were one thing. The ability to use the power was another story entirely. Containing a singularity within a ship also imposed a mass penalty that further dropped the efficiency of the process.

They had concluded that if the ship's remaining power output was split equally between weapons, propulsion and shields, then the squadron of ships would certainly pose a threat to Diversion.

Yates just hoped the alien commander would not call him on his bluff.

.

.

The monitor aboard the Vengeance changed to the double-headed Aquila of the Romulan Empire, signifying that the channel to High Command had been opened. T'laro realized that he was involuntarily holding his breath, and forced himself to exhale and breathe normally.

The wizened visage of High Commander Ikarlus appeared on screen seconds later, and T'laro clasped his arms over his chest in salute.

"I see you are reporting in off schedule, Commander," Ikarlus observed. "What is the reason?"

T'laro explained what had happened while the High Commander listened intently.

When he had finished, the high commander spoke up. "You said they appear to be humans, from an Empire across the galaxy, in an unknown design of ship?"

"Yes."

Ikarlus was silent for several long moments. "Has there been any hostility?"

"We traded threats," T'laro spoke.

"Then you will need to calm them down," the high commander ordered disapprovingly. "Do nothing to provoke them."

T'laro looked like the proverbial deer in the headlights, but merely nodded. "Of course, High Commander."

"Good." The commander looked him in the eye. "The information I will be giving you next is for you only. Contact me from your quarters when it is secure."

"Yes, High Commander."

The screen went back to the Aquila before switching to the human ship's captain, who was still waiting with folded arms.

"It... seems there was a slight misunderstanding," the Romulan began awkwardly. "I would like to... apologize... for my words earlier."

"No harm was done," Yates stated. "Have you had any response from your government to our request?"

He's too calm for his situation, T'laro thought. Perhaps he was speaking the truth. "They are making a decision and I must speak to them again."

"That is excellent news," the human said. "If you don't mind, while we are waiting, could you ask your ships to increase their distance? My crew is understandably on edge and I would prefer to avoid any accidents."

"I will see what can be done," T'laro replied, seething internally. The human has the arrogance to dictate to me? He clenched his teeth and choked the response back. Orders were orders, even if they went against every fiber of his being. What is so special about these humans, that High Command is willing to bend over backwards for them?

.

.

Yates let out a suppressed sigh of relief as the holoscreen switched off. "Wayyn," he spoke into a comm handset, "how is the repair coming?"

"Not good," the chief engineer's voice replied. Wayyn Ploe had served for years with Yates before being transferred to Diversion. "We still haven't been able to locate the spare motivator. The good news is that the hyperdrive itself appears to be intact. We won't know for sure until we power it back up."

"What other options do we have?"

"Very few," Ploe replied. "We have spare motivators for the support craft, but they have a lower rating and would burn out quickly assuming we are able to connect them without making more of a mess of the system."

"Why didn't you tell me this before we had a whole squadron of alien ships about to shoot us?" Yates asked, exasperated.

"Captain," Ploe said patiently, "I had considered it but I wanted to exhaust the other possibilities first. We can always get a replacement motivator. We can't get a replacement hyperdrive so easily."

Yates rolled his eyes. "No we can't just get a replacement motivator. Any spare parts we don't have on board have to come through that wormhole."

"I am well aware of that, Captain. We can dispatch a shuttle to return to the fleet and get the spare parts we need."

"And what do we do if that shuttle miscalculates one of their jumps?" Yates asked.

"We will still be better off than we would if we overload a shuttle motivator by trying to run Diversion's hyperdrive on it."

The captain shook his head. Technically speaking, Ploe might be one of the best engineers he'd ever met, but there were times he found his personality to be infuriating. "Tell you what. You are going to jury-rig a motivator as quickly as you can so that we have the hyperdrive ready in an emergency. In the meantime, I am going to continue working these Romulans and see if we can get something useful out of them. Once that's done, we are going to meet in my quarters where we can air this situation out without having the crew in earshot."

"What time did you have in mind?" the chief engineer asked.

"I'll page you when I'm ready," Yates replied, slamming the mic down.

"Sir, the Romulans have opened a channel again," Comm-Scan reported.

"Put them back on." Yates waited for the Romulan's face to appear on screen. "What news do you have for us?"

"Captain Yates." The Romulan's tone seemed stiff. "I have orders to escort you and your ship to Remus, where the Praetor has agreed to meet with you. We will send you the navigational data and you will match our warp velocity."

"Well." Yates paused as his brain tried to catch up with the sudden 180. "I wouldn't have a problem with that, except it's impossible."

Now it was the Romulan's turn to boggle. "Explain."

"Our drive system is much faster than warp," Yates replied. "That is how we crossed the galaxy. Wherever Remus is, we would arrive there days or even weeks ahead of you."

Yates saw the flicker of realization that crossed the Romulan's otherwise placid face and suddenly connected it to the about-face that the Romulan had done barely a minute earlier. They've heard about hyperdrives before, he realized. Which means they've had contact with Outbound Flight.

"As a gesture of good will, I will allow you to tow my ship to Remus," Yates offered. Hopefully by the time we get there, Ploe will have that damned hyperdrive running again, he mentally added.

"That will be acceptable," the Romulan began, "but I must request that you remain as my guest aboard Vengeance for the duration of the trip."

Yates nodded. "With equal reciprocation, of course. I will come to your ship with several members of my crew if you will send your second-in-command and several crew members to my ship."

T'laro looked as if he had just swallowed something sour. "That is agreeable."

"Excellent," Yates replied. "We will prepare a shuttle at once."