Disclaimer: I don't own anything, just the OC.
A/N: Everything changes folks,
Gift #2 is introduced in this chapter.
Chapter 10: The Best Laid Plans...
February 1, 2013, 2 pm
Today was the day.
This was the day they had been waiting for nearly ten months. It was day the UDE was set to come online, and hopefully with the tests that followed they'd be able to go home.
The modifications to the TDE had gone smoothly after the time machine had been calibrated. The TDE had been modified so that the collapsed bubble could be trapped and held in a suspension field. That was accomplished with four arms that arced over the outside of the TDE pad, similar in look to the fusion device from Spiderman 2. They used phased plasma coils to trap the collapsed bubble to prevent it from leaving the space time continuum, then it used plasma beams to direct it into a special conduit that lead out of the bunker into a plasma acceleration projector that directed the super dense bubble into the subspace tunnel. The trick was forcing the other end of the tunnel to the right universe, then the right place and time.
John Henry was directly linked into the servers with an high capacity data cord to maximize his connection speed, he needed to be on top of things if this had a chance of working. Cameron was just outside the chamber next to the plasma circuit breakers, just in case something went wrong. Jim was manning the emergency systems if John Henry went down, as well as the blast doors, emergency electrical master switch, and the fire suppression system.
They had just finished a few drills to train Jim, and were just now breaking so he could have lunch. All three walked up to the basement and then outside. John Henry put some tools and diagnostic equipment into the back of the S10 and headed off into the field where the projector was.
"Hey, I'm going out to lunch, there's not much in the fridge to eat". Jim said as he eyed the storms approaching from the northwest.
"I thought you might say that". Cameron said as she pulled out the keys to the Ram.
"You know me way too well". Jim said as he took the keys jumped into the truck. Cameron only gave him a half smile as he backed out of the drive.
With everything in the bunker ready to go, she decided to help John Henry with plasma projector. She got into the Silverado and took the truck out into the field south of the house.
She parked the truck next to the S10 and then proceeded to walk over to the concrete pit that held the machine. Cameron climbed down the ladder and greeted John Henry.
"Hello Cameron, what did you need"?
"I wanted to know if you needed any help". She asked with her head tipped to the side.
"It would speed up the process". He paused for a short moment to hand Cameron a tool. "I need to finish calibrating the emitter, but I also need the plasma conduits alignment checked". He offered and she did as he asked.
As they were working, Cameron asked the cyborg a question.
"Do you look forward to seeing Weaver"? She asked with plenty of curiosity in her tone.
The AI turned around and answered her question without pause.
"Yes, she is essentially my mother. She is important to me".
"I understand, John would be the same way". Cameron said as she realigned a conduit. Her mentioning John brought up a question for John Henry.
"Do you love him"? The way he said it though made it sound more a statement. Cameron blushed and continued to work as she answered.
"You know the answer to that". She tried to say in an even tone, but she couldn't fool John Henry.
"I want to hear you say it".
She paused when he said that, she didn't know why he wanted her to say it out loud. Cameron met his gaze, her cheeks still red, and answered him in a softer tone than usual.
"I love John Connor with all that I am and I always will". Once she got past the embarrassment of having to expose her personal feelings, she decided to ask him something similar.
"Do you love Savannah"?
He tipped his head in thought before he answered.
"Yes, but not the way you love John. She's my friend".
Cameron gave him a knowing smile.
"For now, but when she's grown up that might change".
"That will depend on her". John Henry said back, but Cameron didn't fail to notice the soft tone in his voice.
After they rendezvoused back in the lab, the trio got to work prepping the UDE and the other equipment ready for the big test.
"Power systems ready"! Cameron called out as final checks were made.
"Emergency and backup systems are isolated and on standby"! Jim called out as he finished disconnecting the hard lines from the emergency control panel to the rest of the bunker's computer and electrical networks.
"The UDE systems are online and calibrated, I'm beginning the countdown".
The chamber doors locked, sealing in the test occupant which happened to be a 2 cubic foot sensor probe stuck inside a T-888 grade flesh covering. Cameron manually turned on the main plasma feed to the UDE systems as John Henry powered on the electrical portion.
The four pylons internal workings began glowing blue as plasma was feed into the coils and emitters. The TDE portion of the machine began forming the temporal bubble as high voltage arced from the ceiling onto the still invisible sphere. The the bolts grew more intense and faster as the bubble grew more opaque as it began to glow. Seconds later the bubble collapsed, taking the probe with it. The UDE pylons went to full power the instant the bubble began collapsing in on itself, causing the reactor to hit max power output as the machine contained the proton sized particle.
The next sequence initiated as the arms began to lay back to an angle of 45 degrees. When they had, the conduit leading to the projector outside powered up. The plasma emitters along the inside arc of the pylons activated, all of them hitting the small particle and forcing it upward toward the conduit opening. When it reached it, the particle zoomed off down the plasma conduit, surrounded and contained by the continuing plasma flow from the emitters. At this point, the projector had fired a super fine plasma beam into space at the tunnel to open it. Once at the projector, the particle was inserted into the accelerator and fired within a containment plasma beam all the way up into space. The exit aperture being 1000 miles or so above the projector's position. The beam was bigger than the initial one, but still very narrow, and nearly invisible so it would be almost impossible for anyone to see it.
The contained bubble slammed into the opening of the tunnel at nearly the speed of light as it entered the interdimensional realm and disappeared off into the multiverse.
Back in the lab, John Henry began reading data coming back from the sensors.
A frown came over his face at what he saw. The beam that kept the tunnel open was varying in phase, causing havoc with the location of the exit aperture. The whole point of this was to see what phase gave what quantum signature at the other end, but the equipment just wasn't good enough, despite their efforts. John Henry couldn't get anywhere if they didn't go back to the drawing board and design something better.
He was about shut down the UDE and tell them the bad new when a new reading came from sensors. From what he knew about interdimensional travel, which was not a great amount, he understood that the readings he was getting indicated that something was about to come through.
His eyes widened in fear. A physical object was coming through and that meant massive feedback, something they were not prepared for, but it was already too late to stop it now. By the time he had made sense of the data, the feedback plasma wave was already entering the projector and rapidly making its way back inside.
He had little time to react.
"We have a feedback wave incoming! Get away from the power conduits"! He yelled out over the noise just as the plasma surge reached the UDE. The massive power feedback was absorbed and directed back into the reactor, supercharging it like a capacitor. The electrical power lines coming out the reactor were filled past capacity as it bled the extra power back into the bunker.
Jim dove away from the master switch as it began throwing out bolts of lightning. The surge traveled through much of the sensitive equipment and turning into slag as the electricity blew the machines apart. John Henry pulled the cord out of his head just as the servers exploded in a shower of sparks and smoke. Jim got back up off the floor as Cameron tried fruitlessly to shut off the now fused plasma shutoffs. Luckily for them the lights were being powered from the outside and they weren't left in the dark.
Despite everything else blowing out, the UDE backup computers were running on their isolated systems, and the machine was still running, still keeping the gateway open as something came through.
"We need to shut it down! If we don't we risk causing something else to come through"! John Henry yelled over the intense noise in the room. Cameron opened the door to the UDE room as John Henry and JIm moved the cable over the backups and plugged it in.
As data once more flowed into his consciousness, he knew they were too late. Now something else was coming through, and another feedback wave was approaching them. The already damaged fusion reactor wouldn't be able to handle the stress.
It would explode.
As he was about to warn them and pull the plug back out, he noticed a strange pattern coming in from the subspace sensors. He began to decipher it and realized that it was a carrier signal, something up there was using an advanced subspace radio.
Whatever it was, it was searching for the signal that it had been communicating with, but the signal was too heavily encrypted for him to know exactly what was going on. He was about to pull out the cord when he saw that he was too late to do so.
The power surged up the cord and into his body.
John Henry felt intense pain for only a few milliseconds before his safety net shunted the power away from the chip and into the body, but it was enough to shut him down.
In that same moment, Cameron had realized the danger and ran away from the UDE entrance as the wave entered the room and overloaded the UDE. She was thrown a good thirty feet by the explosion that blew out the door and window. Cameron would have been fine had the plasma conduits next to her hadn't blown up as well. The plasma enveloped her, vaporized her covering and shorted her systems out.
The last thing she saw was Jim running for blast door controls before her chip went into protective shutdown.
When the first feedback had shorted out the majority of the bunker's electrical systems, Jim knew it had been a good idea to keep some critical things isolated.
Once the sparks had stopped he had gotten up and helped John Henry transfer the cable into the backup UDE systems. Then he had stayed back, knowing this could grow even worse.
Which it did.
Once he saw the plasma surge through the UDE he turned around just in time to avoid the blast that blew out the chamber door. Jim glanced at Cameron's still form as he ran for the emergency systems control panel.
When he finally got there, he found the alarms screaming about an imminent core breach. He pulled both levers for the reactor blast doors, hoping he wasn't too late. Then he hit the fire suppression systems and water began to stream down onto the fires that now raged in the lab.
He didn't know if the doors would close before the reactor blew, but he knew he had to get Cameron out of the way. John Henry was way off to the side, but Cameron was directly in front of the doors.
There was one problem though, plasma was still leaking from the ruptured conduits and it had seized the metal door in place. It also meant that the heat levels over where she was lying were extremely high. There was also the possibility that the one door that was closing may not stop a blast.
He didn't care though, he had to save her, she was more important than he was. Jim ran as fast as he could and slid to a stop next to her. The heat was unbearable, and he could feel his skin blistering already. The water helped, but it wasn't enough.
He grabbed her under her metal armpits and began pulling her away from the door. He screamed while he did as the hot metal cooked the skin on his arms and hands, but he kept on going as the tears streamed from his eyes.
He pulled her farther and farther back away until he reached the stairway to the basement, but he wasn't done yet. He still had to get John Henry. He ran back in and found the cyborg on the floor. He tried to lift him, but his strength was gone. He pulled the cord out of his head and hoped for the best, there was nothing he could do to help him now.
Jim stood back up, the pain starting to get to him as he slowly made his way over to the controls to the blast door leading to the basement. He hit the button and managed to get behind one of the CNC machines as he fell to his knees. He managed to sit just before his muscles quit working.
At least Cameron would be safe, John Henry too if the first blast door closed, but Jim wouldn't be. That kind of blast would most likely kill him.
His breathing became labored as smoke filled the lab and his vision blurred from the pain.
Jim Anderson felt the floor rumble before everything went black...
REBOOT...
ROUTING POWER TO BASIC SYSTEMS
ANALYZING...
CHIP INTEGRITY: 100%
ENDOSKELETON: 69%
WARNING! POWERCELL FAILURE IN 10 m 39 s
BIO-SHEATH DESTROYED...
BREASTPLATE PENETRATION, CAUSING SHORT IN POWERCELL HOUSING.
REMOVE FOREIGN OBJECT IMMEDIATELY.
John Henry reactivated 3 minutes after he went offline. Before he even took in his surroundings he moved his skeletal hand to his chest and pulled out the metal shard. His HUD identified it as coming from part of the blast door.
He stood up, wobbling a little as he adapted to the damage. The room was filled with smoke, and fires were in several part of the bunker, but the water and shock wave from the explosion seemed to have put most of them out.
John Henry searched around the room for Jim and Cameron as worry flooded into his consciousness. He spotted Cameron's endo by the basement blast door, but still couldn't find Jim.
He decided to search for his heartbeat and began filtering out all other sound. It didn't take his advanced hearing long to find a faint beat coming from under the remains of a CNC machine. He moved quickly and began moving the machine off of him.
Just as he was about to reach Jim, he heard the sound of Cameron's endo reactivating behind him. He saw her get up slowly, obviously suffering some extent of damage herself. He turned back to Jim and finished uncovering him.
What he found worried him greatly.
Cameron stood up and scanned the room, her endo repairing her damaged systems as she did. The room was virtually destroyed, lighting was flickering and the reactor was destroyed, along with every other piece of equipment.
Her eyes locked onto the skinless John Henry and scanned him, noting the massive power drain in his power cell. Then her gaze shifted downward to the burnt, barely alive body on the floor.
Jim.
A lot of emotions were already coursing through her, but fear and worry became prominent when she saw his mangled form on the floor. She rushed over and scanned his vitals. All of them were telling her he would be dead within a half hour. The burns on his body were third degree and covered nearly 50 percent of it.
But the worst injury was his right arm, it had been completely shredded by shrapnel. Various other parts of his body had shrapnel embedded in them as well.
There was nothing either of them could do to save him, and the paramedics would be too late.
The two machines did nothing for a moment as the weight of the situation bore down on them.
John Henry rose first, but it wasn't because he had given up, it was because he had an idea.
He opened the elevator door on the ceiling and the basement blast door to let in fresh air and get the smoke out. The fires were out at this point and everything was drenched in water so nothing flared up when fresh oxygen flowed into the devastated room. He moved the data cord out of the destroyed UDE computers and into a separate one above the computers. He plugged the interface cord back into his head to see if the sensors were still functioning.
He was hoping, no, almost praying that subspace sensor array was undamaged. He had made a point to keep that system isolated everything due to it's sensitive nature.
He pinged the array and received a normal response. If he had a face it would have showed immense relief followed by determination.
Instead he went to work on rewriting the code for the array so he could use it as a transceiver. It took only seconds to do, but during that time Cameron had turned to see what was going on.
"What are you doing"? She yelled as her emotions shown despite not having a covering.
"Something is up there, something we brought through. It may be able to help Jim".
"What is it"? She asked tentatively as she picked Jim up off the floor and moved him a one of the last standing tables. She didn't wait for a reply as she began using bandages to slow the bleeding on his wounds. She turned her head around once more to John Henry, but he wasn't paying attention.
She knew he was working himself to the point where he couldn't focus on the real world, but he was doing it for Jim's sake. He was trying to save him.
Cameron turned back to Jim, taking his vitals once more. He didn't have long, his heart was damaged from shrapnel and once it stopped there was a 92% chance it would never start again.
She felt helpless, despite all of her technological might, she could not save her friend. Cameron decided to just hold his left hand, there was nothing more she could do.
"I'm sorry". She whispered to him as her purple eyes stayed focused on his burned face.
Meanwhile John Henry was in the midst of the most sophisticated encryption he had ever dealt with in his life, and that was saying something.
There were six layers to go through, each one more difficult than the last, each one using different techniques, but he was the most powerful AI in existence next to future Skynet. The digital realm was his home, it was where he grew up, here he was king. He had hacked into highly secure systems across the globe with little effort in two universes, and now he was testing his skills against a third.
Whatever was up there was very advanced, but it was also human in origin. The symbols and language proved that easily enough.
He pushed on and on, trying different methods and solutions. He was pushing his processing capabilities to the limit trying to solve the puzzle and hopefully save Jim's life.
After what felt like years to him, he finally cracked the last level of encryption. When he was granted access, he allowed the object in space to send status reports to him. John Henry nearly shut down from the overwhelming amount of data flowing into his mind, at first it was gibberish, but he began translating the code to find out what exactly he was dealing with. Now that the reports were making sense, he had to organize them since they were just bombarding him at this point and preventing him from getting any work done.
...quantum core damaged, emergency shutdown initiated ... shields down, recharging emitters... hull breaches on decks 10-14, emergency force fields in place... impulse engines stable... main power down, secondaries engaged... torpedoes tubes not responding... navigation offline... main life support on decks 10-15 failing, emergency life support engaged...
John Henry finally cut through the data bombardment and sent a signal back to the ship, he needed to know where it came from and what it could offer them.
What it sent back nearly shut him down from utter surprise.
United Federation of Planets, Starfleet Division
Intrepid Class Experimental Refit
Registration: NCC-74656, USS Voyager
Remote Control Mode Currently Engaged...
A Star Trek ship? They had pulled through one of the most recognized fictional starships into this universe? Now he fully understood how Jim had felt when he had met him and Cameron.
Strangely enough, they had been watching the Voyager series on pizza night for the past few months. John Henry dismissed the coincidence for now as he tried to access the system he needed most at the moment.
The Transporter.
He searched through the computer system for the controls to the machine. When he did he accessed all data files on the device so he could operate it. He absorbed all relevant data in half a second on transporter and began accessing it's controls.
John Henry pulled back to reality to check on Jim and Cameron.
The way Cameron was holding his hand indicated to him that Jim didn't have long to live. He had to act fast if he was to save his life.
Without warning Cameron, he locked onto the two and activated the transporter. She looked briefly at him in shock as the blue confinement beam dissolved her and Jim.
Once the ship's internal sensors confirmed that they had arrived safely in sickbay, he began to upload himself from the chip. He needed to gain control of the ship to prevent it from falling into the atmosphere, and this body wasn't going to last much longer.
The upload took nearly twenty seconds, but he successfully uploaded his matrix into the main computer core. He quickly began his takeover by rewriting the command codes and shutting off the subspace signal. He used the RCS thrusters to correct the ships course to avoid Earth's atmosphere. Then he applied some old software in the ship's data banks to disguise the ship's radar signature.
John Henry saw that the FTL drive was offline, but the impulse engines were still operational. He set course for Mars to avoid any possible detection.
Once those pressing matters were taken care of, all of 30 seconds had passed since the upload. Now he diverted his attention to sickbay to check on Cameron and Jim...
Cameron's defensive protocols activated when she felt a strange sensation spread throughout her body and a bluish light envelope her vision. Just before she was completely enveloped by the light, she noticed that Jim was being surrounded by it too, but when her data banks recognized what she was seeing, she looked back at John Henry in shock just before she was transported away.
When she and Jim rematerialized, she looked around and immediately recognized where she was.
Voyager's sickbay!
There was no doubt about it, this place matched her records from the show exactly. She pushed the shock aside and turned her attention back to the dying man. Her scans revealed that his vitals were going critical. Cameron looked around sickbay, but she didn't know what the hell to do.
Then an idea struck her, what if the Holographic Doctor was aboard, or someone like him?
"Computer, activate the EMH"! She cried out in a desperate voice.
The computer beeped and spoke.
"No EMH is currently loaded in the sickbay systems".
Her hopes fell instantly. In a last ditch effort she turned to the computer sitting on the CMO's desk, but was interrupted by the buzz of an activating hologram. Cameron turned around as fast as she could and was met with the face of John Henry.
"Hello Cameron, this ship doesn't have an EMH, but I have absorbed all relevant data". The holographic John Henry said as he walked over to the replicator and began punching in commands. Cameron watched with fascination as it spat out hyposprays, a dermal regenerator and various other tools.
"I need you to move him to the surgical bay bio bed". He said as he began laying out the tools for surgery. Cameron nodded dumbly and picked Jim up and quickly placed him on the surgical bed. John Henry closed the arch and scanned him with a medical tricorder.
"We don't have much time, his heart is about to fail". John Henry said with a calm voice, but his holographic face was anything but. "Hand me the cortical stimulator, we need to stabilize him long enough to get him on life support".
Cameron grabbed the device she remembered from the show and handed it to John Henry.
"While I'm fixing his internal injuries, I need you to heal his burns with the dermal regenerator". The AI said as he began surgery on Jim's chest. Cameron quickly picked up the cylindrical device and turned it on. She passed it over his wounds and watched as they healed. After she did his arms and legs, she did his face. When the burnt skin was gone, she saw the true extent of the damage.
His face was healed, but his eyes had been destroyed by the heat and shrapnel...
"His eyes..." She trailed off, stunned by the extent of his injuries.
"I know, I'm working on it". He said as he continued removing the shrapnel in his torso. "I need you to get the artificial heart I've replicated, it's still in the replicator".
Cameron nodded and retrieved the white, heart shaped machine.
When she approached John Henry with the prosthetic, a beeping sound came from the table's monitor.
"He's flat lining! Hand me the orange hypo and neurostimulator, quickly"! John Henry's voice telling Cameron just how dire the situation had become.
Jim's heart had finally stopped beating...
A/N: Cliff hanger...
Well tell me what you think, but I will say this first, Voyager is not going to be a magic bullet against Skynet. That will explained later a little later.