A Look Outside (Time Zone 3)

Posted on 21 Sep 2018 @ 10:14am by Commodore Harvey Geisler & Commander Thiago Teixeira & Commander Terry Walsh & Lieutenant Lucas Abrams M.D. & Ensign Kelly Khan

1,549 words; about a 8 minute read

Mission: Fractured
Location: USS Black Hawk, Various
Timeline: TZ3 || 1100 hours

The fighters powered up with a little prodding and rerouting. The computer response was slow but not as sluggish as it seemed on the ship. Terry supposed it was due to the separate and smaller power source. He expected to have some glitches and delayed responses once he got her out into the black, but hopefully not much.

"Oh crap!" he exclaimed as soon as he left the bay. He pulled to the port and narrowly missed some debris. He supposed it had been floating around outside the ship for years. Just so happen to be in front the flight deck exit. "Careful," he said over the open comm, "there's debris floating around out here." He put some distance between himself and the ship before swinging around to take a look. "Oh. No. Talk about a ship in a bottle. Or time in one for that matter. For the most part, it's darkened. I don't see very many lights anywhere. Interior or exterior. But there are scorch marks, oxidation, extensive damage from debris bouncing off the hull...some pretty large pieces of debris from the looks of it. It even looks like there's nebula dust on the hull." Terry watched as an exterior running light floated by. "And parts...gone. I just had an exterior running light float by me. Black Hawk, we haven't even started a sensor sweep of the ship and surrounding area yet. That's all just visible."

After running through the pre-flight check and verifying everything, Kelly took a deep breath. While she had training in simulators on the Gryphon class fighter, that was under controlled conditions. Now it was real and even though she wasn't going out to engage in a dog fight, the situation could still be hostile and she wasn't taking any chances. She flipped the sensors to active as she eased the top of the line fighter out of the Black Hawk's bay and wondered what the galaxy was coming to when Flight Control Ensigns were being called on to fly fighter because the main ship was helpless and a great majority of the crew was dead.

She began to compose a mental letter to her former roommate in her head. Elisha, greetings from the year well ahead of where I should be. Most of the crew is dead and I'm now an acting fighter pilot. Got my hand stuck in the Chief of Intels hair after I tripped and took her head off. It's all good, though, because she was already a skeleton on the bridge. How's blue skies and sunshine for you? and burst out laughing that was bordering on hysterical before she pulled herself back together and began to circle the ship and sending all the images and telemetry back to the ship.

"Parts... gone?" replied back the voice of Black Hawk Actual, Captain Harvey Geisler. It was one thing to expect miracles with the time jumping, but to expect the ship to have remained in pristine condition was another. "What sort of damage are we looking at out there? Or is it damage?"

"From a visible inspection, it looks like damage," replied Terry. "I'm starting scans now. Rocco to Conga, have you got anything?"

Kelly circled around the Black Hawk and brought her fighter coasting to a halt as something new appeared before her. =^=Conga to Rocco...there's a small wrecked alien craft out here,=^= she called as she swept her sensors over it for signs of life. =^=It's been here a few years, too.=^=

Repeat that, Conga," came the Captain's voice over the comm. "Did you say alien wreckage?"

=^=Affirmative, Actual=^= Kelly responded and sent the sensor and recorded data to the Black Hawk as she moved in and circled around the alien craft.

"What do you make of it?"asked the Captain. Though the ensign could not see him, Harvey was certain his displeasure could be seen through the audio-only connection. "Do you think it predates our presence here?"

Kelly circled the craft again and took note of the phaser blasts on it and ran them through the Gryphon's computer. =^=Negative, Actual. It's taken damage from Federation phasers and considering the location and state of the craft, it's been floating here for a few years at least.=^= Kelly responded.


===[Bridge]===

"A few years?" Harvey, standing behind the inactive helm, bowed his head and sighed. The whole concept of being thrown out of time was starting to frustrate him. Looking back up, his eyes looked around for Commander Teixeira. "Sounds like we were boarded once before, and that some of the crew were around when they were here."

"Where were we when it happened?" Thiago offered, aware he wasn't providing answers. "Who boarded us, and why?"

Back over the comm, Harvey spoke, "Conga and Rocco, Actual. Any theories on the ship? We looking at treasure hunters or what?"

=^=It looks like a three person craft of some kind, Actual. Possible a scout ship=^= Kelly responded.

Terry had been monitoring the conversation as he scanned the Black Hawk a little more in depth. =^=And if that's the case, there could be something else on the way. Of course, since it's been here a few years, maybe the something else already came and went. Could be that they disabled the ship, got on board, took what they wanted, and left. If they were following up on their scout ship not checking in, that is. I mean, if we're stuck here, perfect opportunity.=^=

"And if the wreckage has been here all this time," Harvey asked, "why not send more? Unless for whatever reason, this ship just can't be moved." Such a concept didn't make sense to him. Obviously the fighters could operate outside the ship. Why couldn't the ship move?

Behind Harvey, at the Engineering console, a master alarm sounded, echoing throughout the bridge. Lieutenant O'Malley, her red, frizzled hair somehow masking her confused face, worked quickly to determine the cause of the alarm. "Captain!" she cried out. "We're losing antimatter containment!"

Harvey spun around in his chair to face the Engineering station. "Core breach?" he asked, automatically fearing the worst.

"Nae!" fired back the woman in her thick accent. "I might have to... wait. It stopped. I didn't do anything, and it just stopped."

Lucas hung back on the bridge for the moment. None of this seemed right to him, but he wasn't a Science officer and had no idea if he'd be able to help matters. That didn't mean he wouldn't try, though. "It just stopped? Losing antimatter containment doesn't just stop."

"Fields can destabilize and stabilize at will, Doctor," the engineer reported. "As far as containment is concerned, either you have it contained or we don't. If we ever lose containment, we'd never be able to have debates like this."

"Why were we losing containment, Lieutenant?" Teixeira asked. Down as many people as they were, the last thing the remaining Black Hawk crew needed was to bicker. Focusing on the issues at hand and how to address them was the most beneficial thing for everyone.

"I'm honestly not sure," replied O'Malley, looking back to the console and calling up sensor readouts on the upper monitor. "The quantum filaments snagged in the antimatter have a slow rotation, which is what I'm thinking offset us all fifty years in the future. The new fluctuations appear to be the result of an unnatural rotation to the filaments."

Lucas listened as the others spoke around him. He was a Doctor, not a Science officer. Ask him to reattach a limb that had been severed by a fighter falling on it, and he could do it with his eyes closed. Start mentioning unnatural rotation with the filaments, and a person may as well be talking to him via clicks and whistles without the aid of the Universal Translator. For now, the big man planned to sit things out and leave it to those who knew what they were doing.

Harvey's frown deepened. "Let's run a quick glance at the records again. Did the ship suffer this with some of the former crew?" He didn't know how best to ask that question really, but for the ship to have remained stationary, there had to be a very good reason for it all. Perhaps this was tied to it.

O'Malley complied, running a quick search. "This is odd," she remarked. "This happened twice in the past. Here, and here," she said, indicating on the screen. "The first one was logged with an attempt to move the ship. And the other not long after the ship became populated again."

Harvey raised an eyebrow. "It seems like these filaments are not just the cause of this whole event, but maybe the answer. Let's run an intensive scan and see if there's any detail we can pull from these filaments. Maybe, just maybe, we can find something to fix this whole thing with."


===[Space]===

The open comms had allowed Terry to hear some of the conversation. "Alpha One copies transmission. We're heading in. Rocco out." This was going to be one for pilot's locker room.

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