The Medina

Posted on Mon Dec 10th, 2018 @ 1:25am by Captain Remas McDonald & Lieutenant Commander Shadi Zatra & Lieutenant Dinui Locke (loch)

2,101 words; about a 11 minute read

Mission: S1:3: Myriad Problems
Location: 15 light years from Carpathia Colony
Timeline: MD 61 8.31AM

The view screen flooded with light the moment the Whisper Gate summoned itself to action, filling the bridge with a nearly palpable sense of otherness. But it faded almost as soon as it had flared to life, revealing nothing but a spinning starscape.

No star's fiery surface.
No Abborax, at least not immediately visible.

"Report," Remas said, still gripping onto the backrest of Jolani's chair.

The blackness of space never bothered Jolani. There were always lights there to guide her, regardless of whether she had sophisticated navigation tools or not, there was always something nearby and reassuring. While she was long past caring or requiring reassurance, what she did feel was a great sense of discomfort. Things were not as they should be, at least in her experience. All around there was nothing. It was if every single star in a 15 light year span had been swallowed up. However, there were no black holes registering on Jolani's panels. There were no high gravity wells pulling on the ship. There was simply, nothing.

Nothing, however, would be incorrect. She reported in slight awe of the situation, "We are somewhere approximately 15 light years from Carpathia Colony, as near as our instruments can tell us. There's a great deal of guess work here given our situation. You, yourself can see, there's no stars in the vicinity, except...." There was a small beep on her panel. "Well, except that tiny red dwarf. There are objects orbiting but they are likely created, not natural."

Shadi shrieked in alarm. "Hull breaches, Captain Remas! Multiple decks!" Running a system diagnostic, she found the problem. "The deflector shield harmonics were unable to compensate for the temperature differential between the star's core and open ssspace." She looked up from her readout in horror. "Until we can get engineering teams to reinforce the compromised bulkhead sections, we should avoid any direct confrontation. I don't think we could sssustain even one direct hit."

"Good to know. Shadi, increase power to the structural integrity field. Feed the power from the main cannon's back into the SI generators, given our big punch wasn't all that effective anyway," Remas said wryly. He leaned over Jolani's shoulder, eyeing the sensor returns. "Huum...you're right. There's a lot of them out there, hundreds of thousand at a rough estimate. Duranium, polychromatic steel, deuterium...ships."

He looked up at the viewscreen, and then back at the rest of the bridge.

"Its a ship graveyard," Remas said in a cold voice.

"A personal collection for Abborax?" Jolani ventured.

"Maybe..." he said half-heartedly, taking his hand and tapping on the sensor screen at the large metallic signature. Just at a glance, it was in a stable orbit far from the star, and as big as a starbase. "Set a course for that. Abborax seems in a hurry to get there, might as well shadow him along the way."

Jolani responded, "Still in his wake? He seems not to see us there, or he does not care."

"Still in his wake. If it can hide us as we sneak up on him, so much the better. But if we're being monitored by an array of sensor's in amougst the derlict ships, well we're spotted anyway. Might as well go with the best case," Remas said with a smile.

Now that the moment of certain death by traveling through a star had passed, Shadi began to seethe with repressed rage. "I dedicate this next battle to Mazarian," she said. "Unless we fail. Then I dedicate it to Arivek Zhuri, that traitor who always smells like a burning ODN relay." She looked up at the ceiling. "Computer, please note that in the Chief of Operations' log. All of it."

"No."

The odd choir-like voice of Clee'san and the normal computerised tones was still something to get used to, but there was a distracted tone to the voice.

"Sounds like you have something on your mind," Remas said, eyeing the ceiling panels as he returned to his chair. "We have a quiet moment I think."

"During our descent into the star, Abborax attempted to commandeer the ship's automatic systems again. But given I am now present, his attack was rebuffed. In doing so...I was in close contact with the connection he shares with the other Myriad in Messier 4," Clee'san said slowly. "I believe your suicidal pilot is incorrect. This graveyard of ships is not Abborax's, but a higher power he answers to. All network connections he has lead back to the station we are set towards. Like water flowing towards a whirlpool."

"That don't sound a bit ominous in the least..." Remas muttered. "Victor, Shadi, work on a way to get our weapons to fire past Abborax's active defences. Even just overwhelming them enough to get a cannon shot or a torpedo volley through might win us the day."

Jolani turned to Clee'san and said, "I am not suicidal. I have not been for years."

"All life is suicidal, a headlong rush towards annihilation. The mark of a truly aware mind is knowing the price at which their sentience is worth. It is something every citizen and soldier of the Morning Star Empire was aware of. I find it...comforting, that you share this same belief," Clee'san's voice echoed up and out of Jolani's console as privately as it could.

Knowing that was not quite how she felt, she merely shrugged and politely responded, "I am pleased that you are comforted."

Shadi logged out of her console. "Lieutenant Reynoldsss, I'll grab Engineer Jenkins and try to figure out a way to modify a torpedo to get around the phase dispersion of Abborax's impenetrable shields. We'll call for you when we're ready to modify something." She practically galloped for the turbolift without waiting for a response.

Vic chuckled,"Since I'm basically a statue at this point I'll just head down there, maybe I'll get an idea or something along the way." he said as he logged out of his terminal and headed for a separate turbolift.

Dinui was looking over the display and the view screen back and forth just taking it all in then she started talking. "We've gathered a bit o' residual Kasmir Radiation, a byproduct of Phase Space Travel like affore, no' dangerous but o' note." she paused and added, "The dull red dwarf barely givin' visible light let alone heat. to far away." Dinui looked again and shivered at the readings and the view. "Enough ships to take a few thousand life times to gather data on." Thousands of thousands of ships, varying in size, design, and age are scattered throughout the system. Some orbit airless worlds forming intricate glittering rings of metal and glass. "Far as Ah can tell, none o' unpowered, and some of them show the deep and deadly cold of deep space exposure. Like a boneyard o' space travel." She frowned as she added as she finished getting the data straight, "Looks like Abborax, burning towards a knot of a space station orbiting near the heart of the wreck-boneyard field. A righ' briar patch." she said as she continued reading making sense of it all. "We migh' be in trouble here, Sir."

"We've been in trouble since we got here, just took us a moment to ponder out the depth of it," he smiled at Dinui. "Keep the scans going. Anything changes you need to tell us about it right sharpish."

"Aye Captain." Dinui retorted as she turned her gaze to the scans there was no immediate new threat showing, just their quarry with their computer core, their Chief engineer (who may have betrayed them), she hadn't been privy to the events at the time but hearing the way of Chief Operations officer talk made her wonder if they were rescuing to later Brig or something else.

A beep of the Science console indicated a message had been received by the communications array.

Dinui frowned at the sequence it was Federation code, "Sir does Zhuri-delta-five-two-pi have meanin' fo' ye?" She asked baffled by the repeating signal. It made no sense to her, but she was willing to bet the Captain might know. If not well she would do her best to figure it out.

"That's Ari's command code!" Remas said, a mixture of feeling's welling up in his belly. "Lock onto it with the main comm's array, and send this: 'Traveller Actual receiving'. We might be out of the woods with this one."

Dinui let her fingers fly over the console and followed his instructions, "Sent Sir, awaitin' further reply." she said once she was finished with her task. Dinui wasn't sure what game was being played with them, but she really hoped that the CEO was actually still on their side. It was not naive to have hopes, it was only foolish to rely solely on hope. She stayed ready to react for whatever came up next.

The Lieutenant didn't have to wait long before another chirp from her console alerted her to an incoming message.

Diniu read the message aloud, ''Response be, Ah'm sorry. Shield frequency comin' soon." she looked at the Captain, "Do Ah tell him to shake a leg Sir or do ye have other words ye want to be sendin'?"

"Tell him we're working on a way to disable Abborax's vessel. Shadi and Victor are working on it. Can he tell us anything thats useful about why Abborax came to this system?" Remas asked.

Dinui sent the Captain's reply and watched for a response as she worried the inside of her bottom in nervous tention.

Warning chimes arose from the tactical console, as Victor's replacement at fire control scanned the reports.

"Multiple reactor startups detected among the wrecks. Looks like a few of those wrecks aren't as dead as they look," the ExpSec officer said, throwing the tactical plot onto the main viewer. The simplified system map appeared, with the dull nearly lightless star at its centre, and the tangled knot of the Myriad space station on the far side from the Traveller. Sweeping clouds of dead ships filled in the rest of the space, with red hostile icon's appearing to be scattered throughout.

The nearest was hundreds of thousands of kilometers distant, hidden behind a parking swarm.

"Dammit," Remas whispered. "Jolani, get us right on top of Abborax's ship now! Locke, can we do anything from our end to help?"

Dinui frowned as instead of a worded reply it was transport coordinate confirmation to be beamed aboard, the source seemed to be from their own missing computer core, she marveled quietly at the genuis of the CEO as she calculated where to put everyone.
"Incomin' transport core to arboretum an' six to Sickbay, best can do, Sir."

"On top of the ship?" Jolani questioned. Was he being literal or figurative? There was no time to sort it out. "Aye, Captain." Her fingers danced across the console and the ship flipped itself. With a burst of speed, she finished the loop and used that burst to catch up to Abborax's ship. Once a mere few feet above Abborax's ship, she asked, "Do you want me to board it?"

"No, we don't have the time and we got what we came for. I want you to disable every safety on the navigation system and take us to high warp, any direction from this spot," Remas said with a cold tone to his voice. There was a reason starships didn't cluster together when they went to warp. When you warp space-time around a starship to cheat the laws of relativity, gravity can be terrifying things to objects just beyond the warp field.

"Get us beyond this system and into interstellar space, then we can figure out where we are and how to get back to the colony," Remas said.

Considering that the navigation system was a complete and utter mess already, having made pin point jumps with the assistance of the Traveller's creator, Jolani hardly thought that the safeties were really worth much at this point anyways. The fact of the matter was that space was mostly that. The odds of hitting another object were infinitesimal. Then again, so were the odds of her surviving Fell's death. If she died, perhaps she would join him. If not, perhaps space was big enough for her to get a new life, though it was improbable. "Aye, Captain," she said unhesitatingly. "Engaging warp." She plotted a course that was in the general direction of the Pinwheel Galaxy and wondered where they might end up.

 

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