Star Trek: The Quadratic War

[Lys]

Commander's office aboard Khanjar, on the way to rendezvous with Riskdah

Enriov Ishtar i-Nalim Charvanek leaned back on one arm rest of her chair, legs splayed over the other. Far too easy and slovenly a pose for the gravitas needed from a commanding officer, but the Enriov was alone save for the warshrike on her lap. She had liked to sit that way since she was a little girl, and indeed her relaxed demeanour was remarkably relaxed. Ishtar keyed her comms badge and uttered one word, "Murugan."

One does not become a Dahar Master without picking up a few tricks besides more ways to kill people, and there were few communications systems in the Alpha Quadrant that Murugan couldn't splice into given physical access. The old warrior could eavesdrop on any conversation held over internal or external comms, either in real time or from the logs, but it was only enough to make him the third best informed person aboard, behind the commanding and intelligence officers. The first of whom knew he'd listened to her conversation with Kadon, she'd invited him to even, and Murugan by now knew better than to pretend otherwise.

"Your tlhIngan Hol is as perfect as your Klingonaase, Commander," said the man without preamble in the latter tongue.

"I said I did not care for it, not that I could not speak it," replied the woman with an unseen smile. "You may have heard me sing, Murugan, but you don't appreciate just how good I am. Had I gone into the Imperial Opera instead of the Fleet I'd be... dead mostly likely, but perhaps remembered as the best vocalist of my generation. That same talent and skill makes me an excellent accent mimic, and I take full advantage of it. Remind me to tell you the story about the Vulcan ambassador next time we have a drink, might make even you crack a smile. Now I want your thoughts on our new best friend."

"Kadon is a rare breed," Murugan said after several moments, "possessing a keen tactical and strategic mind, and the judgement and daring to use it. He is intelligent and bold, wastes no time, and acts with courage in full measure. You saw his strategy against the cube, that is no doubt how he fights."

"Succinct as always, and it fits the available data. Records indicate Riskdah was a Flight IV model, commissioned less than a year before the war. Kadon was her first commanding officer, so he's been with her for over seven years. If he if worthy of being called her commander, and he is, Kadon will know his ship better than he does his own flesh. She's battered but battle worthy, and we saw that he is not one to shy from combat. That speaks very well of his command skills..." She chuckled softly, "As if today's display wasn't enough."

"Indeed," Murugan agreed.

"He is fit to lead then, but how much can I trust him?"

"How much do you trust anyone, Charvanek?" She could practically hear Murugan's raised eyebrow. "He is a soldier not a politician, he deals directly and forthrightly. Be guarded by all means, but do not look for veiled threats and hidden meanings, lest you find them where none exist."

The Rihannsu nodded to herself, "That may be true, but I have no doubt Kadon is a player in the komerex zha, not a playing piece. His casual impassiveness did not escape my notice, and his dispute with his elder brother did not prevent him from getting a solid command in peace time. He must possess some political acumen, and if he not like me himself, then he will have someone on retainer who is. The first officer perhaps, it would be a natural choice..." She trailed off and fell silent, distracted by her own thoughts. The bird hopped off her lap and into the air.

After a short pause, Ishtar sighed softly, "I'm starting to over think this. He is a member of a larger task force of unknown size. He evaded the question of who was in command, I doubt it's him. The Squadron Leader is worthy of consideration and he has been considered. That will do for now."

"Just remember, Commander, you cannot hide who you are," said the Klingon. "Trust must be earned, but it also cuts both ways. Kadon will offer only as much as you will grant in return."

"I know. Thank you for your counsel Dahar Master, it is valued as always."

[Cynical Cat]

"Executive," said Kadon standing up, "the bridge is yours."

'Rish nodded in acknowledgement and sauntered over to the captain's chair. "Status reports for all decks and sections," she ordered. "Damage control in order of importance."

Kadon exited the bridge and walked to his ready room, just down the pod. He sat down in his chair and touched the comm controls. "Morizan, to my office." He clicked off the comm and leaned back in his chair.

His old friend entered Kadon's office almost a minute later. He smiled and sat down opposite the captain. Like most Klingon ready rooms, even on a battlecruiser, it was small. Shelves on Kadon's right contained various games from a dozen different species, the space behind him contained momentos from the ships he had served aboard, and to his left were very functional weapon racks. Trophies were absent. Everything was plain and functional, with the exception of the furs piled on Kadon's chair, turning it into a barbarian cheftain's throne and making it extraordinarily comfortable.

"Thought Captain."

"Tell me about her."

"She's a member by blood of several politically powerful Romulan families. One of her close relatives was praetor within her lifetime. She has been a player in Romulan politics, at times apparently estranged from her family, and has prospered. Her loyalties are uncertain, her apparent allies do not always prosper, but she has passed through the hurricane and remains an senior officer with connections, rank, and influence.

"She's old Kadon. They live longer than us, a lot longer. She's been a player in Romulan politics longer than we've been alive and avoided catastrophe. II has files on her and standing orders are not to contact her with an agent that isn't considered expendable."

"Good."

"We don't know if we can trust her. She beats her own people at games of treachery."

"My old friend, you're I.I. You trust no one, not even me. You've told me that that one knows how to play the Great Game and survive and to recognize the difference between ambition and the mad acts of those who backed Shinzon. It's clear that the one wants an alliance of sorts and she's too perceptive by half to want her as an enemy. Considering our problems, I'll take an ally as capable as her any day. If I can mange to get access to Dominion cloning technology, I'll order up a starting batch of ten thousand of if I can."

Morizan inclined his head. "It is my job to watch for knives."

"Then watch. For now she is an asset and she serves us on many levels."

"What am I missing? Cretak, of course. He's no longer the only senior Romulan Commander who's word carries weight and with whom we can come to an agreement. And here I thought you liked him."

"I do," replied Kadon. "I like him very well for a Romulan I have only known for a few days. But we Klingons play the komerex zha and the Romulans play their own game with their Senate and Navy and Praetor. It's always good to have more than one move."

[Comrade Tortoise]

"Send to the Humboldt: forget the probes, they've found us anyway."

T'lorn raised an eyebrow, then simply concluded that Kirk was addled by stress, or baseline incompetent. In either case, there was no time. If she was not going to comply she was not going to comply, all that was left was the aftermath of probes getting through, as his ship had not destroyed all of them. Of course, it may not be relevant if those tricobalts do something on the upper-end of the cosmic horror curve.

The Humboldt rendezvoused with the fleet tender, and transported all personnel, including those from the Meh'Ta' off.

"All available power to shields, deflector systems, and structural integrity" he intoned as crew rapidly embarked and found their regular duty stations.

The Riskahd sent a message regarding their survival and the destruction of the cube, which the Humboldt acknowledged, but it may take time for whatever secondary effects they may have caused to propagate. So they waited.

[Josh]

Once aboard the Humboldt, Hantle turned to Vagel. "Well Ltc, I'm sure you've got a mop and a bucket around here somewhere, or some other way we can make ourselves useful in the next bit of a while. Deflectors/SIF might be a good spot for us, Sevar and I used to tear 'em down and rebuild 'em back when she was still a rook."

[General Havoc]

The gaping, raging maw in space that had devoured a Borg Cube whole roiled and seethed with the energies of a thousand raging stars, belching energies capable of incinerating a planetary system out by the minute. Like an open sore in the middle of space, the vortex oozed radiation and fire, spilling even more energy into the turbulent maelstrom that encircled it. And yet relative to dodging the fire of an active Cube, the situation for Riskadh and her sister ships was drastically improved. All that remained of the overwhelming Borg force that had chased these ships in vain through the Badlands was a single Frigate, which, in the absence of its master cube, seemed to hesitate, as though unsure of where its orders were to come from. Seconds later, six photon torpedoes smashed into the Frigate's flank, bursting it like a balloon, sending its remains flying off in every direction to be cremated by the agitated badlands.

And then it was quiet, or at least relatively quiet, as quiet as any ship poised on the edge of a vortex of this size and power could ever get. The storm system raged like Hell unleashed, yet it did not explode, spinning round itself in a system that was nearly stable, at least by the depraved definition of the term that prevailed here. And though the barrage of interference of every sort made it nearly impossible to contact the rest of the fleet, the ships that had gone to hunt the Borg were alive, intact, and ambulatory.

They had won.

*-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------*

"Anything?"

Ensign Resir did not answer, eyes fixed on his console. The rest of the bridge waited as he tried to decrypt the scant bits of information that were leaking in from afar.

"I'm sorry sir," he said. "I can't make anything out. There's some kind of energy spike, and then nothing but interference."

The Captain of the Argonaut and his first officer shared concerned looks, but said nothing. It would be an hour, at least, for Argonaut to push its way out to where the Klingons were battling now, and doing so would leave the Tender helpless. They would simply have to wait and see what -

"Sir!"

"What?" answered Kalpov instantly. And when no answer was forthcoming, he repeated himself. "What, Ensign?"

"I'm reading... more energy spikes sir from... 187 mark 341, from 071 mark 226, from... from all over the place sir! Massive spikes!"

"How massive?"

"The smallest one's a class-8, sir!" shouted the Ensign. "I can't tell what's causing - "

The Ensign never got to finish his sentence, for at that very moment, a vortex of seething energy materialized out of nothing directly in front of the Fleet Tender.

It was not the size of the one that had devoured a Borg Cube bare minutes ago, but it was still a raging inferno, a hellmouth that popped forth in the middle of the seething Badlands and made the space around it look like empty void. Compact and self-sustaining, its spinning eye was wrapped so tightly as to provide little threat to ships at even a modicum of distance, but this one was right there appearing directly off of Argonaut's starboard bow, directly in the center of the fleet the allied vessels had gathered. A Kobyrean Freighter that had been rounded up at great difficulty was simply swallowed whole by the yawning maw, reduced to a spinning stream of plasma before any of the crew could so much as scream. A Federation Bulk freighter off her flank was ripped to pieces by gravitational tides, the mangled remains of cargo and crew spinning down to join her fellow, as other ships scattered and ran in every direction.

Argonaut could not run, for she was locked in place by the needs of the Tender, and the rift had torn open equadistant from her and the next ship in station, the battle-cruiser Immortal. Both ships were massive, tough beasts, hardened against all manner of punishment and protected by a collective shield that wrapped them and the Tender, but the sheering force of this event, small though it was in comparison to others appearing all across the Badlands, was sufficient to shred the mighty shield they had assembled like tissue paper and hurl both ships through space like toys. Argonaut's lights failed as her warp core sputtered and died, her emergency power systems kicking in haphazardly as the ship struggled to retain flight control. But Immortal was even worse off, for rather than being flung away from the massive fleet tender, the bucking waves of force from the activated rift blasted Immortal's engines offline moments before it threw her, tail over teakettle, directly at the tender itself, at a speed which, should they impact, would almost assuredly reduce both ships to mangled, indiscriminate wreckage.

And yet, despite that, Immortal and Argonaut got off lucky, for the main rift did not appear next to them. The main rift appeared far enough away to make it someone else's problem.

Without warning, not even the sensor alerts that the other ships had received, Scylla found herself spontaneously located on the edge of a raging storm that made the wildest plasma tongue seen so far look like a firecracker. The ship that Captain Leyton had just pulled his father off of was vaporized like a drop of water subjected to the core of a star, and Scylla herself was hurled violently in one direction by the expanding blast horizon, only to be arrested in mid-flight and shunted back towards the core of the alternately expanding and collapsing subspace inversion. Gravitational forces of no apparent source sought to rip the venerable cruiser apart like an origami sculpture caught in a violent riptide. And as the engineers aboard Scylla struggled to determine what had happened and what they could do about it, the ship, and indeed the very spacetime it occupied, was being violently dragged towards a hideous mass of violent energy of proportions and intensity scarcely credible this side of a supernova.

[Agent Fisher]

USS Samuel B. Roberts
Badlands


Silence filled the bridge, all eyes fixed on the main screen. They watched the explosion, watched the event that tore apart the fabric of space and time. The moments ticked by, Guisti ready to punch the controls to flee the rippling distortion. He guided them away from the edge of the disruption, keeping a safe distance, joining the Klingon ships.

"Scopes clean." Came the voice of Krieger.

Jess Shepard's head snapped to the side, looking at the Sensors Officer. The burnette sensor gave a sheepish smile. "Well, clear aside from the Klingon ships and the swirling vortex of torn Space/Time and death." She said.

Shepard smiled and shook her head. "OK then, well, let's just form up with the Riskdah and get damage control working overtime." She ordered.

[rhoenix]

U.S.S. Gilgamesh
Bridge

Swift leaned back in her chair, her shoulders slumping and relaxing as she watched the Borg Exterminator Frigate explode into fragments, some of which were already being greedily devoured by the hellish maelstrom of the Badlands.

There was a moment of silence before Swift resumed her duties alone in the darkened bridge of the Gilgamesh, the noises of the bridge seeming unnaturally loud in the quiet.


U.S.S. Gilgamesh
Crew Deck

Doctor Melisande, wearing her old tactical outfit, walked along with Captain Solheim in the darkened crew deck, lit only intermittently with emergency lighting. Their footsteps seemed almost unnaturally loud; this perception only heightened by half-seen glimpses of horrors, and half-heard noises of unknown quantity.

They passed a silent, and still scene of the cafeteria, still stained with the blood and viscera of several different species. A Borg drone was still in its last motion of trying to kill a helpless civilian, the plasma blaster on the drone's arm replaced with a chaotic mass of twisted metal and wire, with the formerly-live energy line still roughly jammed into its ear, leaving behind blackened and scorched flesh on paper-white skin.

Both looked into the cafeteria as they passed, the very recent memory of the desperate battle fought there, and many other places in the ship still holding them in a mild degree of shock, even for what they both had seen during their careers, both in the service of Section 31 and afterward.

Dismembered body parts still reached out of the cafeteria, as if the collective horror of the civilians there were still trying to animate their dead bodies with the will to escape. Without a word shared, and only an understanding glance, Captain and Doctor resumed their walk to the medical bay.

They stopped just outside, and beheld the scene silently for a moment. After a few more moments, Captain Solheim spoke up, his voice almost lazy. "So, this is what you meant by 'having a little trouble in the medbay'?"

Doctor Melisande glared up at the Captain. "So?"

"So," Captain Solheim replied, putting his one remaining arm across his chest, "you never told me you installed turrets in the medbay."

Doctor Melisande rolled her eyes, and walked into the medical bay, which was almost a scene as horrific as the cafeteria, though with far fewer non-Borg parts. "You really should check my expense reports more closely."

"Mainly because the last time something like this happened, you almost managed to get a moon out of it," Captain Solheim replied, even as he looked around the debris, cracked walls, and plasma blast marks on the walls.

"Yeah, and I told you the same thing then, too," Doctor Melisande replied, even as she checked the room over to see what could be salvaged.

"If I remember right," Captain Solheim replied, leaning against the doorway of the medbay, and ignoring Doctor Melisande's muttered retort, "that was for a job involving babysitting a diplomat."

"After listening to him talk for more than ten seconds and not being allowed to even shoot him once, I was damn well going to get some kind of compensation out of it," the Doctor snapped in retort.

"You listed it under 'additional risks' for the mission," Captain Solheim replied with a raised eyebrow.

However, he did not resist as the Doctor pushed him onto a medical bed, and began working on his non-functional arm. However, her reply was nearly immediate. "I'd call listening to him talk an 'additional risk,' and still do," she said, even as she began quickly setting up equipment. "The man was a stupid self-centered jackass."

Captain Solheim sighed as he stared up at the ceiling, idly finding patterns in the blood spatter and other marks. "Yeah, he kinda was."

Silence reigned in the medical bay, only broken by the soft sounds of medical machines, all working toward the process of restoring Captain Solheim's arm. Soon enough though, the Doctor nodded to him. "Alright - your new arm is growing in the tank now. I'll comm you when it's done - surgery should only take an hour."

Captain Solheim nodded, and began walking out the medical bay, though stopped at the entrance for a moment before turning to look at the Doctor with a small, tired smile. "We're tired, we're battered, and we're beset on all sides."

Doctor Melisande looked up, and reluctantly smiled as she replied, though her smile was just as tired. "Just another day at the office, sir."

Without another word, they nodded once to each other, and went their separate ways - Captain Solheim to the Bridge to support his pilot, and Doctor Melisande doing what she could for those on the ship still alive.

[Comrade Tortoise]

Bridge
USS Humboldt
Badlands, Alpha Quadrant

Captain Vladstok, Lt Commander Zuvok, and every other physicist, mathematician and weapons engineer on the ship waited at their action stations. While they did not display any outward signs of it as they went about their other duties, anyone watching carefully could see eyes glancing over to sensor display screens and the interfaces of programs set up to model what was certain to be a very interesting--and possibly weapons grade--event. It started. The initial subspace perturbation from the tricobolt torpedoes propagated through subspace. There was a delay, and the fabric of space time itself contorted at seemingly random points throughout the badlands

It was thing of such horrifying beauty that the only way to describe what they collectively experienced was a deep-seated awe, muted from becoming a full-on religious experience by layer upon layer of psychological conditioning and a metacerebral cortex trained to reflexively supress such things. They were seeing the laws of the universe manifest in a way no one else had ever seen, had ever dared to see, and this was not lost upon them. The weapons engineers in particular paused over the data, their metacerebral cortex atavistically repressing their desire for retribution. No expression showed on their faces, they were not even consciously aware of it. But it was there.

Then a subspace rift opened up and a pair of titanic subspace rifts and accompanying plasma gyres opened up directly off the bow of the Tender. It annihilated a Kobyrean Freighter, and ripped a bulk freighter to unrecognizable debris. It also threw both the USS Argonaut and the USS Immortal, with the Immortal hurling toward the Tender.

Zuvok snapped to attention, alacrity was critical. Without any orders whatsoever activated all of the Humboldt's tractor beams, half anchored the ship to the fleet tender, the other half lanced toward the out of control Immortal. His hands roved over controls as he performed the calculations in real time, and applied tangential acceleration to the crippled Sovereign, attempting to forcibly lever her to a safe course that would not result in both her and the tender being sundered into their component atoms. Another had the the USS Scylla caught in its gravity and was pulling her inexorably toward her doom.

Tlorn did not miss a beat either.
"Humboldt to All Fleet Vessels, Immortal on collision course with Sahir, Scylla caught in gravity well, take all prudent action to assist." hopefully the message would cut through some of the immediate shock, and spur others into some sort of effective action. If not...

[White Haven]

Leyton wasn't yet back on Scylla's bridge when the universe went mad. In an ideal world, gravitational effects wouldn't cause the occupants of a ship any distress; they would be affected by the same forces as the ship itself, so they'd move with it. Ideal worlds break down a bit when the ship in question has generated gravity internally and, more to the point, when the gravitational effect seems dead set and determined to pull in a mathematically-dubious number of directions in any given second. The deck departed at speed. The corridor wall expressed its displeasure with Leyton's back, thoroughly. The deck started to reapproach, only to reconsider the matter, and retreat, dragging the overhead down to crash into the flailing figure's side. THEN the deck started careening backwards.

And then everything stopped. Not that the gravitational subspace bullfuckery was over and done with; THAT would be too much luck. But, for the moment, emergency systems could at least hold the internal effects at bay. Of course they also held the deck at bay, which meant that Leyton and most of Scylla's unsecured crew and cargo were held suspended in the air as if in amber, trapped in the smothering embrace of a suicidally-overloaded combination of structural integrity fields, artificial gravity generators, and inertial dampeners that, for at least a brief window, trapped most of the ship's contents in near-motionlessness relative to the rest of the ship itself.

Failures of inertia on a local level are very hazardous. Actions don't cause expected reactions. Muscles pull on tendons, which then don't pull on bones, or do so in unexpected ways. The heart squeezes, and blood doesn't move. Even if the generators could maintain this level of activity for long (which, experimentation had long demonstrated, was not the case), it would leave a ghost ship in its wake. The whole system could only hope to buy a few moments, seconds at most, for the ship itself to get out of whatever situation it found itself in.

[hr]
Scylla leapt in space...and then started dancing, caught in a reciprocating gravity field that threatened to tear it asunder even without the attendant effects lashing the Badlands storms around it into a hyperenergetic froth. The aged, patched-together cruiser writhed in the embrace of the roaring storm...and the one crew member who wasn't--who couldn't be--incapacitated by the internal safeguards, the ship's helmsman, broke every safety regulation ever written regarding impulse power and navigation. Warp drive was out of the question so deep in a massive subspace event, but the impulse exhausts, normally a sullen red, scaled up through orange and yellow within moments, a white-hot glow blazing away to rival the surrounding plasma storms themselves. Meanwhile, shields bloomed, flared with coruscating energies, and died, rippling up and down the ship's length as fallback generators took up the strain one at a time, holding for moments before blowing out in a shower of superheated components. Scylla's massively redundant systems were made to be used, and if they required massive overhauls after the fact, well, that just meant that they'd done their jobs and that there were engineers left to perform that maintenance, and a ship left to maintain.

[Hotfoot]

Alpha Quadrant
Badlands
Empyrean Bridge

The last several hours had been tense ones on board the Empyrean, carefully linking the systems of what seemed like nearly a dozen ships to be able to handle the load of hauling the battered Romulan fleet tender through warp, all while trying to keep all of the traffic as quiet as possible, as well as attempting to keep an eye out for unwelcome guests. The latter part had not been very successful, much to the annoyance of Lieutenant Commander Dunok, but the work on the tender required sensitive calibration, and the simple fact was that even with the heavy load already on it, the Empyrean had the most advanced computer systems on the fleet. While the vanguard force dealt with the Borg, Captain DuBois continued assisting in the recovery of the fleet tender and the management of all the ships linked to it.

Then a mysterious message came across the communications system from the Riskadh regarding tricobalt torpedoes and the Badlands. As Lieutenant Kam read the message, DuBois’ face paled. Over the intercom, Dunok spoke first.

“Captain, what the Riskadh proposes is immensely reckless, and potentially catastrophic in ways few things are,” said the emotionless voice of the Empyrean’s chief science officer.

DuBois paused for a moment, shaking his head, “He isn’t proposing it, not Kadon, not alone against a cube. All hands, prepare for a subspace shockwave! I want the deflector array aligned for incoming tetryon radiation, and start setting up multiphasic passes for the structural integrity fields and tractor emitters, it’s the only chance we have of keeping everything from crashing together when this hits!”

Dunok responded, “Captain, the only way to maintain that level of phase-shifting while keeping everything else running is to shut down the holographic systems.”

“Do it Mister Dunok,” DuBois began running calculations on his own personal screen, his mind racing to figure out how to best handle a subspace disaster like the one before him. He had spent years studying subspace phenomenon in the Academy, even more years studying them. In his free time, he had constructed holographic simulations of various events, but this was the sort of nightmare scenario that kept him up at nights. Leave it to a Klingon to so casually kick off an event that could blow apart half the Alpha Quadrant if unchecked.

*******

The shockwave hit the ships around the tender with considerable force. To DuBois’ relief, it was not as severe as he feared based on his worst case calculations, but it was still far worse than his best case scenario. As primary power died on the Argonaut and the Immortal, and the Scylla was caught in an eddy of the subspace propagation wave, the Empyrean’s contingency went into motion. Pulling together what systems had been linked, a series of deflector fields, tractor beams, and subspace manipulation began. Rather than attempting to fight the subspace blast, the Empyrean began to manipulate it, using the raging torrents of energy in controlled bursts to slow down the hurled ships, to reduce the effects of the storm, effectively diverting some of the blast back into subspace and then back out in another direction, using the deflector arrays from every ship in the link to help manage the tremendous flows of energy. As individual systems began to drop off, the systems of the Empyrean began to pick up the slack, beginning to redline the ship’s systems. Lieutenant Forest worked the systems in the warp core as best he was able, while Mister Dunok worked every iota of efficiency from the system. As the Humboldt attempted to grapple the Immortal, DuBois focused more and more on the Scylla, attempting to save the ship from being annihilated by the fundamental forces of the universe.

[General Havoc]

It was all over so fast.

The Immortal was being propelled by nothing more than a momentary burst of momentum, a large burst, but unsustained. Nothing but the inertia of a very large body propelled Immortal on its way. The body in question was extremely large, particularly without a warp field to reduce its mass, and Humbolt, with its smaller size, would likely not have been able to meaningfully deflect the ship in question, had it not chosen to employ its tractor beams to link itself to the Immortal and then project them both relative to the largest object present.

Slowly, like the tumbling of astronomical bodies, the Immortal and the Humbolt were shoved away from the Immortal, the Immortal's nacelles missing the tender by mere feet, before both it and the Humbolt tumbled off into empty space, the other ships of the makeshift fleet parting before them as Immortal's engineers labored to restore main power. With emergency power alone, the inertial dampeners were able to mitigate most of the centrifugal force that would otherwise have smashed the crew to paste against the bulkheads, but the crew were still hurled off their feet and flung about like toys, as what engineers could remain standing struggled to restore the ship's proper functioning.

Scylla meanwhile, caught in the vice-grip of an enraged subspace storm, struggled mightily to save itself. Emergency generators sourced from God-knew-where for God-knew-what purpose, overloaded themselves into fiery ruin as they dumped power unimagined through the ship's systems. The engines screamed, sending shockwaves through the ambient plasma, as lights failed and the ship endeavored to shake itself to pieces. But the grip the storm had on the venerable Excelsior would not relent, and the addition of one vessel, even one as advanced as Empyrean, would have done nothing to change that. Yet when Empyrean linked itself through the network deflector arrays of all the ships around, it began to have effect. Slowly, with infinite strain, Scylla's speed slowed as it approached the maw of chaos, dwindled to nothing, slowly began to reverse. Hull plates ripped loose, escape pods and torpedo tubes jammed, the deflector screamed and died as consoles within the ship exploded into sparks and pyrotechnics. Fires spontaneously appeared in half a dozen locations throughout each deck, the fire extinguishing systems only intermittently responding. But finally, at length, Empyrean managed to suppress the vortex just long enough for Empyrean's engines to drag her free, before the ship collapsed like an exhausted swimmer beyond the reach of the subspace anomaly, the hull around her thruster ports glowing cherry red in the ambient hellfire of the Badlands.

And then, at last, it was quiet.

[Josh]

Shirazi took in the latest telemetry from the fleet in silence. Even Gleck was beyond a colorful interjection at this point.

The researchers that survived this would have a wealth of data beyond any previous conception. Even the less-refined military grade sensor suite on the Meh'Ta was reaping a harvest of data. Perhaps, assuming they lived long enough, the specialists would be able to piece together some sort of coherent picture of what all had already happened this day and give new names to the phenomenon that they had created in their desperation.

For his own part, he already had the name, one that translated readily and spoke to the beliefs of species throughout the quadrant including his own, even if the faith had largely dwindled in this age.

Hell had been unleashed upon normal space.

***

Aboard the Humboldt, Hantle pulled himself to his feet. "Guess we survived all that."

The Bobsies were still on the floor, muttering to each other in peals of their native language moving too fast even for the universal translator to handle. As one they turned their heads toward him.

"There has been"

"a great disturbance"

"in the warp."

Hantle winced as he rotated his shoulder, drawing a popping crackle from the joint.

"I'm going to put that down to 'bloody obvious' rather than mystical communion, boys."

[rhoenix]

U.S.S. Gilgamesh
Main Deck

Captain Solheim's next stop after ensuring that Doctor Melisande's medbay was clear was the bridge - the others had to be warned. He emerged cautiously from the doorway to the bridge, only to see a Romulan disruptor suddenly pointed at his head. It relaxed after a moment, as Swift did, still looking wide-eyed.

"It's just me, Swift," Captain Solheim said in a calmer tone of voice than usual, knowing the amount of stress the relatively young pilot was under. "The others have to be warned."

"Fine, fine," she said, looking as if she was purposefully trying to calm herself. "Remind me to put a bell around your neck later or something. Sir."

Captain Solheim did not reply to her comment, instead activating the comm, and opening secure communication lines to the Riskadh. The darkened and empty bridge was obvious behind him, as were his injuries, triaged though they were. "Gilgamesh to Riskhadh, this is Captain Solheim. On our way back here we saw a large welcoming committee of Borg searching for us in the Badlands. We dropped some probes with messages out there indicating that our meeting place was on the far side of the Badlands to try to throw them off, but it probably won't divert their whole force."

[Comrade Tortoise]

U.S.S. Humboldt

The tiny little weaponized survey vessel tumbled hurtled through space, pulled by the titanic inertia of a ship 30 times its own mass, however, thanks to the tractor beams the acceleration was slower and tangential, and there was no axis spin to put strain on the inertial dampening systems. The U.S.S. Immortal had lost main power, shields were down, and engines were not operational. In order for them to fix their problems, they needed to stop their multi-axial spin.

Tlorn looked at his little display "Good work Mr. Zuvok. Helm, accelerate, slowly, to full reverse impulse, let's bring the immortal to a 'stationary' position." the gentle thrum of the impulse engines began to build throughout the ship as the impulse engines slowly came up to full thrust so as not to rip them free of their own moorings by accident with the sudden application of newton's laws.

"Mr. Zuvok, please utilize the other tractor emitters to stop the Immportal's pitch, roll, and yaw spin. Do coordinate with Helm to prevent us from sharing said spin. Thank you."

As the primary tractor emitter held on to the immortal's center of mass, two additional emitters first stopped the immortal's roll by attaching to the far side's of her saucer section with a slippery grip, like a set of brake pads, while the maneuvering thrusters and impulse engines compensated for any roll translated to the Humboldt. A similar procedure was repeated with pitch and yaw until the Immortal was stopped and stabilized.

"Communications. Hail the Immortal.... Captain Anderson, do you require assistance with damage control and repair?"

[White Haven]

Engineering bucked wildly, then began to flex as the hull of the ship around it bowed and twisted. The decking hammered Rennthek ch'Tel from below, bouncing him a few inches up into the air, and then hammering up again just as he fell back to meet it. One leg buckled, the other managed to absorb the impact, the combination sending the burly Andorian staggering sideways against the railing separating the walkway from the open space surrounding Scylla's primary warp core. Hands closed on the railing. The deck departed at speed. The muscular Andorian's grip remained firm. The hands firmly clenched around the railing served as a pivot, vaulting Scylla's chief engineer in a tight arc that--

--would have either flung him into the reactor or slammed him against the opposite side of the railing, depending on when he lost his grip. Neither of those things occur, because the emergency dampening systems cut in; that same combination of overloaded gravity generators, structural integrity fields, and inertial dampeners that kept the ship's captain from being dashed apart. In Rennthek's case, however, it froze him in mid-motion, stretched out over the abyss of the long drop down past the main reactor.

Blood should have hammered in his ears. It didn't; it couldn't, not with inertial dampeners running so far above rated maximums. For every action, an equal and opposite reaction. Objects in motion remain in motion unless acted on by an outside force. Force equals mass times acceleration. When simple laws like these are suspended, however temporarily, bodies that evolved under those rules cannot endure long. Rennthek's heart didn't pound. It should, but it didn't. Blood didn't pump. Air didn't flow. For long seconds, his body simply froze, trapped in amber, but without the support of a full stasis field to make it possible to endure.

The effect ended...but it was at least a second too late. Limp fingers slipped from the railing as the blue-skinned figure in the uniform of a Starfleet lieutenant commander tumbled straight downwards, all lateral motion arrested. Another railing sailed by, then another as the plummeting figure's eyes slowly started to clear. Air finally moved, drawn in in preparation for a scream that never had time to emerge.

Scylla's chief engineer hit the reinforced casing around the main dilithium reaction chamber after a fall in excess of twelve meters. Structural members made of the same material as the hull of the ship itself shrugged off the impact. Bones, meat, and skin did not.

[hr]
A simple distress signal, likely automated, began to broadcast over the tactical network as Scylla staggered to a halt at last. It pinged out for several seconds before being replaced by a rough-sounding, rasping female voice, one that sounded in need of a heavy cough with every word.

"Scylla is declaring a medical emergency. Casualties on all decks."

[Cynical Cat]

Arikel looked over the casualty list and then sent a copy to Kadon for his review. The losses were unfortunate, but it was a cube. "Continue patrol," she ordered the helm. "Main screen, tactical."

A map of the burning chaos that was the Badlands replaced the fleet image on the main viewer. The plasma gyres around Kadon's Rift had yet to settle down although the ones further away were mostly unaffected. "Navigation, set course for subsector seventeen by ten by five." There was a big gap between plasma gyre there and it was a place to watch.

"Aye Commander."

"Communications, send fleet rendezvous coordinates to the new ships and inform the fleet of their impending arrival. Maintain presence at action stations. Carry on."

------

Kadon looked up from the casualty list and hit a button on his desk. "Aaveroke, send an invitation to the Romulan Commander for a dinner aboard the Riskadh."

"Dinner sir?"

"Yes, is there a problem?"

"No captain, not at all. Hailing the Romulans and sending the invitation."