Capt. Shayne: Pass Me The Physics

[Quinn]

((Deck 4, Science Lab, USS Arrow)) Hobart: I’m here, sirs. Commander Waters is in the care of Ensign Piweh and Chief Ra, now.

He nodded wordlessly, and cast a hand over his shoulder to welcome Hobart into their midsts. He was glad for the engineer’s arrival. Jacin might be a great scientist, a fine officer, and capable of explaining quantum mechanics to a kindergartener, but Shayne’s vast array of experiences and capabilities stopped well short of pure science, the one profession he had simply discounted while in San Francisco. 

Jacin: I may have a working theory Sir.

Hobart: A theory on.. What?

A good question, but Shayne wasn’t particularly picky about what Jacin addressed specifically- they had such an abundance of problems that even a small bit of progress would make him happy. 

Jacin: Captain, Lieutenant. Take a seat.

Shayne glanced at Hobart, and gave him a look. 

Shayne: Aye, ma’am. 

As he sat, playback began- of, Shayne assumed, the message that Jacin had mentioned previously. To his relief, it showed a haggard but apparently well Cayden Adyr. 

Adyr: =/\= Captain, I hope this reaches you. We are all alive and uninjured. The station, however, seems to be falling into the atmosphere, and we are witnessing the planet's past state, before it was destroyed. We're not yet sure of the connection to this station, but we are attempting to establish communications with others in the temporal flux. Their form and identity is unclear, but we hope to establish a dialog across time. =/\=

No, haggard wasn’t it. She looked… vague, as if the universe itself wasn’t quite decided upon what she was to look like. Around her form, an almost invisible haze was still distracting in its slow and steady undulation, and a spectrum of colors trimmed her uniform in the thinnest and subtlest of ways. If he looked closely, he could spot tiny patches of aging on her features- a year, perhaps, in either direction. At that moment, they’d never felt closer, and yet farther. 

Shayne: Why these consequences in particular?

 

Jacin: There are many possibilities for why this is happening. The almost spectral visitors that the away team have encountered, Commander Water’s experience with the probe.  We don’t have enough time to fully. Investigate this if we’re to bring the crew back safely.

Was it just him, or was Jacin taking a stronger lead on matters? Before she would have explained the situation in detail, leaving him to draw his own conclusions. Now, she told him straight- there wasn’t time to make a full analysis of every bit and bob. They had to focus. 

Hobart: Between the probe and the away team, it seems like we’re able to send stuff back to the past, but not pull them forward.

Shayne: Meaning that if we can send them the right object or information we can get them home, or more precisely, they can get themselves home. 

It sounded workable to the captain, but Jacin had a different approach. 

Jacin: What if we’ve been looking at this the wrong way?

Hobart: ::pinching the bridge of his nose:: Is there a right way to look at temporal mechanics? They all hurt.

He sympathized with the engineer- temporal mechanics was like adding a fourth axis to a three dimensional coordinate. However, in Shayne’s experience, the very thing that made it such a fearful topic was what made it graspable; its lack of boundaries. They could use that. But how?

Shayne: Don’t imagine the lines or the cause and effect. It’s a river. It’ll go where it wants. We just need to nudge it here and there. 

Jacin: What if this is an experiment that has gone wrong?  

It took Shayne a brief moment to understand that she was not referring to anything they’d done, but the situation as a whole. It did have the merit of being well represented throughout history, and indeed, in Shayne’s own career. 

Hobart: Whose experiment?

A similarly relevant, but burning, question crossed his mind. 

Shayne: And when?

Jacin: Chronitons are harmful to beings that exist outside of the standard time and space that we do. What if those beings were attempting not to time travel but to break through to our dimension and it went horribly wrong? Those images, those encounters are what I believe you would call ghosts?

Shayne’s mind was piqued, and struggled against an inertial quagmire to retrieve the relevant factoid that his teenage self had plugged into his brain’s deep storage during his relentless pursuit of Starfleet-redacted information. 

Hobart: And you think these ghosts tried to take advantage of somebody's experiment? What if, uh, they're not friendly ghosts?

Shayne: For the duration we need to assume that they’re not, but… there’s something… 

Something about crossing, something about strange communications confusions, something distant- incredibly old… ancient, even… 

Jacin: Those Sheliak or any of the other races could have been caught in the same ‘trap’ that we were. Those could be echoes of something that happened years ago. 

Hobart: Given the sound of this recording, “years” is probably putting it mildly.

He couldn’t resist the smile as Hobart’s words triggered his memories. For decades, Starfleet had picked up an unusual echo of signals sent through a specific sector of space. Different officers’ communiques were inexplicably arriving changed, their voices speaking lies, or simply reporting that which had not occurred. The reports were endlessly scratchy and distorted, and it took a significant effort by the SCE to eventually suggest a possible explanation. The sector in question, a relentlessly guarded Tholian territory, was the area in which the USS Defiant- the old, old one- had disappeared into a different realm. That alone wouldn’t explain a tinker’s cuss, but other reports of another cosmos, and, importantly, another human species, were continued despite incredulous brass hats at Command. There was no proof, no assertive authority on the matter, and yet it felt too strange to be fiction. 

None of the hallmarks of a crossover were detected by Arrow, and though that didn’t mean anything conclusively, it suggested they weren’t faced with anything they were familiar with. Ghosts and shadows and demons and Sheliak… winning would be just getting everyone back alive. 

Shayne: Alright, we have a working theory. If we can find why they might be interested in this technology, everything else might fall into place. 

Jacin: The station was being pulled towards that planet. In an already weakened state it would be more susceptible to gravitational forces, but like Dr Apgar’s experiments with generating Krieger waves the planet that the station orbited became home to an immensely powerful generator.

Krieger Waves… he knew he’d heard of them before, but the name was also filled with a foreboding, like a mind expanding too quickly from its horizons. 

Shayne: Entropy eaters. 

Nothing in the universe, so far as Shayne could figure, would continue growing indefinitely without an obvious source of fuel- except Krieger Waves. When they’d been tested, the only thing that stopped the initial release from pulverizing a planet was a Federation starship launching warheads in its way. It wasn’t difficult to see why another species would want their hands on such technology. And if Krieger Waves truly were self-sustaining, they might well continue rebounding and spreading out to infinity. 

Hobart: Wait, wait, wait. Who’s Apgar?

Jacin: He was a Tanugan scientist. His experiment worked but when the generator was taken to the planet it continued to send out radiation waves. If something similar is happening on that planet, we shutdown the generator we end the flipping through time and prevent any further damage to the station. 

Her words made sense, in concept if not in technical details. If he remembered correctly, Krieger radiation featured a number of unusual properties that would make it a hazardous energy even in controlled circumstances. If a temporal event, intentional or otherwise, had been opened in the presence of Krieger energy, then any number of things could have resulted- including an oscillating temporal instability working on a roughly seven minute schedule. 

Shayne: I’ll be damned. 

Hobart: So, assuming that’s what all this is, we get down there, we find this generator, we shut it down and then… the crew comes back? Or do they just stop wherever— I mean, whenever they are?

There were few things that spoke of an officer’s quality like the questions he posed. Even if Hobart was struggling with the temporal aspects of their mission, his ability to seize the logistical side of things was impressive. 

Jacin: Response

Shayne: Assuming the generator is operating in a time period we can access, it sounds like a solid plan. 

Now this was getting complex for him too. 

Hobart: So, what we need is eyes on the station, and a team on the ground, and constant communication between the two. And when the crew phases back into our time—if they ever do—we have less than seven minutes to shut down the generator and get them out.

A hell of an undertaking- no amount of training from Starfleet would help guide their next steps, and they had no time to practice; the landing party’s safe return was not guaranteed with every time jump. 

Jacin: Response

Hobart: ::cocksure:: Ah, I’m sure I can shut it down. No problem. ::beat:: Got a photon torpedo I can borrow?

Shayne raised an eyebrow. 

Shayne: I never lend books or torpedoes. 

One could lead to explosions that would change the fabric of reality, and the other was an antimatter warhead. 

Jacin: Response

Hobart: Yeah, sorry, "borrow" was probably the wrong word, sirs. I'm not gonna bring it back.

Shayne couldn’t help but grunt. Damn right he wouldn’t. 

Jacin: Response

Shayne: Wait a minute- that station is ancient, not to mention ragged and being pulled deeper into a gravity well. Even if the torpedo is launched at the planet the shock wave might be enough to damage them. 

Destroying the generator would be the relatively simple matter; it would be doing so with a minimum of casualties that would be the trick. 

Hobart: Response 

Jacin: Response 

It was a risky suggestion, but their options were rather limited. Whether they used shuttles, or tractor beams, or grapplers, or anything to hold the station above the blast zone, it would depend on how good a day its engineers were having when they put her together. 

Shayne: What do we need to be prepared? 

Jacin/Hobart: Response

 

Tag/TBC…

Captain Randal Shayne
Commanding Officer

USS Arrow

NCC 69829
G239202RS0