[Jaxom/others] Detour On The Way Home, part 1

[Clifford]

ooc: You all knew this was going to happen, right?

“Detour On The Way Home, Part 1”

The reluctant Captain Jaal Jaxom

Ensign Joann Meyers

Lieutenant Commander Tale Gilohesh

Lieutenant Commander Diane Doctrine

(ooc: Diane’s rank was incorrectly stated in the last two posts…oops)

and her son Toby

==Shuttle Scioto, nearing the Archwind Nebula==

The type eleven shuttle was making quick work of its journey back to Trillius Prime. Jaal had spent the better part of the voyage brooding. While he was sure Admiral Brigid would do what she said she’d do, he was uncertain the higher ups in Starfleet Command would follow through with his suggestions for the other POWs rescued with him. Bureaucracy was definitely frustrating.

For her part, the counselor kept trying to play calming music on the shuttle’s sound system and suggested comfort food she knew Jaal enjoyed. It was making a difference albeit a slow one. Joann hoped he would be closer to normal by the time they arrived back to his home. Only time would tell.

=====

They were almost half way through their journey closing in on the Archwind Nebula, a simple gas and dust cloud  situated somewhat more or less equidistant between starbases five, fourty-five, and fifty-five.

The shuttle’s sensors started picking up something odd.

“Jaal!” she called back. He was in the rear of the shuttle.

He just went aft to try for a nap but he came right back after hearing the perplexed tone in her voice. “What’s up?”

“There’s something weird showing up on the sensors,” Joann told him, pointing to the display, “Take a look.”

Jaal took the co-pilot’s seat and studied the readout. “Well, it’s not like we have a starship sensor suite… but…” Once his attention was fully focused on the readout his eyebrows went up. “That’s an awful large gravimetric disturbance… I can’t see any way that’s naturally occurring, not in this dust cloud.” His brow crinkled as he studied the sensor’s translation of the event further. “There’s way too many neutrinos and tachyons flying around for a simple dust cloud… there’s chroniton activity as well... definitely weird. It’s on the other side of the nebula so our readings are a bit fuzzy.”

Jaal was no stranger to events such as this. During his time on Miranda he’d experienced a number of spatial anomalies. He idly wondered if this was some sort of temporal incursion, or perhaps something from the so-called ‘mirror dimension’. The tell tale signs of such an event were there.

“Should we check it out?” Joann asked curiously.

“Are you kiddin’ me? Of course we’re gonna check it out.” Jaal playfully scoffed at her question while adjusting his posture in the co-pilot’s seat.

Joann was amazed at how instantly his dour mood dissipated once there was some kind of mystery on their hands. This was good, she thought, he needs this more than he knows.

Jaal trained the shuttle’s sensor suite at the anomaly. “At the very least we’ll fly by, record some better readings, then report it to Starfleet. I’m sure there’s a starship nearby far better equipped to deal with it. They might even have it on their long range sensors by now.”

Joann tapped the pilot’s console, adjusting their course.

==aboard the Runabout Montaunnet==

The Montaunnet hung suspended in the belly of the anomaly, its usual hum of engines replaced by an eerie, oscillating drone. Outside the viewscreen, spacetime itself had become a living thing—ribbons of distorted light pulsed like veins through the darkness, and what should have been stars now flickered like distant campfires seen through warped glass.  

Tale gripped the pilot’s console, her knuckles lightened. Her neural implant buzzed incessantly, feeding her fractured warnings she couldn’t fully interpret. "Shields at 47%, structural integrity holding… for now." She wiped blood from her nose with the back of her hand.

Diane was slumped over the co-pilot’s console groaning. She was trying to sit up straight but wasn’t quite making it.

“Auntie Tale!” Toby called from the seat right behind them, “Is mom okay?”

When Diane finally sat up, it was evident, at some point, the small vessel had bucked unexpectedly and the inertial dampeners hadn’t caught it. There was a bruise on her forehead and at some point her nose had bled. “How long?” she managed to ask.

"Eight minutes since we lost thrust," Tale interrupted, watching her friend's pupils for signs of concussion. "The anomaly's playing havoc with our chronometers, but biological clocks still—”

“I mean how long were we out?” Diane was trying to get some kind of reading on her console. She turned around and reassured Toby she was all right. “I’m okay kiddo, just a wee banged up.”

Diane turned back to the console. After a few tentative taps she stated, “Dammit… Sensors seem to be inoperative at the moment.”

Without a word, Tale reached into the medkit beneath her seat. The hypospray hissed as she loaded it with a mild analgesic and cortical stabilizer. Gently, she pressed it to Diane's neck. "For the headache you're pretending not to have," she murmured, her thumb brushing away a smudge of blood from Diane's temple. "And before you argue—Toby needs you sharp, not stubborn."

Diane submitted to Tale’s ministrations. Her Orion friend was correct, as usual, so she sat still while Tale gave her a once over. “Argue?” She asked with a hint of a smile despite their desperate situation, “When have I ever argued with you?”

“Alpha Delphi and for both of us,” Tale lowered her voice a hair. “I'll not continue that story.”

“That’s probably for the best,” Diane whispered in a rambling manner to Tale, “How’s Toby? He’s all right back there? He’s not injured is he? He sounds all right. I need to check on him.” Diane was about to unbuckle her harness but then she heard Toby’s voice.

“I’m okay mom,” the seven year old piped up from behind them. He was still strapped into one of the passenger seats. “Do we know what happened?”

”We’re trying to find out kiddo,” Diane answered her son. The worry in Toby’s voice was evident to his mother but he sounded like he was in better shape than she was. “As soon as we can get the sensors working again we can find out where we are.”

She turned back to Tale, “Probably should do a diagnostic on propulsion, see if we can get moving again… we should also send out a distress signal as well.”

"Engines are online but stuck in a feedback loop," she reported, tapping the comm. "I think we need to manually bypass the thruster control. And prep a Class-3 distress beacon—modulated frequency in case this anomaly eats standard signals."

“Excellent idea.”

==Shuttle Scioto==

“Jaal, we’re picking up a distress signal from inside the nebula,” Joann’s brow knitted deeply, “Who could be in there?”

”Is there a message attached?” The Trill asked.

Joann shook her head, “It’s actually a class three beacon,” she was adjusting the controls and typing into the console, “I’m adjusting our course to intercept it.”

Jaal was attempting to get the most out of the type-11 shuttle’s limited sensor suite. “The beacon is broadcasting, they modulated the frequency… if I had to guess, whoever sent it knew they needed to cut through any interference the nebula might cause.”

A few taps of the console later and an Orion woman in a Starfleet uniform, colored to indicate she worked in either sciences or medical, appeared on the screen. “This is Lieutenant Commander Tale Gilohesh, I think we’ve come through some kind of anomaly, we believe it might be temporal in nature, our engines and sensors are currently down, we’re not even sure of our coordinates. We are requesting assistance.”

Joann and Jaal looked at each other. Jaal sighed, “All right, let me extrapolate their position from the beacon’s course.” He shook his head, “We may have to go in… shields up.”

Joann hid a smile by looking out the viewport. “Aye, Captain.”

Jaal rolled his eyes and kept on task, ”Adjust course to…three oh six mark two seven four… take us down to about half impulse… and stop smiling, we have no idea what we’re dealing with here.”

Joann flashed him a look, “Why so surly all of a sudden?”

”You heard them,” Jaal answered without taking his attention off the sensor readings, “They think they went through a temporal anomaly. They could be from anywhere or anytime. I’m going to send a reply on the same modulated frequency they used. Let’s see if we can get a read on them.”

==aboard the Runabout Montaunnet==

The console beeped for attention. Diane, still holding her head, looked and tapped a few keys. “Someone is responding, maybe we’re closer to civilization than we thought.”

On their small screen a Trill male wearing casual clothes appeared. “This is Captain Jaxom. We’ve received your distress call. We’re on our way to your location. Hang in there.”

Diane looked to Tale with a questioning expression, “He’s dressed pretty casually for a captain? Don’t you think?”

Tale looked down at her own disheveled uniform, her black cardigan pulled askew and her hair a tangled knot. “Seems to me that it could be a civilian ship— or perhaps off duty? Any way we slice it, it’s a good sign.”

“Beggars can’t be choosers as they say,” Diane quipped. “My bet is off duty, he’s definitely the in charge type.”

She checked her readouts once again and asked her companion, “Any results on the engine diagnostic?”

"Thrusters are back online, but warp core is still fluctuating." Tale kept her voice low so Toby wouldn't hear the concern. "Good news is, if that captain's as close as his signal suggests, we won't need warp to—"

The console beeped for attention. “We have an incoming transmission,” Diane announced, “It’s on the same frequency we program the beacon to use.”

“Someone must’ve found it already.”

“Oh, right,” Diane tapped on the console. On the screen the Trill they’d seen previously showed up. “This is Jaal Jaxom, to whom am I speaking?”

“Commander Diane Doctrine and Lieutenant Commander Tale Gilohesh,” Diane stated, while subtly taking note Jaxom didn’t include his rank in the introduction.

”And ME!” Toby piped up from behind them.

”Ah, I see you have a passenger,” Jaal smiled at the kid’s spunkiness.

”My son, Toby,” Diane explained with a tinge of sheepishness in her expression.

”Great,” Jaal was genuinely amused, “Okay, back to business. We’re about forty five thousand kilometers from your position just outside this dust cloud you seem to be stuck in. Do you at least have impulse power?”

Tale leaned toward the comm panel, her fingers dancing across the diagnostics. "Impulse is nominal, Captain Jaxom—" A warning chime interrupted her. She silenced it with a tap, her voice never wavering. "—though I'd recommend you keep your distance. This anomaly's playing games with spacetime metrics."

Jaal nodded in acknowledgement and answered, “If you can get out under your own power, we won’t have to risk coming in… but we will come for you if the need arises. Whatcha think?”

She tilted the display toward Diane, showing the real concern: their thruster plasma was cycling erratically, pulsing in time with the anomaly's light ribbons outside. "We can make a break for it," she added for Jaal, "but I'd suggest you prep a tractor beam at zero-four-seven mark two-one. That's where this thing's grip seems weakest."

She could see Diane's eyebrow twitching upward at Tale's specific coordinates—no sensor should have been able to determine that. But she simply nodded along, her fingers already inputting the course.

”We’ll meet you there.” Jaal replied over the comms. “I think we should also leave this channel open… just in case.”

Tale wiped her nose again with a frayed sleeve. "Let's just say this thing's singing a very distinctive song." She reached back to squeeze Toby's ankle. "Eyes forward, sprout. We're about to show Captain Casual how Starfleet handles a rough exit."

”I’m ready!” Toby sat straight in his seat and gripped the armrests looking like he was about to lift-off from a planet.

“Punching it in three,” Tale placed her hand to the console. Her fingers shook ever so slightly as she keyed up the sequence. The deck plating vibrated beneath their feet as the ribbons of light began to pulse faster— almost as though it was sensing their impending departure. “Two…”

Diane held onto the armrest of the co-pilot’s chair as well. 

Tale exhaled sharply as she slammed her fingers down, closing her eyes. “One—-”

The Montaunnet lurched forward with a jolt, then wrenched sideways. The inertial dampeners squealed in protest, tossing them against their restraints. Tale banked hard, riding the temporal tsunami like a surfboard on a wave. The viewscreen showed the break in the rippling ever closer with each passing millisecond. 

A sound like shattering glass hit them as everything went completely dark.

—-Then stars.

Unfiltered starlight flooded through the viewscreen. Hanging in space was a type-11 shuttlecraft. It was nearly as large as their runabout with a much sleeker, more aerodynamic silhouette.

==Aboard the Scioto==

Jaal’s brow furrowed with worry, “Are we in transporter range yet? Their structural integrity is starting to fail. Whatever they went through gave their craft a serious beating.”

“Almost there.” Joann replied while altering their course for an intercept.

“I’ll beam them over as soon as I can,” Jaal relayed to Joann, “We’ll catch their runabout in a tractor beam and tow it wherever they’re headed.”

Tale, Diane, and Toby, were whisked away from their runabout and found themselves materializing aboard a different vessel.

TBC…