Originally posted on fanfiction.net - Link.
Note: This story takes place after the main events in the episode "Terminal Provocations".
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Subspace Side Trip
“I can’t believe you signed the captain’s yacht out in my name again,” Boimler pouted sitting in one of the pilot’s seats. “And that you dragged me along with you to go who-knows-where while the Cerritos warped off right after we left the ship. Why do you keep doing this to me?”
“Hey, relax Boims. We ain’t going AWOL or anything,” Mariner smirked seated next to him. “We’re just taking this baby out for a little spin and we’ll rendezvous back with the Cerritos before you know it.”
“Yeah, just in time for our court-martial,” Boimler moaned. “I never thought my Starfleet career would end this way. Being drummed out of the fleet due to your unhealthy obsession with joyrides!”
“This isn’t a joyride,” Mariner corrected. “We got important stuff to do. We’re heading to Theta Zibal III to conduct vital business transactions.”
“Oh no,” Boimler groaned. “Please tell me you didn’t con me into joining you in picking up another load of contraband.”
“Of course not,” Mariner said. “We’re going to Theta Zibal III to sell a load of contraband. You didn’t think I acquired all those dangerous, random weapons just for myself, did ya?”
“What?!” Boimler yelped. “Are you crazy? That’s crossing a line! You can’t sell a bunch of weapons to unknown parties on a neutral, independent planet! That’s a violation of the Prime Directive! No way! Forget it!”
“Relax, Boims. The Prime Directive doesn’t apply,” Mariner waved. “I’m just gonna unload a dozen or so crates of various bladed weapons to a bunch of wealthy, material possession-obsessed collectors. It’s not like I’m running a load of Klingon disruptors to a mob of trigger-happy revolutionaries. At least not this time…”
“Well, I guess that’s not too bad…wait, what?!” Boimler yelped doing a double-take. “What do you mean this time?!”
“Well, ya see…” Mariner began.
RUMBLE!
“Uh, what was that?” Mariner asked as the yacht suddenly shook violently.
“Not sure. Some kind of gravimetric distortion,” Boimler glanced at the sensor readings. “It’s destabilizing our engines. We’re dropping out of warp…ahhh!”
“Whoa!” Mariner blinked as the yacht abruptly transitioned from warp to normal space to an all-encompassing white light. “Great. Warp and impulse engines are offline. Switching to thrusters.”
“Better bring us to a full stop until we find out what happened,” Boimler said checking the yacht for damage. “Running a trans-spectral analysis now. Looks like we entered some kind of subspace quasi-phase pocket.”
“Aw, man. Not again!” Mariner cursed. “I hate it when stuff like this happens.”
“You’ve run into subspace pockets before?” Boimler stared at her in surprise. “Oh wait, of course you have!”
“Well, yeah. Who hasn’t?” Mariner gave him a look. “Starfleet auxiliary craft are always running into unexpected spatial phenomena. You’d think the odds would be infinitesimal given the crafts’ small size compared to the infinite vastness of space, but turns out incidents like this tend to happen to not-so-random Starfleet officers every other week!”
“Huh, imagine that,” Boimler blinked. “On the bright side, it looks like I finally beat the odds. Guess the universe has a quirky sense of humor.”
“More like the universe’s self-appointed script writers have no imagination,” Mariner rolled her eyes. “Talk about going to the gravity well one too many times…”
THUD!
“Aaahhhhhh!” The two ensigns yelled as a slim, humanoid body suddenly slammed into the yacht’s fore viewport.
“Holy *bleep*!” Mariner yelped. “Yuck, get it off! Ugh, why doesn’t this thing have viewport wipers?”
“Wait, I’m reading a human lifesign,” Boimler stared at his console in amazement. “Whoever’s out there is still alive!”
“What?!” Mariner gasped. “How the heck…know what, never mind! Locking on. Preparing to transport.”
“Wait, shouldn’t we set up some kind of containment field first?” Boimler asked. “We could accidently beam aboard some strange, residual subspace particles…”
“No time, man. Energizing,” Mariner engaged the transporter controls. The humanoid figure materialized prone in the yacht’s small transporter alcove. “Okay, let’s see who you hit.”
“Who I hit?” Boimler sputtered getting up and grabbing a medkit from a supply locker. He quickly approached the prone figure and knelt by their side. “Hello, are you okay?”
“Uh, I think so,” A pair of alert, feminine brown eyes blinked up at him. The clearly female figure sported a practical yet stylish crown of dark hair, wore a sleek utilitarian civilian jumpsuit and appeared to be about the same age as Boimler. “Are you Starfleet?”
“Yep, that’s us,” Mariner grinned sauntering over to her. “Ensigns Beckett Mariner and Brad Boimler at your service.”
“Oh, thank goodness!” The figure sighed in relief. “I was afraid I was going to be stuck in that strange white void forever.”
“Eh, still might,” Mariner shrugged. “That is if we live that long.”
“Huh? What do you mean?” The figure sat up and stared out the fore viewport. “Oh no!”
“Easy,” Boimler cautioned while carefully helping her into a chair at a secondary control station. “Your system has obviously had quite a shock. Try to stay calm.”
“Physician, heal thyself,” Mariner quipped.
Boimler gave her a dirty look while running a medical tricorder over their guest. “I’m not getting any anomalous readings. From what I can tell you seem to be in perfect health, Ms…”
“Odelina,” The figure smiled at him. “Or Odette if you wish. And you seem to be in perfect health too.”
“Uh, thank you,” Boimler blinked.
“Nice to meet ya, Oddy,” Mariner leaned against a console. “So, what’s a nice girl like you doing in a subspace quasi-phase pocket like this?”
“Well, my ship was just warping through space like any other day,” Odette began. “I was doing some reading when I suddenly felt a sharp jolt. I began making my way to the bridge when the bulkhead next to me suddenly disappeared. Next thing I knew I found myself suspended in that featureless limbo out there.”
“How long ago was that?” Mariner asked.
“I don’t know,” Odette shrugged. “A few hours at least. I have a pretty good sense of my internal clock.”
“You were stuck in an airless, zero-gravity subspace environment for a few hours?!” Boimler gasped. “And you survived without even slightly elevated CO2 levels? How the heck is that possible?”
“Eh, it’s subspace, Boims,” Mariner shrugged. “Just one of the many deus ex machinis of our strange, fascinating universe.”
“Well whatever the reason, I’m certainly not going to complain,” Odette said. “Especially if it kept me from crossing over the great, final frontier known as death.”
“Smart girl,” Mariner nodded in approval. “Though even death isn’t nearly as permanent as one might think. At least to some people…”
“I think you’re lucky you were ejected into subspace at near the exact opposite velocity vector as your ship,” Boimler said running a final scan on Odette. “The force from the atmospheric decompression made your net relative momentum and velocity practically zero. If they had been any higher you would have been nothing but a messy smear on our viewport when you smacked into our hull.”
“A fate I’m quite happy to have avoided,” Odette smiled at him. “Thanks to you.”
“It was nothing,” Boimler shrugged modestly. “It’s our sworn Starfleet duty to explore the unknown, aid others in distress…”
“Yeah, yeah. Enough with the boring sciencey stuff already,” Mariner waved heading back to the pilot’s seat. “Let’s get outta here before another ship bumbles into the pocket and ends up turning us into a messy smear on its hull.”
“Right,” Boimler gulped checking Odette once more. “Are you sure you’re feeling alright?”
“Don’t worry. I’m fine,” Odette assured him. “You go work on getting us out of this place. And please try to locate my ship too while you’re at it. It’s very important.”
“Eh, whatever,” Mariner rolled her eyes.
“That might be difficult,” Boimler warned returning to his seat and quickly running a few sensor scans. “All the extraneous EM interference is rendering our sensors nearly blind. Proximity detection limited to less than sixty meters. Wait, I’m reading fairly high levels of plasmons, polaritons and plasmarons. They seem to be concentrated in various subspace eddies…”
“Quit it with the particle counting, Boims. I know how to get us outta this mess,” Mariner cut him off. “I’ve done it before.”
“Of course you have,” Boimler drawled.
“This subspace quasi-phase pocket is like an inflated, misshapen balloon,” Mariner worked her console. “All we gotta do is blow a hole in it with a torpedo and ride the resulting shockwave out.”
“Are you insane?! What am I saying?” Boimler stared at her in horror. “Detonating a torpedo inside subspace could rupture the very fabric between it and normal space!”
“Uh, yeah. That’s exactly what we want it to do,” Mariner retorted. “Duh.”
“It would be an uncontrolled reaction,” Boimler went on. “We could end up forming an unstable subspace rift. Besides, the captain’s yacht doesn’t even have weapons.”
“No, but it does have a deflector array,” Mariner pointed out. “Which I’ve finished reconfiguring to emit a resonance burst. It should simulate a photon torpedo blast just fine, only with more intense shockwaves…”
“WHAT?!” Boimler yelped. “Oh no! Don’t even think about it…!”
“Too late,” Mariner grinned activating the main deflector. “Hold on to your hats, boy and girls! Here we go!”
A bright blue beam shot out from the yacht’s deflector array before coalescing at a point a hundred yards in front of the ship. The beam stayed active for a few seconds before shutting off.
“Aaaaaand nothing happened. Nothing happened,” Mariner blinked. “Okay, I was not expecting that.”
“That’ll be a first,” Boimler muttered.
“Hmmm, this particular subspace quasi-phase pocket must be different than the others I’ve found myself stuck in before,” Mariner concluded turning to face her companions. “Whelp, there goes my brilliant plan. Anyone else have any bright ideas?”
“Don’t look at me,” Odette held up her hands. “I’m not a scientist.”
“Well technically I am, but are you sure you don’t have any stray subspace knowledge rolling around in your head?” Mariner asked. “We’re not too picky.”
“Wait a minute,” Boimler leaned forward and studied a set of sensor readings. “Look at these plasmon counts. They keep fluctuating within the concentration of subspace eddies while the polariton counts stay consistent.”
“Yeah, so?” Mariner asked.
“So, it means that some of the matter must be exchanging between normal space and subspace on a subatomic level,” Boimler explained. “If they get out, we can get out. All we have to do is match the exact resonant frequency of the plasmon’s corresponding EM variances and amplify the resulting quantum plasma oscillations until they propel us back into normal space.”
“And how the heck are we supposed to do that?” Mariner drawled sarcastically. “Reverse the polarity of the plasmons? Like that overused, nonsensical cliché would ever work!”
“No, we emit a localized antipolariton field,” Boimler went on. “It will interact with the polaritons in the eddies and the resulting subatomic level repulsion combined with the right shield modulations should amplify the quantum plasma oscillations until they’re strong enough to get us out.”
“Wow,” Odette stared at Boimler in awe. “That’s brilliant!”
“Eh, I wouldn’t exactly call it that,” Mariner brushed her off. “But when did you start acting all Spock-Data-Dax-like, Boims? Have you been taking Science night classes on the side or something?”
“Uh, actually I read about it in one of the Enterprise-B’s mission logs,” Boimler admitted working his console. “Along with a few footnotes from the Al-Batani, the Stargazer, the da Vinci…”
“Well, here’s hoping your nerdy habit of pouring over boring ol’ mission logs pays off,” Mariner said as she reconfigured the yacht’s deflector array once again. “Okay, modifications complete. Positioning us in the center of the nearest subspace eddy.”
“Great,” Boimler performed a final check of his calculations. “Emitting antipolariton field…now!”
The region around them began to distort as the yacht proceeded to shake and rumble ominously. “Hull stress starting to rise,” Boimler reported watching the readings. “Approaching recommended limits.”
“Oh dear,” Odette braced herself in her seat.
“The workers at Utopia Planitia better not have slacked off when they build this baby,” Mariner warned as the yacht continued to shake and groan violently. “You sure this antipolariton plan is gonna work, Boims?”
“Pretty sure,” Boimler gulped diverting all reserve power to the structural integrity field. “Of course, it’s only a theory…”
“WHAT?!” Mariner yelped as sparks began to fill the cockpit. “Ahhh, we got power conduits overloading!”
“Don’t worry, Ensign Boimler!” Odette shouted above the din. “I believe in you!”
“Thanks!” Boimler gasped as the hull stresses passed the redline. “I think…”
“A lotta help moral support and happy thoughts are gonna be when we break up like an odd Tellarite couple!” Mariner griped as subspace continued to distort around them. “Arrrggghhh, I’m about to spend the rest of my life trapped in a featureless white void with Boimler! Talk about a living…!”
Note: This story takes place after the main events in the episode "Terminal Provocations".
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Subspace Side Trip
“I can’t believe you signed the captain’s yacht out in my name again,” Boimler pouted sitting in one of the pilot’s seats. “And that you dragged me along with you to go who-knows-where while the Cerritos warped off right after we left the ship. Why do you keep doing this to me?”
“Hey, relax Boims. We ain’t going AWOL or anything,” Mariner smirked seated next to him. “We’re just taking this baby out for a little spin and we’ll rendezvous back with the Cerritos before you know it.”
“Yeah, just in time for our court-martial,” Boimler moaned. “I never thought my Starfleet career would end this way. Being drummed out of the fleet due to your unhealthy obsession with joyrides!”
“This isn’t a joyride,” Mariner corrected. “We got important stuff to do. We’re heading to Theta Zibal III to conduct vital business transactions.”
“Oh no,” Boimler groaned. “Please tell me you didn’t con me into joining you in picking up another load of contraband.”
“Of course not,” Mariner said. “We’re going to Theta Zibal III to sell a load of contraband. You didn’t think I acquired all those dangerous, random weapons just for myself, did ya?”
“What?!” Boimler yelped. “Are you crazy? That’s crossing a line! You can’t sell a bunch of weapons to unknown parties on a neutral, independent planet! That’s a violation of the Prime Directive! No way! Forget it!”
“Relax, Boims. The Prime Directive doesn’t apply,” Mariner waved. “I’m just gonna unload a dozen or so crates of various bladed weapons to a bunch of wealthy, material possession-obsessed collectors. It’s not like I’m running a load of Klingon disruptors to a mob of trigger-happy revolutionaries. At least not this time…”
“Well, I guess that’s not too bad…wait, what?!” Boimler yelped doing a double-take. “What do you mean this time?!”
“Well, ya see…” Mariner began.
RUMBLE!
“Uh, what was that?” Mariner asked as the yacht suddenly shook violently.
“Not sure. Some kind of gravimetric distortion,” Boimler glanced at the sensor readings. “It’s destabilizing our engines. We’re dropping out of warp…ahhh!”
“Whoa!” Mariner blinked as the yacht abruptly transitioned from warp to normal space to an all-encompassing white light. “Great. Warp and impulse engines are offline. Switching to thrusters.”
“Better bring us to a full stop until we find out what happened,” Boimler said checking the yacht for damage. “Running a trans-spectral analysis now. Looks like we entered some kind of subspace quasi-phase pocket.”
“Aw, man. Not again!” Mariner cursed. “I hate it when stuff like this happens.”
“You’ve run into subspace pockets before?” Boimler stared at her in surprise. “Oh wait, of course you have!”
“Well, yeah. Who hasn’t?” Mariner gave him a look. “Starfleet auxiliary craft are always running into unexpected spatial phenomena. You’d think the odds would be infinitesimal given the crafts’ small size compared to the infinite vastness of space, but turns out incidents like this tend to happen to not-so-random Starfleet officers every other week!”
“Huh, imagine that,” Boimler blinked. “On the bright side, it looks like I finally beat the odds. Guess the universe has a quirky sense of humor.”
“More like the universe’s self-appointed script writers have no imagination,” Mariner rolled her eyes. “Talk about going to the gravity well one too many times…”
THUD!
“Aaahhhhhh!” The two ensigns yelled as a slim, humanoid body suddenly slammed into the yacht’s fore viewport.
“Holy *bleep*!” Mariner yelped. “Yuck, get it off! Ugh, why doesn’t this thing have viewport wipers?”
“Wait, I’m reading a human lifesign,” Boimler stared at his console in amazement. “Whoever’s out there is still alive!”
“What?!” Mariner gasped. “How the heck…know what, never mind! Locking on. Preparing to transport.”
“Wait, shouldn’t we set up some kind of containment field first?” Boimler asked. “We could accidently beam aboard some strange, residual subspace particles…”
“No time, man. Energizing,” Mariner engaged the transporter controls. The humanoid figure materialized prone in the yacht’s small transporter alcove. “Okay, let’s see who you hit.”
“Who I hit?” Boimler sputtered getting up and grabbing a medkit from a supply locker. He quickly approached the prone figure and knelt by their side. “Hello, are you okay?”
“Uh, I think so,” A pair of alert, feminine brown eyes blinked up at him. The clearly female figure sported a practical yet stylish crown of dark hair, wore a sleek utilitarian civilian jumpsuit and appeared to be about the same age as Boimler. “Are you Starfleet?”
“Yep, that’s us,” Mariner grinned sauntering over to her. “Ensigns Beckett Mariner and Brad Boimler at your service.”
“Oh, thank goodness!” The figure sighed in relief. “I was afraid I was going to be stuck in that strange white void forever.”
“Eh, still might,” Mariner shrugged. “That is if we live that long.”
“Huh? What do you mean?” The figure sat up and stared out the fore viewport. “Oh no!”
“Easy,” Boimler cautioned while carefully helping her into a chair at a secondary control station. “Your system has obviously had quite a shock. Try to stay calm.”
“Physician, heal thyself,” Mariner quipped.
Boimler gave her a dirty look while running a medical tricorder over their guest. “I’m not getting any anomalous readings. From what I can tell you seem to be in perfect health, Ms…”
“Odelina,” The figure smiled at him. “Or Odette if you wish. And you seem to be in perfect health too.”
“Uh, thank you,” Boimler blinked.
“Nice to meet ya, Oddy,” Mariner leaned against a console. “So, what’s a nice girl like you doing in a subspace quasi-phase pocket like this?”
“Well, my ship was just warping through space like any other day,” Odette began. “I was doing some reading when I suddenly felt a sharp jolt. I began making my way to the bridge when the bulkhead next to me suddenly disappeared. Next thing I knew I found myself suspended in that featureless limbo out there.”
“How long ago was that?” Mariner asked.
“I don’t know,” Odette shrugged. “A few hours at least. I have a pretty good sense of my internal clock.”
“You were stuck in an airless, zero-gravity subspace environment for a few hours?!” Boimler gasped. “And you survived without even slightly elevated CO2 levels? How the heck is that possible?”
“Eh, it’s subspace, Boims,” Mariner shrugged. “Just one of the many deus ex machinis of our strange, fascinating universe.”
“Well whatever the reason, I’m certainly not going to complain,” Odette said. “Especially if it kept me from crossing over the great, final frontier known as death.”
“Smart girl,” Mariner nodded in approval. “Though even death isn’t nearly as permanent as one might think. At least to some people…”
“I think you’re lucky you were ejected into subspace at near the exact opposite velocity vector as your ship,” Boimler said running a final scan on Odette. “The force from the atmospheric decompression made your net relative momentum and velocity practically zero. If they had been any higher you would have been nothing but a messy smear on our viewport when you smacked into our hull.”
“A fate I’m quite happy to have avoided,” Odette smiled at him. “Thanks to you.”
“It was nothing,” Boimler shrugged modestly. “It’s our sworn Starfleet duty to explore the unknown, aid others in distress…”
“Yeah, yeah. Enough with the boring sciencey stuff already,” Mariner waved heading back to the pilot’s seat. “Let’s get outta here before another ship bumbles into the pocket and ends up turning us into a messy smear on its hull.”
“Right,” Boimler gulped checking Odette once more. “Are you sure you’re feeling alright?”
“Don’t worry. I’m fine,” Odette assured him. “You go work on getting us out of this place. And please try to locate my ship too while you’re at it. It’s very important.”
“Eh, whatever,” Mariner rolled her eyes.
“That might be difficult,” Boimler warned returning to his seat and quickly running a few sensor scans. “All the extraneous EM interference is rendering our sensors nearly blind. Proximity detection limited to less than sixty meters. Wait, I’m reading fairly high levels of plasmons, polaritons and plasmarons. They seem to be concentrated in various subspace eddies…”
“Quit it with the particle counting, Boims. I know how to get us outta this mess,” Mariner cut him off. “I’ve done it before.”
“Of course you have,” Boimler drawled.
“This subspace quasi-phase pocket is like an inflated, misshapen balloon,” Mariner worked her console. “All we gotta do is blow a hole in it with a torpedo and ride the resulting shockwave out.”
“Are you insane?! What am I saying?” Boimler stared at her in horror. “Detonating a torpedo inside subspace could rupture the very fabric between it and normal space!”
“Uh, yeah. That’s exactly what we want it to do,” Mariner retorted. “Duh.”
“It would be an uncontrolled reaction,” Boimler went on. “We could end up forming an unstable subspace rift. Besides, the captain’s yacht doesn’t even have weapons.”
“No, but it does have a deflector array,” Mariner pointed out. “Which I’ve finished reconfiguring to emit a resonance burst. It should simulate a photon torpedo blast just fine, only with more intense shockwaves…”
“WHAT?!” Boimler yelped. “Oh no! Don’t even think about it…!”
“Too late,” Mariner grinned activating the main deflector. “Hold on to your hats, boy and girls! Here we go!”
A bright blue beam shot out from the yacht’s deflector array before coalescing at a point a hundred yards in front of the ship. The beam stayed active for a few seconds before shutting off.
“Aaaaaand nothing happened. Nothing happened,” Mariner blinked. “Okay, I was not expecting that.”
“That’ll be a first,” Boimler muttered.
“Hmmm, this particular subspace quasi-phase pocket must be different than the others I’ve found myself stuck in before,” Mariner concluded turning to face her companions. “Whelp, there goes my brilliant plan. Anyone else have any bright ideas?”
“Don’t look at me,” Odette held up her hands. “I’m not a scientist.”
“Well technically I am, but are you sure you don’t have any stray subspace knowledge rolling around in your head?” Mariner asked. “We’re not too picky.”
“Wait a minute,” Boimler leaned forward and studied a set of sensor readings. “Look at these plasmon counts. They keep fluctuating within the concentration of subspace eddies while the polariton counts stay consistent.”
“Yeah, so?” Mariner asked.
“So, it means that some of the matter must be exchanging between normal space and subspace on a subatomic level,” Boimler explained. “If they get out, we can get out. All we have to do is match the exact resonant frequency of the plasmon’s corresponding EM variances and amplify the resulting quantum plasma oscillations until they propel us back into normal space.”
“And how the heck are we supposed to do that?” Mariner drawled sarcastically. “Reverse the polarity of the plasmons? Like that overused, nonsensical cliché would ever work!”
“No, we emit a localized antipolariton field,” Boimler went on. “It will interact with the polaritons in the eddies and the resulting subatomic level repulsion combined with the right shield modulations should amplify the quantum plasma oscillations until they’re strong enough to get us out.”
“Wow,” Odette stared at Boimler in awe. “That’s brilliant!”
“Eh, I wouldn’t exactly call it that,” Mariner brushed her off. “But when did you start acting all Spock-Data-Dax-like, Boims? Have you been taking Science night classes on the side or something?”
“Uh, actually I read about it in one of the Enterprise-B’s mission logs,” Boimler admitted working his console. “Along with a few footnotes from the Al-Batani, the Stargazer, the da Vinci…”
“Well, here’s hoping your nerdy habit of pouring over boring ol’ mission logs pays off,” Mariner said as she reconfigured the yacht’s deflector array once again. “Okay, modifications complete. Positioning us in the center of the nearest subspace eddy.”
“Great,” Boimler performed a final check of his calculations. “Emitting antipolariton field…now!”
The region around them began to distort as the yacht proceeded to shake and rumble ominously. “Hull stress starting to rise,” Boimler reported watching the readings. “Approaching recommended limits.”
“Oh dear,” Odette braced herself in her seat.
“The workers at Utopia Planitia better not have slacked off when they build this baby,” Mariner warned as the yacht continued to shake and groan violently. “You sure this antipolariton plan is gonna work, Boims?”
“Pretty sure,” Boimler gulped diverting all reserve power to the structural integrity field. “Of course, it’s only a theory…”
“WHAT?!” Mariner yelped as sparks began to fill the cockpit. “Ahhh, we got power conduits overloading!”
“Don’t worry, Ensign Boimler!” Odette shouted above the din. “I believe in you!”
“Thanks!” Boimler gasped as the hull stresses passed the redline. “I think…”
“A lotta help moral support and happy thoughts are gonna be when we break up like an odd Tellarite couple!” Mariner griped as subspace continued to distort around them. “Arrrggghhh, I’m about to spend the rest of my life trapped in a featureless white void with Boimler! Talk about a living…!”
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