Chapter 9
USS Xu Fu
Stameris System
Stardate 54792.0 (October 17, 2377)
‘Are there any starships nearby?’ Nara asked her tactical officer as the starship dropped out of warp in the uninhabited system.
Two hundred years earlier there had been a thriving slave camp in the system but with the arrival of the Federation and Starfleet in the 2160s it was quickly disbanded and the system had lain dormant ever since. There wasn’t even a colony on either of the two habitable worlds in the system.
‘None, Captain,’ Ufiri answered. ‘There is no evidence of anything in this sector; no ships, no subspace traffic, nothing.’
‘Excellent,’ she replied and turned to her tactical officer, Rash Ufiri. ‘Lieutenant, open an encrypted channel to Starbase Bastion. I’ll take it in my ready room.’
‘Aye, Captain,’ Ufiri replied as Nara headed that way.
‘Bartel, you have the conn.’
By the time Nara entered her ready room and sat at the desk, the active signal light was blinking, so she entered her authorization code and waited. Admiral Terence Glover’s visage appeared on screen and he did not look happy to see her.
‘You’re five days late,’ he admonished her.
Nara bit back her insubordinate reply and responded civilly, ‘the repairs took longer than expected, Admiral, but we have arrived in the Stameris system.’
‘What of it?’ the admiral asked.
Nara sighed, ‘we’re ready to conduct the first trial of the Korr subspace slipstream engine before we attempt to catch up to Interceptor Group Four.’
‘There is no time,’ Glover responded. ‘The Sitak’s warp sled had a field imbalance and they are now making their way at regular speed. You’re being retasked to IG-3. I’m feeding you the coordinates now. I expect to receive a report within the month that you have caught up to them.’
‘Admiral, I’m not going to engage this drive for a long duration without a trial run first, regardless of the time constraints.’
Glover’s eye began to twitch imperceptibly and he leaned forward. ‘Do not question my orders, Captain. Proceed as directed, Glover out.’
‘Asshole,’ Nara muttered before squaring her shoulders and returning to the bridge.
‘Is everything all right?’ Bartel asked in a whisper as Nara took her place in the center chair.
‘Apparently there have been some issues with the Sitak and we’re being retasked to Sandhurst’s group,’ Nara responded just as quietly. ‘Glover ordered us to proceed without the initial trial.’
‘Is he crazy?’ she asked.
‘Probably, but we have our orders,’ she said and turned toward Lieutenant Vil’Kinn Tyrr, her operations officer. ‘Set condition orange throughout the ship.’
The lighting across the ship changed hue to reflect the new order and bulkheads closed over all external windows, sealing the most vulnerable areas of the ship.
‘All decks report condition orange, Captain,’ Tyrr responded.
‘Take the warp core offline, vent all drive plasma, power up the Korr slipstream drive, and retract the nacelles.’
‘Plasma is venting and slipstream drive is powering up, estimate three minutes to full power.’
‘All hands, this is the Captain. Some vessels within the task force have suffered minor setbacks and as a result we have to proceed with a long duration run of the experimental engine at the heart of this mighty vessel. We don’t know what will happen so we will be at red alert until we emerge from the slipstream corridor. That is all.’
‘All drive plasma has been vented, Captain, and the nacelles have been retracted,’ Tyrr told her. ‘We are secured for slipstream velocity. The Korr engine will be at full power in thirty seconds.’
‘Open an aperture into subspace,’ she ordered. ‘Do you have the new rendezvous coordinates?’
‘Deflector controls are a little sluggish, Captain,’ Erom replied from the helm. ‘An aperture is opening though. The new rendezvous coordinates have been programmed into the navigational computer. They’re much further than the last coordinates.’
Nara and Bartel shared a worried look. The deflector control system had been one of those affected by that bizarre computer virus and although both of them were experts, neither had been able to figure out where that virus had come from or who it had been designed by.
‘How wide is the opening, Lieutenant?’
‘The aperture is ninety meters wide and widening.’
‘How long will it be before the ship can safely enter slipstream?’
‘Thirty seconds, ma’am,’ Erom replied.
Nara watched as the turbulent energies of subspace began to affect normal space and muttered a Canopian curse. ‘If we don’t enter soon, we’ll have to try somewhere else.’
‘It’s barely wide enough now, Captain.’
Nara took a step toward the helm console and rested a hand on Erom’s shoulder, ‘go now, Lieutenant, full impulse.’
The Xu Fu entered the slipstream corridor at the relatively leisurely speed that full impulse provided but as soon as the bow hit subspace, the ship was accelerated to something close to infinite velocity as recorded on the warp scale.
‘How are we doing?’ Nara asked as the ship began to shudder violently.
‘Inertial dampeners are having trouble with the speed we’re traveling at, Captain,’ Baransky said. ‘The telemetry we’re receiving from the primary sensors is giving us new parameters. It’ll take me a moment to compensate.’
‘The structural integrity field is down to eighty percent,’ Ufiri reported from the tactical station. ‘I’m reading microfractures forming on the outer hull, deck six, sections fifteen through nineteen, trying to reroute power to compensate.’
The shuddering subsided and Nara breathed a small sigh of relief. ‘How’s the structural integrity now?’
‘Holding steady at ninety seven percent,’ Ufiri responded with a slight smile.
‘All right people, I want hourly updates from every department for the next twenty four hours and we’ll see how we go. I want everyone to be on full alert. This is a completely untested engine and there have been no trials.’
‘Captain,’ Erom said, ‘I think there’s a problem with the navigation computer.’
‘What’s the problem?’
‘Those coordinates you sent, they’re not what the computer now shows as programmed in.’
Nara peered over her shoulder and noticed the discrepancy. ‘Do you see that?’
‘Yes ma’am, the third and fourth numbers in each of the coordinates has been transposed, that wasn’t my doing.’
‘Emma, Ana, what can we do about this?’
‘Adjust course,’ Bartel suggested.
Baransky shook her head. ‘We can’t, we’d have to drop back into normal space before we can enter a course correction. Whoever was responsible knew about the engine and knew how it worked, just as well as we do.’
‘How far off course will we be if we continue on this trajectory?’ Nara asked.
Erom did a quick calculation in her head, ‘about forty light years, give or take.’
‘Two entire sectors, that’s a fair distance,’ Bartel said.
‘But not an insurmountable problem,’ Nara responded. ‘Now that we’re in the subspace slipstream, I don’t want to rock the boat, as it were.’
‘So we’ll see where we end up?’ Bartel asked.
‘Exactly,’ Nara confirmed.
