Chapter 4 cont.
Six Days Later: The Admiralty conference room at StarFleet Command, San Francisco:
“Modern communication is an amazing thing,” thought Admiral Janeway. She looked around the conference room. Admirals Chelt, Nechayev, Ross and S’etek were physically present. Captain Sanjay of the Seleya and Fleet Captain Picard of the Enterprise were also here. On a pop-up video terminal at one end of the conference table Captain Elizabeth Shelby of the Sutherland was visible. Her image was being transmitted from her ship out near the Badlands on the far side of Bajor. The conference room main viewscreen held the image of Admiral J.T. Hanson, who was actually the inhabitant of another universe completely. On another pop-up screen at the opposite end of the table from Shelby was Captain Francisco “Frank” el’Sabra of the Buran. The Buran belonged to the same universe as Adm. Hanson and was currently almost as far from Hanson’s office as Shelby was from the conference room. Janeway shook her head in quiet amazement. “And we are here to talk about a mutual enemy from a third universe!” she thought. “Dear God, it almost makes me miss the Borg!” She focused her awareness as Nechayev called the meeting to order.
“Attention, people!” The slight hubbub died down. “Admiral Hanson, Captain el’Sabra, thank you for joining us. Admiral, can you tell us about the current status of Empire operations in your universe?”
All eyes turned to the main viewscreen as Hanson spoke. “The current status is: We’re screwed.” The declaration came out of Hanson’s mouth with a flat weariness. “The Empire smashed through our blockade of the Fracture six days ago, destroying or disabling over one hundred ships. Then they went on to Mars with the intention of exercising a “scorched earth” policy. We were evacuating civilians literally under the gun. A lot of good people sacrificed themselves in the process. After a twenty-four hour bombardment of the surface the Empire withdrew through the Fracture. Casualties are in the hundreds of thousands.” Hanson suddenly looked older than his years. “We killed twelve of their ships and captured one when its self-destruct failed to go off.” Looks of shock spread around the room. “All of the prisoners committed suicide when we seized the ship in question. Computers were wiped, data crystals smashed, and personal logs erased. We got some intel, which I’m transmitting now,” he could be seen pressing a button just out of sight, “But it wasn’t much. I hate to admit it but we put up a pretty sorry showing for ourselves and now over half the fighting ships in our fleet are wrecked. If they come back we’ll be hard pressed to keep them off of Earth.” People around the room digested this information with varying degrees of success. “There is one piece of good news,” Hanson added. “The Buran, under Captain el’Sabra, was outfitted with the new cloaking technology that Captain Sanjay was kind enough to share with us during his visit. They managed to shadow the Empire fleet when they returned home and have brought back valuable data about conditions on the Empire’s side of the Fracture. Captain?”
Captain el’Sabra cleared his throat and peered for a moment through the viewscreen at the assembled company before beginning. “We were able to piggyback through the Fracture on the Empire’s heels and we got a good look at what they have waiting for us, assuming this joint expeditionary force goes forward,” he qualified.
Admiral Neychayev spoke up. “Captain, we are most assuredly ‘going forward’ with this effort. The Empire has not attacked us in force as they did your StarFleet but they have sent probing vessels nearly every day into our universe for the last two weeks. They know we are here and if they manage to finish you off we will probably be next. I’m sure from the reports I’ve read that you also had a Ben Franklin?” Her inquiry had the tone of a formality but she waited for Captain el’Sabra to respond.
“Um, well, yes, we did,” el’Sabra said.
“Then I think his famous quote applies here about hanging together,” Neychayev replied. “Rest assured, we are committed to aiding in this effort.” El’Sabra looked a bit uncomfortable at her bluntness but he nodded and continued his debriefing.
“When we popped out of the Fracture we slipped into orbit around Io and repaired the slight damage caused by the transition.” He glanced towards Sanjay. “Thanks, Nick, for those beefed-up shield specs. I don’t think we’d have been fully functional with our old shields.” Focusing back on the group as a whole, he continued. “The Empire has what appears to be some kind of battle station guarding the Fracture exit on their side.” His face was replaced by footage of a large space station backlit by Jupiter. It was mushroom-shaped, with numerous small craft flying lazy figure eights around it. The upper “cap” of the mushroom was pockmarked by dozens of torpedo tubes. The chilling dagger-through-the-Earth emblem was splashed across the main body. “As you can see,” continued el’Sabra, “The Empire maintains a fairly heavy CAP over the station, which we have designated Hades.” A few of the people in the conference room grinned grimly at the reference. “We stayed in silent running mode and observed for two days.” The footage jumped ahead to several different cut-scenes of various large and heavily armed ships approaching Station Hades. “It would seem that the Empire rotates at least one of their Dreadnought-class ships past the station every six hours. We were able to intercept enough transmission traffic to conclude this is S.O.P. for them. Earlier intelligence reports had indicated the Empire had already invaded another universe prior to them attacking ours. At the conclusion of our observations we tailed another fleet into the Fracture and ended up, well, there.” el’Sabra’s face took on a very grim aspect. “I thought what they did to us was bad. I had no idea.” The view on the screen changed suddenly and shockingly to an image of Paris. It wasn’t the Paris that the people in the room knew, though. The Eiffel Tower in the image bore a close resemblance to a melted candle stub. The area around the Champ Elysees was devastated, with nothing but rubble and melted bricks as far as the eye could see. In the foreground, a line of raggedly dressed people marched single-file, chained together, while cleaner, better-dressed men and women paced them with weapons at port. Quiet murmurs broke out around the conference table at the sight.
el’Sabra continued with his report. “We found evidence that this universe had also had a Federation so we decided to stick around and find out how the Empire had conquered it. We figured the information might help us avoid the same fate. It took two days, but we finally got at least part of the story out of some refugees hiding out amidst the ruins on Andor. It seems that in this universe there wasn’t any intervention by the Organians a hundred years ago when the Federation and the Klingon Empire were at odds. The resulting war devastated most of the Alpha Quadrant and it took a century of rebuilding just to set things right again. When the Empire showed up the Federation in this universe wasn’t nearly as strong as either of ours and fell quickly. Apparently, the Empire avoided over-extending themselves by the expedient of bombing most of the civilized planets back into the Stone Age. They then enslaved most of the survivors on the heavily populated planets and left the less-populated colonies to simply die off from a lack of supplies.” If he looked grim before his visage looked positively mordant now. “The people we talked to on Andor told us about a weapon the Empire has called the thuringar. It apparently pulls multi-phasic beings into our plane of existence and collars them in an energy field. They can then be controlled and directed towards their target. When they hit, they drain all electro-magnetic energy from anything in close proximity.” He smiled bleakly. “We humanoids are powered by electro-magnetic energy. I saw a few corpses…” He shuddered theatrically. “It’s not pretty.”
Hanson interrupted, “We got a taste of this thuringar first hand during their breakout into our space. Just one of these things can knock out a Galaxy-class cruiser.”
“Ransom’s aliens,” Janeway muttered. Only Sanjay seemed to hear her.
“What’s that, Admiral?’” he asked.
“Nothing, Captain,” she said, waving him off.
“Fortunately,” el’Sabra continued, “The thuringar seems to take an enormous amount of energy. Only their Dreadnought-class vessels carry the generators to produce them. Once we got this information I decided to return through the Fracture. I figured this could be vital to our war effort,” he concluded.
Admiral Neychayev took over. “Admiral Hanson, you’ll be happy to hear that our people have been able to modify what we call ‘Smiley’s Device’ so that starships can make the transition between universes without benefit of the Fracture.” J.T. looked relieved at this statement.
“So we can start planning the assault to close the damn thing?” he asked.
Neychayev smiled coldly. “Oh, yes we can. Admiral, I’m prepared to field a force of two hundred ships for this. It will strip us down to the bare bones but I think it will be enough to make such an expedition viable. Can your people seal the Fracture permanently if we go through with this?” All eyes were on Hanson.
“Admiral, my people assure me this is doable. They tell me we will have to engage the process right at the Fracture’s origin in the Empire’s universe and it could take anywhere from twenty minutes to an hour to complete but we know what to do. If your two hundred can keep the Empire off of our backs we’ll slam the door on their plans for inter-universal expansion! I don’t have much to work with but,” he dropped his eyes downwards to his desk read-out for a moment, “I think we can kick in an additional fifty ships. A few of them have the upgraded armor you provided us with but it’s only a few. There just hasn’t been time…”
“Excellent,” Neychayev said, “Our Captain Shelby has been working on an assault plan based on the information you’ve provided us. I’ll let her explain.” Everyone’s attention shifted to the pretty, blond captain in the other pop-up viewscreen. Shelby smiled confidently at them.
“Thank you, Admiral. What I had in mind I’ve been revising in my head as I listened to Captain el’Sabra’s report. My basic proposal is this. We take a small force, perhaps thirty or forty ships, and hit the Empire in that other universe as a diversion. If we launch the attack a few hours before we go into their universe it may draw off enough of their forces to weaken their reserves, giving us a fighting chance to complete this mission with the remaining ships. The space station they have guarding the Fracture concerns me but I may have some ideas on how to neutralize it. I won’t know until I talk to a few of our experts. My primary concern is this thuringar thingy. I saw what happened to the Yorktown and I really don’t know what to do to counter that weapon. If they can generate enough of those things they may be able to devastate our fleet before we can accomplish the mission.” She looked mildly embarrassed. “I’m sorry, I should have said, ‘Before you can accomplish the mission’. I’m too far out to participate personally.” Before anything else was said, Janeway spoke up.
“I might be able to help with this thuringar.” All eyes were on her as she continued, “When Voyager was lost in the Delta Quadrant we encountered another StarFleet vessel, the Equinox. The captain of the Equinox was performing certain unethical experiments utilizing multi-phasic beings as power sources in an attempt to expedite his crews’ return to the Alpha Quadrant. We put a stop to it, of course, but we also down-loaded the Equinox database. I suspect there may be something in Captain Ransom’s research we can use.” Heads began to nod around the table.
“S’etek,” Neychayev said to the Vulcan admiral, “Get the Science Division on that right away. I want answers yesterday!” S’etek bowed briefly to the assembled group before exiting the room. “Elizabeth, I want you to work with Captains Picard and Sanjay on your plan of attack. I’m going to have Captain Picard lead the main force and Captain Sanjay lead the diversionary force.” Picard merely nodded but Sanjay looked a bit surprised at her pronouncement. “Kathryn, I need you to pull together every Defiant-, Sovereign-, and Galaxy-class ship we can spare and get them here no later than day after tomorrow. Strip everything from the Romulan border to the Orion Sector. We have to move quickly before the Empire tries to take another bite out of Admiral Hanson’s Federation.” Janeway nodded her acknowledgement. “Admiral Hanson, I’d like you to stay on the line with me after everyone leaves so we can take a look at what you will be adding to the assault force.” Hanson bobbed his head at her. “Chelt, you coordinate with Shelby, Picard and Sanjay. Whatever resources they need to call upon for this to work, you get it for them. That is top priority. Admiral Ross, I want you to contact the Border Service Command. We’re going to be very thin out there and I need you on top of things to put out any brushfires that might break out. Ok, people, you have your assignments! Get to work!” The meeting broke up as everybody went to their assigned tasks.
to be continued...
Maybe we'll get to see the two Picards face-off and quote Shakespeare at each other! 
