NationStates Jolt Archive

Cadia System, Heart of Metallinautian Space

The space around Cadia prime has been the epicenter of hustle and bustle for almost a decade since the breakthroughs in the slow Temporal Research field. The Breakthroughs came in the form of a Dereilct Indran Vessel. It was almost 200 years old. Though it was very aged the ship was centuries ahead of the Metallinautian Temporal Fleet. The ship was harvested and researched. They were emerging as one of the temporal fore runners.

For the last 3 1/2 years they had spent enormous amounts of money and time converting the Cadian Jump Gate into a temporal wormhole matrix. The process has been littered with failure. Up until now there had been no successful link. The gate has all the necessary parts and power supplies. The problem was in that no wormholes were to be found. There was some speculation as to why this happened. The theories ranged from Cadia being an unstable area to Indran involvement. None have been proved or disproved.

Captain Jane Clifstone was a middle-aged woman. She was fair of face and skin. She was around 1.75 meters tall and about 45 kilograms. Her eyes were chestnut brown; overall she was a 'classic' beauty with curly blonde hair. Jane was fidgeting in her chair as she impatiently waited watching the view screen. It was fixed on the gate, which was powering up.

The gate itself is nothing that special. It is a ring that is 3 Kilometers in diameter. The outside of it was currently flickering blue as several petawatts surged through it to make the gat turn on. Inside the ring a white void was all that one could see. Occasionally it would pulsate blue.

"Ma'am, ten seconds until gate has reached 100%. Nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, gate is operational." a lieutenant informed her.

The gate came alive the void shimmered away and a pulsing purple color danced in the huge hoop.

"Gate is fully operational captain, awaiting your orders ma'am." the lieutenant continued.

"Well, the same thing we have been trying to do for the last 3 and a half years is what's on the menu today boys. Begin scanning for links. I will be in my ready room." with that she strode off into her ready room. She could tell this was going to be a long day.

Back on the bridge the crew was having idle chatter amongst themselves. They ranged from reminiscing about old academy days to how awful it was to be assigned to the temporal division. Meanwhile they neglected a little beeping noise. It was an indication of a link up.

"I'll be damned" the one who spotted it said. "Where does it lead to?" they continued speaking for the whole bridge.

Several moments passed as the computers whizzed through several star charts to cross-reference and ensure the deduction was the most accurate one available.

"The Triangulum..." trailed off the lieutenant from earlier. Beep his console went as he contacted Clifstone, "Ma'am, you may want to rejoin us for a moment." he continued.

The gate slowly changed from a purple color to a starry backdrop with many articles of debris. It was clearly a derelict fleet.

"Where the hell is that?" the captain wanted to know. "Furthermore, what the hell is all the debris?"

"Well ma'am preliminary exams have shown the debris is part of or possibly all of the Indran Temporal Incursion Fleet. The place is the Triangulum galaxy." the lieutenant said not breaking his gaze from the view screen.

"Computer how sure are you that this is the Triangulum?" Clifstone inquired.

99.9% chance of being correct ma'am the sultry voice replied.

"What is the the .1%?" the Captain inquired

An uncharted and potentially dangerous territory ma'am retorted the computer.

After several moments passed the lieutenant broke the tense silence, "What should we do?"

"We are going through. Shields up, weapons on standby, that means the temporal ones too we don't know what could hurt Indran vessels like that." the Captain said brazenly.

Tag for interest and possible RP.

Taggedamuffin

"Captain I have a question." the lieutenant sheepishly uttered.

"Yes?" Clifstone replied. She was feeling very impatient which was obvious in her face.

"What if we need escorts?" he asked meekly.

"What are the vessels are in our vicinity?" the captain inquired.

"There is an Arenumbergian Destroy and a few various sized Sskiss vessels ma'am." the lieutenant said with growng confidence. He felt better because the captain had ridiculed him.

"Send out a message asking them if they wish to escort us through. Brief them all the information we have gathered." Clifstone ordered.

ooc:this is your chance

tag.

"I want to see what lays beyond that portal lieutenant. Set a course accordingly." Clifstone instructed.

"Aye ma'am course set" he said pushing a few buttons on the holographic display. "Awaiting the order" he said flatly, eyes riveted to the screen.

"Execute order." the captain said.

The ship glided gracefully towards the portal. It then entered the glassy surface and it rippled a little. As soon as the ship entered the ring it lurched forward. The crew inside were thrown all around as the inertial equalizers were not equipped to handle the raw speed of Temporal Hyperspace.

Clifstone was pinned against the wall on the far side of the bridge. "What the hell is going on!?" she screamed as her voiced bounced from the hull reverberations.

"The inertial stabilizers ma'am! They were not designed for such speed. If we are going to stay at this pace the ship will tear apart! I give her no more than 2 minutes." the lieutenant screamed over the wailing hull.

"Can we drop out of the wormhole with some kind of inhibitor?" the captain screamed struggling to get to her feet.

"Not advisable captain. We are thousands of light years into unknown space, we might never get home." he yelled back.

"Well what do you suggest?” the captain screamed as alarms began to blare. The hull was on the breaching point.

"We have no choice. We have to ride it out." he screamed at the top of his voice as the hull began to twist.

All at once the ship stopped. Everyone flew forward inside the vessel.

"Damage report" the captain barked as she stood up.

The lieutenant dragged himself up by the station he was at and walked over to his post. After several system diagnostics programs ran and reported he replied, "Some minor damage to the hull, Shields will be down for a good amount of time, long range communications are nearly destroyed. Other than that systems are coming back 100% ma'am".

The captain was dumbfounded as she took the time to first look at the view screen. "What is that?" she said pointing at the screen.

All at once the entire crew seemed to realize what was on the screen.

"Bring up the holographic view." Clifstone ordered.

Silently the lieutenant pressed the holographic keys and brought up the 3d representation of what they were seeing.

The bridge lights gently dimmed and the hologram was brought up. It showed a vast debris field. Several derelict vessels and many damaged and abandoned stations.

“Captain these are definitely Indran vessels and stations. Sensors say were are in the Triangulum.” a voice from the back of the bridge said.

“Life signs?” the captain inquired blankly.

“None ma’am. Nothing is coming up at all. Deep space scans indicate no life anywhere in the proximity of several parsecs.” another voice replied from the side of her.

“What happened?” Clifstone asked.

“Ma’am I have no suggestions.” the lieutenant said.

“Nor do I” said several other voices.

“Scan the area in depth” the captain said.

After several uncomfortable minutes a voice shredded the silence, “This is a dangerous spot to be in. There all sorts temporal anomalies. I am reading micro wormholes, temporal fissures, temporal hiccups and all sorts of unknown temporal dangers.”.

“What about that massive station over there?” Clifstone inquired.

“No life signs as I previously said. Though there is a strong electronic signal coming from the interior.” a voice said puzzled.

“Is there anywhere for us to dock?” Clifstone inquired.

“Scans indicate a massive hangar on the other side of the hangar.” the lieutenant said.

“Docking rings?” the captain questioned.

“One” the lieutenant said.

“Fine set course and get your gear you are leading the away team.” Clifstone instructed.

“Aye aye ma’am.” he said enthusiastically.

After 4 minutes the ship began to initiate docking procedures with the station. The process was inhibited by a crippled security program that was not allowing them to dock. It was shut down with quite an effort even though it was 90% corrupt. The away team trod through the air lock into the station.

“Air toxin and radiation readings are nominal. Atmospheric conditions are optimal. Remove space suits.” the lieutenant ordered.

The pads on the three suits of the away team beep and the suits were miniaturized back into the pin sized containers whence they came. They walked over to a control panel that was still blinking with life. They downloaded the station map into there neural implants.

Upon scanning further the lieutenant concluded that the electronic source was emanating from the several AI terminals in the station. The nearest one was 6.7 meters away according to the map. The team walked the distance and were now over looking their own vessel. The 700 meter ship was dwarfed by the sizable hangar. [I]What could this have been used for?[I] The lieutenant pondered.

They found one of the stations. The terminal was not responding. After several hacks the system came online. They were greeted by a holographic Indran.

“Greetings, I am lieutenant Max Jarvis from the Vast Interstellar Imperium of Metallinauts. We are here by accident. We are puzzled by the fact that there are so many derelict vessels and temporal anomalies in this space. We also hope you could provide some insight as to why none of your people are coming up on our scanners.” he said waiting for a response.

A ragtag group of assorted Sskiss vessels had arrived at the Cadia system. The two lush habitable worlds ceded to the Sskiss by the Metallinauts government for their part in a bloody civil war were slow to populate. Supplies were slow in comming and colonists even slower. Between both worlds there were barely ten thousand Sskiss.

Sskaak' Rrawss was within the chamber of were Dictates/Orders given/received [bridge]. He was in deep thought and his body showed it - it had assumed the posture of Deep Thought/Pondering". Sskaak' Rrawss mused, "Why were these two ideal worlds so slow to develop?" Was it because they were so distant from the Sskiss crecheworlds? It did not make sense to him. He had, however, heard/seen rumours about a mass build-up amoung his people to colonize "the Aged Brood Mother and its Creche". It was a holo of predominently K and G class stars 150Ly across directly rimward from Sskiss space and some 200ly away. And at it's approximate center, dominating, was a great swollen red giant - some Sskiss had called it the "hunters eye"....

In addition, he heard/seen rumours of a large fleet of new ships that had grown/constructed and although all tried to be silent about it, information still travels, like a prey's spoor in the wind. Sskaark' Rraws carried out his duty - another 25,000 colonists were droped in organic life pods from the one colony vessel that was present. In addition, more supplies and the herds of prey animals for the vast open areas that were to become a Sskiss city's pastures and hunting grounds.

As they were about to leave, Hisss' Oorr, a lean, almost emmaceated Sskiss squawked in some concern, signaled "important information received" and waited patiently for instuctions....

"visual/verbal" Sskraak' Rawss hissed. Perhaps he thought, there will be some excitment after all.... A visual of a Female Mettalinauts (or so Sskraak' Rawss thought - "knowledge of the "other" [aliens] was not his specialty) began to speak. A Sskiss organic data nodule had to translate. Aside from translating the vocals, it generated a hologram of a Sskiss to add further information via a Sskiss's body movements. Sskraak' Rawss mused "there speaking is so "empty/bland""!

The transmission was short, and Sskraak' Rawss, with modifiers of "Swift/Predatory decision" (he signaled this by an abrupt snap of his jagged toothed lined jaws) and issued his dictates/orders. "All vessals that give death [warships] will hunt with our crechemates...."We will merge packs for hunting/discovery of technology!"

And so the Sskiss craft joined their allies, perhaps mused Sskraak' Rawss the great Tyrant/ruler of all Sskiss will issue a reward....

For an intelligent, Third Generation Artificial Intelligence Hologram, the avatar for the Idalon Nexus was as sophisticated as they come. Idanex, as she liked to be called, had vast information programs and subroutines at her command. When she was given this posting three and a half years ago, she could not have been more thrilled, at least on the scale of how much avatars can get thrilled at the prospect of holding the highest level clearance in the ranks of Indran Holographic Avatars. As it was custom, the Avatars, Holographic Crewmembers, Humans, Aliens, and even the ships themselves, had complete and equal rights. No one was treated as a second rate citizen. As such, it was as much of an honor to recieve such a posting as a normal human would feel. However, things in the recent years have been different. Over the past two years, strange orders, classified orders at the highest level had been coming down the subspace pipeline direct from TIF High Command. Only she and General Sokun had high enough clearance to understand what had been happening.

Five years prior to her assumption of her current post, the Main Temporal Observatory in the home system had been found to be tampered with and was off by a factor of 0.023 during a routine fifteen year overhaul. With that kind of degree of misalignment, the data acted upon by the Indran Senior Directorate would also be off and could cause massive reprocussions. Thankfully nothing had required the consultation of the Observatory. After the misalignment had been discovered, a special, highly classified team, unknown even to the Senior Directorate, went to a secondary Temporal Observatory which had been completed in secrecy six years prior, to attempt to discover the identity and nature of the saboteur. In a matter of hours, the team had isolated the exact timeline event where the sabotage occured. What they discovered, was unthinkable. Even with all of the advancements of Indran Temporal Technology and the latest state of the art tech, the entire nation had operated on the assumption that they were the sole civilization that had mastered temporal technology. They were wrong. They discovered a temporal footprint signature left by the saboteur. The signature registered at a level not recorded by the Indran Temporal Level Development Scale. As soon as the team discovered this fact, they contacted the Temporal Incursion Fleet High Command and detailed the urgency of the situation and immediately, classified the matter at the highest levels. They also authorized a massive search through the timelines, a search of such a magnitude that one like this had never been considered as a possibility.

It took just more than eighteen months to discover the nature, and more importantly, the identity of this previously unseen foe. This race, the Suchae, were a race of beings that lived outside the realm known as the Space/Time Continuum. What was even more disturbing, was that the Suchae had been aware of Indra Prime for a long time before the sabotage occured. The team leading the research into the Suchae came across some very cryptic and distorted information buried in the folds of the STC. When they finally decrypted the information, they discovered that the Suchae had been influencing certain prominent members of the Restored Extra Solar Union of Systems Alliance, ever since the reincarnation of the alliance.

With Indra Prime facing imminent danger from multiple fronts, first from the Suchae directly, and secondly from the multiple nations who had had unknown modifications made by the Suchae, the Temporal Incursion Fleet High Command decided to construct the Idalon Nexus Facility and develop a weapon that would be able to counteract the technology used by the Suchae. It took eight grueling months to construct the outerframework as well as the most spartan crew quarters and AI mainframe, just to allow for work at Idalon Nexus to begin. Overall, the station hadn't been completely finished when the Weaponship was deployed.

For more than a year, the scientists who were pulled to the Idalon Nexus in Triangulum to work on Project Marauder, worked double and sometimes triple shifts to come up with a design for a weapon that would counteract the technology they now faced. With the threat of unknowingly sharing information with the Suchae, they had been forced to maintain a policy of isolationism from the rest of Indra Prime as well as her closest allies and the newly formed Temporal Research Council. Once a suitable design had been fabricated and the specs ready for actual construction, the recently finished supershipyard was able to begin its three year construction project. With this massive project underway, the TIFHC decided that there needed to be a massive fleet presence in the system to defend the one single vessel that would be able to protect the Indran Civilization from total destruction. So they reassigned seven whole fleets to guard the Triangulum Galaxy, primarily the gateway that led to Gamma Eridani, the Idalon Nexus Facility, as well as the secured Planetary system used to store the Chronotonium and the Temporal Crystal. Knowing this was a risky move, the High Command did it anyway, even if some nation would eventually find out.

Of course, a nation did. When a Klonor scoutship had accidentally breached the quarantine zone that was set up to protect the region and detected the massive operation, they did the only thing possible, they turned tail and attempted to flee the area and make it back to the Milky Way to warn the alliance. When the Indran vessels detected the scoutship, they sent a flotilla of vessels after the scoutship to destroy it before it could transmit the information it found out about the operation. Before the scoutship made it back to the Milky Way, the vessel was destroyed along with all hands, but not without launching a data probe,that went undetected, into the wormhole that linked back to the home galaxy. The information it contained was badly damaged, yet managed to find its way to the ESUS. Eventually the most advanced temporal civilizations, or the Temporal Research Council, found out that they had been lied to and that valuable temporal technology had been withheld (for an unknown purpose) from them and they were none to happy. They eventually launched an offensive to reclaim the technology that they believed was rightfully theirs.

Idanex, continually reviewed the information she possessed while her program had been in the data processor. To her, little to no time passes from points of activation. The time between the final activation by Lieutenant General Sokun and the Metallinautian team's activation, seemed infintessimal. When she went offline, she went to her idle state knowing that the War Indra Prime had feared was on the doorstep. When she was reactivated, it was to a completely damaged, nearly destroyed station to a team not even of her own nation. When she was reactivated, she heard the words of the Metallinaut Team but was immediately on the defensive.

“Greetings, I am lieutenant Max Jarvis from the Vast Interstellar Imperium of Metallinauts. We are here by accident. We are puzzled by the fact that there are so many derelict vessels and temporal anomalies in this space. We also hope you could provide some insight as to why none of your people are coming up on our scanners.”

When Idanex heard this, she reached out as far as she could, which was not far at all due to the damage the sensors had taken. She could tell, that there was a vessel docked at the Third Docking port, and that the vessel showed signs of temporal distortion. She diverted power from her own system, which caused her to momentarily flicker in and out of appearance, to extend the range of her sensors. The Team Leader had not been lying, there WERE massive temporal distortions in the region as well as a massive debris field, one that spanned multiple parsecs, that could only be explained one way. A massive cataclysm must have occurred after she had been deactivated that destroyed the entire Indran navy stationed in the region. She quickly did an estimation on the amount of debris left, and concluded that the debris was the remnants of no less than six hundred vessels that were once the pride of the Indran Temporal Incursion Fleet. She was stunned in disbelief. What could possibly do such damage to the most advanced fleet ever to sail between the stars. Could the Suchae have attacked and destroyed the entire fleet? If so, why was she still here? She decided to go on the offensive and grill the Metallinautian Team for information about her people.
She readjusted her appearance from the tabletop hologram to a full sized avatar so that she could look the Lieutenant straight in the eyes.

"I am the avatar for this station. My designation is Idalon Nexus, but you may refer to me as Idanex. Why is a Metallinautian Vessel docked aboard my station and WHY is there a Metallinautian team within my station?! This is a highly classified military installation! You will state your clearance level immediately or face immediate removal from this station through explosive decompression!"

She knew that her systems were at less than 3% and that she would not be able to fulfill her bluff, but she had to put on a face that showed determination in her resolve to get answers on her terms not theirs.

Jarvis jumped back and put his hands outward in a jesture of peace, "Wait we have no intentions of harm to you or this station. We were conducting a test of our recalibrated jump gate. We modified for temporal worm hole jumps. As we sat idle waiting for it to connect to one it did. Wha we saw and scanned was a massive dbris field millions of light years away. We concluded only Indrans knew about technology of that sort in the manner that they are able to produce and entire fleet. So we went throught to see what had happened. That's when we detected no signs of Indran life anywhere and also found that this place is a temporal minefield. Our ship was pretty badly damaged as it is not buily for the stresses of sustained temporal hyperspace. We were wondering if you could help us with repairs. As to my clearence, in Metallinauts I have a level 10 Temporal Clearence. That means I am allowed to travel time. So does the crew of that crew out there. Maybe we can work together?". He awaited her response.

*TAG*

Idanex listened to the explanation given by Lieutenant Jarvis and also accessed her database on Metalinauttian physiology. With what scanning capability she had at her disposal, she did what she could to determine the state of mind of the Officers standing before her. Because it required so much energy to commit to such a scan, her holoimage wavered in and out while the Lieutenant rambled on about the damage to his ship and requested repairs. As close as she could tell, Max Jarvis was a seasoned officer, althrough one who had not had much contact with the Indran Civilization. In retrospect, she determined that everything that he was saying was true and that there was no reason to doubt him. If she wanted to survive, she would have to cooperate with this group of soldiers and give them the information they wanted. Some of the information they had given to her had been a surprise to her. First of all, the severely damaged station she noticed herself when she was reactivated by the Metallinautian boarding party. Secondly, she was thrown off guard when the Lieutenant said there was a massive debris field. Finally, she definitely did not expect to see for herself that in the space that once countless hundreds of ships patrolled, many of them friends of hers, was riddled with spatial and temporal distortions on a massive scale. Hopefully the Metallinautian crew could repair her systems as much as they could all at the same time where she would help them in trying to identify the problems with her insufficient data. Hopefully, this team would be able to help her enough so she could get enough information and be able to relay her back to the Indra Prime High Command to report the massive destruction that occured in this system.

"Lieutenant Jarvis, you are recognized to be a member of the Vast Interstellar Imperium of Metallinauts, and therefore an ally of the Sovereign Nation of Indra Prime."
She looked around at her surroundings momentarily before returning her cold gaze back onto the Lieutenant.
"And as such, I am requesting and requiring your assistance in repairing my vital systems, as all my repair drones are not responding to my attempts at communications. If you assist me in getting my system back up to a level of normal operation status, I will order my repair drones in the spacedock to attend to your ship's needs. However, once your ship is completely repaired and my systems are repaired to a point which I can leave the station, we will attempt to find out the nature of the cataclysmic event that occured here. I will need to get in touch with the Temporal Incursion Fleet High Command and report that there was a possible major incident with the Suchae. They need to know what happened here, as soon as we find out for ourselves. Once my primary avatar bodily construct is repaired I will transfer to it and join your vessel in search for the SCC. Agreed?"

Jarvis was pleased with the avatars diplomacy. They would most certainly help the Avatar. The his brow furrowed at two words that were not in his vocabulary. "Pardon my ignorence we are new to the temporal field. We only have experience for a few decades. What is the 'Suchae' and what is this 'SCC' you speak of?" he said. With a deep breath he continued, "We will certainly help you with your repairs and search. Although, will the TIFHC be happy with our presence here? I mean they sealed this space off a few years back right?". "Alas, perhaps it is fate that has brought us here to you. Shall we send out our worher craft to aid your drones in the recovery of the debris field? We would be glad to aid you in anyway possible." he said ernestly.

The crew began to move more freely about in the room looking at the battered halls.

"Captain we have a situation.." he went into a lengthy explination. A new day of co-operation was about to be born.

Idanex considered giving the Lieutenant false information regarding the Suchae and the SCC, but with the events turning out how she feared, she thought that she would probably need some dire assistance from the Metallinautian Empire if she were ever going to figure it out.

"What I am about to tell you does not leave this room, or I WILL destroy your ship AND your crew.

Eight years ago, Five years before I assumed my post here, the Main Temporal Observatory in the Gamma Eridani system had been found to be tampered with and was off by a factor of 0.023 during a routine fifteen year overhaul. With that kind of degree of misalignment, the data acted upon by the Indran Senior Directorate would also be off and could cause massive reprocussions. Thankfully nothing had required the consultation of the Observatory. After the misalignment had been discovered, a special, highly classified team, unknown even to the Senior Directorate, went to a secondary Temporal Observatory which had been completed in secrecy, six years prior, to attempt to discover the identity and nature of the saboteur. In a matter of hours, the team had isolated the exact timeline event where the sabotage occured. What they discovered, was unthinkable. Even with all of the advancements of Indran Temporal Technology and the latest state of the art tech, the entire nation had operated on the assumption that they were the sole civilization that had mastered temporal technology. They were wrong. They discovered a temporal footprint signature left by the saboteur. The signature registered at a level not recorded by the Indran Temporal Level Development Scale. As soon as the team discovered this fact, they contacted the Temporal Incursion Fleet High Command and detailed the urgency of the situation and immediately, classified the matter at the highest levels. They also authorized a massive search through the timelines, a search of such a magnitude that one like this had never been considered as a possibility.

It took just more than eighteen months to discover the nature, and more importantly, the identity of this previously unseen foe. This race, the Suchae, were a race of beings that lived outside the realm known as the Space/Time Continuum. What was even more disturbing, was that the Suchae had been aware of Indra Prime for a long time before the sabotage occured. The team leading the research into the Suchae came across some very cryptic and distorted information buried in the folds of the STC. When they finally decrypted the information, they discovered that the Suchae had been influencing certain prominent members of the Restored Extra Solar Union of Systems Alliance, ever since the reincarnation of the alliance.

With Indra Prime facing imminent danger from multiple fronts, first from the Suchae directly, and secondly from the multiple nations who had had unknown modifications made by the Suchae, the Temporal Incursion Fleet High Command decided to construct the Idalon Nexus Facility and develop a weapon that would be able to counteract the technology used by the Suchae. It took eight grueling months to construct the outerframework as well as the most spartan crew quarters and AI mainframe, just to allow for work at Idalon Nexus to begin.
For more than a year, the scientists who were pulled to the Idalon Nexus in Triangulum to work on Project Marauder, worked double and sometimes triple shifts to come up with a design for a weapon that would counteract the technology they now faced. With the threat of unknowingly sharing information with the Suchae, they had been forced to maintain a policy of isolationism from the rest of Indra Prime as well as her closest allies and the newly formed Temporal Research Council. Once a suitable design had been fabricated and the specs ready for actual construction, the recently finished supershipyard was able to begin its three year construction project. With this massive project underway, the TIFHC decided that there needed to be a massive fleet presence in the system to defend the one single vessel that would be able to protect the Indran Civilization from total destruction.
The Weaponship I refer to, is the SCC TIF Temporal Command Vessel, the one weapon of massive proportions designed to protect the entire Indran Civilization as well as the rest of the Galaxy.
So you see the massive debris field out there is whats left of the seven fleets that were stationed in this system to protect from the Suchae. Now you know the reason the Temporal Research Council tried to invade Indran Space."

OOC: Tag. CAMTIM should know about this...

The crew had been working furiously to repair the mangled station. What ever had happened it was bad. The station was barely holding together. Though Idanex had proved herself as an invaluable asset in repairing the station. Crews were slowly making progress in repairing the station.

Captain Clifstone paced back and forth on the bridge. Who or what the hell can do this to the Indrans? I doubt that the Suchae could have done this. Surely there would be trails of their presence she pondered.

“Captain” a voice rang in her neural communication system.

“Yes?” she replied hoping for answers or good news.

“Well we have repaired most of the essential systems. Power is hovering around 80 or 85% currently.” the voice informed her.

“Excellent, what of the Avatar?” she inquired.

“Well it appears she is well on the mend. I dare say she is fully operational.” the voice replied.

Avatar Node

“Well, we have most of the systems up Idanex.” Jarvis cheerfully mused. “I have just received word that my Captain will board to meet you face to face.” he informed the Hologram. “Also we are venturing into the debris field. We are going to start hauling the hulks into the docks.” he continued.

Several Hours Later

The air in the hanger turned into a vacuum as the doors and force fields were removed.

Shuttles Alpha I through Beta XII you are clear to launch the feminine computer voice informed the thirty or so pilots.

“Roger that” one of the pilots replied. “Kick ass!” another shouted.

In a matter of five minutes the little armada was in full motion. The buzzed around the hulks, locking tractors beams onto the battered and broken hulls.

“Captain, I am getting some seriously funky readings. I am not-------” a voice said cutting out at the end. The shuttle was sucked through an immense gravity well smaller than a pin head. It was the fourth one to go in an hour. Others had fallen pray to temporal fissures and hiccups. One shuttle disappeared for a nanosecond and came back to the ship. To the horror of the crews they had aged 90 years and the shuttle showed that it had certainly been around for 90 years.

Overall the recovery effort was doing very well. Several of the repairable hulks were now dry docked in the massive bay.

“Captain, I am receiving word that we have just reactivated the repair droids.” said an ensign.

“Excellent, perhaps the logs can provide us with some answers” she stated. “But for now, I am going on board the station to speak with Idanex.” she said. After several minutes of walking she came to the node where the avatar was. The many soldiers were bombarding her with questions. “Soldiers” she barked.

They snapped to attention at her voice.

“You are dismissed from your shift, to the holodecks with the lot of you, extended time. If anyone has a grievance tell them to take it to me.” she said with the tone a mother would use.

The Soldiers hopped off like excited school children.

“Pardon my crew, it is the first time we have dealt with such advanced technology. I am Captain Clifstone, commanding officer of the RMF Intrepid. I am pleased to meet you. As you probably have noticed we have begun repairs to the fleet and station, though the area is rife with temporal catastrophe. I ask what you think should be the next course of action.” she said.

"Captain Clifstone. You are indeed keeping up your end of our bargain. So I will begin to keep up mine."

A holographic display of some device appeared between Clifstone and Idanex. She let the captain look over the image for a second before she looked up inquisically at Idanex.

"The device you see before you is a microregional temporal nullifier. It is designed to prevent any temporal instability within a region that would have different temporal signatures. I understand that some of your crew have encountered some of the temporal anomalies that surround this station. Some have been adversely affected by them. Here is the solution. install these in your vessel and your subvessels and they will prevent any of your vessels from being sucked into any of the singularities or temporal vorticies. It should facilitate your recovery of the battered hulks of starships that are out there."

The hologram of the device dissapeared without Idanex even taking her view off of the captain.

"You may also want to have those crew who have been affected, find there way to the medical bay if it is still intact. There is some regenerative technology there that can be of assistance to them. I am not in touch with my medical computer core so they will need to be able to access the computer systems in the Medical Bay manually and find the information that they need to operate the devices.
I dont know the status of the war effort that has been happening here and in the Milky Way, so if you would, find out as much information from the Temporal Observatory as you can. I will accompany you to Deck 152 where the observatory is once my avatar arrives,

You will also need this."

A second hologram faded into view between Idanex and the captain. This time, it was a rotating image with constantly changing numberical figures.

"This, captain, is a highly advanced form of temporal technology. One that is designed to fit your ship and your ship alone. This is a sensor program that will allow for your vessel to identify, track, and follow, any Indran Temporal Engines emissions. Due to the advanced nature of our technology, we made them virtually untrackable. They would in fact be completely untrackable without a special waveguide we installed in each vessel that would allow us to track them and make sure they are still on course. Each vessel has a different signature but all have the same basic structure. This program will allow your vessel to account for any and all Indran Vessels still activated. It is not sophisticated enough to allow you to have the precise location of the vessels, but it will give you the direction it travelled in. Perhaps we may be lucky enough to find some complete vessels. In the event we do, all technology still remains under the sole possession of Indra Prime, even if I am the only surviving member of our civilization."

"Thank you Idanex. This will indeed prove very handy." she handed the hardware to a marine who ran off to the ship with it. "In the meantime I will have a crew go check out the sick bays. Now are you able to project yourself onto my ship? As I would appreciate you overseeing the installment of that cube. Also I wish to have some counsel in my quarters." Clifstone said casually.

Sick Bay

"Man this job sucks dude" PFC Jacobson said.

"Jake shut it now" 1st Sgt. Walker said. "I think I hear music.." he said.

Slowly and quietly, classical music crept into the room. Something quickly jolted by. It was too fast to see.

"Sarge, something is here with us." Jacob shuddered.

Then they saw it... a whirling dervish. Several cleaning machines dancing a strange dance. They fainted.

Several hours later the awoke in the infirmary onboard the station. The power was back up and some of the equipment was salvaged. They were informed of what happened.

"What about the dancing robots sir?" inquired Jacobson.

"Dancing robots?" Clifstone inquired. She muttered something to the attending nurse.

They drugged. Several years later he would learn it was over exhaustion that caused his hallucinations.

"Idanex, the cube is installed and most of the fleet repaired. Want to go hunting?" Cliftone inquired.

Bump