NationStates Jolt Archive

"And then *hic* he said, 'well how was I supposed to know that was what his antennae were for'!" exclaimed the woman, before bursting out into hysterical laughter and dropping her head down onto the table with a crash. Her eyes glazed and her movements clumsy, the burgundy tunic of her uniform was hanging open and she clutched a half-empty glass of blue liquid as though it was the only thing in the universe that mattered to her.

"Well, Lieutenant, I think you've had enough Romulan ale for one evening," Captain Jeremy Kyle said with a sigh and a polite smile. He reached across the illuminated table and tried to take away the glass from her hand, surprised at how much effort it took to pry the thing from her grasp. "I think it was better when this stuff was illegal. Hannah - it's time for you to go to bed."

Shoving her chair out from behind her roughly, she rose to her feet and stood swaying for a few moments, performing a mock salute. "Aye *hic* aye, Cap'n!" she spluttered with a goofy smile. She pivoted on her feet roughly and staggered towards the exit, though before she managed to get there she stumbled sideways and found herself seated with two surprised ensigns. Succumbing to the alcohol, she fell asleep in the chair, her dull brown hair splayed across the two ensigns' empty plates.

Kyle sighed and smiled apologetically to the two ensigns, as he moved to hoist the semi-unconscious woman to her feet and drag her to her quarters. He was stopped by the sound of digital chimes, as the computer interjected over the intercom. "Now hear this, now hear this: all officers to the bridge. Repeat, all officers to the bridge."

With a frustrated grunt, he let her slump back down onto the table again. "Ensigns, before returning to duty please ensure that Lieutenant Bates is safety returned to her quarters."

"Aye sir..." both said in confused unison, looking down at the woman again as their Captain darted out of the room.

***

Side-stepping the turbolift doors hurriedly, and clutching his already-aching head like a mother nursing a newborn baby, Kyle uncomfortably propped himself up against the science console where Commander J'tal stood, and simply gazed at the Romulan officer with desperation in his eyes.

"Captain," J'tal said, looking up from her scanners and frowning when she saw his expression. "Look at this please."

"Commander, I'm not on-duty for another six hours, this had better be..."

One of the monitors changed to show a pulsating effect that appeared to radiate over many surrounding sectors. A tiny dot several sectors away from the epicentre was suddenly enlarged as the screen zoomed in on it, and it was revealed to be the USS Novara - this ship - which flashed in red as the waves of energy washed over them.

"What in God's name is that?" Kyle said, after a pause.

"You did not feel it?" J'tal enquired, with a bemused look on her green-tinted face.

"Commander..." he growled.

"Sorry, Captain," she nodded. "I just assumed that you had noticed it. The ship shook slightly some moments ago."

"I have been otherwise engaged," Kyle sighed. "Lieutenant Bates has been homesick again. I think we're gonna need to bring Lieutenant Commander Jackman back onto tactical and security for a few days... again. Anyway... what caused that?"

"Ah," the Romulan woman nodded. As first officer she was well aware of the deteriorating psychological state of Lieutenant Bates, and continued on without question. "Well Captain, as for what caused this wave to emanate I do not know. It appears to have resulted from a particularly large burst of energy several lightyears away, as part of some kind of colossal tear in the fabric of space-time. It even sent out an unusual subspace shockwave which radiated for several lightyears in all directions."

"How did that cause the ship to shake?" Kyle asked.

"The subspace interference interacted with our warp field rather negatively, sir, and the ship was forced out of warp," J'tal told him. "Inertial dampeners struggled to compensate for a moment." Kyle glanced over his shoulder at the viewscreen on the front bridge wall, and sure enough they were no longer moving at warp.

"Oh," he nodded. "Damage?"

"Negligible, although Commander Novak has already 'complained' to me that he estimates it will take him thirty minutes to completely re-calibrate the warp nacelles in order to restore our warp field," J'tal said. "Additionally, until the interference subsides, our long-range subspace communications will be... patchy."

"Well, this is certainly worth deviating from our course for a while to investigate," Kyle said somewhat loudly, clasping his hands together in enthusiasm. "Commander, feed the co-ordinates of the epicentre of that energy wave to the helm. Helm, lay in a course to those co-ordinates at full impulse, going to warp eight as soon as engineering reports nominal power."

"Aye, sir," Ensign Jones called from the helm. "Heading nine-three-two mark six-five, full impulse speed confirmed."

"Commander J'tal, you have the conn," Kyle said, clasping his forehead again. "I'm going to find me some particularly strong coffee..."

***

It was a couple of days travel before the Novara entered into range of the area where the burst of energy had occured. Their warp engines became increasingly unstable the closer they came, until the point where they had to drop out of warp and proceed the rest of the way under full impulse power. By now, Captain Kyle had managed to sleep off his unfortunately timed encounter with Romulan ale, and had spent most of the journey locked away with Commander Novak in the main engineering room trying to help him keep the warp engines online for as long as they could. Not that this was an especially entertaining task, as Commander Novak was renowned for disliking people interfering in what he perceived to be 'his domain', but on this instance the Captain was forced to ignore his constant moaning for the sake of the mission.

Now on the bridge, with Lieutenant Bates notably having her usual station at tactical filled by a certain Lieutenant Commander Jackman - a brash young man who had risen quickly to his rank and was keen to let everybody know about it - Kyle sat anxiously on the edge of his leather padded seat alternating his stare between the viewscreen and the helm. The closer they got to whatever was out there, the more systems began to act up, and with nothing else like this ever having been recorded, Kyle was understandably nervous.

"Captain, I am noticing something unusual now that we are closer," J'tal announced. Her eyes were firmly buried in the eyepiece of a scanner and she didn't look up.

"By all means enlighten us, Commander," Kyle said.

"Well..." she hesitated. Which was unusual for her, a person renowned for speaking her mind. "I am detecting some manner of spatial anomaly, over one and a half astronomical units away from the central star of this system."

"What kind of anomaly?"

"I am unable to say, nothing like this has been recorded in our database," she said, with an uncharacteristic shrug. "It has a significant gravity well, and its presence here appears to be disrupting the orbits of several other celestial objects, but it does not bear any hallmarks of a typical singularity. It also appears to be undergoing from some sort of rapid expansion phase, although I am unsure of the specifics at this range. Sensor resolution continues to decline."

Ripping open the flap on his burgundy tunic as he hopped across the bridge to her station, Kyle mumbled in frustration. "Well that's damn peculiar." He looked over his shoulder for a second and called back, "helm, drop to half-impulse."

"Aye sir, slowing to one-half impulse," Jones acknowledged.

"Captain..." J'tal alerted him, pointing at one of her screens.

"I see it, Commander," Kyle nodded. As they came closer and the sensors were able to cut through more of the interference, they began to see bursts of potentially dangerous radiation being emitted at random from the core of the 'object'. Automatically, the computer sounded general quarters and several idle monitors switched to display the condition red graphic as shields were automatically charged to full power. Various monitors around J'tal's station burst to life as the sensors started detecting all manner of unknown elements and radiation signatures that the computer was unable to identify, although at this distance the computer didn't appear to be able to get much information on it anyway.

"I would hazard a guess that those energy discharges are potentially dangerous," J'tal stated the obvious.

"The computer seems to agree with you," Kyle said, striding back to his chair. "Are we close enough to get more detailed scans?"

"There is still a lot of interference to cut through, Captain," J'tal told him. "Once we are somewhat closer, our sensors may be powerful enough to penetrate it."

Ramírez, the communications officer, looked over his shoulder and shrugged. "I am not detecting any transmissions of any kind, and the standard update signal from Starfleet Command is overdue," he said with a distinctly Spanish accent. "There isn't even any background radio noise out here. However our communications are not functioning well so close to the source of the subspace interference. I doubt anything short of a direct laser linkup would allow for functional communications at the moment."

"Right," Kyle said with a note of finality, his decision apparently made. "Helm, return to full impulse, same course. We need to determine what the hell it is. Ramírez, launch a communications buoy to clear the interference and inform Starfleet of our progress. We're going to get a closer look at it."

OOC: How open is Semi-Open?

[OOC: Kinda like a stable door. The bottom half is closed, but the top half is open so the horse can see outside. Basically, I don't fancy three thousand people joining up with three thousand ships each, with one half disappearing from the thread after three posts and the other half systematically dismantling the story by waging random warfare against each other for no apparent reason.

Or something that effect. :p

Basically, if you have an idea for joining just give me a shout and I'll happily see you in deep space. I just don't want it overcrowded, is all!]

The Novara approached the anomaly as closely as she dared. Whatever it was seemed to be exuding a massive gravitational pull on whatever happened to be in the area, and the Excelsior-class starship was forced to engage full reverse thrust just to maintain station keeping status.

Now close enough to cut through the massive interference and put the anomaly on the viewscreen, the bridge crew were presented with an impressive - and daunting - sight. An enormous cloud of purple gas, it seemed, with an incredibly bright white light emanating from its central point. So bright was the core of the object that the computer had to automatically compensate and dull the viewscreen's brightness slightly to prevent it from blinding anybody who looked at it. Indeed, Novak had immediately recommended that shields be strengthened to prevent the light from causing thermal damage to the hull - which meant it must have been quite bright.

On the viewscreen, with its brightness reduced, they could look at the anomaly in perfect detail. The purple-red gas swirled violently around the bright core, reminding Captain Kyle of a tornado back home in New Manchester on New Eden. It seemed almost as though the central core was both sucking the gases into it, and at the same time spewing more gas out, maintaining the enormous size of the thing indefinitely. Sensors couldn't even begin to identify what the gases consisted of, because they continually informed J'tal that no mass was present. Of course, even at this range the massive amounts of interference the anomaly discharged seemed to be interfering with the sensors, and by this point in time communications were virtually impossible, with even a direct laser link being distorted by the unidentified radiation waves and energy discharges.

The bridge crew sat in silent awe, knowing the object to be thousands of kilometres across and completely alien to all previous cosmic knowledge. Even if they knew what the hell it was, it was still a beautiful and awe-inspiring sight to behold, especially considering the energy it was putting out. Meanwhile J'tal was diligently manning the science station on the bridge with such a level of focus that one might be forgiven for assuming she was a Vulcan. Despite several probes being launched into the anomaly, none of which were ever seen again nor able to transmit back any data, and liaising with various science departments across the ship who were equally perplexed, no-one seemed to be able to decide what the object could be.

"Anything yet, Commander?" Kyle asked.

J'tal simply looked up and shook her head. "Apologies Captain, but even at this range sensors are unable to distinguish anything concrete. And I certainly would not recommend approaching any closer."

As if to prove her point, the ship lurched slightly to one side, sufficiently violently enough to almost knock several crew members from their chairs in their dazed state. Lieutenant Commander Jackman reported that shields were holding, though, so Kyle tried not to concern himself too much by it. Presumably Novak would immediately communicate his frustrations at the shields being drained if such a thing were happening.

"Keep trying," Kyle said. "We've already wasted a dozen probes on that thing, and discovering new stuff is always our mission. See if you can..."

"Captain, please stand by..." J'tal said ominously, even holding her hand up in a polite way of telling him to 'shut up'. She plunged her face into the sensor hood as several of her instruments began bleeping in agitated unison, and she began rapidly tapping at several different controls without even taking the time to watch what she was doing. Nobody could ever claim that J'tal didn't know her way around a science console, at any rate.

But a prolonged pause and continued beeping was too much for Kyle to bear. "Commander, what is it?"

"Captain, sensors just recorded an enormous mass directly in the centre of the anomaly," J'tal told him. "Yet I am presently unsure as to what that mass might be."

"Maybe it's just the sensors cutting through all the crap," Kyle offered. Her shaking head and slight frown suggested otherwise however.

"I do not believe so Captain," J'tal said. "At this point I am fairly certain that the anomaly does not have mass, which is why we were previously unable to record any. I am now convinced that there is something 'within' the anomaly, something else. And I believe it is coming through."

"A ship?"

"Uncertain," J'tal said, with a shrug. "If it is so, then it is the largest such vessel I have ever witnessed. Mass readings suggest it is approaching the size of the first moon of Novus Romulus."

"That's a big ship," Kyle remarked.

Their questions, or at least their present questions, were answered by the vista ahead. Even with the brightness turned down, the viewscreen blinded everybody as the anomaly pulsated with light, brighter than anything they could remember seeing. The purple gases expanded rapidly, engulfing the Novara and forcing her backwards in a sudden jolt. As the crew steadied themselves, the gases retracted as quickly as they had expanded, being pulled straight into the bright core as though it were an incredibly powerful black hole. The Novara shook in protest as her engines struggled to prevent herself from being pulled in along with the gas, when suddenly the gravity released her and she rapidly began to head in a reverse direction.

At that moment, the bright light dissipated as though it had never been there. Once the bridge crew adjusted their eyes to the newfound darkness, they saw something in its place. Something enormous.

"What the hell is that Commander?" Kyle called across the bridge. "Helm, maintain full reverse!"

"It is made from an alloy I am unfamiliar with," J'tal informed him. "Sensors will not penetrate it. I estimate it to be over two thousand kilometres in diameter however, and it is extremely massive."

It was spherical, roughly. It seemed to bulge at either end slightly, almost like an hourglass which had been crushed inwards. There were no distinguishing features; no signs of welding, no engine ports, no windows, no hangar bays, no weapons, nothing. Just a continuous mottled brown colour, its hull incredibly smooth to the point where it almost looked as though it had been grown rather than constructed. No-one was quite sure what it was, but it definitely wasn't an asteroid or something similar.

"All interference has subsided Captain," J'tal told him. "Communications and sensor systems should be functioning normally. I am still unable to scan beyond the outer shell of the object however."

"Ramírez, see if you can hail 'it', all frequencies, all linguacode," Kyle barked his order as he stared at the object with his brow furrowing in concern.

"Aye sir," Ramírez nodded, spinning around to face his console and clumsily shoving his earpiece back on. He tapped his panel rapidly, making a couple of mistakes in his panicked state. "Unknown object, this is the Federation starship USS Novara, we mean you no harm, please respond, over. Repeat, this is..."

As the officer was attempting to establish communications with them, the object on the viewscreen appeared to be growing in size quite rapidly.

"Commander J'tal..." Kyle asked.

"The object is accelerating, quite rapidly," J'tal announced. "It is on a collision course. Our reverse thrust engines are incapable of outrunning it."

"Damn," Kyle growled. "Jones! Come about, bearing... one-eight-seven mark three-two, ahead full impulse. Get us out of its way!"

"Aye sir!" Jones responded, assaulting his console with a flurry of commands.

The Novara turned in space, cutting its reverse thrust to maintain momentum away from the object in the process. Once the large starship completed its turn, the main impulse engines glowed brilliant red as they immediately blasted to life. She began to move at a diagonal angle away from the brown object, desperately trying to avoid a collision - with an object that large, she was destined to lose at a game of chicken. Literally a few metres made the difference between life and death as the object barely avoided hitting the vastly smaller starship, and continued on unhindered along its course, accelerated continuously as she went.

"Captain, the object has now exceeded the maximum speeds our impulse engines are capable of achieving," J'tal informed the Captain in her relentlessly monotone voice.

"What is its course?" Kyle asked, standing up to walk over to her and look at the readings for himself.

"Their course appears to be heading towards a star system we charted last week," J'tal said. "The planet is host to a colony of unknown origin. It is sparsely populated and lacks defensive capabilities. The object will arrive there in two point three days, present speed."

"See if you can hail that colony," Kyle said to Ramírez hurriedly as he moved back to his seat. "In the meantime, Jones - take us to warp. Follow whatever the heck that is."

OOC: Forgot all about this thread! If any of you fancy laying claim to the colony mentioned above, go for it. Just bear in mind that nothing you throw at this object is likely to inflict any damage, despite the complete absence of any apparent shielding. And the object is very likely to respond if you try...

P.S. It's a plot device, people!

In the nomenclature of the Triumvirate's Galactic Exploration Command the colony world was labeled GEC-5983-5529-04. A typical M-Class world. The 'M' was for 'mud'.

One of the first thing the (very occasional) visitor to Muckrake, as the locals called it, would probably say was that it was a very muddy looking world. Even from orbit it looked like a giant mud puddle. Various browns and the odd twist of tan water swirled together along with the occasional rock to form a landscape that many described as downright depressing. Even the buildings that made up the surface portion of the colony looked like mud. Rust covered most every exposed surface and everything else was covered in a thick blanket of slimy green-brown moss.

Not that the colony administrators cared to install, much less pay for, anything more aesthetic. It was plainly obvious from the primer-gray-and-rust hull of the dilapidated orbital transfer station that hung thousands of miles above the colony that they were interested in the bottom line rather than making the place look good. Perhaps if it had looked nicer they would have gotten more visitors but not only was Muckrake not in any travel guides but the colony's owners liked it that way.

----

"And yesterday's count?" The little gray man adjusted his monocle, studying the figures that streamed through it, as he waited for his assistant to pull the relevant numbers. For the ultra-capitalist ArAreBee, time is money and for this ArAreBee nothing but money mattered.

"Umm..." His assistant, a thin dark-skinned human with a shaved head and plain accent by the name of Jerome, flipped through the data and did some quick math in his head. "...fourteen. Fourteen hides."

"Fourteen? That's good!" Fourteen was good when one was hunting the local opalfish for their hides. Opalfish, as the first explorers had come to find, were ugly, viscous, and nasty creatures who, for all their negative traits, had one positive that made this colony completely worthwhile. That was that their raw hides were covered in multi-hued opalescent scales that were even more attractive after they had been killed, skinned, and properly tanned.

"But we lost three workers..." Jerome continued. That was the bad side of opalfish and Muckrake in general. The fish were also aggressive when hunted and tended towards a cunning and malicious intellect which 'could result in a serious degradation of sapient resources', in the vernacular of the corporation that ran the colony.

"...that's bad. Three? Are you sure?" Administrator GeeTeTee concentrated for a moment and the images streaming past his monocle changed. "I suppose finding three sets of limbs is a good baseline. This is a serious degradation of sapient resources! When is the next shipment of debt laborers due?"

Administrator GeeTeTee knew the answer already, as he had known the answer for the last three months. Docked at the transfer station was his answer and the reason he couldn't expect any additional resources for quite some time. The light freighter assigned to the colony had been damaged during a non-passive management-labor discussion and the navigational interface had been severely damaged.

"I've re-sent your request for additional debt laborers and the head office has replied..."

"Yes yes, I know." GeeTeTee sighed, "They will not send more until we can arrange transport. And we can't arrange transport until we somehow get our hands on a working navigational interface."

The operation on Muckrake was profitable, yes, but not quite profitable enough to justify sending a repair ship out to the colony with a replacement nav interface. Not without picking up a sizable amount of opalfish hides for sale back in Sol. Hides which the administrator would be willing to sell his own children into slavery on the Roanian homeworlds to obtain at this moment. Less workers to hunt the opalfish meant it would take longer to get the hides which meant it would take longer to get more workers so it would take... Contemplating this gave GeeTeTee a headache.

"Well at least we know they are dead. Right?"

"Yes sir..." Jerome nodded. Each debt laborer normally had a half-dozen tracking devices planted in their body nominally for their own protection. This also meant it was easy to tell when they were slacking off or, in this case, dismembered. "All of the trackers are now moving in separate directions. Those that we didn't recover. I have hunting parties tracking them down."

"Good, good. Hopefully we will get a few more hides out of this at least. And no chance they just ran off either..."

Jerome sighed now. There would always be rumors around the various debt labor colonies that there were groups of laborers that had managed to remove their tracking devices and somehow gone native. "No sir. As I told you before, there is no way any of the debt laborers could survive more than a few days anyway. We control the clean water supply and the food supply. Rumors aside, there is no way they can..."

There was a chime and the door to the administrator's office slid open and a female ArAreBee rushed into the room, "Sir, sir!"

"What is it? Can't you see I'm in a meeting?" GeeTeTee looked over at his secretary and just kept looking. His secretary, or rather the fact that she was wearing little more than a transparent plastic jumpsuit, was often the one bright spot in his day. Not that this was anything interesting to the human Jerome. Alien standards of beauty being what they were he found it hard to distinguish one smooth gray body with some occasional folds from another smooth gray body with slightly different folds.

"But sir... The technicians on the station are urgently requesting your attention! They said there is something heading for the colony! Something big!"

GeeTeTee frowned and poked at the controls at his desk. A hologram of another ArAreBee appeared over the center of his desk. She was wearing the headset and utility harness that marked her as one of the colony's technical staff and a look of excitement on her face.

"Sir! Administrator GeeTeTee! We have a huge something headed towards us!"

"How huge? The meteor defenses..." The colony had defenses that were up to the task of destroying errant meteors and comets, perhaps even warning off pirates or raiders, but as they were planetary based they had both a very short range and a very limited arc of fire.

"Bigger! Based on sheer mass alone it could be anywhere from a hundred to a few thousand - that's thousand with three zeros - kilometers in radius! Way too big for the meteor defenses!"

"Are you sure?"

"Sure as sunshine, sir! Wait a second..." The ArAreBee turned to someone off-holo, "A ship? Space warp? Can you tell what type of ship it is? No?" She turned back to the administrator. "Did you get that sir? A ship has been detected on the long range sensors as well. Moving towards us via a space warp drive."

"Yes, yes..." GeeTeTee was suddenly visible agitated. "Could it be an SDF warship?" The SDF (Sunset Defense Force) was nominally the military force the colony would call for assistance. Not that the administrator would appreciate the inspection that would bring to his just-this-side-of-legal (and occasionally not) operation. But they did use a space warp drive on some of their vessels as a secondary propulsion system.

"It's... We can't tell. Too far away still and the sensor readings are being distorted by the object." The technician poked some invisible controls in front of her and pushed what she saw on her sensors to his monocle. Which wasn't much. "We're not exactly cutting edge up here. More like the blunt end..."

"Crap. Crapity crap crap."

"Sir? Should we try to contact them?"

"No!" GeeTeTee went nearly white. "Hopefully they will pass us by and just keep going!"

"But sir, maybe they have a nav interface we could..."

"No! No buts!" It was a good idea, sorta. The SDF could be quite generious with the taxpayer's di-coins, but there was still the problem issue of forcing debt laborers to occasionally engage in 'unsafe combat' with the native wildlife. "Jerome! Make this place look..."

"Legal?"

"Yes!"

OOC: What are the rp possibilities? I'd like to be another Federation ship if that's possible