NationStates Jolt Archive

Starfleet Academy
New San Francisco
New Earth

The lecture hall was full of the new intake to Starfleet Academy. The hundred or so Cadets sat in their newly issued uniform for the first time as they waited for the lecturer to arrive. The chairs were set up in a semi-circle with a stage in the centre and a large LCARS display behind the stage. The Lieutenant standing by the door stood smartly and shouted;
“Commandant on Deck!”
The Room snapped to their feet and stood to attention as the Academy commandant entered the room. Making his way to the stage he gestured for the cadets to relax and they began to sit back down.
“Welcome to Starfleet Ladies and Gentlemen” The Commandant smiled “These next few years will set you on a career into the stars, and it is you and those who follow you that will get to experience what many of us in Starfleet haven’t experienced in a long time”
The Commandant paused for effect.
“As some of you know, The Alliance council has authorised Starfleet ships to commence exploration operations again, we’ll be operateing our ships outside the United Alliance of Planets for the first time in nearly a hundred years” The Commandant stated “Now, anyone give me a reason why this is so”
He looked around the hall, a few cadets put their hands up, scanning the crowd the Commandant fixed on a Betazoid “Cadet?”
“No one save for the top-level UEP and Starfleet Command knows, our alliances choice to not explore beyond our borders is shrouded in mystery” The Betazoid replied.
“Correct” The Commadnant said “Now, how many planets in our United Alliance?”
“Over a hundred, and countless colonies and outposts” A Cadet replied after being pointed out by the Commandant “Spanning a 5,000 lightyear sphere”
“Very good” The Commandant smiled “Now who can tell me the name of the new Flagship?”

United Alliance Ship Galaxy
Starbase One
New Earth Orbit

The Massive form of the Galaxy-Class starship was dwarfed by the even more massive Starbase One. The Galaxy was safe in the Starbase as her crew arrived aboard. Captain Thomas J Lennox, long serving officer of Starfleet, had been given command of the prestigious ship. Commander Jessica Stato, young but competent officer had been assigned as XO. Lieutenant Commander Charlie Thompson, Tactical expert assigned as Chief of Tactical and Security, Lieutenant Commander Jenny Standford, Engineering super-woman as Chief Engineer rounded out the first half of the senior staff. The Second half consisted of Lieutenant James Penny as Chief Medical Officer and Lieutenant Holly Kirk as Chief Science Office.

Captain Lennox gave the order and the ship powered up. Her running lights blinked on and began to flash, her Warp Naccelles lit up in blue light. Detaching from the Docking arm, her thrusters flared as she pulled away from the superstructure towards the Spacedock doors. The doors slid open as the ship approached and the ship slipped into Space. The Presence of the ship alone let her move through the civilian ships in orbit and near orbit of New Earth. Once clear the ship engaged Warp Drive.

Leaving United Earth Alliance Space
Four Days Later

Captain Thomas Lennox marvled at the size of his new ship, easily dwarfing the Excelsior class, 642 metres long, 42 decks, cruise velocity of Warp 9.2. The Galaxy and her class were the largest, fastest and most powerful ship in Starfleet. Sat in the centre chair on the Bridge, he watched as the crew sped through space.
“System coming up, sensors indicate it’s inhabited” Charlie Thompson reported as he worked his console.
Thomas smiled “Helm officer, drop us out of warp when we reach the system” He ordered “Ms Kirk, full sensor scan as we enter the system”.
Ten minutes later the ship entered the system.

OOC: Can I join as my machine race? FT Birkaine was taken over by a machine civilization.

OOC: Yea sure, by all means

The system they arrived to was a lifeless wasteland for all they cared. It was a binary system with a single blue giant and a smaller red star orbiting each other and experiencing mass transfer. They orbited each other so quickly that the stars were a bit warped and ejected part of their mass out wards into an enormous spiral of gas that spanned across several AUs.
The planets were all relatively small, rocky ones, and only one of them was able to sustain basic life. While the outer planets were rocky ones, an extremely hot gas giant orbited the two stars closely.
Strangely enough, despite the system being completely dead, there was a faint radio transmission, which sounded like a data burst.

United Alliance Ship Galaxy
Deck One, Main Bridge

"Nothing" Jenny reported "No signs of intelligent life at all"
"Damn" Thomas muttered "Thompson, any communications?"
Charlie worked at his console for a few seconds before looking up with mild surprise.
"Yes sir, it's very faint but theres some sort of burst transmission" He reported.
Thomas smiled "Track it, lets try and locate who ever is out here" He ordered.

The Sleek form of the ship moved through the system following the transmission, passing close by a spiral of gas, which fizzed of the ships navigational deflectors.

The blacken sphere, the thirty third constructed by the Technonaut Collective continued to orbit the planet's nearby moon, lucky enough it had been on the opposite side when the new arrivals had dropped in. Its mission had been a simple recon of the nearby systems to detect threats and possible cleansing and repair based sites, it had just about finished collecting data for this systems when the Overmind had noted the subtle markings of a nearby warp capable vessel and the sphere had added a small boost to get on the opposite side. The Master of the Sphere was also notified of the new development and had broken off from its previous cataloging...

Likelyhood of threat?
Minimal, no Sphere has previously run across them and the Reclamation records are also clean, we are detecting a number of low power weapon and defense systems. We rank a eight out of ten possibility of destroying them before they are alerted to our presence with our current data.
Well then do we stand and fight for this system or flee Overmind?
We suggest further study, we should be safe for the moment for all but there deepest probings, we have already activated protocols to create the impression that we are a slow moving natural satellite of this moon.
Captured Asteroid camo?
Correct.
Continue to study them then, we wish to investigate a possible flaw in our data, hopefully its nothing...

After some time, they finally arrived to the source of the transmission, which was some kind of satellite fixed in orbit between the two stars, in the middle of a highly radioactive area that was bombarded by solar wind.
The small octahedral satellite was no bigger than a car; of a deep blue color with long antennae coming out of some of the vertices, which made it look like a more geometrical Sputnik. The nature of its transmissions suddenly changed, and it began broadcasting in a normal radio frequency, but with a light encryption. It also seemed to gradually pulsate.

The Galaxy approached the Satellite, the ship stopped about one hundred metres away from it. Running scans they observed it as it change transmission.
"It's transmitting something, minior encryption" Charlie reported.
"Alright, Kirk get on it, let me know what it says" Thomas reported "Thompson, keep running scans of the area, don't let our guard down"

The computers of the Galaxy easily managed to decrypt the transmission, even if it was being broadcasted on a completely unknown language. However, it started broadcasting audio. More specifically, it strangely broadcasted the records of the ancient human space probe Voyager. The transmissions of whale chants and Beethoven looped endlessly, but between the loops it transmitted coordinates.

The scanners detected a warp disturbance coming directly from the octahedron itself. Apparently, to circumvent the relatively slow speeds of radio transmissions, the satellite had opened a micro wormhole within itself to broadcast its coordinates to whatever had sent it in the first place. It seemed to detect the Galaxy, and started scanning it.

United Alliance Ship Galaxy
Deck One, Main Bridge

"It's Voyager" Jenny reported "They're playing the transmissions from the Voyager probe, I'm currently listening to Beethovens symphony"
"Well at least we can tell Starfleet we solved a mystery" Thomas smiled "What are they doing now?"
"It also appears to be transmitting Co-ordinates, passing them to helm" Jenny replied "And, they are now scanning us"
"Set a course for those Co-ordinates, Half impulse"

The coordinates led them to the third planet of the system. While it was a fairly standard Mars-like world, its orbit was extremely eliptical and it was surrounded by a rocky planetary ring resulting from a moon getting torn apart in the Roche limit. There was a larger moon still orbiting it, but aside of that the planet was nothing Starfleet hadn't seen before.

While the planet was fairly standard, what quickly drew the attention of the Galaxy's crew was a massive warp distortion being formed, apparently a larger wormhole, with a negative mass. It was the exit point of a warp jumpgate, it seemed.

United Alliance Ship Galaxy
Deck One, Main Bridge


"Kirk, send out a rotating tachyon pulse at that wormhole, see what responce you get" Thomas ordered.
"On it sir, Deflector dish firing"