January 14th, 055 SDE:
The ship rocked as an energy discharge struck the battered hull. For once they had made it to the Rim. Countryman glanced at the strategic plot which was currently displaying a sensor chart of the local storm. It had been fifty years since they had arrived and far too many cycles, but they’d come up with a plan that seemed likely to work. Anchorage sadly couldn’t come with them, but they’d packed up everything they could take with them, including far more fighters and shuttles than the Enterprise would normally carry. The ships were stuffed into the cargo bay and then every bit of free space inside those ships had been packed with cargo. They were leaving nothing of use behind.
Ruri came up from behind him, “Readings are consistent with previous surfacing events, estimate five minutes before hyperspace transition.”
Countryman turned to Eri at the helm, “Standby to engage warp engines on my mark.” Then he turned to Vera and Richards at the engineering station, “How’s the hull look?”
“Battered but the hull plating is stable, for now. We’ve dumped as much energy as the reactor can spare into the structural integrity grid and inertial dampers, but even with my reactor upgrades, this ride is going to be rough.”
That was something Countryman was well aware of. Vera had managed to find them the full output of the main reactor and they’d spent decades overhauling the structural integrity grid, enhancing the navigational array to get them to this point. Unfortunately, as they’d found out back in 014, was that passing through the Rim at warp speed was extremely stressful to the hull. The spatial stress had also done a number on the engines and they’d only just patched them back together after that. Yet the time constraints meant trying to navigate the rim at sublight was equally risky.
“I guess in that case we are as ready...” he said, only to be interrupted by an alarm.
The ship rocked as several eddies emerged all at once, several a little close for comfort but no direct hits.
“Damage?”
“None, plating is holding.”
He let out a breath, just as a different alarm went off, mere seconds before the very air shifted as an odd charge went through the air.
“Hyperspace transition completed, we are in normal space!”
“Helm, get us out of here! Maximum warp!”
“Course set for out of the storm, full emergency warp!” replied Eri.
The warp engines hummed to life, the deck plates vibrated and the ship shot forward. Almost instantly, alarms went off as the ship rocked and screeched. Discharges struck the hull in rapid succession, plasma turbulence tearing into the plating.
“AIF failure! We are losing the outer hull!”
That was something they had actually expected, “Understood, deploy emergency bulkheads, and maintain course!”
The ship bucked terribly, something screeched, “Hull collapsed, deck two sections 134a through 1430a. No losses.”
“Emergency bulkheads?”
“Holding.”
Eri commented, “Sir! Warp field destabilizing! I’m losing the port engine!”
Richards interjected, “On it! Diverting power... stabilized! For now anyway!”
The ship shook again, several more discharges hit the hull and Countryman prayed the ship would hold together. In simulation they’d made it nine hundred and fifty nine times out of a thousand, damn good odds, but every simulation indicated they would take a beating getting through the rim.
The lights flickered, the ship bucked again. More reports of damage came in, as another section of the hull collapsed, then the view changed, things calmed and they shot out into normal space, the storm no longer surrounding them.
The engines groaned, a terrible sound reverberating through the entire hull and then suddenly they were out of warp. “Both warp engines are offline!”
Countryman sat heavily in his seat, “Damage report!”
Richards responded moments later as she read off the engineering monitor, “Heavy damage to the outer hull, hull breaches on all decks. We lost large sections of the outer hull, parts of several decks have collapsed. Warp drive is offline, power failures on several decks, fourteen subengines have failed. Minor structural failures detected throughout the primary hull. Residential section 4 has been compromised, emergency force shields have engaged and maintained atmosphere, but repairs are required.
Countryman sighed, “Make it a priority, I don’t want to evacuate an entire residential section, it's hard enough finding beds for...”
Richards interjected, “I know, I had to rearrange the ship and design communal bunks.”
Countryman was aware, and without the communes, there was no way they could have housed the massive 1.2 million people onboard. The communes were stacked bunk regions where hundreds of people could sleep and they were practicing hotbunking with the people living in the communes. Everyone was itching for more space and now that they were out of the Storm, it was time to find a place to settle down and start building. They needed new ships, and soon.
Vera interjected, “Seems we had blowouts throughout the ship, multiple SIF generators are offline, structural integrity fields have fallen below thirty percent of nominal.”
Richards said, “I can probably get that up, but we’ve taken a lot of damage. No damage to the primary starframe thankfully but we need a rebuild of the ship.”
“Wonderful. Can we at least defend ourselves?”
“Well we are missing a lot of plating and a number of weapon mounts. But yes, we do have operational weapon systems.”
Countryman sighed, “Start scanning for a promising system in which to conduct repairs.”
Two hours later Countryman was settled in his command chair reading over the latest revised damage assessments. They had taken a pounding, entire sections destroyed, large sections of the outer hull missing and extensive scorching. Burnouts and broken equipment abounded as well. Richards wasn’t wrong; they were looking at an extensive refit and rebuild of the Enterprise. Right now the best they could do was patch the plating with whatever they happened to have on hand before setting sail to a promising system in which to mine the materials they needed to finish fixing the ship.
Richards was currently down in the engines taking a look at the warp drive engines to determine what it would take to get them back to operational status. While Misaki was at operations, conducting scans of the local area.
An alert suddenly went off and Kaori at the tactical station reported, “Contact, inversion signature bearing two one three, mark six eight, distance two hundred thousand kilometers.” She frowned, “It’s Krall?!”
“Krall? Misaki, can you confirm?”
“Confirmed, Inversion drive signature is a 99.98 percent match with known Krall inversion signatures.”
“On screen!” said Countryman as the viewscreens were adjusted to display the Krall? ship.
What was revealed with the increased magnification was a large angular ship with the distinctive design language elements of the Krall. “Analysis?”
“Hull composition and design elements appear to be Krall technology. However I am detecting no life readings.”
“No crew?”
“We are being hailed,” reported Misaki
From a robotic ship? This was already a little strange. Taking a breath, he said, “Let’s hear it.”
The speakers came to life as an image appeared on screen of a familiar Krall female. “Enterprise I don’t know when this message will find you or where it will find you. When we learned you’d been swallowed by a Hyper-ion storm, we sent this ship out to find your ship. Included among its systems is a hyperdrive, which may prove useful to you.”
Tika took a breath, “Given the size of the storm it's unlikely we found you within, so if you’ve already escaped, we’ve included a care package.” Tika sighed, “Hard to say if it will be useful to you, but the cargo bays of this ship contain two and a half million liters of deuterium fuel. We know fuel is hard to come by in the storm and figured you might be in need of some by the time you escape. In addition we included some basic materials with which you can use to patch hull damage and perhaps most useful to you is an extensive set of star charts. This probe is even programmed to scout out the surrounding areas.”
The message ended with that. Leaving them with a gift sitting on their doorstep.
“Eri? Bring us alongside the Krall ‘probe’,” said Countryman, figuring they should take a look at the care package.
January 17th:
Countryman stepped off the gangway and looked around the Krall probe. Richards had been looking it over and had recently told him she’d finished her analysis. She met him a moment later coming from a door toward the rear of the massive probe ship. It was far larger than any probe they’d ever used and equipped with large cargo bays, making her more of an automated freighter with an unusually robust sensor array and extensive computer banks. “So what’s the prospect?”
She sighed, “Their engines aren’t much better than ours, I found the hyperdrive, it's barely functional, looks like fifty years of use have degraded the drive to near uselessness. We might be able to transition into hyperspace, but I can’t make any promises that we will be able to leave again.”
Countryman frowned, “I’m not really inclined to risk being stuck in hyperspace again. Fifty years was enough for me.”
Richards suddenly looked relieved, “I’m glad to hear that, I feel much the same.”
“Right so about the inversion drive?”
“It was never designed for a ship of our mass and the probe’s own diagnostic systems indicate it’s on its last legs. We can get a few jumps out of it, but I wouldn’t recommend trying to jump the Enterprise.”
“Wonderful, the Krall send us a gift and the two systems we need most are basically dead.”
Richards scratched, “Sorry, wish I had better news.” Then she added, “Well there is one more item. I did find the long range comms array. They built a seriously robust subspace comm unit. This far from Krall space there is a comm lag delay of nearly nine hours, but the array actually has the signal strength to make a clear connection with the Krall homeworld.”
“That’s interesting.”
“Yes and I checked the comm logs, the ship sent a report when it detected us, another one when it scanned us and confirmed our identity. More interestingly the probe received a response. One intended for us.”
What did it say?”
Richards gestured at the console, “You might want to see it yourself, but the short of it? The message was from Tika, the years have certainly aged her. Kinda strange seeing someone age so much.”
Countryman chuckled, “Well it has been fifty years and the Krall don’t have our medical expertise. I guess I should go talk to our old friend. Thank her for the gift. That nine-hour lag will make things interesting.
Tika gazed at her reflection, her mind thinking of how much time had passed. Fifty years, it had been fifty years since she’d last heard from the Enterprise. There was much she wanted to tell her old friends. Yet one thing she did notice from Countryman’s response was how little he’d aged, or to say apparently not at all. He didn’t look like he’d aged a day. Meanwhile her once soft face had wrinkled and her scales had dulled with age. No longer were they the vibrant purple and silver of her youth but a dull purple and a lifeless grey. It was strange to think that she wasn’t far from the grave and he looked to have many years left to look forward to.
Footsteps drew her attention and an old fleet leader stepped in. A former superior and then an equal and now the two of them were fellow teachers at the academy, passing on the lessons they’d learned to the young. It was all they really could do at their age. Her friend Fleet Leader Adira noted the mirror, “Thinking of times past are we?”
She sighed, “I was, but I guess I have one less regret to take to the grave.”
The other woman sat down and said, “Well you aren’t the only one with regrets over that. I wish I’d sent someone, anyone to help them. We had ships in the area.”
“But at least they are alive, and our care package actually reached them.”
“Right but they still need help and they are so far away that it would take a lifetime for anything we send to reach them.”
Tika knew what her friend was getting at. She gestured at the map, “Galactic Quadrant III, other side of the galaxy and over sixty-five thousand lightyears away. We have no ships aside from a single long range probe in the area and said probe is nearing the end of its life cycle. Fifty years of storm chasing took its toll.” she let out a breath and pointed at something, “Still I did find something, our probe visited several systems in the area, this one has everything they need to repair the Enterprise, the only problem is the presence of a young civilization on the second planet.”
Adira sighed, “Just tell them about the damn system, they are a people in need and we both know they are enlightened enough to realize messing with a young culture just isn’t worth it.”
She turned to the console, “I guess I should and they might just find it regardless. It’s only 6.4 light years from their present position.”
With that in mind, she tapped out a message. As she wrote, she considered a bit of scientific exchange and included some of their more recent research. What would come back would revolutionize certain fields of Krall science for decades. Most notably for hyperspace, but in the moment, she didn’t know that.
Countryman set aside the latest correspondence and then turned to Richards, “Will the patches hold?”
“Simulations say yes, we are good to accelerate to high sublight velocities.”
He turned to Eri, “Set course for SLR-223, maximum sublight.”
Eri set in the course and the engines hummed to life. In moments, they started to gain speed, in seconds, they were traveling at a significant fraction of lightspeed, but without the warp engines, there was no better way to travel 6.4 lightyears. The only downside was that such a journey was going to take them the better part of eight years...