Forwarded by the ASC-VSO Posted: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 07:13:50 -0800 In: alt.startrek.creative From: "Jay P Hailey" JayPHailey@TIC1.NET Title: Star Trek: Outwardly Mobile Author: Jay P Hailey (JayPHailey@yahoo.com) Series: MISC - TNG OCs COdes: None Part: 8/335 Rating:[PG] Archive: Fine with me, just tell me where. Disclaimer: Paramount owns all things Star Trek. I claim Original Characters and Situations for me. The Holly Hop Incident By Jay P. Hailey And Dennnis Washburn Over the next two days I talked with Captain MacDougal. He wasn't giving an inch. He wanted help against the Bugs and my efforts to find a compromise met with failure. He didn't want the Harrier to help negotiate a treaty or a cease fire. He wanted phasers. I was in a bad position. I needed more information and I wasn't going to get it from the USS Hood. I waited for Green or Holly to come up with any new data on the Holly drive. Even with Snoopy's' help they simply weren't able to go very fast. The tampering with the experimental drive that had landed us in this situation was quite subtle, according to Charles Holly, the inventor of the drive. With no progress forthcoming from talking to the Hood, or from the Holly Hop, I had to make a decision. "Set course for Vulcan." I ordered. "Engage at Warp 6." "Aye, Aye, Captain." Spaat said. The USS Harrier swung around and leapt into warp speed. We had taken the Hood totally by surprise. They turned to pursue, but it was too late. "The Hood is hailing." Flagg reported. "Don't accept it." I said. We easily out ran the Hood. It was my hope that we could find more information, or at least a more reasonable reception at Vulcan. While we were leaving the Hood behind, its subspace radio was passing us, warning the Federation that we were coming. We got to the edge of Vulcan's solar system about eight hours ahead of pursuit. This was odd. Vulcan was one of the founding planets of the Federation. The one in our time had much better defenses. "Approaching Vulcan space, Captain." Spaat reported. "Slow to Warp 3 and continue at Warp until we are hailed or until we sight a Vulcan ship." I ordered. "Aye, sir. We are now in Vulcan Space. Eight minutes, 37 seconds to Vulcan." Spaat said. "Scan Vulcan, please." I said to Varupuchu. "Scanning." Varupuchu directed the scientific equipment of the Harrier towards Vulcan. He looked at his readouts, now returned to standard operating mode. He double checked the scan. "Seven Minutes to Vulcan." Spaat reported. Flagg added "Federation starships continue to pursue. They are about eight hours away at their current speed, warp 4.3. They appear to be trying to en globe the system and cut off our retreat." I didn't like the way he phrased that. It rubbed me the wrong way to be pursued by Starfleet. "Mr. Varupuchu?" I prompted. "I am not reading any life forms." Varupuchu sounded irate. My heart seemed to stop in my chest. "Confirm that! Run a diagnostic on the sensors." Varupuchu began the diagnostic "I have confirmed the readings, Captain. There are no life forms on Vulcan. The background radiation appears to be 3000% of Vulcans' normal level." "Oh, God." I think I said that out loud. Although my particular area of interest was Klingon culture and history, I knew of Vulcan. Who in Starfleet didn't? Spock had been the first, but he hadn't been the last. Through the Vulcan officers in Starfleet we all had a window on a planet where things were a little better. Maybe we didn't wish to cast out our passions on the sands, but we all knew it was possible. The Vulcans were once called the "intellectual puppets" of the Federation. We all knew differently. They were our consciences. Now two billion of them were dead. We continued into orbit. I was in shock really. It just didn't make sense. I was ready to blame the "Bugs" that this Federation was fighting. The details didn't fit that theory. The destruction of the surface was incredible. The area of ShiKahr and Vulcan's Forge were bombed into a glassy, radioactive slag about 5 meters deeper than the original surface. I remembered all the history. When I visited, I could almost hear Surak across five thousand years. It was all gone. The destruction was 100 years old. I couldn't believe it. Who would waste Vulcan that thoroughly and leave Earth or Andor untouched? Vulcan had once been a very violent planet. I had visited the catacombs under the palaces of the ancient nobles. They might have survived there. Except that when we scanned into the catacombs, we measured an incredible amount of thorium. The radioactive element was so thick in the ancient chambers that even in an armored vacc-suits, we would have received a lethal dose in twenty minutes. Then Flagg delivered another blow. "Look at these scans." He said. I looked. It was a spectroscopic analysis of the atmosphere of Vulcan. The damage was so extreme that we couldn't call this planet class M, anymore. However, Flagg had a more subtle point to make. The spectroscope revealed the chemicals and elements present in the atmosphere of Vulcan. Flagg compared the waste products of the bombardment with the records of various weapons in his tactical database. The analysis showed that the bombs used were fusion bombs. They were big ones. They matched stuff present on Earth during it's "Cold War" nuclear standoff. They did not match the profile of Vulcan weapons from their nuclear holocausts. Nor those of many other worlds. "I think the conclusion is clear." Flagg said, "Earth did this." "No." I couldn't believe it. Earth people are the most aggressive xenophiles in the Federation. I could not accept that this would happen under any circumstances. Flagg drilled the message home. He did several other tactical analyses. He showed me the long range scanner reports. The Federation Starfleet was mostly headed towards us from Earth. The rest were from the usual starbases. The starbases themselves were out of position. It was as if they were guarding a perimeter, not a collection of planets. I was almost violently angry, once the message had gotten through my skull. Those bastards. Those unbelievable maniacs! No wonder those bugs were set on killing them! It was a rational choice, given the circumstances! We stayed in orbit around Vulcan or a little while longer, trying to assure ourselves that no one was waiting to be rescued. So much as one life form, or one forlorn message to posterity would have soothed me, a little. There was nothing. The destruction was complete. With dread in my heart I ordered a course for Andor. I feared what we would find. I simply had to know for certain. The Harrier ran the Earth blockade easily. It did not have time to form up. As we sped for Andor the news of what we had seen at Vulcan cast a pall over the ship. The morale of the crew was shaky and everyone had a kind of stunned look. I would have worried, but I was still trying to get my mind around the whole planet having been murdered. Holly came into my office. I should be specific. He pounded frantically on the door until I let him in. "We've got it! We got it!" He whispered intently, looking about my quarters as if he expected a man in a black hat to be eavesdropping. "What do you have?" I was learning not to assume things about Holly. "We discovered how the Tampering was done. I can recreate it!" He was waving his hands and almost physically restraining himself from dancing. "I can steer the machine back home, I think." "Excellent!" The subject of home focused me "I'll get us moving towards the spot where we appeared." "Huh? Oh, that's not necessary, Captain." Holly said "It isn't?" If I had understood any of Holly's work, and that was stretching it a bit, then it was a type of dimensional transfer. Each area of space is unique in terms of dimensions. Each has its own dimensional quirks that seem to change randomly with time. This is why standard "Hyper drive" systems don't seem to work. Each "Hyper space" jump has an element of randomness to it. "Location isn't as big a factor as you might guess. If we misjumped at all, then the fault is in the field of the drive itself. Time and space aren't relevant except in a macroscopic sense." It took me a few seconds to work that out. "Time?" I said "So we HAVE time traveled." Holly didn't even hesitate. "Oh, yes. It is certainly a possibility... I think." I could feel my face grow hot. "You said `time and space aren't relevant'. Are you saying that this device can travel in time as well as space!?" He looked at me intently. I had missed something and he needed to explain it more clearly. "For the purpose of this device, time and space are interchangeable. Travel in one is the same as travel in the other." He continued bemused "I'm not even certain they are different things at all...." All the warnings drilled into us in the Academy and Command School came flooding back to me. Time travel was dangerous. The slightest action could have chaotic and unpredictable consequences. I remembered in he records I had read, where Captain Kirk and all the others who had time traveled had held the entire existence of the Federation in their hands. Some didn't even know it at the time. Now, Holly had made it easier to travel in time than to fly to the nearest star. My head swam "Do you realize what you've done?!" I roared. Holly stopped and looked at me. He didn't get it. I regained control of myself, with effort. "Don't touch that thing until you hear from me!" Spaat called from the bridge "Captain Hailey to the Bridge." I ran out of my quarters and down the hallway, heading for the turbolift. As I ran, things started to occur to me. Suppose that these `wrong hands' that Flagg was so afraid of got hold of Holly's' device? I could think of about five ways to get completely filthy rich right off the top of my head. If any single person got it then they could be a master criminal like the galaxy hasn't ever seen before. No police force could ever touch them. Worse, what if this hypothetical someone had an ax to grind? I could think of several terrorist groups who would love the ability to travel in time easily. The Klingons would love this device, too. They might declare it dishonorable. One the other hand, they might invent a new code of time travel honor and use it violently. What if the Romulans got it? The hairs on the back of my neck rose. As the turbo lift moved towards the bridge I began to think furiously. Control of the device would be extremely important and so far the USS Harrier had the only one. Where better to time travel to than the first test of the prototype? If they wanted to keep the Holly Hop in their hands once they had already gotten it, then taking it from the wreck of the Harrier seemed to me to be the easiest way. I didn't know exactly what a Romulan ship from twenty years in the future might look like, but I did know that the Harrier stood little or no chance against one. Especially if they knew us well. As I entered the bridge, I was having several waking nightmares. Many of them featured technologically advanced Klingon, Romulan and Federation starships appearing near the Harrier with forceful opinions about the fate of Holly's' mad device. "Report!" I ordered. Spaat told me that we were approaching Andor. "Scan the planet, and Varupuchu?" "Captain?" "Keep a careful eye out for any subspace anomalies, or anything out of the ordinary, okay?" Varupuchu gave me a dubious look, but said "Aye, Sir." Flagg was looking at me with a neutral expression. I had a chill. This affected Flagg's paranoid area of responsibility. --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.561 / Virus Database: 353 - Release Date: 1/13/2004 -- Stephen Ratliff ASC Stories Only Forwarding In the Pattern Buffer at: http//trekiverse.crosswinds.net/feed/ Yahoo! Groups Links To visit your group on the web, go to:http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ASCL/ To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:ASCL-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service. From ???@??? Tue Jan 20 00:34:09 2004 Status: U Return-Path: Received: from n36.grp.scd.yahoo.com ([66.218.66.104]) by penguin (EarthLink SMTP Server) with SMTP id 1aIOvlyQ3NZFl40 for ; Mon, 19 Jan 2004 21:32:47 -0800 (PST) X-eGroups-Return: sentto-1977044-12963-1074576613-stephenbratliff=earthlink.net@returns.groups.yahoo.