Forwarded by the ASC-VSO Posted: Mon, 26 Jan 2004 19:36:20 GMT In: alt.startrek.creative From: "Jay P Hailey" JayPHailey@comcast.net Title: Star Trek: Outwardly Mobile Author: Jay P Hailey (JayPHailey@hotmail.com) Series: MISC - TNG OCs Codes: None Part: 15/335(?) 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. Webpage HTTP://jayphailey.8m.com The Voyage of the Harrier By Jay P. Hailey And Dennnis Washburn We arrived near the location of Deep Space Five about 30 hours later. Our long range sensors reported Ugohaid destroyers in the area. The Ugohaid ships did not approach us or answer our hails. I guess they were waiting to see what we would do. "Yellow Alert." I ordered as we closed in on the last known location of space station. Around me the crew of the Harrier took up their alert stations. They had gotten fairly good at it lately. That made me a little more comfortable. "Sensors, report." I said. Varupuchu would scan for the station, while Tillean scanned the nebula itself for clues. "No sign of the station." Lt. Commander Varupuchu reported. Tillean said "Captain, I am reading odd gravometric disturbances. Their range is approximately one hundred thousand kilometers from us. They are located towards the nebula." That was a surprise "That's well outside the nebula, isn't it?" "Yes, sir. That's better than halfway between the nebula and the last reported position of the station." "Begin a phase one search, please." I asked Li'ira. Then I stepped up to the science station to work more closely with Tillean. Behind me, I heard Li'ira give the specific orders necessary to carry out my wishes. The bridge became quite active. "Can you identify the anomalies?" I asked the Science Officer. "No, sir. I can't even locate them precisely. I can only detect them by measuring their effects on the surrounding gas and radiation." Tillean was leaning into her console manipulating the controls faster than I could keep track of. Screens flipped by, and the computer made the programmed noises to indicate it was processing data. Then the Vicharrian woman stopped scanning suddenly and focused on a particular screen. I could see the wispy shapes of a mass of free floating gas depicted on the screen, as well as labels giving the content and condition of each detected mass. "Captain, please stop the ship." Tillean said. I didn't waste time "All Stop!" "All Stop!" Li'ira repeated as Spaat our big Vulcan helmsman quickly brought the ship to a halt. Stephanie Anderson, on the tactical station, quickly began to arrange things for a red alert. She was anticipating my orders, but I didn't mind. It would increase our reaction time. Everyone else was looking at me. I turned back to Tillean. "Report, please." I said. Tillean put the schematic up on the main view screen. It showed the USS Harrier about to move into a cloud of cold molecular gas, characteristic of the nebula. The composition of the cloud was wrong. Badly wrong. The cloud the Harrier was about to penetrate was composed of single molecules of aluminum, tritanium and duranium. These were the metals typically used to construct starships. There was also a significant amount of nitrogen and oxygen. In the cloud there were also atoms of carbon and silicon. All the raw material you might need to build a space station and crew. In the very center of the cold were atoms of cold and still deuterium and antimatter. They had not reacted with each other very much. They were so cold they simply hadn't moved into contact with each other in large quantities. Tillean said "I noticed the cloud, but what really caught my attention was a slight pulse of gamma radiation from the antimatter in the cloud." I looked at her screen. The gamma radiation was very slight. Just a few percentage points above background level. I was thankful for Tillean's sharp eyes. "Good work, Lieutenant." I said. "Helm, back us away from the cloud dead slow." "Aye, sir." Spaat replied. The Harrier began to back slowly away from the cloud. "Mister Varupuchu, please analyze the cloud. I want to know if that's our missing space station." As Varupuchu went to work I sat back down in the center seat. This did not look good. Anything I could think of that could disintegrate a space station so thoroughly would have converted some of the mass to radiation. There would have been a blast of heat, light and radiation. There would be some clues. It was entirely possible that this was not Deep Space Five. I thought it was unlikely that an entire space station could be so thoroughly destroyed, and then all the energy leached out of the debris. Tillean spoke from her station. "Captain, may I launch a probe? It would help with the analysis of the gravometric anomalies." "Go ahead." I said. I was curious about them myself. As we moved, I watched Varupuchu scan and Tillean ready her probes. I felt like doing something, anything. Varupuchu was a better Ops Officer than I was. Tillean was much better as a Science Officer than me. The smart thing at this point was to let them do their jobs. I looked at every other station on the bridge. The bridge of the USS Harrier was a big circular room covered with panels, consoles and work stations. It seemed at first like it would be overwhelming. Too much information, too many things happening at once. This was true if you looked at the bridge all at once. As I looked around me, I concentrated on each station. Once I had become familiar with the layout of the Harrier's bridge, I could tell nearly everything about the ship and her condition by looking at each station in turn. Nothing was happening, except for the sensors and scanners. "Ready for launch, Captain." Tillean informed me. "Launch your probes." I said. There was a whoosh and a thump as a group of three probes were launched. We all watched as the probes spread out in a triangle headed towards the nebula. As the probes got closer to the gravometric anomalies, we could see the effects of them more clearly. However, as close as the probes got, they could still see no direct evidence of the anomalies. Then the signal from one of the probes winked out. It was just gone. Tillean altered the focus of the other two probes to search for the missing one. There was no hint. It utterly disappeared. Tillean continued her mission with the other two probes. It was scary losing the probe like that but what else could we do? We had to know more about what was going on. Varupuchu approached me and spoke quietly "Captain, I have a report." I motioned Li'ira over and said "Go ahead." The Operations Officer said "The cloud closely matches Deep Space Five in mass and molecular composition. Its' position and drift are consistent with the last known position of the station. In short, there is nothing to contradict your theory." I was disappointed. Whenever I heard of ships or people lost in space, I held on to the hope that a rescue mission would find them. Everyone I spoke to in Starfleet felt the same way. The next time it might be us. "Thank you, Mr. Varupuchu. Please keep scanning. Look for escape pods or a log buoy." "Aye, Captain." Varupuchu scanned for another half hour. He didn't find anything. We began a wider search pattern. I didn't expect much, but I didn't want to give up hope, yet. Anderson reported from her Tactical Station. "Captain, I am reading a Ugohaid destroyer. She's shadowing us." I said "Keep a sharp eye on her, please. Alert me if they start to close with us." I didn't like the idea of conducting the rest of this mission with an audience. "Captain, the probe is back." Tillean said grimly. "On screen, Lieutenant." I said. On the main screen I could see the schematics of another cold molecular cloud. It was composed of duranium, silicon and rest of the material used to build probes. There was no molecule that was attached to any other. It had simply appeared as though from nowhere. The probe/cloud dispersed. It was generally heading in the same direction at the same speed as the probe had been when it had disappeared. It had appeared in the same spot as far as I could tell. I heard Stephanie say "I have a bad feeling about this." The truth was I did, too. Captains aren't allowed to say it though. "Helm, bring us about and set course away from the nebula. Engage at full impulse." I said. I really wanted to warp out of there quickly. Once we were routed where would we stop running? The Harrier abandoned the search pattern and began to fly away. As we went I said to Varupuchu "Did you find anything?" "No, Captain." He said. He would have reported any sensor contacts at once. I knew it, but I still wanted to hear differently. "Keep scanning, just in case." I said. I caught Varupuchu's face. It was plain that he thought it was hopeless. His scan was very thorough however. After all, it might be us the next time. "The Ugohaid destroyer is still shadowing us, Captain. They have engaged full impulse." Stephanie reported. I sat back into the Captain's seat. It wasn't very comfortable. "Anything yet, Lieutenant?" Tillean was watching her board intently. She was calculating things about the cloud, I could see. The equations went by too quickly for me to see in detail. "No, Captain." She said "I still can't get a lock on the anomalies. I can see what happened to our probe, but I couldn't even say for certain that the anomalies are the cause." "Keep trying" I said. I turned back to the screen. I was disturbed that our sensors didn't seem to be giving us any good information. As I watched the main view screen went black. --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. 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