Forwarded by the ASC-VSO Posted: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 15:58:03 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: 16/335(?) 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 As I watched the main view screen went black. "Report." I yelled. The Bridge burst into activity. "Sensors out, Captain." Tillean reported. "Mr. Varupuchu, run a class three diagnostic on the sensors, please." I said "Tactical, can you get a scan of the Ugohaid ship?" "Negative, Captain." Anderson said "Tactical sensors are down as well." "Red Alert!" Li'ira said "Mr. Spaat, are we in danger of striking anything?" I asked "I do not believe so, Captain. I recommend a severe reduction in speed in any case." "Go right ahead." "Lieutenant Anderson, please open hailing frequencies." "Aye, Sir." I heard the tones of the communications system being activated. "Channel open, Sir." "This is Captain Hailey of the Federation Starship Harrier, to the Ugohaid destroyer. Please respond." As I finished I heard interference on the channel. Garbled noise came back at me. I recognized the garbled sound of my own voice. I looked at Stephanie. She was tuning the communications system to try to counteract the distortion. The Security Lieutenant looked confused. "Captain," She said "The signal is being reflected back at us. It's having multiple reflections and each one is more distorted than the last." Tillean said "It is? Captain, may I try something with the sensors?" I looked at Varupuchu. He looked at Tillean with dreadful calm. I knew he thought Tillean should have gone through him. Catching my eye he said "The sensor diagnostics report heavy external interference, Captain, but no internal malfunctions. The sensors are available." "What do you have in mind, Lieutenant?" I asked. "If I encrypt the sensor signal and then route it through the communications buffer we might be able to filter out some of the interference." "That sounds good, Lieutenant. Proceed." Tillean worked with Anderson for a minute getting the stations connected correctly. Then she said "Scanning now." As scanners began to operate. Tillean and Stephanie had to tweak the connection but eventually they were able to put a picture up on the main screen. I looked and saw the back end of the USS Harrier. She looked like she was four kilometers off our bow. Beyond her there was a constellation of starships. Each looked like the Harrier. The further each was from us, the more distorted it looked. At a distance I could see multiple specks of light, which seemed to be heavily distorted images of the USS Harrier. In every direction we looked we could see a similar thing. Looking to the side, we could see a side view of our ship, distorted in more distant images. To the rear we could see the nose of our starship, reflected many times. "What in the world?" I said. It was a confusing image. "I thought so! Captain, we have been englobed by something." Tillean said with a hint of smugness. "By what?" Li'ira said Tillean dropped her smug tone. "I don't know. I can tell you that it reflects our scans and communications signals back at us, distorting them." "Was it the Ugohaid?" I asked. "We have no knowledge of the Ugohaid working on this type of weapon, Captain." Li'ira said "We do know what they are working towards and this isn't even close." "Besides the Ugohaid destroyer was well outside weapons range, sir." Anderson put in. "Captain, I think I can learn more about this with more analysis of the sensor signals. The way that the signals are deformed can tell me a lot." Tillean said. "The problem is, I'll have to launch another probe." "You sure are tough on those things." I grinned "Permission granted." Tillean readied another probe and launched it with a whoosh and a thump. Simultaneously, the Harrier in front of us launched a probe. It shot across the intervening four kilometers in a flash. We heard a slight thud as the probe from the Harrier ahead of us struck our hull, and disintegrated into scraps of metal. We watched on the screen as our probe left our launch bay and mashed itself against the Harrier behind us. We could see through the probe's sensors that the Harrier behind us had launched a probe towards one of the distorted images behind it. The screen dissolved into snow at the same moment as the thump from the probe striking us happened. On replays we could see distorted Harriers throw distorted probes at each other for as far as our sensors could reach. The time of the probe impact was nearly the same for all the images. The further away the images, the more delayed the image of the probe hitting them was. As the images appeared to be further away from us, they got more distorted. Beyond a certain distance we couldn't make them out clearly at all. Into the stunned silence that followed this, we could hear an outraged beep from Stephanie's board. "Minor damage to the hull near section two of deck six. Hull integrity down to 98% in that area." I realized that we had sustained a dent from the probe. Tillean was scanning with enthusiasm. Varupuchu looked at her grimly, then shook his head at me slowly. He turned back to his station. Tillean said "That's odd." And focused her scanners. "What's odd, Lieutenant?" Li'ira said. Tillean again put her findings up on the main view screen. They showed a tracing of the paths of the debris from the destroyed probe. The paths made a pretty curved flower pattern away from the Harrier. Sir Isaac Newton was screaming in my ear. "Why are the paths of the debris curved?" I asked. As we watched, a piece of debris curved around our lower port nacelle and approached a piece from the probe that had hit that image. It approached its mirror image and the two objects met. Then they disappeared. It was as if they had slipped through a curtain. They disappeared from the forward end to the rear. The cloud of probe debris curved out behind us and slowly disappeared, one piece at a time. Why behind us? I looked at Mr. Spaat?s station. We were moving ahead at one quarter impulse. "What's the range to the ship ahead of us?" I asked "Four thousand two hundred and eighty three meters, Captain" Spaat reported. "Have we closed with the image in front of us?" Spaat consulted his sensors "No, Captain." "Range to the image behind us?" "Four thousand two hundred and eighty three meters, Sir." Spaat said. I thought about it. "Mr. Spaat, prepare to take our speed up to one half impulse. Be ready to avoid a collision with the image ahead of us." "Aye, Sir." He programmed the moves into his helm console. With only four kilometers of separation no humanoid reflexes would be quick enough to avoid a collision, but the computer could act quickly enough. I hoped. "Engage." I said, when Spaat was done. He ran his program and the impulse engines of the Harrier fired. Our apparent speed, as measured by our internal sensors, began to increase. Outside nothing seemed to change. "Range to fore and aft images?" I said. Spaat replied. "Unchanged, Captain." "Keep an eye on it, please." I replied. After about half an hour not much had changed, except that the images seemed to close in approximately 100 meters. I believed that this meant whatever had surrounded us was closing in. Tillean estimated that it was approximately 2 kilometers wide in a globe around the Harrier. I left the bridge in Li'ira's capable hands and went to lounge. I was hungry. It had been a couple of hours since lunch time and I had not eaten, and I needed to be at my peak to deal with whatever this was. The Lounge on the USS Harrier was huge. It was two decks tall and had a balcony running around the edge on the second level. About ninety years ago it had been intended to combat claustrophobia among the crew. It had huge windows along the outer hull. As I ate a sandwich and sipped some pikku juice, I could see off duty members of the crew gathering at the window. I walked over to see what the attraction was. Out of the window we could the twinkling reflections. The nearby reflections were visible and pretty. The more distant fuzzy images seemed like stars. If you didn't know any better, it would look like a formation of Constellation class starships against a backdrop of regularly spaced stars. Taken alone it was somewhat beautiful. "Captain Hailey to the Bridge." Li'ira's voice rang out through the intercom. "Captain Hailey, please report to the Bridge." I wolfed my sandwich down as I walked briskly towards the turbolift. When I arrived on the Bridge, I had wiped most of the crumbs off my uniform. Li'ira was waiting for me. I noticed as I approached that she looked really, really nice. I was able to concentrate enough to realize that stress had increased her body's production of lust inducing pheromones. "Report." I said. "Lieutenant Darvon Ahk has discovered what the phenomenon that surrounds us is." Li'ira plainly did not like what Tillean had to report. I turned to the Science Officer. "Well?" Tillean's enthusiasm had an edge to it now. She was still gonzo but now she was unhappy. "There is no object around us. It is the edge of the universe that is reflecting our signals." I didn't get it, at first. "Could you explain that a little more?" I asked. "We are in a universe that measures approximately two kilometers across." Tillean said. --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.564 / Virus Database: 356 - Release Date: 1/19/2004 -- 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 ???@??? 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