Captain's Log, Stardate 68810.7

Posted on Sun Jul 31st, 2016 @ 5:03pm by Captain Tim Williams

It has been an unusual past few days. First, we discovered the wreck of an NX-class starship, the DeSalle, which predated the Federation. It was presumed destroyed with all hands during the Earth-Romulan War, but looks to have drifted over the centuries out to the Lembatta Nebula; far further than any ship of its class ever made it under their own power. The crew appeared to have all been killed instantly during the accident which sent it to its final destination, as the ship sped to near-light-speed without intertial dampeners to protect them. Doctor Takanashi and her teams were able to recover and identify all of the remains, confirmed against Starfleet's DNA database.

But that wasn't the strangest thing. After Grif and her teams were able to patch up the hull breaches, and restore power to the warp core, the crew began to notice strange things occurring on the ship; systems which would re-route power back to themselves once it was directed away, commands which would cancel themselves after being given, even physical switches reverting themselves once toggled. I ordered an investigation, and we discovered that whatever it was that had caused the initial accident, somehow managed to duplicate the DeSalle and her crew. Grif, Jean and Ryan were able to use a combination of the ship's astrometric sensors and multi-phasic probes to locate the phased duplicate, and establish a communications link to the other vessel.

I won't lie and try to pretend that it wasn't strange to talk to the captain of a starship that was out in space over a hundred and fifty years before I was even born. It was a surreal experience, especially as they had no idea as to the predicament they were in. Their sensors had been unable to scan anything not out of phase as they were, and their engines were unable to have any effect on their position as they were tied to the DeSalle in phase with the rest of the galaxy. Thanks to the effects of relativity, they believed that only months had gone by. I took no pleasure in informing them that they are all now well over two hundred years old.

Captain Chandrakala wasn't able to shed much light on the cause of the accident, though she did report that they detected increased levels of polaric radiation just before they lost their sensors. Considering we believe they were in the vicinity of a Romulan minefield at the time, that could be the cause of their phase shifting. Polaric ions are highly unstable and unpredictable; research into them was banned in the Polaric Test Ban Treaty of twenty two sixty eight after the Romulans themselves nearly caused the accidental destruction of their colony on Chaltok Four, and they were known to experiment with polaric mines during the war with Earth. I've been reviewing Starfleet's database for reports of the effects these ions can have, and they vary wildly from disrupting sensor readings to sending personnel back in time twenty four hours. It isn't inconceivable that a polaric mine exploding at just the point the DeSalle went to warp could have interacted with the forming warp bubble, and phase shifted the ship, while at the same time hyper-accelerating it away from the explosion. I've promised Captain Chandrakala that we will do everything we can to bring her people back into our phase, but I don't envy her the task of keeping their morale up after this news.

At least they know that, even if it came two hundred years late, their rescue is not far away now.