Talking Through Time

Posted on Sat Jul 30th, 2016 @ 3:35pm by Lieutenant Commander Horatio Hawke & Captain Tim Williams & Lieutenant Commander Jean Reynard & Lieutenant Griffen Tanol & Counselor Melony Taylor & Lieutenant Ryan North

Episode: Lost Property
Location: USS Highlander - Bridge

Sitting at the Ops station, Jean was monitoring the translation of the probe between quantum phase bands. Since they had a good idea of what the correct settings were thanks to Grif's modifications in astrometrics, he'd been able to program it to home in on the right main band, but he was having to fine-tune it to exactly match that of the missing ship. Finally the readings coming back from it stopped to fluctuate and the ship came into focus.

"Captain, the probe is now at the correct phase band," Jean said. "I have the alternate De Salle on the probe's main sensors. I'm picking up active power and numerous life signs."

"OK," Tim responded, taking a pause as he reflected on just how strange a conversation he was about to have, if their plan worked at all. "Route our communications through the probe, and hail the De Salle. Make sure to use a lower subspace band. Starfleet's standard frequencies from the time should be in the ship's database."

"Aye, sir," Jean said, setting the probe's relay unit to the correct protocols. He activated the transmitter and got an automatic handshake back from the other end. "Hailing frequencies open, captain."

On the screen, the severe-looking middle-aged woman of south Asian appearance stood from the command chair. “I’m Captain Saroja Chandrakala of the Starship De Salle. Please identify yourself.”

"Captain," Tim said, stepping towards the viewscreen and establishing himself as the one with whom the conversation would be had. The appearance of the crew on the other side of the slightly staticy viewscreen and the captain's name indicated that the crew were indeed the original crew of the De Salle, and not their descendants, though how that was possible was yet to be answered. "My name is Captain Tim Williams, of the..." he paused, before deciding to omit the word 'Federation'. "Starship Highlander. We're from Earth." Well, most of us, he thought.

Chandrakala’s demeanour softened and she visibly relaxed. “Captain, it’s good to hear a friendly voice. But … we don’t recognise the configuration of your ship. I wasn’t aware that Starfleet had such a vessel.”

"There's a lot that we need to discuss, Captain," Tim replied, dodging the question as best he could. "First, can I ask you; what do you know of your 'recent' circumstances? Any strange anomalies you may have encountered, or unusual events?"

While the captain talked, Ryan glanced over at his sensors. Though they were not properly adjusted to see and detect the other ship, he wasn't leaving anything to chance. Given the odd circumstances that brought the other ship to her current state, Ryan wanted to make sure that his own ship didn't suffer the same fate. Well, that and all the data that was being collected was going to make a very interesting report. No doubt the science council was going to love hearing about it.

Chandrakala shrugged, her softer demeanour now shifting into exhaustion. "We've been adrift for almost three months now," she said with a weary quiver in her voice. "We were conducting a clearing operation in the Rigel system when we must have tripped a mine. Not close enough to kill us, but it still knocked us about and took out most of our systems except basic life support. Thank God the inertial dampeners held up or we'd all be jam on the bulkheads right now. Most of my crew is alive, but we're getting low on supplies and are down to emergency rations. We've only recently been able to restore our sensors and comms, but we have a problem with our engines; they're powered but produce no thrust."

She was about to continue her report, but stopped herself, deciding to ask another question instead. "I thought we'd be rescued well before this. What took Starfleet so long to find us?"

Ryan didn't look up from his station as the captain kept talking. He was slightly curious as to what kind of explanation his own captain was going to give considering why the rescue mission had taken so long.

"To be perfectly honest with you Captain, Starfleet called off the search for the DeSalle some time ago. Quite a long time ago as a matter of fact. They couldn't find any trace of you for several parsecs around the Rigel system. We came across you by accident." Tim answered. Technically, what he said was true; Starfleet's records at the time showed that when they had realised the DeSalle was missing, they did conduct a search of the surrounding systems. When no trace of the ship was found, it was assumed to have been destroyed by the Romulans, given that the war with them was still ongoing.

Grif bit at the edge of her lip as she listened to the conversation between the two captains. Humans were resilient but learning that they were stuck in a different phase for something like two hundred years was going to come as a shock. Glancing at the sensor readings from Jean's readout she ascertained that the out of phase ship was in excellent condition, not having been affected by space and time the same way her counterpart had been. That and an idle engineer fixes everything that doesn't even need fixing. Leaning towards Jean, Grif whispered "Amp some power to the deflector dish and extend the field maybe we can get rid of the interference that way."

Jean rolled his eyes but started to adjust the deflector, careful to make sure that he didn't burn out the long-range scanners that shared the same dish as he ramped up the power. "I don't even know why we call it a deflector dish anymore. I ask you, when was the last time we actually deflected anything with it?"

"Well you know it does stop space dust and micrometeorites while at warp. I'd rather not see the damage that could do." Grif replied as she watched the screen clear up a bit but not completely. "I wonder how they're going to take the news being two centuries old and all that."

Jean shrugged. He'd heard about situations like that, like the Bozeman, but he hadn't had a lot of time to do any research thanks to all the technical work. "Better than dead, right?"

"It's not so bad... A certain kind of finality to it all." Grif replied with a shrug as she watched the emotions roll over the face of the old ship's captain. "Old age versus a bang though.. a bang every time."

"I think after adjusting to the changes they might be alright but it's going to take time, and not everyone will react the same, like you said some of them will probably think they would be better off dead." Melony piped up "I don't really plan on letting anyone complete that thought if I can help it" she finished morbidly.

A terrible realisation started to dawn on the Earth captain's face. She looked briefly down at the deck before looking back up, seemingly steeling herself for bad news. "How long have we been missing, Captain?" she asked, the muscles in her neck tensing.

Tim paused for a moment before answering, and decided it would be best to just come out with it. "The current year is twenty three ninety one. You've been missing for two hundred and thirty two years."

Chandrakala's eyes widened and she breathed in sharply. She sat back down in her chair and looked around at her bridge officers, off screen, as the shock of the news struck them.

"I'm afraid I have some more bad news, Captain. Whatever it was that happened to you in the Rigel system has had a strange effect on your ship. It's been duplicated and phase-shifted. Essentially, the ship you are on is in a slightly different phase to us and the rest of the galaxy, but there's a duplicate that is in phase. It's been pretty badly beat up from its years among the stars, but that's how we found you." Tim motioned for Ryan to transmit the data they currently had on what had happened to the DeSalle over to them. "We're trying to figure out how we can bring you back into our phase, but anything you can tell us about the incident in the Rigel system will be of help."

The other captain shrugged and looked back up at her counterpart from the twenty-fourth century. When she spoke, her voice seemed meek and lacking in its usual authority. "I wish I could give you some solid explanation, Captain, but I don't think one exists," she said with a slow shake of her head. "We were clearing out some remnant Romulan forces. We pursued one close to a known minefield, but we didn't think we were too close. The Romulan was manoeuvring erratically and we matched his course as best we could. He went to warp and I ordered pursuit ... then all hell broke loose."

Chandrakala paused and looked off screen to her left, listening to someone whose voice wasn't picked up by the comm. "I'm sorry, Captain, my science officer has just reminded me of something. As we were pursuing the Romulan, we detected increased levels of Polaric radiation. It wasn't enough to pose a threat on its own, but it was out of the ordinary."

"That could explain the phase shifting," Tim answered, nodding as the thought formed in his head. "Research and use of Polaric Ion Energy was banned in 2268 after the Romulans nearly destroyed their colony on Chaltok IV, but during the Earth-Romulan War, they were definitely known ot have used it in their mines. It's very unstable, and has been known to cause a whole manner of anomalies, including temporal shifts." He brought his attention back to Chandrakala as he finished his thought.

"I appreciate that all of this has come as a shock to you and your crew Captain, but you can rest assured that we'll be doing everything we can to bring you back to our phase. We'll try and maintain the probe that is enabling this link, so contact us on this frequency again if there is anything that you need."

Chandrakala nodded slowly. "Thank you, Captain. We appreciate your efforts."