Cl.02.05 – It took the turbolift no more than a mere 20 seconds to deliver Commander Denaris to the bridge. As soon as the doors opened, he stepped onto the bridge and as he quickly moved himself passed Lieutenant C’riss at the tactical station, he took a seat behind the science station on the left side of the panoramic view screen. Just as he sat down and logged in, he could hear the Captain say “Take us out of warp, miss Faulckner. Proceed at full impulse. Set a course towards the jumpgate.” The ginger-haired human female manning the conn of the ship nodded in response and replied with a loud “Aye, ma’am”.
Commander Kobrrei was standing between the command area of the bridge and the conn station a few meters in front of it. “We are at the gate in less than 5 minutes. Lieutenant T’sani, power up the gate link interface.” The Vulcan operations officer, seated on the Captain’s right hand, behind the ops station nodded and started to enter in commands into the computer interface. Several hatches on the primary and secondary hull of the ship opened, the gate interface technology emerged from the depths of the ship. “Interface powering up and charging. Fully operational in two minutes, sir.” T’sani reported. Kobrrei nodded. “All stations, report ready for the first jump.” Kobrrei ordered after he had opened a ship wide comm channel by tapping in some commands into his own console. Several minutes later, Lieutenant T’sani managed to report that the ship was ready.
“We are approaching the gate.” Susannah Faulckner reported, awaiting further instructions. “All stop.” Aelyn ordered. “Log into the gate interface.” The Captain continued, eyeing T’sani who immediately established a link between the ship’s interface units and the gate computer system “Link established, gate decloaking.” T’sani said several seconds later. “On screen.” Kobrrei wanted a visual confirmation that they were successful in establishing the link. Two large amber coloured metallic structures appeared. The two slender structures formed a wide frame around an aperture which will be the entrance to the subspace fold as soon as a link between two gates is formed. “The interface reports ready. The gate is responding.” T’sani reported. “Enter the Nerey’N gate address to establish the subspace fold.” Kobrrei walked over to the operations station and monitored how T’sani used the rather unusual computer interface to enter commands into the gate’s computer. “The gate has accepted the destination address. Establishing link. Link confirmed. Subspace connection is forming.
The two C shaped metallic gate united moved apart, widening the aperture between the units. As soon as the metallic structures were in their new position, a visible anomaly was forming and about 10 seconds later the subspace form between the Tarm gate and the Nerey’N gate had fully stabilized, allowing the ship instantaneous passage to another part of space. “Gates fully linked. Subspace fold stable. We are ready to jump, Captain.” Captain Aelyn eyed her first officer and gave him a short nod, giving the order to proceed with the first jump. Kobrreii returned to the seat on the Captain’s right hand and sat down. Both the Captain and the First officer used their consoles to activate the seat restrain protocol. Instantly solid restraints emerged from two slots just above both of their shoulders. Almost instantly, all other present bridge officers took a seat at their respective station before initiating their own restraining protocol. Captain Aelyn opened a channel to engineering: “Aelyn to Engineering.” It did not take long for Lieutenant Jaura to reply. “All stations report green, align the nacelles to full horizontal.” The Engineering department head confirmed, jumped down the ledge from where he was working and used the controls one level below to move the nacelles to such a position that the would be provided with a greater level of protection. Ever since the Intrepid class starship, there haven’t been launched any classes of starship that had moveable warp-nacelles. With the experimental tri-cored engine the concept of movable nacelles had been reintroduced. “Ready, Captain.” Jaura said as soon as the nacelles had stopped moving. “All hatches and intake valves are secured, ma’am.” Kobrrei reported as he took one last look at his console. Aelyn nodded and gave the final order: “Take us in.”
With a very low powered burst from the ship’s aft thruster assembly, the ship started to gain momentum slowly but steadily. The tip of the Callisto’s primary hull made contact with the spacial anomaly that had been created between the gate subunits. Instantly it distorted as regular matter was sucked into the intricate network of subspace filaments that jointly made up the jump gate network. Several seconds later the entire ship was engulfed by the spatial anomaly which warped the ship to almost infinite length while on the other side of their corridor, the ship exited subspace at the destination gate. Before Denaris could count to 20 the ship had successfully made the jump. According to the medical data, most of the ship’s crew would not be affected by such a jump, only species that were more sensitive to tetrion emissions would be expected to feel any form of adverse effect from the jump. Bajorans weren’t sensitive to tetrions so he should not be feeling anything but if he had to be honest, he had to admit that he was at least feeling a bit queasy. Additionally he was pretty sure he was feeling a tingling sensation through his cybernetic prosthesis. He reached the conclusion that it must his cybernetic implant that must cause these sensations. He could only hope that the remaining jumps would not cause him any additional discomfort.
“Report.” The captain demanded as they concluded their jump. “Jump successful.” T’Sani reported as her first indications showed that they had reached their destination gate succesfully. “We are in the Nerey’N system, ma’am.” Calyssa nodded. “All stations, level 5 diagnostic and report ready for second jump.” Kobrrei bellowed through the ship’s comm channel. It took the departments about four minutes to complete the required diagnostic and when that time elapsed, stations reported in green again. “Captain, all stations are green.” Kobrrei swivelled his chair to face his superior. Aelyn nodded “Anything out of the ordinary?” She asked him “A slight misalignment in the secondary ODN junctions and a 2 promille increase in plasma flow through the tertiary manifolds. Still well in safety parameters.” Kobrrei reported. Aelyn sighed coming to the conclusion that it was safe to proceed with the second jump. “Link up with the next gate. When ready, take us in.”
The same took place as before. The ship and crew readied itself for another entry into the subspace network. The ship came about, slowed to the required speed and dived back into the gate. Denaris could feel another wave of nausea coming up but this time it felt more intense. It cost him some effort to prevent his system from throwing out everything. The jump through subspace would normally take about 10-15 seconds but this time it appeared to be considerably longer. After another 3 seconds or so, the ship also began to shake violently. “Report.” Aelyn shouted, requiring her bridge crew to feed her with the necessary data on what was going on. “Captain, our hull geometry frequency seems to be of by several Hertz. We are losing our link cohesion.” T’sani reported. “Compensate.” Kobrrei shouted while the shaking had become even more intense. All present bridge officers had to hold on onto their console with at least one arm. “Attempting…” T’sani replied. “Increasing power to exterior subspace frequency modulators.” Those were installed as part of the jump gate interface to make it possible for the Callisto to interface with the gates’ computer grid but also allowing save travel through a subspace thread. Instead of making the ride more gentle and stable, the experience of shaking seemed to intensify. “No effect.” C’riss reported. “3 seconds before we lose cohesion all together.” She hissed. “We don’t want that, Captain. Organic tissue cannot survive this dimension of subspace. I suggest that we abort the jump and leave the subspace filament now.” Denaris added his two cents after fighting off another wave of nausea. “Agreed.” Aelyn concluded. “Make it happen.” She said and several officers sprung to work immediately. One last violent jump later, the Callisto exited subspace and ‘fell’ back into regular space. The last jolt felt as if the ship fell several hundreds of meters out of the skies. It took the crew a few moments before they got their orientation back.
“Wha.. what happened.” Aelyn said. She released the constraints that kept her from falling out of her chair. She was pretty glad that they were standard issue nowadays because without them, this particular trip through the gate network might have been a lot worse. “It seems that we are back in normal space again, ma’am.” Aelyn nodded and noticed that most of her crew were still unconscious from that last jolt. She tapped her badge and required medical assistance. “Get me a full report on all ship systems.” T’sani nodded. “That will take several minutes, Captain. I will get right on it.” She walked back to the command area to see whether her first officer was back among the conscious ones. He was slowly crawling out of the dark tunnel he seemed to be in. “Whaa..” “Easy now, Commander. We are alright.” Calyssa said. Commander Nayru accompanied by several junior physicians exited from the turbolift and started to do their check ups right away. Slowly the bridge crew were brought back and as soon as the medical team was finished Fenna reported to the Captain. “Nothing too serious, ma’am. Several lacerations and bruises, but not even a broken bone. The sudden fall from subspace into normal space overloads several of the neural pathways but that is to be expected. I’ll be in sickbay now.” Aelyn nodded and waited for her bridge crew to return to full consciousness and awareness.
“Now ladies and gentlemen. I expect full reports: What happened, how is the ship doing and where in the hell are we?” It took the crew several minutes to gather the information that was required to answer that question. “It appears that our gate interface grid seems to have been malfunctioning.” C’riss was the first that was able to shed a bit of light on the situation. “As T’sani reported during the jump, the frequency modulators were unable to maintain frequency sync with the formed subspace tunnel.” C’riss said after carefully reading her sensor telemetry. “I concur with that conclusion, Captain.” T’sani reported from her operations console. “But how?” Kobrrei managed to remain standing. “We performed several diagnostics before initiating the second jump.” “Inconclusive.” T’sani replied. “At this time I cannot answer that.” “Keep at it, Lieutenant.” Aelyn said as she walked over to the console of Lieutenant C’riss. “Have you been able to get a full ship status?” “Aye, ma’am.” The Caitian replied. “Propulsion intact, weapons and shields intact. Structural integrity field dropped to 65%. Power flow and computer seem to be working but are restricted. Sensory relais are still fully operational.” A first analysis indicated that the Callisto had faired through the ordeal pretty well. “Well that’s some good news.” Aelyn said. “Now for the last question…” She said, moving to the science console behind Lieutenant T’sani who was still busy to get the question asked what had happened and why it happened.
“Sensors are fully operational but we lack allocated computer processing space to succesfully interpret the sensor data, Captain.” Denaris reported as soon as Calyssa had joined her science officer. “Can you free up some more?” Denaris nodded “I can attempt that but all stations are demanding more from the computer as we speak. Perhaps it is a good idea to launch a class 4 sensory probe. They have their own independing computer core that will do the thinking work. Aelyn nodded. “Good idea. Carry out.” With several inputs, Denaris readied the probe and launched it from the forward launchers. “Probe away.” Kobrrei seemed to have mastered his balance again and as soon as he felt confident, he joined his Captain and science officer. “Program the probe to fly a standard triangulation profile. That way we will get the data in faster. “Sensible thing to do.” Denaris concurred and he carried out the commands that the first officer gave him. “It will take the probe 5 minutes to get us a positive fix on our position.”
Lieutenant Raa exited the turbolift with reptilian speed. “Captain, do you have a minute?” Calyssa nodded and she walked to her command chair where Lieutenant Raa was waiting. “Ma’am, I have been able to free some computer space for my Intel labs to run within specified parameters and I have been able to establish a rough triangulation of our position and we are really out of our way.” The Pahkwa-Tanh lizard like strategy officer reported. “Check the viewscreen, Captain.” He said. Doing so, she looked of the large panoramic holographic viewport towards the stars. “None of the starts that we see are those we should be seeing. “I have not been able to exactly to pinpoint our position but according to the alignment of the stars, I estimate that we should be well beyond the D’akkala wall.” “You can see that by just looking at the stars?” Aelyn said, somewhat impressed by Raa’s ability to come to that deduction. “You forget, ma’am, that we Pahwa-Tanh have augmented sense of spacial awareness.”
“Captain, the sensory probe is sending in its data. We now have a positive fix on our location.” Denaris said. “Let’s see. Show it on our viewscreen.” The screen jumped in a split second from an exterior view to a tactical overview of this region of space. A Starfleet chevron indicated the ship’s position and it appeared that Raa was right about at least one thing: They were far far away from where they should be. No other Starfleet chevrons were anywhere near their current location.” Commander, overlay a representation of faction space over the probe’s data.” Several parts of space were coloured indicating its affiliation. Starfleet space in the Reach seemed to be several thousands of light years away, as well as Felwar space. “We seem to be well in the Delta quadrant, Captain.” Kobrrei managed to look over Denaris shoulder who was interpreting the probe’s data as it was coming in. “According to at least 5 separately validated scans, we are on the other side of the D’akkala wall.” As soon as Denaris said those words, Aelyn eyed straight into Raa’s reptilian eyes. “Red Alert!” Aelyn shouted.