Ad Astra :: Star Trek Fanfiction Archive ^{Beam me up, Scotty.}

Chapter Text

The Star Beagle Adventures                                                
Episode 3: Yours Is No Disgrace
Scene 8: You Are Here

3.8
You Are Here

“Okay, you have to see this… I didn’t want to run a scan of this depth until we were well clear of the area of denatured space. Our probe is digging pretty deep into subspace to gather this information…”

The large, musclebound luchador in charge of the U.S.S. Beagle’s engine room had his wife and all three captains, as well as the U.S.S. Escort’s director of engineering, Lt. Ki Kresid, along with General Krank, Trader Pel, and a few others, in the Beagle’s mind-bending engine room. While Skip Howard, Dutch Holland and Sakura Nakamura Holland were used to this space, Rhonda Carter and especially Pel both found themselves flinching and ducking whenever someone on another platform walked past, anchored by gravity on a floor that was at a 60 degree angle - or even more when an engineer passed just above them - upside down relative to the people below them.

Dutch Holland brought up a readout on the primary engineering monitor, which was even larger than the wall-sized monitors on the Beagle’s bridge.

“That looks like Dolnok Nor,” said Sakura Nakamura Holland. She was very gently massaging and exercising her hands.

It wasn’t immediately obvious to everyone else, but gradually, they began to register that the readout was showing technical details that represented the mass and electrical readouts of the station, the 5 large shuttles, 2 remaining cardassian tugs, the Galorn class cruiser… and one more ship…

“A D7 Klingon Battle Cruiser?” asked Sakura Nakamura Holland.

“Not with that power reading,” Captain Skip Howard rejoined. “Krank? Is that a…”

“An abomination,” the elderly klingon general said.

He looked around and noticed that everyone was looking at him expectantly. General Krank indulged in a heavy sigh. “Nearly 200 years ago, when my government was upgrading our fleet, we provided a number of antiquated D7 cruisers to the Romulan Star Empire in return for their research into improved cloaking devices. These were the first ships the romulans used to experiment with a new power system…”

“Micro-singularities,” said Skip Howard. “The first generation of them did not work well. The romulans stuck with this design until they perfected it. Material analysis indicates this ship was of romulan construction - it was probably operative about 70-90 years ago. About the time the cardassians were expanding into this region of space. So this ship, most likely now full of dead romulans, was probably shadowing the cardassian operation to move the space station into place. Something went wrong…”

“The romulans had all kinds of problems trying to manage their use of micro-singularities until only about 40 years ago,” Sakura observed. She turned toward her husband. “How did you know it was there?”

It was odd to see Dutch Holland smile - it was a luchador mask smiling. “The chances of the space station being accidentally dragged through an area of subspace instability are hopelessly improbable. Something they brought with them had to cause it. I had been thinking about that for a while, but the idea of it being a romulan experiment with micro-singularity power plants didn’t hit me until I examined the compression fractures in what’s left of that cardassian tug’s nacelles. And it tracks with the records we were able to access. There was a flash - like a cloaking device at close range not failing, but briefly allowing the cloaked vessel to be seen due to a rough cycling…”

“It’s been nearly 80 years,” said Commodore Yui Song. “How is it that that romulan ship is still cloaked?”

Skip Howard, Sakura Nakamura Holland and Dutch Holland turned toward the commodore and replied in unison: 

“Micro-singularity."

“Unless someone deliberately shuts that cloaking device down, that ship could remain cloaked for thousands of years,” Sakura added.

“And we don’t want to do that,” said Dutch Holland. “Trader Pel knows why…”

Everyone turned to look at the minuscule ferengi exile.

Pel exchanged glances with his fellow astral travelers, then took a deep breath. “Our experiences… those destructive light thingies… the ghosts on that cardassian space station… the battleships… the wolfhounds… they’re from somewhere else. Ki and Rhonda and I were talking about it. This last experience, when we were knocked out, the ghosts fed us math…”

“The formulas were way too much for me and Ki,” said Rhonda Carter. “But Pel was able to remember them…”

“The math isn’t that difficult,” Pel rejoined. “It’s very similar to a market manipulation scheme designed to short sell future values…” He stopped as he could see the eyes of his audience glazing over. “Well, anyway, the math for that scheme was inspired by a subspace movement tracking algorithm. Or it inspired the algorithm - I’m not really sure which came first…”

Dutch Holland picked it up: “As you know subspace and relative spacetime are both constantly in motion in ways that are very loosely related. Areas of weakened subspace create fracture patterns that cause subspace to realign…"

“Enough with the Sherlock Holmes reveal, Dutchie,” said an exasperated Skip Howard. “Get to the point…”

Trader Pel spoke up first: “The point is that all those ghosts who have been dragging us out of bed and across a hundred lightyears to Dolnok Nor don’t actually live there. They’re from somewhere else. And they’re telling us how to find them.”

Commander Dutch Holland touched a control with a gloved finger. The main engineering monitor changed to display a vast star chart in four dimensions. With two points highlighted. Holland pointed. “We are here. They…” Holland moved his gloved finger to point at the other highlight - a star system approximately 400 light years distant and located in a remote sector, well above the mean distribution for the galactic disk: “Are there…” 

3.8