Entering the Unknown

Posted on Sun Jun 21st, 2020 @ 5:12am by Cailus Griffin & Captain Nycolas Temple & Commander Owen Nash & Lieutenant Commander Mindo & Lieutenant Kalin Brennan-Griffin PhD & Lieutenant James Smith
Edited on on Tue Jul 7th, 2020 @ 1:20pm

Mission: Into the Wild
Location: USS Pandora

A Mission Post by Commander Nycolas Temple & Lieutenant Commander Owen Nash & Major Leo Haliwell Sr. & Lieutenant Arthur Torres Dr. & Lieutenant Mindo & Lieutenant Kalin 'Shae' Brennan PhD & Lieutenant Katniss Wakefield & Lieutenant James Smith & Lieutenant JG Cailus Griffin & Lieutenant JG Machwen Adaestron & Captain Bethany Wallace
Mission: Into The Wild
Location: USS Pandora
Timeline:
Sat Jun 24th, 2017 @ 2:10am


The USS Pandora had travelled quietly and quickly through the Carnwennan Corridor, as she made her repairs and headed towards the Inconnu Expanse. The Starfleet vessel had managed to avoid danger by using the Talarian border as a means of protection, though they had been stopped on two occasions by nervous Talarian patrols. The Republic was obviously reeling from the loss of their ship, and their view of the Pandora's intervention into the conflict had been mixed. Still, with blessings from the High Council, the Pandora was allowed to continue through the Corridor without incident.

Sitting in the Captain's chair, Commander Nycolas Temlple was also nervous. The Pandora was about leave the safety of the Talarian space and enter into the unknown territory of the Inconnu Expanse. No one in Starfleet had ventured into this area for a significant amount of time, and they certainly did not know what changes - and new dangers - had occured during their absence. Thankfully the crew had worked efficiently and diligently to repair damage caused by the Tzenkethi and restore the Pandora into top form before they made the leap into this wild frontier.

A chime sounded across the Bridge, indicating they were close to entering the Expanse.

Nyx pressed a button on his side screen to send out a ship-wide message, "All stations; report your status,"

Katniss looked up for a moment as the message over the comm had disrupted her chain of thought, she took a deep breath before reaching for her communicator and gently tapping it.

"Wakefield here, Research lab standing by, I'm ready to provide assistance and my expertise to anyone or department that needs assistance, Sir."

Quickly after Lt. Wakefield's message ended, another came through, from Ensign Adaestron, "Ensign Adaestron in Sickbay, ready for anyone who needs medical assistance, Sir."

Bethany looked up as she heard her console chirp in her ready room, followed by the message and quickly tapped the comms button on her console to respond "Marine Air Wing On Standby, Sir. Alert Fighters ready to launch on your command."

On the Bridge, Owen monitored the main sensors from his Operations Station. Nodding he ran a check of the primary systems before speaking up. "Operations is standing by, Captain," Owen reported. "However the Chief Operations Officer is as ready as he is going to be whilst keeping a few apocalypse stopping tricks up his sleeve just in case..."

Owen looked over at the Captain and made sure he could see his Ops Officer was being humourous.

At the Tactical station, Cailus piped up with his usual, dry tone in sequence. "Tactical is standing by at minimum readiness. Primary deflector shields and weapons are powered down for standard cruise." Glancing at Owen he added wryly, "No reports yet from Starfleet on the pending apocalypse."

The Major stood a little off to the left of the Captain in parade rest, his face in a calm, controlled expression as he simply said "My Marines are ready when you need them, Captain."

Arthur was standing a little behind the tactical officer -- a man whose name he could not remember. Kalus? Something like that. He nodded in response to the captain's question. "Ready, sir."

Smith was busy in his office when he heard the message come across his comm, tapping his comminicator he said, "Intel Department is ready to assist." Smith hit his communicator again to call his Assistant, "LT Ryan please report to my office." LT Ryan responded, "aye sir". Smith leaned back in his chair waiting to see what orders would come from the captain."

=/\="Science is ready,"=/\= Shae said simply from Astrometrics. After her recent debacle with science versus nature, Shae decided to stick to the comfort of Astrometrics until things with her returned to normal; she was still fit for duty, but she didn't want anyone on the Bridge to take notice that she was not quite herself and thus cause worry or a distraction.

----Engineering----

"Mindo!" hissed Crewman Zo to the chief engineer, currently distracted by some Ensign with a faulty PADD.

Mindo looked up and Zo pointed to the comm badge on his chest. Realizing what he meant, Mindo tapped his badge and reported, "Engines are in top shape. We're ready for anything."

"We're ready for anything?" said Zo.

Mindo grinned back. "Anything's possible. Get to your station."

---- Bridge ----

"Alright," Nyx took a breath, "Helm, take us into the Expanse. Heading 34 mark 10, warp 7."

After cruising for some time in relative quiet, the Pandora began to experience mild shaking, as the forward shields deflected a sudden spate of unknown objects in their path.

Concerned, Nyx tapped his badge, "Lieutenant Brennan, do you know of an asteroid field in this region?"

=/\="Initial scans into the Expanse's unique phenomenon weren't able to penetrate very far, so I cannot confirm the presence of an asteroid field, however, I am only now picking up some shadows with the Astrometric sensors. I'm sending the readings to Ops for higher resolution scans,"=/\= Shae said from her station down in Astrometrics.

"What do you read Mr Nash?" Nyx asked.

Owen typed in some commands as he re-aligned the forward sensor array to take some more focused readings. "Captain, it looks like we've run across a debris field... I recommend coming out of warp and having a look around," he reported.

"Let's take a look around then," Temple suggested, "Helm, slow to impulse."

No sooner had the Pandora dropped out of warp, they were confronted by the large saucer section of a destroyed vessel, as it loomed right in front of them.

Gripping his seat, Nyx sat upright, "Evasive maneuvers!"

Almost before the captain finished speaking the ship dipped down into the 3D plane, impulse engines straining so hard that the inertial dampeners began to fail -- ahead, seen through the viewscreen, a vast field of nigh-impassible debris sprawled out in all directions.

Owen grabbed hold of the Ops console as the ship lurched suddenly whilst coping with the new conditions she was suddenly encoutering. He held on as best he could whilst trying to re-route power to vital systems a a alert on his console warned of the inertial dampeners beginning to fail.

----Engineering----

"Chief, you all right?" yelled Zo, working his way to a console under the stress of damaged inertial dampeners. He signaled to another officer. "Ensign, try to get inertial dampeners fixed."

Zo crawled over to where Mindo had landed after the jolt knocked him almost across the department. "Mindo!"

He reached the fallen Chief Engineer and immediately saw he was unconscious. Zo hit his comm badge. "Engineering to Medical, Chief Engineer Mindo is down and out! I need..." the ship rocked, and Zo was catapulted to the wall. Mindo's body followed and Zo managed to catch him and prevent an even harder landing than before. "I need medical teams down here immediately." Zo shook off a sharp pain in his shoulder and got to the pool table console. Just then, to Zo's relief, the inertial dampeners came back.

"Good job, Ensign," said Zo. "Help me check the core."

----Sick Bay----

Holding on to one of the sickbay beds, Lieutenant Adaestron tapped his comm badge, "Sick Bay to Transporter Room One, medical emergency. Transport myself, Crewman Tannis, Crewman Hardie, and Nurse Jedlička to engineering,"

=/\="Aye, Sir," the transporter operator replied, and a glow enveloped the four medical officers.

A second later, the four of them rematerialised in engineering, medical kits in hand, having anticipated their requirement.

"Tannis, with me," Machwen ordered, making his way over to Lieutenant Mindo, "Hardie and Jedlička, check everyone else out."

Mindo lay unconscious on the floor across from the center console.

Zo approached Machwen from behind. "Doctor, the Chief is down. I tried to stir him awake, but I haven't been able to really check on him. We've got a few problems down here and with the Chief knocked out I'm pretty much the guy in charge."

Machwen grabbed the tricorder off of his belt and began scanning Mindo, "It doesn't look like he's doing too bad, but without the technology in Sickbay, I can't say anything for certain."

Machwen applied a painkiller to Mindo, before turning back to Zo, "Is there anything that you can't do that you need the Lieutenant for?" he asked.

Zo blinked twice. "Aside from keep the ship from exploding, no not really."

----Intel Room----

Smith was standing in his briefing room going over data pouring in about the area when he felt the ship inertial dampeners fail, Smith watched as the rest of his staff held onto their stations, but he wasn't so lucky. The pitch of the Pandora sent him into one of his stations he had been monitoring. Smith stood up a little dazed, pain was shooting down his whole right arms and he had a small gash along his head. Pulling off his jacket he applied pressure to the wound with his good hand. Looking over at his Assistant he smiled, "Lieutenant would you be so kind as to notify sickbay of my injuries." Smith decided to sit and continued to try and read through his finding despite his spinning head.

Lieutenant Ryan hit her com badge =/\=sickbay this is LT Ryan, LT Smith is in need of medical attention, looks like a concussion and a broken arm, and he is refusing to leave. Could we get someone to the Intel briefing room and deck four.=/\=.

Back in engineering, Machwen turned to Tannis, "You think you can handle that? I'm kind of tied up here,"

Tannis grinned at the chance to take this situation on his own, "Of course, Lieutenant,"

"Good job, Crewman," Machwen told Tannis, before tapping on his comms badge once again, "Machwen to transporter room one, I need Crewman Tannis transported to the intel room on deck four,"

=/\="Aye, Sir," the transporter operator replied once again, before transporting Crewman Tannis to the intel room.

Upon arrival in the intel room, Tannis looked around, before spotting the lieutenants, and walking over to them. "What's happened?" he asked them.

Lieutenant Ryan looked up from a console she was sharing with Smith and smiled, "Lieutenant Smith was standing when the inertial dampeners went and was flung into the consoles, then the deck." She pointed to the blood come from his head and the arm the was tucked against his chest in a makeshift sling.

Smith smiled looking over at Crewman Tannis, "Well I learned one thing I can't fly". Trying a little humor to lighten the mood

Tannis carefully made his way over to the console, before kneeling down to check the Lieutenant's condition. "I can bandage up your head," he told him, "but if your arm's broken, we'll have to deal with that in sickbay,"

Smith nodded, "Well I've been avoiding sickbay since I've been onboard, and I guess That's going to change." Smith looked over at Lieutenant Ryan, "Lieutenant, take over until I return." Ryan replied, "aye, sir." Looking back at Crewman Tannis Smith said, "Well once you take care of my head, let's get to sickbay. Smith chuckled, "the Doctor is going to look love this, I still haven't checked in with him since I've come on board."

Tannis got out an anti-bacterial wipe from his medkit, and began wiping Lieutenant Smith's wound, "Perhaps he'll be able to get in a full checkup now, you're not exactly in the best position to resist one,"

Smith nodded, "true, well once your finished with my head I'm ready to get to sickbay. Smith turned to look at Lieutenant Ryan, and said, "Take over while I'm gone and find out from the captain what we can do to assist." Ryan nodded, "aye, sir" she went back to monitoring reports that were still coming in. Smith continued to wait for Tannis to finish his work and the ok to make his way to sickbay.

Finishing the bandage on Smith's head, Machwen stood up, and held a hand out to help Smith up, "Shall we make our way to sickbay, then, Lieutenant?" he asked.

Smith nodded and stood up looking around at those that were busy working, and said, "let's get this over with." Smith made his way out the door on his way to sickbay.

---- Bridge ----

Nyx looked at the Medical reports coming in from his console, as he tried very hard to keep his lunch from coming back up again from the ship's sudden twisting movements.

"Helm, get us out of this debris field." He asked as they shook once more. "Quickly."

"Trying, sir," the exasperated Ensign replied, "We're close to reaching a safe zone."

After taking another strong dive, a chunk of a Tzenkethi shuttle scraped across the Pandora's hull, sending a fearsome shudder across the ship. With a lurching turn to her right, the Pandora finally emerged underneath the debris field, leaving a trail of junk floating in their wake.

"All stop." Nyx was thankful to order once they had reached safe distance, leaning back in his chair again. "Mr Nash, I want a shipwide damage and injured report."

"Aye sir," Owen responded as he pressed the comm button on the Ops panel. "Nash to all departments, provide damage reports and system issues to me as soon as you can."

In the mean time, he started running checks on the primary systems and trying to collate the information sent to him.

"Lieutenants Brennan and Torres," Nyx tapped his badge. "What is your analysis of the debris? What have we stumbled upon here?"

=/\="I'm still trying to work that out, Captain," Shae answered from her lab, trying to coax from the sensors some semblance of an explanation for what they were seeing. "Sir, thanks to the sensor modifications, I am detecting graviton particles, but not nearly in the levels I hypothesized we might find. I don't yet know what tore these vessels apart, but I'm working on it. I recommend full stop while I analyze the data coming in now, otherwise we may unknowingly run into whatever caused this damage."=/\=

Arthur leaned in over one of the tactical consoles at the rear of the bridge. "One thing is certain. There are, or were, a lot of ships out there. If it wasn't a gravity fluctuation that broke them apart," he waved around at the intact bridge with one hand, "and we seem to be the proof that it was not, then something has been very busily turning starships into scrap metal. I recommend we move to yellow alert."

"Aye," Nyx remarked, "Go to yellow alert until we've figured this out."

On the main vidscreen, the field of junk floated silently in front of them like a yawning ocean at midnight. There was a feeling of dread growing in Temple's stomach, which he at first believed to be motion sickness but was quickly becoming something else.

"I have a bad feeling about this." He muttered gravely.

----Engineering----

"Hull breach on decks 12-14," yelled Ensign Ba Keer, a young Bajoran woman who looked rather jostled herself.

Zo cursed. "What the hell are they doing up there?!" he said, moving his attention back to the center console. "Get teams out there now!"

"A lot of our people are injured," said Ensign Ba.

Zo looked around and saw a lot of people on the floor. Including Zo, five people seemed to be unharmed and were frantically working on consoles. Zo tried not to panic. He'd never been in charge before, at least, not in the real world.

"Zo! What do we do?" yelled Ba.

Zo realized then that he too had hit his head a bit. Never mind that, he thought. Think of something!

"Just keep those decks sealed off," he said. He turned back to the doctor and noticed Mindo was conscious again, but bleary-eyed. "What's his status, Doctor?"

Machwen was shining a torch a torch in Mindo's eyes, thankfully they were dilating and contracting correctly. "He should be good to go soon, with all hope," he told Zo.

"What's that smell?" said Mindo, trying to shake the dizziness.

"That's probably the smoke from the console that exploded over there," said Zo, pointing to the busted wall console about five yards away. There were already two crewmen with fire extinguishers putting it out.

"How do I look, Doc?" said Mindo.

"I'd say you're ready to get back to work in a few minutes, but keep sitting down until then. Unless you don't feel well?" Machwen replied.

Mindo stood up, but slowly to make sure he could see straight. His head hurt like hell, but he could stand straight.

"Zo," he said, "What's our status?"

"I've got teams on Decks 12, 13, and 14 trying to fix a hull breach," Zo reported.

"OK," said Mindo. "Thanks, Doc. I think I can take it from here."

"Alright then, but come straight to sickbay if you feel unwell," Machwen told Mindo, standing up, before tapping on his comms badge =/\= "Adaestron to Tannis, I'm making my way back to sickbay," he told Tannis before leaving engineering.

=/\= Bridge to Engineering =/\= Temple's voice came over the comm. =/\= What's the damage?" =/\=

Mindo tapped his badge. =/\= Mindo here. We've got some bumps and bruises down here. There's a hull breach on decks 12, 13, and 14. My people are on it right now. Minimal damage to the warp core. Our inertial dampeners looked bad for a moment, but we've got them back up and running. You should be able to achieve maximum warp if need be, but please don't. =/\=

=/\="We may not have a choice, Mindo," Nyx replied, "Keep me posted on those hull breaches. =/\=

=/\= Understood. Mindo out. =/\=

----Bridge----

Temple stood and looked at the field again, unable to shake this persistent feeling of dread. There was something familiar about this event.

"Scan the field for lifesigns." He ordered, "Or any biological elements."

Owen ran a focused sweep of the area directly infront of the Pandora using the forward sensor array and started running the numbers and details in front of him.

He looked up at the viewscreen as the information started filtering in. Owen sent the information he was receiving back to Lt. Brennan through a direct link to the Astrometrics lab with a short text message asking if she could check over the new readings coming in

"My god..." he started to say as he read the readouts before looking up and noticing Nyx looking back at him.

"Sir, I'm picking up more than just debris out there...not just spacial debris and damaged vessels...it looks like there's more out there," he reported. "I've asked Lt. Brennan to further analyse the readings we're getting."

=/\="Oh... oh my stars, Captain, I think... I think we're surround by dark matter," Shae said with a shudder in her voice. "It's the only thing that makes sense, it fits with everything else we know about the Expanse so far, and it's consistent with the readings we're getting now. We'll need to realign the main deflector to emit metreon particles to effectively navigate the Expanse, but for now photon torpedoes will illuminate the edges of the dark matter fields, so we don't collide with it trying to get out of this debris field."

Dark matter - the murky spacial phenomena they had planned to investigate in their own time. Though not when they found themselves suddenly surrounded by its forceful presence in the middle of this sea of death.

"Mr Griffin, have a forward spread of photon torpedoes ready," Nyx immediately ordered. =/\= I'm keen to get out of here now, Lieutenant Brennan. Find us a safe place to head to. =/\=

Cailus didn't need to be told twice, his hands working the console rapidly even before Nyx had started speaking. He'd been in space long enough to know that 'dark matter' was code for 'get the hell out and don't look back', even with all the fantastic modern technology the Pandora crew had at their disposal.

"Torpedoes are set for standard dark matter cartographic exploration," the Security Chief reported coolly as he worked, professionalism masking his concern. "Warheads are set for minimum yield, maximum blast radius, high visibility detonation. Ready to fire on your order, Captain."

=/\="Ready when you are," Shae echoed from Astrometrics, and at Nyx's orders the torpedoes were away, the first volley impacting a pocket of dark matter ahead of them, illuminating the nebulous mass that had torn other ships apart.

Nyx meanwhile moved to the front of the Bridge, standing between the helm stations, eyes fixated on the field.

"So there's a pocket of dark matter here," He spoke aloud, "Acting like a Bermuda Triangle for ships... But they wouldn't have come here on their own and the dark matter alone wouldn't have torn them apart like this... Something brought these ships here and destroyed them."

Owen looked up from the Operations console as he followed the Captain's thinking. "Question is... Who or what led them here...and why..."

Another volley of torpedoes illuminated more of the dark matter boxing them in, and the energy of the torpedoes ghosted over the surface of the pocket, allowing Shae to track and chart where else the dark matter was, highlighting the areas in their view on the main screen where this dangerous substance of nothingness existed. And to their horror the realization dawned on them that this was not just a pocket of dark matter, they were completely surrounded, and to make matters worse it was moving; it was nothing short of a miracle that they had made it this far without colliding with this current of dark matter that made up the Inconnu Expanse.

The sinking feeling in his stomach finally reached the bottom, like a heavy thud echoing across the silence. He turned back to look at the Bridge crew. "It's a trap."

OFF