Lieutenant al-Kwaritzmi’s log, supplemental: the Redding has been trapped in the Underspace for several hours now. I have seen it from my quarter’s window: an indistinct dark orange void, filled with junk and debris. Out attempts to restart the warp drive are still inconclusive, but today is a new day – whatever that means in this time-fractured place – and I’m going back to Engineering filled with confidence.

As Iskander arrived in Main Engineering, he immediately noticed that it was much more quiet than the usual. Not the machinery in itself – everything was buzzing and whirring as it usually did – but the crew seemed nervous, electrified.

He saw Sirti-nei-Plex and approached him. The gracile Arcadian seemed tired and dry, but this was the end of his shift and he’d probably soon go soak in his waterbed.

“Lieutenant” said Iskander. “What’s the word?”

Sirti-nei-Plex looked at him with very tired eyes.

“I have finished securing the ODN network” he said. “We are at no risk of a feedback shutter or a Lovelace cascade. I expect you to review my work.”

Iskander peeked at the monitor where Sirti-nei-Plex had been working.

“You modified the flip-flop protocols?” he hazarded.

“Sure” answered Sirti-nei-Plex. “That will defend the registers from desynch. There’s also several other things I’ve implemented. I expect you to find all mistakes I made in the code and to confirm that I have been very clever. Now I’m going to bed.”

Sirti-nei-Plex stood.

Iskander suspected there was more. “I will. Say, Sirti, the crew seems quite silent. Has something happened?”

Sirti-nei-Plex sighed. “There’s talk that we have encountered other ships in the Underspace.”

“Hostile?”

“There’s been no combat. Word is that they are equally stuck as we are. But we have received no communication from the bridge – whatever they’re saying, we are not privy to it. And now – goodbye.”

Iskander nodded to him and looked around. Mir Durbus wasn’t to be seen – she was probably sleeping after having pulled a couple shifts – which put him in charge. The turn shift was slowly happening, so he made the round to see what progress was being made and to put some stick about.

While doing the round, he saw Lieutenant Z’Xak nested in a dark ceiling corner, immobile. The big spider had a quarter, but wasn’t bothered at all by just climbing a wall and sleeping there – nobody had protested so far, although it was weird.

The intercom chirped.

“Durbus to Main Engineering” said the intercom.

“al-Kwaritzmi here. I thought you’d be sleeping, Commander.”

“If you are already back to work, it means that you yourself have had too little sleep, Lieutenant.”

Touche, thought Iskander.

“We are going to initiate reroute power and emit a strong tachyon shower,” continued Mir Durbus. She was probably on the bridge. “We must sustain it for at least twenty seconds. Be ready for it. If it goes well, we are going to warp. We are counting on you in Main Engineering to keep the ship in one piece.”

“Aye-aye, Commander” answered Iskander. A tachyon shower? Had we found a way to defeat the time distortion by emitting tachyons?

The intercom sounded again, but now it was ship-wide.

“This is Commander Vistia Xe. We are going to attempt to get out of the Underspace. Brace for turbulence.”

At least this time she hadn’t added that infamous “I guess”.

Iskander raised his voice to be heard in all of engineering. Fortunately for him, he had quite a big voice. He walked to the main table of the room, where he could see it all.

“You heard the commander. We are going to lose power on many systems, but that’s how we like it. Talk to me if something is going topsy-turvy.”

As announced, power was rerouted. On the engineering monitors, he could see the power going into the particle sympathic system, making tachyons.

“Ensign Audrey, strengthen the inertial dampers” he ordered.

“Aye, Lieutenant.”

Ten seconds passed. Twenty seconds passed. Thirty seconds. Finally the tachyon emission stopped.

They hadn’t gone to warp. They were still in the Underspace.

________________________________________________________________

Mir Durbus called Iskander to the Reddaurant a half an hour later.

That was most unusual. Iskander couldn’t recall another occasion when his direct superior had requested a work meeting at the ship’s bar. And it felt weird to leave Main Engineering to go there at the beginning of his shift.

Yet, when he entered the Reddaurant, he could understand why. Mir Durbus looked positively exhausted: so deflated that she even seemed to have changed hue of blue. The several plates in front of her might have been breakfast or a very late lunch, but there was no mistaking the coffee she was drinking.

He sat at her table and waited for her to speak.

“You know, we are not alone in here” she said finally. “I suppose that the crew knows.”

That wasn’t what he expected her to open with, but what did he know.

“The crew knows little. I have heard rumors and nothing more, Commander.”

She nodded tiredly. “We have managed to find allies in the Underspace. Four ships. They have been trapped far longer than us – the longest apparently for more than one month, although as far as we know this could also be seven seconds for the rest of the universe. A Dopterian merchant ship, a R’ongovrian civilian skipper, a patrol ship from an unknown Delta Quadrant race, and a Romulan bird-of-prey.”

That might have been worrying. “Romulan?”

“Republic.”

Iskander nodded.

“They’re stuck for the same reason we are – it is impossible to create a stable warp bubble with time shifting and desynchronising as it does. Since they have been here longer than us, they came up with a plan.”

“The tachyon shower is their idea, I take it.”

Mir Durbus took a large bite of something purple and chewed a long time before answering. “It is. They mapped the Underspace and found a number of weakpoints. The theory is that the tachyon shower will resonate the Underspace and repel the Tuegg foam and – oh, I’m too tired to explain, and honestly I don’t understand it fully but Therese says it is brilliant and will work.”

“I trust Commander Siouinon, but we emitted a lot of tachyons and are still here.”

Mir Durbus made a crooked smile. She was too tired to be jolly, which was another first in Iskander’s book.

“One ship isn’t enough. The plan is five ships, each located in an Underspace weakpoint, each emitting tachyons simultaneously. That might stabilize the whole region for long enough.”

“Why five?”

Mir Durbus looked out of the window at the weird and orange Underspace.

“There’s four of them. They tried four and it didn’t work. They hope that five is enough. If it isn’t, we’re going to wait for a sixth ship, I guess.”

Iskander scratched his chin.

“Am I wrong in assuming that half an hour ago we tried with five? And it didn’t work?”

“It didn’t work because the Romulan Bird-of-Prey couldn’t take it. Their power grid gave up while setting up the tachyon shower. It almost took the ship with it. We’re going to try again when they have fixed the malfunction.”

Iskander digested the information. They depended on alien ships to get out of here, and some of them had been here so long that they had fallen in disrepair.

“How long are they going to need for the repairs?” he asked.

“That depends on us” answered Mir Durbus.

“Oh, no.”

“Apparently most of their engineers are dead, Iskander.”

“You can’t be serious, Commander.”

“I’m way too tired to be unserious” she said eating a gelatinous pink fruit. “They have been dead for weeks – apparently they got hit by a really large space debris and part of the ship depressurized for a while.”

Iskander looked out of the window.

“And – you are sending me?”

“Are you jumping to conclusions, Lieutenant?”

“Am I?”

She chewed. “Yes. But you are also correct. The Captain has already decided. You are to assemble a small team and go by shuttle to the Romulan ship. Fix whatever engineering mess they have, make sure the ship can survive creating a tachyon shower, and call for reinforcements or for resources if you need any.”

He looked out of the window again. He somewhat hoped to see the Romulan ship in the foaming chaos of the Underspace, but of course he didn’t.

“Understood” he said, a bit more rigidly than he would have liked to.

“And don’t get backstabbed or anything like that, Iskander. Pretty please.”