—- USS Luna, Bridge —-

“In two hours we enter underspace,” Commander Carrillo said, “We don’t know where we’re going so we need to be ready for anything. Science department launch what probes you want to now.”

Miller nodded turning to her science console and sending word to the team to fire off any probes they had to go into the spatial anomaly now. A few moments later the USS Luna’s mission pod fired off a large device into the portal. Carrillo glanced around the bridge, confident that everyone knew their jobs, and nodded mostly to herself. They were ready, and it was only wanting to wait for the first readings from the probe that they were waiting. No use coming out the other side of underspace into a sun.

During the two hours Carrillo took to reading mission reports from other Starfleet ships on her PADD to familiarize herself with some of the possibilities that lay beyond on the other side of the anomaly. It was like dozens of wormholes suddenly opening up, and while just one had altered the fabric of the universe as they knew it, nobody knew what this many was going to do. If one of these portals lead to an unfriendly rival like the Dominion then they could be pushed to another devastating war. If multiple portals lead to malevolent forces, then Starfleet may cease to exist.

Setting the PADD down she glanced at tactical, “Time?”

Jara nodded, “It’s been two hours ma’am.”

“Lieutenant Pr’Nor, take us in, half impulse,” Carrillo said watching the screen from the captain’s chair in the centre of the bridge.

Slowly the anomaly grew closer and then vanished as they entered it. While the crew did not feel it the USS Luna suddenly began to travel many times faster than the top warp speed of the ship. Pulled along they were no longer in the space they knew, and instead were rocketing towards something new.

“We’re launching our next probe now,” Miller reported, as the probe was fired from the mission pod.

“Well we’ve boldly gone, now let’s see what that gets us,” Carrillo said.

—- USS Luna, Holodeck 3 —-

Lieutenant Junior Grade William Hume collapsed on the sand next to his fellow security officer Lieutenant Junior Grade Rosa Flores who was attempting to sunbath under the simulated sun which gave off the right kind of light to suntan with. She huffed loudly, “You’re getting water on me.”

“Well we’re at a beach what do you want?” Hume asked, as Flores turned around to properly and uniformly tan on her back.

There was a splash about a hundred yards away as Lieutenant Yi Zhang dove into the water, splashing Lieutenant Akane Sone one of the ship’s stellar cartographers as he did. Wiping water from her face she swam over to the shower of the beach and got out of the water sitting on a towel next to Flores.

“You excited by all the new space stuff we’ll see,” Hume asked.

“You mean stellar cartography stuff? Sure, but it’s all space stuff,” Sone said.

“Things fall into two categories for security, stuff they can punch and space stuff,” said Zhang as he took exited the simulated ocean.

Hume was quiet and just smirked at the thought that life was that simple. Maybe it was, at least as a Lower Decker, he went where he was told and did what he was told and sometimes he got to play the hero but most of the time he just made up the numbers. An extra body on away missions or doing physical work for the more senior officers.

Lieutenant Yi Zhang, who had joked that his own job in Operations was mostly supervising boxes as they were moved from one end of the ship and back noticed the faraway look to Hume and sighed, “Don’t tell me you’re having more big thoughts.”

“No I’m just thinking,” Hume said, not quite about to explain what it was he was thinking about. That had been one of the great things about dating a half-Betazoid councellor she could tell what he was thinking without him having to find words for it. But he’d mucked that one up.

His actual girlfriend Lieutenant Rosa Flores shook her head ruefully and turned over to sit up. She knew Hume could be moody at times, alternating between outgoing and alive with periods of quiet introspection. She was never quite sure how to react to those, how to encourage him to express himself.

Usually something active got his mind off of it, so she stood up and tugged on his hand, “Come on let’s swim.”

Knowing her was being off and moody Hume nodded, the Vancouver-ite standing, and allowing himself to be pulled towards the simulated ocean.

—- USS Luna, Bridge —-

“Commander, we’re exiting underspace,” at the stellar cartography conn Lieutenant Akane Sone had washed up from her beach time and donned her uniform. As they exited and space around them returned to normal she began to examine the stars around them, trying to place them.

“Any idea where we are,” asked Lieutenant Kolem, acting-First Officer.

“Just a moment,” Sone said, “Checking databases now.”

Commander Olivia Carrillo glanced at the Stellar Cartography officer and waited, the USS Luna was moving away from the portal, scanning things and automatically taking in sensor readings. There was no inhabited planets as of yet.

The computer  chimed in with a communication from the larger stellar cartography lab, and Lieutenant Scchhttt’aaakkk. His chirps were translated, “Commander we in the delta quadrant, our positioning looks like what the USS Voyager reported as being  the Devore Imperium.”

At the tactical conn Lieutenant Claudia Jara said, “Captain two ships heading our way, both match what we have in our databanks as patrol ships for the Devore Imperium. They’ve seen us.”

“Time to intercept?” Carrillo asked.

“Two hours,” Jara said.

“Okay we have one hour, then I want all department heads in the ready room to report on who or what the Devore Imperium is,” Carrillo said, glancing at Kolem and heading into the captain’s office to start reading Voyager’s logs.