Nearly Three Weeks Later…

“I’m so glad to be out of there…”

Usually so pristine, so prim and proper, Commander Vashara Zail looked drained, exhausted even. Dealing with the Ferengi was never easy at the best of times, but having to support the acting Captain in trade negotiations meant the Orion beauty had spent an inordinate amount of time in close quarters with some particularly unsavoury characters over the last six days. She’d endured lecherous looks, crude comments and sexual advances from some of the most repugnant characters. Characters that would have made Orion slavers seem like saints.

She wasn’t alone of course. Noli had suffered the same from those poor, stupid souls who felt brave enough to try it with her during the negotiations. And while she could voice her dissatisfaction publicly, she could certainly feel solidarity with her colleague she sat alongside. Not that Vash would have even been involved with the trade deal, or the Ferengi, if Starfleet had pulled their finger out and appointed a commanding officer that was actually able to take charge in a timely manner, not three weeks later. Again, not something she could voice her displeasure with, but at least the trade conference was over, and so was the wait.

Whilst Vash sat there bellyaching, Columbia closed in on the rendezvous point in the Mizar system at a leisurely warp three to ensure they would not be too early (or late) for their meeting. Who they were meeting was still no clearer. Secrecy seemed to be the order of play yet again, with Starfleet coy on who the latest incumbent of the Columbia hot seat would be. She had her suspicions, her hopes, but recent times had taught Noli a great many reasons to avoid making any assumptions.

Noli allowed herself to get a little too deep into her considerations until she heard a voice from starboard calling out to her. Her curiosity piqued, the Commander turned to her right and noticed the Science officer staring at her, waiting for her response. The expression on his leathery face concerned her enough to turn her whole chair in his direction.

“What is it?” she asked, eyebrow raised.

“We’re intercepting some communications from ships in the Pyrithia system that their warp drives have suddenly, inexplicably shut down,” the Xelliat told her, his brows furrowing as more reports came in.

Noli cocked her head, and then tapped the arm of her chair. Across the ship, the familiar botswain’s whistle rang out and her voice echoed the hallowed corridors. “Commander Prida to the bridge at once,” the Bajoran instructed, then rose to her feet and crossed the bridge.

By the time the Chief Engineer emerged from the turbo lift, the Commander, the science officer and his able deputy were deep in conversation about the incoming reports.

“What’s occurring?” Prida asked, sauntering over to the science station with a steaming cup of her favourite Risian beverage. Her smile disappeared when she saw the look of concern on the XO’s face. “This can’t be good…”

Noli looked down at the hulking scientist and nodded.

“We’ve received four separate reports of ships within sensor range losing their warp drives without explanation,” Onsas repeated, looking at the reports and then adding a swift, “five”.

“That can’t be right…” the Chief passed her drink to the Assistant Science chief and rounded the console, standing to Onsas’ right and looking over his shoulder at the readings. “Have you scanned for any spatial phenomenon? There has to be something linking them,” the Bajassian surmised.

“Two is a coincidence, any more than that is damn peculiar,” the XO agreed, shaking her head and folding her arms across her chest.

“Nothing on any sensor bandwidth from this range. I’ve checked all…” he stopped his report and his hands flew over the controls at speed.

“Commander?”

“I’ve lost them,” the scientist revealed.

“What do you mean, lost them?”

“They’re gone,” Prida interrupted, reaching over and inputting a few commands herself, shaking her head. “They’ve just… vanished…”

Spinning on her heels, Noli glared across the bridge at the tactical station. “Lieutenant,” she called out, “can you confirm? You too, Henry?” she looked towards Flyboy at the CONN. Within seconds, both officers agreed that they could no longer detect the ships that had been in range just minutes earlier.

“Suggestions?” Noli called out, hands on her hips and looking more than a little frustrated at the lack of information available to her.

“I’ll run a systems diagnostic,” Prida advised, receiving a nod of confirmation from her friend in response.

“I’ll go over the transmissions we received from the ships in question, and see if they give us any clues that we may have missed,” Vashara offered, glancing over at Onsas and receiving a nod of encouragement and thanks.

Noli was just about to give her approval and return to her seat at the heart of the bridge when the ship buckled under her feet and tossed her into the air, along with anyone else on their feet. Those seated were either thrown from their comfort, hurdled into nearby bulkheads or slammed into the consoles before them as the red alert klaxon sounded and the ship came to a swift stop.

Once the dust had settled, Noli dragged herself into the command chair. “Report!”

It took a few seconds for anyone to respond, the first being Henry who had just about kept his seat at the CONN. “Engines are offline, Commander. We’re at all stop,” the human revealed, turning and shrugging his shoulders. “I have no explanation. One minute everything was fine, next it was like we hit a brick wall,” he told her.

“Looks like the only systems that seem to be impacted are engines, long-range communications and sensors,” Prida said whilst brushing some black locks out of her face.

“I want a full status report and a staff briefing in fifteen minutes,” the Bajoran instructed, glaring at anyone who looked in her direction. “This is a Galaxy-class starship. Failures like this don’t ‘just’ happen,” she told them sternly, waving them away to their duties whilst taking a number of deep breaths in order to compose herself a little more.

“We’ve got over two dozen injured and recuperating in their quarters,” Doctor Okan informed the staff, looking across the ready room desk at the Bajoran who had assumed the comfy chair behind it. “You should be there too,” the Risian advised, but her request fell on deaf ears.

“Without engines, we’re about three days away from Trill at full impulse,” Henry revealed from the sofa on the port wall, sat next to the Bolian tactical chief.

Commander Prida was the last of the senior staff to arrive in the ready room, waving a data PADD at her friend. Wandering past the gathered officers, she stood before the XO and slid the PADD across the table. “All systems are online and functioning within normal parameters, with the exception of the aforementioned systems,” the grey-skinned woman moved to the side and lent against the wall to relax.

“Thankfully, we have short-range sensors,” Onsas declared, then rose to his feet and wandered to the computer display on the starboard wall. Reaching out, he pulled up a sensor readout. “We didn’t detect it until too late, but Henry was right earlier,” the Xelliat nodded in recognition of the Flyboy’s earlier summation. “We hit a wall indeed. A subspace distortion, to be precise.”

Watching the display, which showed a three-dimensional model of the Columbia travelling through space at warp until she hit the distortion, most of the staff simply nodded slowly, pretending to know what was going on. Lucky for them, Onsas was on hand to share more information.

“We don’t need to be master engineers,” he smiled at Prida, “to know that that the affected systems all require stable subspace harmonics in order to function correctly. This disruption, whatever it is, was so concentrated in this area that the second we made contact, those three systems simply stopped working.”

“It collapsed our warp field in an instant. Without detection, without warning,” Henry nodded along. “That’s why we felt it the way we did.”

“How do we get them back?” Vashara Zail sat forward in her chair, hands clasped together and elbows on her knees.

“We can’t,” Prida shrugged, arms folded across her chest. “The wall spreads too far at this point. The best thing we can do is reach the communications range of Starbase 62 and bring them up to speed on what’s going on.”

“They may even have more information for us,” the Risian doctor suggested hopefully.”

“I want all required departments working on this until further notice,” Noli instructed, “we’ll continue on our way at the best possible speed.”

As the meeting drew to a close, the senior staff departing in one cluster, the Commander spun in the chair and pushed herself to her feet, glaring out into the heavens. Where once there had been stars streaking past at unfathomable speeds, there were now stars that remained in view far longer than they should. It would take time, but Columbia would eventually reach comm range. Time the crew would have to try and get some answers.