“Will this actually work?” Captain Jake Lewis asked as he stared at numerals and symbology that meant absolutely nothing to him. “Can we actually use this to get home?” The Underspace had brought them here, and now, it might get them home.

If the Romulan was right, and that was a big if. 

This wasn’t exactly elementary subspace mechanics they were talking about. It had taken the entire braintrust of the Advanced Science, Technology and Research Activity, plus a Klingon research team from the Science Institute of Mempa V, to crack the code of the Underspace the first time. Now, they were relying on the mathematical musings of a single former Tal’Shiar operator. She wasn’t even an astrophysics prodigy either. She was just a xenotechnologist playing the part.

“Thankfully, we’re riding on the shoulders of giants here,” Lieutenant Commander Sena offered, giving credit where credit was due. “Dr. Lockwood and Ensign Vok developed the original field equations that it relies on, and the modifications to the Ingenuity were made by Dr. Brooks and Lieutenant al-Qadir.” In the early days of the Underspace crisis, the Pathfinder class cruiser had been modified to manipulate the aperture in the Vespara system, and those modifications would now be central to the task at hand. “Do you think you can get them working again, Lieutenant Raine?”

Head buried in a PADD reviewing the finer details of Sena’s proposal, the chief engineer of the Ingenuity looked up. “In principle, yes, I can certainly reimplement the mods that Tom and Akil made to the warp assembly,” Lieutenant Dani Raine confirmed. “But the additional tweaks you’re proposing, wouldn’t they cause an inversion in energy density versus the original design?” That’s what bothered her about this. The original work had an intrinsic negative feedback cycle built in. This went the opposite direction, and if the reaction got out of hand, it could swallow their ship whole, just as that aberrant aperture had almost done to Vespara Prime.

“That’s sort of the point,” Lieutenant Commander Sena nodded. The last time, they’d had to restrain the effects of an aberrant aperture that had birthed a gravitational singularity within the corona of the Vesparan star. This time, they needed to do the opposite, drawing forth an aperture and expanding it for their use. “In the Vespara system, the exotic byproducts catalyzed within the core were meant to subdue the aperture effect. This time, we must excite a primordial aperture to make it traversable.”

“How excited are we talking about?” Lieutenant Commander Will Sharpe, the chief engineer of the Serenity, asked cautiously. He had no issue with unconventional solutions – they’d saved his bacon more times than he could count – but he’d always based them upon his decades of accumulated experience. This, on the other hand, was some real fringe stuff, and it ran orthogonal to everything he knew. “From an engineer’s first year at the academy, they caution against creating the very sort of high-energy compressions within the subspace medium that you’re proposing here. This is the sort of shit that can turn you into stardust real fucking quick.”

“There are a good many things out here that may turn you to stardust, Commander,” Lieutenant Commander Sena replied pointedly. “But I assure you, my calculations won’t be the ones that erase you from existence.”

For a moment, the room was silent.

This wasn’t really about the accuracy of Sena’s calculations at all. Of course she had done the best with what she had, and of course she had no intention of getting them all killed as, after all, she would die alongside them if so.

No, what this was really about was whether they should take a risk on a chance, or if they should just keep plodding along as they had been for the past five months. Running the warp drives of the Serenity and Ingenuity as hot as they could go, and including the few stops they’d made, they’d managed to average warp 9.6 across the last 144 days. But that had only brought them 759 light years closer to home. Assuming they didn’t overload a warp core and that they didn’t encounter a hostile enemy power intent on destroying their cruisers, if they kept up that clip, that meant they still had another 5,625 light years – or 2 years 9 months and 14 days – to go.

Except they didn’t. Not since the blackout had come. Not since subspace had been rendered unusable to them as a superluminal medium. Now, they were all but motionless. In this new reality they were now facing, it wasn’t three years they were looking at. No, assuming they could maintain .9c in perpetuity, it would be 2,724 years within their walls before they saw Federation space again, and courtesy of the relativistic effects, 6,250 years would have elapsed beyond their bulkheads.

What choice was that?

“Sena is right,” Captain Lewis concluded. “We have no other choice. Not with the blackout. Not without warp drive, sensors and communications.” 

If they didn’t give the Romulan’s plan a shot, they might as well park themselves permanently over this unnamed, uninhabited rock and carve out a meager existence for themselves. The timescales in play without warp drive were not just the sort where you’d never see your parents, your kids or your grandkids again. They were the timescales over which entire empires rose and fell. The Romulans, the Klingons, and even the Federation itself might all be no more by the time their descendents – ninety or so generations later – at last made it home.

“But what if the blackout disappears as spontaneously as it appeared?” Lieutenant Commander Sherrod Allen asked. “We could be taking all this risk for nothing.” The executive officer of the Ingenuity was not a man quick to action. He preferred a slower, more methodical approach to decision making, a sharp contrast to their de facto division commander.

“If you’d like to wait for that, we’ll leave you a shuttle, and you can park your ass here, praying that the universe heeds your call,” Captain Lewis replied coldly. “But, I’ll tell you, the universe ain’t listening. Me, I prefer to make my own fate.”

“Sherrod,” Commander Cora Lee addressed her executive officer more compassionately than the captain of the Serenity had. “Whether it’s years or millenia we’re looking at, that’s a long time. Longer than we can ask of anyone.” She had seen over the last nearly five months what their isolation was doing to the crew. “And the math, I’ve looked it over. It all checks out.” Half a truth, and half a lie. She had looked at it, but she didn’t have a clue what it said. It didn’t matter though. She just wanted to get this crew home before the galaxy froze over. “I, for one, am in full support of Lieutenant Commander Sena’s plan.”

“As am I,” said Lieutenant Commander Ekkomas Eidran, the executive officer of the Serenity, adding his support not because he’d even tried to understand the Romulan’s math, but rather because he trusted his captain’s instincts. If Lewis felt this was the right approach, he’d back it.

“I see no reason we can’t give it a try,” smiled Lieutenant Raine before glancing over at the Ingenuity‘s executive officer with a mischievous twinkle in her eye. “Sherrod, I promise I’ll be extraaaa careful.” Careful was certainly not what the spunky grease monkey was known for.

“You pays your money, yous takes your chances,” Lieutenant Commander Sharpe quipped. “I’m game.” All things considered, while the science was wacky, and he didn’t understand the half of it, since when had he ever understood what those lab rats did? It usually worked out though, and if he was honest with himself, this would hardly be the craziest thing they’d ever pulled off.

All eyes moved to the Ingenuity‘s executive officer.

“Fine, I guess,” Lieutenant Commander Allen sighed, resigned to the fact that his vote didn’t really count. Captain Lewis would go off and do what he always did, and the kids would follow, just as they always did.