Travelling the cosmos was the dream of every Starfleet officer, but crawling along at impulse power for three long days was not what any of the crew had imagined. It had afforded them time to complete minor repairs and for injuries to heal; for those in engineering, operations and science, there had been time to try and make sense of the subspace wall they had struck over seventy-two hours earlier; but space was vast, and there to be travelled at exponential speeds, not crawled along at a sling’na’s pace.

With only short-range sensors to rely on, the search for data was significantly hampered, and they’d not been able to make any sense of where the distortion had come from. Commander D’orr himself had hardly slept over those three days because this was a mystery that he couldn’t solve, and he hated that. His bedroom had felt his wrath, with shattered glass sparkling on the floor beneath where the mirror had once stood, furniture tipped over, and pillows ripped to shreds. Xelliats were known to have brute strength, but he prided himself on trying to overcome the reputation and distrust his species often felt, but the confusion of their situation had provoked him enough to forget all of his hard work.

In fact, the only thing not to have felt his wrath was his sling’na. Xelliat spent a lot of time talking to their faveourite crustacean, and Onsas was no different in that regard. A native of his home world that had been brought aboard to keep him company and remind him of home, known only as ‘My Friend’, the crab-like critter often served as his inspiration. And as the critter weaved and bobbed through its tank, the Commander felt a sudden, yet familiar feeling.

Something his human friends referred to as an epiphany.

When he eventually arrived at Stellar Cartography, he was out of breath and wheezing sufficiently that one of his junior officers instantly rose to his feet and offered the hulking giant his seat at the control panel. When he felt comfortable enough to harness the power of breath again, the Xelliat tried to explain what he had pictured when watching his dear friend.

Tapping on the controls, he displayed the positioning of Columbia on the screen that enveloped the room. A second instruction set keyed into the controls saw her projected flight plan come into play. “Warp drive involves us moving from point A to point B, without deviation or adjustment,” he told his juniors, “so we have had what limited sensors we have at our disposal searching for a path forward.

In an instant, Lieutenant Kedam stepped forward and started inputting new controls. “We’ve not been scanning for alternative routes out of the area, or even in reverse. We’ve been entirely focused on finding a way forward,” she grinned, nodding along as she followed her superior’s train of thought. “If we sent out a series of probes, we may be able to find pockets where the distortions subside, or are at least weak enough that we can resume some warp drive capabilities.”

“Agreed,” Onsas nodded along. “Set them to find such a place and stay there, like a beacon through the clouds. How many do you think we’d need?”

“About a dozen,” the Cardassian scientist suggested, looking up at the display again. “That should give us enough coverage to detect a route towards the Starbase. Maybe even as far as somewhere like Trill,” she mused, folding her arms over her chest.

“Get them ready,” Onsas ordered whilst making his way back to his feet. “I’ll suggest the plan to the Commander.”

“And you think this will work?”

Noli glared down at the science station from her position beside Onsas whilst the scientist nodded in confirmation.

“Flyboy?” the Bajoran looked up at the Helmsman optimistically.

Lieutenant Commander Henry Mitchell had joined them at the science station and hung on the Xelliat’s every word with great optimism. He wasn’t one for crawling through space, so any opportunity to get moving again had his support. “You find me the route, I’ll get us through. Might take a while, but it’ll beat sitting on our asses for years as we crawl to the nearest port,” he looked the scientist in the face and nodded approvingly, appreciating the efforts they had gone to.

“We’ll have to be careful,” Henry warned the Bajoran though. “There is every chance we might hit another wall, or something we don’t anticipate or detect until the last minute.”

Grinning, the XO gently slapped the scientist on the back and then moved off towards the command chair. “Mission control is over to you, Commander. Henry, link your station up with Onsas and work with his team,” with that, she slipped into her chair and tapped her controls.

“This is the Commander,” she called across the ship, “Brace yourself for potential bumps in the road. Sickbay, standby for possible casualties. All hands… red alert.”

“Subspace distortion ahead. Decelerating to impulse in 3… 2… 1…”

Anyone who still had the power to scan from long distances, or maybe an omnipotent being who could observe the entire galaxy, would no doubt be highly amused at the sight of a Galaxy-class starship alternating between impulse speeds and high bursts of warp power while she weaved across the Pytheria sector block. Her movements were peculiar but necessary given the state of things, and whilst it was odd to see, it was even stranger to experience. For some, inertial dampeners were not doing enough to combat the sheer stress of the acceleration-deceleration process. Sickness-induced colour changing had caused a sudden increase in crewmembers resembling the Strategic Operations Officer. For others, they felt like a Jack-in-a-Box that had sprung, bobbing from side to side, backwards and forwards. Even the acting Captain was struggling with the constant shifts in momentum.

Henry, however, was having the time of his life. He had always been so supremely confident in his own abilities, but as he adjusted course for the sixteenth time in the last hour, Noli couldn’t help but marvel at her friend. She’d known him for a few years now, and to say he was the best pilot she had ever seen probably didn’t do his talents justice. It was why she had put in for his promotion after the Zaran incident, and its awarding was the only positive to come out of that whole debacle. They’d dallied with the idea of dating a while back, when she’d been tactical chief back on Ulysses and later the Hathaway. Frontier Day and the events that followed saw the end of that as she’d been promoted to the upper echelons of command, and they’d agreed to stay good friends ever since. She still called him by her affectionate nickname every once in a while, but that had grown less frequent out of respect for him, and his new beau. She’d never told her best friend, Prida, about her feelings for him all that time ago, and she wasn’t going to tell her now that the engineering chief had begun seeing the pilot. Prida was like a sister to her and meant more than anyone else she could think of, so she’d never betray that trust and wouldn’t ruin something positive for two people she felt closest to. So, that was all he was now. Flyboy, chief pilot of the grand starship Columbia, and the only person she would want at the helm right now.

Another brush with the leading edge of a distortion saw the ship rumble beneath their feet.

“Okay, so maybe a synth with marginally quicker response times,” she mused cheekily, glad that only she could hear her deepest, darkest thoughts.

“Status report?” the Orion next to her called out, drawing another appreciative smile from the Commander.

Vashara Zail was probably the senior officer she had known the least amount of time, but their shared background in strategy and command had brought them together through some unprecedentedly difficult times of late. Both had grown to trust the other implicitly. Listening as she gave commands and chipped in with suggestions during briefings made the XO feel more at ease with her decision to appoint the Orion as her right hand advisor all those weeks ago. Even though the strategic ops chief had never wanted to step into the role of acting XO, she’d done so professionally and with ease. It made Noli’s constant shuffle between roles easier to bear.

“Shields are at eighty percent,” Lieutenant Mora advised from tactical. Linn Mora, another of Noli’s trusted officers from way back when, had an equally important role to play in the ship’s evolving situation. Monitoring the shields and inertial dampeners was critical to ensuring ship and crew alike made it through the journey in one piece.

“Energy transfer systems are operating within tolerable levels,” Lieutenant Commander T’Kir  responded from Operations. Noli hadn’t known the Vulcan for very long – he’d only come aboard from Hypatia after Zaran – but so far he’d proven to be a very capable officer. Most Vulcan’s his age had moved beyond ship operations and into the realms of command, but not him. T’Kir had never shown any interest or ambition (nor would he as. Vulcan) and simply enjoyed… appreciated… technology. His role in all of this was to make sure the ship’s systems could handle and support the constant shift between propulsion systems. So far, everything had performed admirably.

Nodding along to the series of reports from the team, Noli felt relieved to have them by her side. Not one had questioned her authority through all of this, none of them seemed fazed when she constantly shifted from enforcer to commander. Many relationships formed in battle lasted a lifetime, but those bonded over six weeks in spacedock had the potential to last a lifetime. United in uncertainty and duty to their shipmates, this was a crew that would (hopefully) last a lifetime.

“We’re about half-way to Starbase Sixty-Two,” Henry eventually answered, his eyes glued to his controls and the space distortion that lay ahead. “The burst of warp six earlier really helped, but we’re going to struggle to get above warp three from now on, save for a miracle.”

That meant the rest of their journey was going to take a significant amount of time.

Time that they could ill afford, if they had known what the rest of the galaxy had in store for them.