5 Days later…

Ethan sat nervously in the center seat of the USS Zebulon Pike. The bridge was silent and the tension was thick enough that you could cut it with a knife.  A green planet loomed large on the viewscreen. The planet was surrounded by ships of every shape and size, with the vast majority being B’rel Birds of Prey with a smattering of D7 Battlecruisers and several Negh’var attack cruisers.  Support facilities orbited the planet including an enormous space station capable of housing a dozen large ships at a time. They were deep in enemy territory.

“No indication of detection,” Audren announced from her console monitoring the cloaking device.

Ethan stood and walked to Jolie manning the tactical and operations stations. “Have the defense systems ready at a moment’s notice.”

Jolie nodded as her fingers hovered over the weapons fire icon. “We’re ready over here Ethan.”

“Ms. Kovalev, are you detecting any sub-space instability?”

Mikaela taps commands on her sensors. Seeing the all-clear for negative instability, she tapped a few more times. “There’s no instability per se, but it’s just right for the shenanigans you are all going to do. So, we’re good to go, Talon.”

Ethan pressed a nearby comm button,  “Bridge to Crawford.  Are you and Aimee ready to open a rift?”

Engineering

Carolyn sat at the station, her hands running over the console as fast as she could move them.  The calculations alone had taken up most of the last five days.  She had grown more nervous and more on edge about getting back home as the hours and days had passed.  The universe they had ended up in was so…wrong.  Everything wanted to kill them or poke them or prod them.  For her first assignment, she’d been tossed from the frying pan to the fire and back again.  She was trying to frame it in a positive light – she was learning plenty about herself and the crew she’d willingly signed up with.

=^=Bridge to Crawford.  Are you and Aimee ready to open a rift?=^=

She glanced at the combat medic, “Crawford here.  I’ve just run the simulations on the calculations.  We’re at 90% success rate.”

“I confess, am completely lost when it comes to engineering.  I would have never been able to modify the deflector dish without her help.  I wish we had more accurate readings of our quantum signature.   Even a thousandth of a decimal off could send us to the wrong universe.  I think 90% is optimistic.”

“Anyway to increase our odds?” Ethan asked.

The chief engineer shrugged, “It would take hours to get us to 95%.  I think we have to do this now.”

“Understood.  Our cover will be blown once we initiate the inverse tachyon beam so you will need to move fast.  Make sure everything is ready because we’re going through one way or another.  As soon as Kovalev finds that sub-space instability we’ll proceed.”

The engineering chief nodded, mostly to herself, “Roger that.  I’ll have her spun up and ready to let loose.  Crawford out.”  She turned to Sandoval, “You’re going to want to find something to hold onto when we do this.  Bumpy ride is the understatement of the century.”  She gestured to the equipment around the room, “Strap what you can down…anything loose is gonna be blunt force trauma.  I’m going to get this thing ready.”  Carolyn grimaced as she pushed the Pike’s systems beyond the maximum operating parameters as she entered the commands that would kick off the opening of the rift.  She wasn’t sure how long she’d be able to stay conscious if things went sideways.  Whatever she could do to automate their journey, she was going to have to do.

“What about the holo-engineers? They won’t get hurt from flying tools and whatnot. I’m more concerned about the Klingons. I doubt they are friendly.”

The Chief Engineer wiped the sweat off her brow, “I never expected my first assignment might be my last.”  She turned to the combat medic, “Sorry, I had to say that out loud.  Get it off my chest and out of the way.”

“Then let’s not let it be.”

Later…

Crawford glanced up at the screen and tapped the console, “Crawford to bridge…we’re ready down here.  Routing control of the activation sequence to you.  Once you light the match, there’s no putting out the fire.”

“Thank you, Carolyn,” Ethan replied. He pressed the red alert icon on his armrest and klaxons reverberated across the ship as lights and consoles shifted to a red hue. “Jolie at your discretion.”

A nod came from Jolie as she heard Ethan. “Copy,” she stated.

As she was about to begin to start the opening of a rift a haunting and familiar sound echoed off of her console. Her eyes widened as she realized that it was an incoming fleet, just outside of their FIF scanning.

“Ethan, we have incoming!” she yelled as 14 icons appeared on the monitor, “And they are hell-bent to intercept us.

Suddenly the main viewscreen changed from the abyssal of stars to a woman dressed in a red command uniform with 4 gold pips on her chest.

“This is Captain Vax of the USS Heracles. We are on an intercept course and request that you stand down your attempts to open a rift.”

Jolie looked at Ethan again, “What’s your orders?”

“ ’Cannon to right of them, cannon to left of them, cannon in front of them, volleyed and thundered’,” Ethan recited.   “Damned the consequences! Do it, Jolie! Do it now! Open the rift and hope it gets us home!”

Suddenly the entirety of the front of the Pike was consumed by 9 Birds-of-prey, 3 D7 Battlecruisers, and one Negh’Var warship at its center; blocking off any sort of escape route. A single and last ship dropped out of warp right over the top of the Negh’Var warship, and glided to a halt; an Argonaut Class Federation ship with the registry of USS Heracles NCC-80555.

“I told you to stand down Commander. As of this moment you are relieved of command,” Vausees stated as she looked off-screen, “Commander Fergouson, take a security team and bring that ship to the main hanger and place that crew under arrest.”

The viewscreen shifted to the small armada that lay around the Pike. Jolie looked at Ethan. “Sorry boss, I didn’t get a chance to open that rift.”

The sound of humming was heard just before the cockpit was filled with three Starfleet Security Officers; one of who had a phase rifle aimed right at the center of Ethan’s chest. Her bright Emerald green eyes looked at him from behind the scope.

“Your move Commander,” Debrah said as her finger lightly touched the side of the rifle.

His hand was on his pistol,  the hammer, already drawn back and halfway out of the holster.  He snarled at the stranger but lowered the hammer and let the gun fall back into the holster. “Who the fuck are you?”

“Right now I am the one with the advantage,” she stated as he nodded to one of the Security Officers who was near him. “Do not resist Commander.”

Jolie, who had been watching all of this, had slowly moved her hand to the small of her back and had grabbed the handle of her phaser when the sound of a charged phaser was heard next to her ear. “I wouldn’t do that miss,” Zyvia said as she held her phaser up to Jolie’s head. “Unless you want to be the first person to experience a point-blank stun.”

Jolie released the phaser and held up her hands. A look of defeat was plastered on her face as her shoulders sunk. Zyvia reached down and removed the phaser that was on Jolie’s back.

“Not quite standard issue,” Zyvia stated as she looked at the customized weapon. She then handed it off to another security officer before placing cuffs on Jolie’s wrists.

Another Security Officer appeared in the cockpit. “The rest of the crew have detained and transported off the ship, Commander Fergouson.”

Debrah nodded as she looked at Ethan, “You will pilot this ship into the Heracles’ main hangar. Try anything funny and I will not hesitate to stun you,” she stated as she kept her bright emerald eyes locked on him from behind the scope of the rifle she held.

“Pound sand,” Ethan said coldly.  “You want to do it, do it yourself. I ain’t gonna help you.”

“You are all the same, in the beginning,” Debrah said before she slid the rifle behind her back and retrieved a pair of old-fashion metal cuff’s. “Are you going to make this difficult, cowboy or are we going to go easily. I’d prefer easy, less paperwork, but either way works for me.”

He smirked at the cuffs, but didn’t say anything.  He simply held his hands out in surrender.  “I don’t mind inconveniencing pirates and the like, but I know when I’ve been beaten. Just answer me this: how did you compromise our cloak?”

“They didn’t beat your cloak, human,” a slightly deep feminine voice stated as a Klingon woman appeared, J’telas. She looked at Ethan with a smug look on her face as a Security Officer secured the cuffs to his wrists. “I did, and it was almost as if you were using a Narlin design too,” she said, “But that is impossible since the Narlin’s were wiped out nearly 300 years ago by the Romulans.”

“It’s possible because it didn’t happen. As you can see I am Hylon and I assure you that my Narlin cousins are very much alive and not extinct either,” Audren stated standing next to Ethan.   “And I’m curious about it as well. Most powers including the Romulans and Klingons have difficulty penetrating our cloaks because of the way it operates.”

J’telas stepped off-screen for a second before coming back on-screen holding up a small device, or rather a peice of a device. “Salvaged this from an Orion Trader that said he picked it up off of a derelict Romulan ship,” she turned it in her hand and looked at it. “Narlin cloak design, probable the internal power supply if I had to guess. Not entirely sure but when we powered it up it gave us one hell of a signal that we then used on our few remaining satellites to warn us when the Romulans were near.”

Audren raised an eyebrow, and Ethan shrugged.   There wasn’t much to say other than they had gotten ahold of the technology and found an exploit.

J’telas shrugged as she tossed the piece to someone off-screen. “Exploit or not it has kept what little of my former life intact.”

“Then I applaud your ingenuity, ” Audren said.