Dark Echoes - Part 6

Phasing took about five seconds—

Firm gasps filled the away team’s comm-links before a loud shout of terror blasted through the away team’s environmental suits as a human crew member in a naval duty uniform.

Aaen looked over his left shoulder with a wince. His left ear was still ringing. With a subtle gasp, he asked, “You okay?”

The Chief Engineer nodded, taking a breath.

The away team looked around in front of them. They each recognized what this room was for, though the design had changed. Radically, Aaen noted. “Away team to Odyssey, come in,”

“Go ahead!” Smith replied promptly.

“There’s a crew aboard this ship. From the looks of things, I’d say the ship was either under attack—or, they went through something similar to what we did before we got here,”

Smith winced, “Say again, sir?”

“This ship’s crew are suspended, somehow. . .like, they’re frozen in various postures, like they’re hiding or running away from something.” Aaen exchanged a look of curiosity with the rest of the away team. “We’re going to try to find their bridge. Maybe we’ll be able to learn more, there,” Aaen said with a gesture.

“Roger that,” Smith agreed.

The ship’s infrastructure was designed intelligently enough to enable the away team to navigate a simple maze of dark-red-lit metal tunnels and crawlspaces until forcing a way through what they collectively reasoned was a maintenance hatch. The ship was clearly on red alert, and from the looks of things, whatever the ship had gone through, it didn’t bode so well for anyone or anything inside. Of the three crew members on the bridge, they looked frozen in their seats—completely motionless, and. .asleep?” Aaen wondered, noting their viewscreen was full of part snow, part void.

“According to these readings, these people are stuck in space, and time,” the temporal readings were unmistakable, “They’re from the same space and time as we originally are,”

“And their uniforms and their ship changed around them all-the-same, too,”

“Yeah,” Aaen agreed.

“They’re all alive and alert. I’m getting healthy vital signs from all of them,”

“How do we get them in-sync with this space and time?” Aaen asked generally.

“Away team, this is Jones. That ship you’re on. .my close-range sensor analysis suggests it’s trapped in a temporal entanglement. The phenomenon will release that ship and its crew, but it’s going to take some serious firepower to break an entanglement as strong as the one that’s holding it where it is,”

“What kind of firepower?” Aaen asked. The comm-link broadcasted his voice through the bridge effectively.

She replied with wide-eyed and nodding as though to indicate she was being very serious, “Like a FULL SPREAD of high-yield torpedoes!”

“Are you kidding?” Smith asked Jones sharply. “At THIS distance?” That many torpedoes at high-yield could take out both ships!

“By the way, we’re running out of time! The space surrounding that ship is stabilizing! If we don’t free it, it’ll blow up in our face and create an explosion with ten-times greater magnitude!” Jones glared at the sensors screen, It’s THAT, or we RUN-LIKE-HECK for our lives to get out of the blast radius! NOT likely!

Smith faced the front of the bridge, “Sir?”

Aaen thought about the options for a second, then decided, “Do it!”

Smith snapped, “Arm torpedoes—set for high yield!”

Jones improvised—carefully—as the order was carried out. “Torpedo warheads armed. .and locked on!” The targeting her hand hovered over the firing controls.

“FIRE!” Smith commanded.

The away team braced against anything that looked sturdy.

Odyssey’s viewscreen filled with six almost white, nearly blinding warheads as they shoot at their targeted coordinates in a seeming blink of an eye. The detonation shook both bridges violently. The Valiant’s crew were as motionless as metal statues; the away team forced as much of their weight as they could into the bulkheads. The away team was shaken around sharply like a two-year-old shaking a fish in a bag full of water.

“Away team?” Smith asked with some noticeable concern in his voice.

“We’re here!” Aaen answered, noting a change in the behavior of the Valiant’s crew. “And so is the crew of the Valiant!”

*****

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