Posted by Gamemaster WHITE TIGER (Gamemaster Trainee) in Main Sim: Listening Post 47

Posted by Lieutenant Commander Dr. Charlotte Mackenzie Kelley (Executive Officer/Number One) in Main Sim: Listening Post 47

Posted by Captain T’Nara (Commanding Officer) in Main Sim: Listening Post 47
Posted by… suppressed (7) by the Post Ghost! 👻
-snip-

Gibbs, at the joined Science stations on Outpost 47, continued to monitor Pathfinder’s detrimental news. Listening in to the messages between Captain T’Nara and Admiral ‘poking his nose in.’ He suspected he would be in hot water with his Department Head over his error, but there seems to be no time for that. Keeping to the chain of Command he addressed his question to his next senor officer.

“Commander Kelley, Permission to access a shuttle from Outpost 47 to assist evacuation of Pathfinder. I’m not the best shuttle pilot but I can get from point A to point B.”

Ensign Gibbs, Sci JO
USS Ark Angel

” They have enough Shuttles ensign but monitor them from your position .” Charlotte replied

CMD. CHARLOTTE KELLEY, M.D.
EXECUTIVE OFFICER

Initially crestfallen he saw the wisdom in Commander Kelly’s orders. “Aye. Ma’am.”

“Currently, Pathfinder has launched her first waves of shuttles toward Ark Angel. As an Intrepid class ship Pathfinder has three shuttles, that can be used to evacuate 22 crew. At that rate, each of the shuttles would need to make seven rotations each to fully evacuate the ship. The computer reports Pathfinder could be evacuated fully in the hour given, “

Ensign Gibbs
Sci JO, USS Ark Angel

T’Nara had heard the timing. “7 rotation? Can we do it in 7 rotation. Wait. Hang on. Ms. Kelley. How many shuttle craft do we have between here and the Ark Angel? If we can get all the shuttles going to the Pathfinder and retrieve everyone from the Pathfinder, I believe we can do it in less that time.” She said.

Captain T’Nara
Commanding Officer
USS Ark Angel

” If we use the shuttles from the AA the Listening post and the Pathfinder ma’am we can do in 3 rotations Captain if my math adds us correctly.” Charlotte replied

CMD. CHARLOTTE KELLEY, M.D.
EXECUTIVE OFFICER

USS ARK ANGEL
NCC-98729

COMMAND DIVISION
MEDICAL OFFICER CORPS
STARFLEET

She pondered a little bit. “3 hours huh? Let’s do it. Lets makr it happen. Once we get everyone from the pathfinder over to the Ark Angel the better. I don’t want starfleet breathing down my throat about it.” She said. “Vance. Get me the admiral on the other vessel.” She added.

Captain T’Nara
Commanding Officer
USS Ark Angel

Vice Admiral Vance stepped toward the communications console as Captain T’Nara’s request reached him. His eyes remained on the Pathfinder telemetry for another second before he keyed in the secure command frequency for the USS Thunder Valley.

“Open priority command channel. USS Thunder Valley. Commodore James.”

The console chirped as the connection established.

“Commodore James, Vice Admiral Vance aboard Listening Post 47.”

There was a brief pause before James answered, his voice coming across the channel from the Thunder Valley’s bridge. “Admiral Vance. James here. What have you got?”

Vance looked toward the Pathfinder display. “Captain T’Nara is accelerating the evacuation. Pathfinder has three shuttles cycling personnel toward the Ark Angel, but that isn’t enough for the timeline we’re working with. She’s combining shuttle assets from the Pathfinder, this station, and the Ark Angel to increase the evacuation capacity. She wants to know what the Thunder Valley can contribute.”

James glanced toward his own tactical display, then toward the personnel around him on the bridge. “I’ve got our primary shuttle bay operational. How many craft are you asking for?”

“As many as you can safely commit,” Vance answered immediately. “I don’t need ships sitting in a bay waiting for perfect conditions. I need shuttlecraft in the rotation.”

James considered that for a moment before responding. “Thunder Valley can put four shuttles into the operation. Two are already fueled and ready. The other two can be turned around shortly.”

“Good. Put all four into the evacuation rotation.”

“Aye, Admiral.”

Vance’s tone remained firm. “And Commodore, I want your crews coordinating with the Pathfinder and Listening Post 47 rather than operating independently. We don’t need three separate evacuation plans competing with each other.”

“You’ll have it. I’ll have my flight control officer establish the rotation and coordinate directly with the station.”

“Make sure they understand the priority. Pathfinder personnel first. No cargo. No equipment recovery. No sightseeing tour.”

A short silence came across the channel.

“Understood,” James replied. “We’ll get the people off that ship.”

Vance nodded once. “That’s what I wanted to hear.”

James then added, “Admiral, once the evacuation is underway, do you want the Thunder Valley standing by for the Pathfinder itself?”

Vance’s expression hardened slightly as he looked back toward the damaged Intrepid-class vessel. “Not yet. Captain T’Nara will make that determination once her people are aboard the Ark Angel. Until then, your job is simple. Get those four shuttles moving and keep them moving.”

“Understood. Four shuttles committed to the evacuation. I’ll have them launched.”

“Good. Keep Captain T’Nara informed through the station. Vance out.”

The channel closed. Vance immediately turned back toward the operations console, his attention returning to the Pathfinder as the evacuation continued.

WHITE TIGER
GM • USS ARKANGEL
NCC-98729
“Where Legends Begin”

Commander Kelley remained at the operations console, watching the shuttle telemetry populate across the display as Vance’s conversation with the Thunder Valley concluded. Four additional shuttles from the Commodore’s vessel would substantially change the evacuation tempo, but Kelley wasn’t interested in simply putting more craft into space and hoping the numbers worked. She pulled up the flight-control data and began assigning the available craft into staggered rotations, ensuring that Pathfinder’s own shuttles could continue cycling personnel while the Listening Post and Thunder Valley craft joined the operation without creating traffic conflicts. “All right,” she said, more to the operations personnel than anyone else, “let’s make this clean. Pathfinder shuttles remain on their current rotation. Listening Post and Thunder Valley craft will alternate arrivals so we’re not stacking six or seven shuttles around the Ark Angel at once.”

She looked toward the communications station. “Get flight control on both vessels tied into the same traffic schedule. Every shuttle coming off Pathfinder gets a designated receiving bay before it launches. I don’t want crews sitting in orbit waiting for somewhere to put their passengers.” Kelley then checked the projected personnel count and compared it against the shuttle capacities. “Once the Thunder Valley’s four craft are in the rotation, we should be able to cut the evacuation considerably. Keep the crews focused on personnel. No cargo, no equipment, no attempts to recover anything that isn’t alive and breathing. If Pathfinder has injured aboard, they come straight to Ark Angel medical intake and Spenn gets the numbers before the next rotation comes in.”

Kelley finally turned toward Captain T’Nara, her expression serious but composed. “Captain, Vance has the Thunder Valley coordinating with us. Four additional shuttles are being committed, with two ready immediately and two following shortly. I’ll have the flight-control schedule synchronized between all three locations.” She glanced once more at the Pathfinder telemetry before continuing. “We can make this work, Captain. But once we start this rotation, we keep it moving until that ship is empty.”

CMD. CHARLOTTE KELLEY, M.D.
EXECUTIVE OFFICER

USS ARK ANGEL
NCC-98729

COMMAND DIVISION
MEDICAL OFFICER CORPS
STARFLEET

Listening Post 47 had settled into the peculiar rhythm that came with a Starfleet emergency: controlled, methodical, and only barely ahead of events that refused to remain predictable. Across the operations center, the main tactical display tracked the evacuation of the Pathfinder while flight-control personnel coordinated the steady stream of shuttlecraft moving between the station and the ships holding position outside the temporal distortion. Pathfinder’s own shuttles continued their rotations while additional craft from Listening Post 47 and the Thunder Valley maintained their assigned traffic pattern, each approach carefully sequenced to prevent interference. Every transporter transfer, docking confirmation, shuttle departure, and personnel count was being fed into the station’s operations log. Alongside those feeds, the science consoles continuously monitored the temporal phenomenon surrounding Pathfinder, measuring its spatial boundaries, energy fluctuations, and displacement effects. The two situations had become inseparable; the faster the evacuation progressed, the less time Pathfinder had to remain exposed to whatever was happening inside the field.

The science department’s latest readings were becoming increasingly difficult to reconcile with one another. The temporal distortion had begun behaving differently from its earlier pattern, its boundary expanding and contracting in irregular pulses rather than following a predictable cycle. Sensor echoes continued to appear around Pathfinder, some only milliseconds out of synchronization with the vessel’s actual position. Then, without warning, the station’s long-range sensors registered two identical Intrepid-class signatures. For approximately 1.8 seconds, Pathfinder appeared at both its actual coordinates and a second position roughly twelve kilometers away. Both contacts transmitted the same registry, the same hull configuration, and the same life-sign count before the second contact disappeared from the sensor grid. No warp signature, impulse trail, transporter activity, or other conventional explanation accompanied its disappearance. The station’s computer classified the second contact as an unresolved temporal phenomenon while the science systems began comparing the two datasets. Before that analysis could be completed, another distortion moved through the field, causing several sensor arrays to report conflicting timestamps for the same shuttlecraft. One tactical display briefly indicated that an evacuation shuttle had already docked with its receiving vessel while the actual flight-control telemetry showed the shuttle still approaching. The discrepancy corrected itself before the flight-control system could issue an automated collision warning.

Then the Pathfinder telemetry changed again.

CONTAINMENT INTEGRITY: 48%

The value remained steady for several seconds before another line appeared beneath it.

TEMPORAL FIELD VARIANCE: INCREASING

The station’s science computers continued their analysis, comparing the latest readings against the original telemetry recorded when Pathfinder first emerged from the anomaly. A third warning appeared across several consoles.

CAUSALITY DISTORTION DETECTED

No immediate tactical threat was identified, and the evacuation remained underway, but the operations center was now dealing with a phenomenon that could no longer be treated as simple sensor interference. Pathfinder was still where the station expected it to be, the evacuation was still progressing, and the temporal field had not yet breached the station’s perimeter. Nevertheless, something within the distortion was causing Starfleet sensors to disagree with the sequence of events they were observing. The station continued to record everything it could, maintaining communications with the evacuation vessels and feeding the latest telemetry toward the Ark Angel while the science teams worked to determine exactly what had changed. Outside the windows, shuttlecraft continued their carefully controlled approaches through the darkness of the Theta Persei Fringe. Inside Listening Post 47, every console continued counting forward.

For the moment, the evacuation continued.

The temporal field continued to fluctuate.

And Pathfinder remained trapped between the two.

WHITE TIGER
GM • USS ARKANGEL
NCC-98729
“Where Legends Begin”

Gibbs watched helplessly as Pathfinder struggled with her chrono containment field. In looking over the data Gibbs interpreted that the chrono field was causing almost two Pathfinder’s in the same space and time…but what if it was something else?

Using the stations sensors, Gibbs started a query. Could the chrono anomaly be caused by a parallel dimension? He asked the computer to search for markers noted in previous encounters with the fluidic space, the Terran Empire, and other established parallel dimensions. If those markers were present, it would help to partial explan what was happening to Pathfinder.

Ensign Gibbs, Sci JO
USS Ark Angel

Captain T’Nara walked up to the ensign. “What is it ensign?” She asked him. “Anything unusual?” She added another question.

Captain T’Nara
Commanding Officer
USS Ark Angel

Charlotte stood next to T’Nara watching the monitors and the view screen well her hands were clasped behind her back without a word.

CMD. CHARLOTTE KELLEY, M.D.
EXECUTIVE OFFICER

USS ARK ANGEL
NCC-98729

COMMAND DIVISION
MEDICAL OFFICER CORPS
STARFLEET

“Captain, I am scanning the area for markers that may indicate an alternate dimension.” Gibbs stated flatly, “These readings show Pathfinder in two places at once. In our known relativity of space, that cannot occur. A unique set of mass and matter cannot occupy the same place, unless there are two places.” He attempted to explain his theory as he worked over the controls. “Maybe this temporal rift is also a rift between parallel dimensions? That would help explain readings of two Pathfinders that I am detecting. But for now, it is just a theory…”

Ensign Gibbs, Science JO
USS Ark Angel

For several minutes, the evacuation of the Pathfinder proceeded with the kind of disciplined efficiency that Starfleet crews were trained to achieve when everything around them was threatening to come apart. Shuttlecraft moved in carefully sequenced intervals between the crippled Intrepid-class vessel, Listening Post 47, and the Ark Angel, their flight paths constantly adjusted by the combined traffic-control systems of all three facilities. Each shuttle that arrived was met by waiting personnel, its passengers rapidly transferred and accounted for before the craft was cleared to depart once more. Across the operations center, the numbers continued to change in the right direction, slowly but steadily, as Pathfinder’s complement was reduced with every successful rotation.

Then the latest personnel count appeared on the main display.

PATHFINDER PERSONNEL REMAINING: 10%

For a brief moment, it almost looked as though they were going to make it.

Ninety percent of the Pathfinder’s crew had been evacuated, and the remaining personnel were now concentrated aboard a ship whose structural integrity and temporal containment systems were both deteriorating by the minute. The station’s flight-control officers continued coordinating the shuttle traffic while science personnel monitored the increasingly unstable temporal field, and beyond the viewport, the distant silhouette of Pathfinder hung against the darkness of the Theta Persei Fringe like a ship caught between two moments in history.

Then one of the returning shuttlecraft altered course.

The change was subtle at first, almost small enough to be mistaken for a routine correction. The shuttle had cleared Pathfinder and was following the established corridor toward its assigned receiving point when its flight vector began drifting away from the Ark Angel and toward Listening Post 47.

Flight Control transmitted a correction.

The shuttle did not respond.

Another command followed, this time through the emergency control channel reserved for flight-control overrides.

Still nothing.

The shuttle continued toward the station.

Its engines remained stable. Its transponder continued broadcasting. Its life-sign telemetry remained active. From every technical indication available to the station, the craft was functioning normally, yet it was behaving as though the people controlling it were no longer receiving the same reality as everyone else.

“Unresponsive shuttle changing vector toward the station,” the tactical officer reported.

Before the station could establish whether the craft had suffered a computer malfunction, a temporal effect, or something far more dangerous, four other shuttlecraft suddenly vanished from the tactical display.

There was no warning.

No distress transmission.

No indication of mechanical failure.

For one impossible heartbeat, the four contacts simply ceased to exist.

Then space lit up.

Four violent explosions erupted along the evacuation corridor almost simultaneously, brilliant flashes of energy illuminating the darkness around Pathfinder as fragments of duranium hull plating, shattered nacelle components, and burning debris scattered outward through space. The shock of the destruction was immediately visible on the station’s sensors as the remaining shuttlecraft scrambled to avoid the expanding debris field.

One shuttle threw itself into an emergency evasive maneuver, its impulse engines flaring as it narrowly avoided a cloud of debris that moments earlier had been another Starfleet vessel. Another craft was forced several kilometers off its assigned corridor, breaking formation and temporarily disappearing into the edge of the temporal distortion.

Across the station, warning indicators flooded the tactical displays.

FOUR SHUTTLECRAFT DESTROYED.

EVACUATION CORRIDOR COMPROMISED.

DEBRIS FIELD EXPANDING.

UNRESPONSIVE VESSEL APPROACHING LISTENING POST 47.

And through all of it, the fifth shuttle continued its approach.

It should have stopped.

It should have altered course.

It should have responded to the station’s increasingly urgent commands.

Instead, it continued toward Listening Post 47 with an almost unnerving precision, following a trajectory that would bring it directly into the station’s vicinity.

The station attempted another hail.

Nothing.

“Shuttle, this is Listening Post 47. You are entering restricted approach space. Acknowledge.”

Silence.

The communications officer tried again, this time transmitting on every emergency frequency available.

“Shuttle, acknowledge.”

Nothing.

The vessel continued approaching.

Then, for the briefest fraction of a second, something appeared on the science console that made no sense whatsoever.

The shuttle’s identification transponder changed.

USS ARK ANGEL — SHUTTLECRAFT

Then it changed again.

USS PATHFINDER — SHUTTLECRAFT

Then, before the computer could even complete the analysis, it returned to its original identification.

The entire sequence lasted less than a second.

The computer immediately flagged the event.

CAUSALITY DISTORTION DETECTED.

At almost the same moment, the temporal field surrounding Pathfinder surged.

The effect was visible even from the station.

Space around the crippled Intrepid-class vessel seemed to ripple, not like an explosion or a conventional energy discharge, but like an image reflected across disturbed water. Pathfinder’s silhouette stretched momentarily across the darkness before snapping back into focus.

The science consoles erupted with contradictory sensor data.

For a moment, Pathfinder appeared exactly where it had always been.

Then another contact appeared beside it.

Identical.

Same registry.

Same hull configuration.

Same warp signature.

Same life-sign count.

Two Pathfinders now occupied the tactical display.

Neither was moving.

Neither appeared to be a sensor ghost.

Both were transmitting.

Both were transmitting the same message.

“They’re awake.”

The transmission repeated.

“They’re awake.”

Then the second Pathfinder disappeared.

The first remained.

For several seconds, nothing else happened.

The evacuation systems continued to operate. The remaining shuttlecraft held their positions. The station’s tactical officers continued tracking the debris from the four destroyed vessels while the science department struggled to reconcile readings that contradicted everything Starfleet understood about causality.

Then the tactical display changed again.

A second Pathfinder appeared.

But this time, it did not appear beside the first.

It appeared inside the temporal field at a different point in space.

And the station’s sensors detected something aboard it that had not been there before.

Life signs.

Dozens of them.

The computer began attempting to resolve the readings when another alarm sounded.

The unresponsive shuttle was now within weapons range of Listening Post 47.

It was still not answering hails.

Still not slowing.

Still flying directly toward the station.

Behind it, the temporal field surrounding Pathfinder continued to pulse with increasing intensity.

And aboard the real Pathfinder, the final ten percent of her crew remained trapped.

PATHFINDER EVACUATION: 90% COMPLETE.

TEMPORAL FIELD VARIANCE: CRITICAL.

UNKNOWN PATHFINDER SIGNATURES: TWO.

UNRESPONSIVE SHUTTLE: APPROACHING.

For the first time since the evacuation had begun, the station’s computers could no longer determine which events were happening first.

WHITE TIGER
GM • USS ARK ANGEL
NCC-98729
“Where Legends Begin”