<Snip>

Tyrran was watching the small monitor next to him intently. Across the screen status readouts from the ship’s systems and telemetry from the sensors scrolled down in blocks of data. His expert eyes quickly parsed the information. The transit had so far been uneventful and he almost missed the slight fluctuation in the gravitational field. He rechecked the reading but couldn’t be sure what it was he had seen. He stood and walked over to Wendell’s station.
“Commander, did you see a blip in the singularity’s gravitational field?” He asked.

Mulligan, XO

“I didn’t see that fluctuation, Commander,” Wendell explained as worked. “I was going to call that up to a system glitch. That particular sensor had taken some damage in our last battle action, and I hadn’t had the time to fix it, yet.”

If the Commander hadn’t seen the blip, everyone on board soon felt it - the ship suddenly lurched with force overwhelming the inertial dampers. The black hole’s gravitational field had momentarily magnified by an order of magnitude, briefly pulling the Memorial off course and interrupting its warp field and knocking its warp drive offline with a shower of sparks from the Chief Engineer’s bridge console. The initial lurch was followed by the warp field collapsing, dropping the ship out warp!

The black hole raged on the viewscreen. The ship had dropped out of warp, but it had done so still millions of kilometres away from the deadly event horizon - they were safe so long as another gravitational distortion like that happened.

GM Roadrunner

Tyrran staggered and clung to the chair as he rode out the impact of the distortion. He looked at the viewscreen and felt his jaw clench as the blackhole swirled menacingly nearby. Warnings sounded from different stations around the bridge. He looked at Wendell, who was busily working the science station, and for a moment felt out of place. Just a few days ago he had been the CSO on the Lulea. It would have been his job to figure out what had just happened to them. Now he was the XO, and he needed to gather information so his Captain could determine their next course of action. He turned briskly on his heel and walked quickly back to his chair, tapping the comm’s panel as he sat down.
=/\= All departments report your status, damage, and casualties to the XO. =/\=

Mulligan, XO

A voice came over the comms nearly immediately on the heels of the XO’s comm. =^=Engineering to bridge, you guys tapping the brakes without warning again? Any idea what happened?=^=

Tyrran keyed the comm.
“At the moment it looked like we ran into a gravimetric distortion from the black hole. I couldn’t begin to tell you what caused it. What’s your status?” He asked.

Her tone, though relatively light, still had an edge to it that was either irritation or pain. She realized they had nearly talked over one another and a slight laugh tickled her throat. =^=Engineering is fine, Sir. A couple bumps ‘n’ bruises but we’ll live.=^= She rubbed her hip and winked at her cohort. =^=The warp core is another story. Complete shut down. Diagnosing now. Will let you know what I find.=^=

Danora
Eng/AI Spec

Emergency systems had knocked the warp core offline for its own protection. A full restart would take at least two hours, but an emergency start-up from cold could do it in 30 - at the risk of not working and taking even longer to get started up again.

Tyrran’s brow furrowed. He didn’t have to tell them how important warp power was at this moment.
“Understood. Keep us informed of your progress. Bridge out.” He closed the channel

“Now, we seem to have to not worry about getting sucked into the event horizon of the hole just yet.”

“Thank you, Commander.”

Tyrran turned to the Captain. “It would appear the warp reactor has scrammed. According to these readings the ship is stable for the moment.”

Mulligan, XO

“But, this will have an obvious impact on our ETA to the rescue site.”

CSO

“Very true,” Tyrran acknowledged. It was easy to lose sight of those facts when the ship was in crisis. ‘Unless they were also damaged by a gravimetric distortion…’ It was certainly plausible. “Do we have the SS Anne on sensors yet?” He asked.

Mulligan, XO

OOC: I hope you don’t mind, but I moved parts of your reply to fit better into the existing posts.

Jared

The SS Anne was on long range sensors now, thankfully most of of the interference from the black hole was no longer an issue - but the ion storms between their present location and the Anne were still preventing full resolution. While not much could be read from the Anne, the power signature showing up on screen was fluctuating wildly - possibly interference, but it didn’t quite match up with the ion storms’ activity, meaning the ship’s power grid was soon collapsing or in danger of overloading.

Another tremor ran through the ship as a much smaller gravimetric wave passed through the ship, so minor as before it was as if the ship itself shuddered from it. Once again, the exact source of the gravimetric distortion couldn’t be determined.

GM Roadrunner