[snip]

Just after giving the orders Ari might be struck from a scientific standpoint of realization that perhaps her orders were not the correct action to take. Given spatial torpedoes lacked any subspace ties, and photonic torpedoes only did o a small scale level when exploding and at that on a far different wave length of subspace then what they were seeing, likely this would do nothing. Equally so if she had read the previous report on scans that Black had given her just a few minutes ago she could see that the alien metal though quite thin, was just far too strong for any of their weapons to make a tent on.

Lastly there was also the factor that El had said this whole opening would be pretty small in the grand scheme, not much more then 10ft or so wide when fully opened (it was now at 8ft) its likely it wouldn’t send them anywhere or anywhen, nor would it likely spit out anything in return. It was a subspace rift solely meant to transmit some powerful long range comm signal from the alien artifact. In short if they wanted to have any chance of blocking or interfering with it they would have to do what El said and hope for the best, though equally if they didn’t want to risk the ship and their own lives nothing was stopping them from simply letting it do its thing, equally so they could just leave or any similar combination of not interfering with what was about to happen. Either way they had but just under 2 minutes to make something happen before the choice was taken from them!

GM CockRoach

Having nodded to weapons to fire, and nothing happened. Ari growled and slammed her fist on the comm. Her voice was gruff with rage a little more obvious than usual, for her. [O] Engineering! Bridge. You have one minute. Make it count. You have control to do what you suggested. Our plan didn’t work. [O]

She glanced at the XO and shook her head as her first came down hard enough on the console that she actually winced. “Damn it! I should have known!” She shook her head and hung her head waiting for the results of engineering’s plan. With both hands holding her up on the console, she pulled her right hand back as she bit her lip. The hand pulled automatically close to her body to protect the injury she was now trying to ignore. If anyone looked, when she shifted position and her hand moved, a small smear of blood would show at the waist of her uniform only to be covered again with her hand.

Another growl exited her lips a second later. “What’s taking so long?!” Usually a much calmer scientific minded woman, Ari was chomping at the bit more than usual this time as they waited for engineering to do their thing.

Her mind growled back at her as she waited in silence, fuming at the Science Station console.

She glanced up at the XO long enough to bark at him as well. “Her out people back on the ship… NOW! I won’t risk losing them if this planet does something stupid again. Being the cryo tubes of they aren’t already here.”

She turned her back to the main bridge to look at the station again. This time she glanced down at the bruised hand, bleeding from the force of the blow to the edge of the console, and wondered if the Doc would buy that it was a gym accident. She crawled her hand again and started at the view screen to see the results.

Ari CO

[o] Bridge. Engineering. El here. We’re ready. Engaging … warp flicker effect [c]

El, Eng

Just a second later the entire ship shuddered hard. It felt akin if anything remembered or had experienced the effect of an old 21st century vehicle being shifted badly with its transmission. The ship was trying in effect to go forward to warp, but the alterations were keeping the ship still. The warp bubble formed around the Bonnie and extended just enough to cover the emerging subspace hole. The flickering soon after begin just as the massive alien structure finished doing what it was preparing too do.

Sure enough the Bonaventure’s comm array picked up an effort by the structure to send some kind of high energy subspace comm burst, but it was of a design and type that they could not understand, nor probably do so for decades or more to come (aka decoding it is beyond your era!), it seems the structure despite its failure to do so tried again, and again the flicker effect of the Bonnie’s warp bubble interfered or blocked the attempt.

This went on for almost four more times over the course of what felt like an eternity but was in later hindsight barely more than 3 minutes at most. The strain on the poor Bonnie though was evident in that time, consoles flickered, sparks shot out of vents or wires, lighting flickered or dimmed across the ship, and the life support semi-failed in places causing the temperature to rise across the ship upwards of 110 some degrees fahrenheit. Added to this was the worsening vibrations which would make everyone feel like their whole bodies were being shaken apart in places. In short the ship was doing something that it was clearly never meant to do.

Then after a nerve wracking eternity (aka 3 minutes or so!) the alien structure nearby seemed to pulse and its own lighting flicker, then with a multitude of tiny fires and explosions across the mammoth structure it seems its internal systems gave out and it died an almost anti-climatic death, aka it simply shut down. Readings on the structure showed however, that despite this radiation levels would likely be of a deadly nature even for decades to come, meaning an up close examination of this alien structure was probably not going to happen in their life times.

Once engineering shut down their made experiment, systems slowly and sluggishly came back to normal or rebooted. The ship was in rough shape, but everyone was alive and while the Bonnie would probably have to put back into port at Earth for a week or two was easily fixable. In turn warp capability was restored as were long range comms and uplinks back to Earth Starfleet. The planet that had blown itself to kingdom come and back was still there, presenting an interesting anomaly in and of itself as how many star systems ever had two planets on opposite orbital sides of each other? The population likely could be helped if Earth decided to do so, but there also was the consideration that given it was an Earth starship’s crew that had indirectly caused all this problem however, well intentioned in their situation, maybe it would be best to simply leave the planet to its own devices and just observe from a distance.

Regardless whatever, the future may hold for the Bonnie and her crew, this was certainly one mission that people would be talking about for years to come. Once their course was set the Bonnie came about and lept smoothly back to warp, on their way back to Earth for much needed repairs, they would arrive at their current speed within 2-4 days give or take.

==End Sim!!==

GM CockRoach