[snip]

Closing in on scans they found the origin of the Risan signal! It was indeed a sublight system transport barely bigger then a runabout or so near the front, with a lager three deck high/wide open cargo module. A deep gouge of some kind like that of a lighting/plasma strike was on the aft port quarter of the cargo module, exposing the entire bit to space. Scans though not entirely clear showed the module contained a few canisters of deuterium. This was likely the matter/antimatter explosion that had been picked up originally. The explosion they could see had sheered off 3/4ths of the main body of the ship’s impulse reactor leaving it crippled by any measure.

Life signs scans showed 2 maybe 3 individuals, one was in a critical state the other were ‘moderately unstable’. Life support seemed at low levels though. It also seems that while trapped in the whirlpool anomaly someone aboard the ship had been skilled enough to rig up some some ion collection arrays. These normally were used within certain solar systems to collect stray particles and ionic energies to store for collection into a colonial battery storage unit say on a station or the like. Something likely that this ship had been used in the past to do, and was in the process of shipping deuterium to a depot in the system it came from when it wound up here. These arrays are likely what kept it able to keep life support and the distress call going as long as it has and with such critical damage the ship had suffered.

The problem as they could see it was the anomaly which did indeed seem to be some kind of wormhole or maybe a subspace rift or eddy held the crippled vessel in what might be termed ‘the eye of the storm’. It was safe in this small area but outside it the turbulence would no doubt shred what remained of the ship in its damaged state. Due to the anomaly and nebula interference, transporters were out of the question, a tractor beam could be used, but the anomaly as they pulled it free would likely destroy the ship outright. The one brighter point while they tried to figure out how to rescue these people one way or another was that now that they were within range they could attempt short range comms through the distress signal.

=/\= Lt. Mullins please report to the Bridge ASAP =/\= Glen needed the CE. The questions about use of the tractor beam, transporters, and whether or not the deuterium canisters could result in secondary matter/antimatter explosions required an engineer to answer.

Max heard the comm request go off and he hit the comm location on the station and responded, =/\=Lt Mullins to Captain, I am on my way up. I have been listening to the conversation up on the bridge and it can be confusing. Give me 5 minutes and I will be there. Might be best to not move or do anything else until we get this discussed.=/\= Mullins then got up from his station and left Main Engineering. After a few minutes of walking and riding in the turbolift, Max arrived at the Bridge. When the doors opened, he walked in and said, “Lt Mullins reporting to the bridge as requested. How can I help?” He waited for a response from the Commander and Captain

“NE Coals”, Glen asked the Comms officer, “Now that we are within range can you attempt short range comms through the distress signal?”

‘’Captain?’’ Cross asked ‘’Ships have been coming inside the nebula without any danger ,so the Whirlpool must have formed recently. The Federation would not have exposed the Trudgrad under such dangerous and destructive conditions ,jeopardizing the lives of the crew ‘’.

“Yes Doctor,” Glen replied, “I guess we all assumed that it happened at the same time that the SS Space Bug, or whatever it was called, detected the massive energy event ripping open spacetime. I mean, we have no proof they were linked together, but if I were a betting man…”

‘’We know that Whirlpools are a phenomena that form when water moving in two different directions comes into contact with each other and interact in an unusual way. They can’t continue to travel at the same speed and direction through each other, so they are forced to turn and swirl around each other, its theoretical physics.”

”…it’s only a theoretical whirlpool too!” Glen added. Was it the pregnancy addling her brain? Glen wondered, Surely it’s too early for that? “This isn’t a whirlpool on the surface of an ocean, it’s in the spacetime continuum, and it’s also in 3D. It’s just easier for everyone to visualise it as a whirlpool.”

“In this case it could be the gases that the wormhole might have changed their direction and created the whirlpool ? ‘’ she scratched her head wondering if Glen was about to throw her off the bridge ‘’ Captain we know we cannot go through knowing it will shred our ship to pieces and its not an option can we instead save that ship by going under the Whirlpool since its is caught in the middle ,swirling around with no way out ‘’.

Hopefully someone ,anyone will came up with a solution, thought Cross.

“Doctor Cross, we aren’t going to enter the ‘whirlpool like phenomenon’. Please don’t worry yourself on that account. However, if safe to do so, I do want to rescue survivors and investigate further. No one else has ever seen this before, and that’s our basic mission statement right there!”

’’ Did I mention going inside the Whirlpool Captain? Correct me if I’m wrong!’’ Cross retorted back ‘’ I’m merely suggesting if you take the ship deeper and see if its tunnel shaped, would it give you and Lt Mullins a better approach and assessment to save that darn ship and if its the wormhole that created it and its the gases that has formed it, ,someone with a higher IQ then me may have a more advantageous understanding at how it was formed and maybe some thing may click’’ the CMO retorted back at this point she gave a quick glance at the CE.

She waited for his response before deciding to leave the bridge.

“Just to be clear,” Glen reiterated, “Not only are we not going inside the ‘so called whirlpool’ but we aren’t going more that 200 metres near to it either. That gives us double clearance on where the Trudograd was hit by lightning, and it’s the lightning part exploding the ship from the inside part that I’m concerned about, just as much as the getting sucked into it and torn apart part.”

After the captain said we weren’t getting closer than 200 meters, the odds of transporter or tractor beam working was all but 0%. Max was not sure how this was going to work without getting closer but he needed to provide the details to the captain.

Cross nodded, instead of screaming ‘’I never told you to get into that Whirlpool, I just asked if there is another option that the ship could take to get to the Risan and just for the record I ain’t that dumb and know what we are seeing is 3D ,tell me if there is not a funnel shape beneath what kind of a Whirlpool is it?’‘.

Taking a deep breath and in a low voice she told Glen ‘’I’m heading back to sickbay just in case anyone alive out there materialize on the beds just like the previous Junior engineer’‘.

Lance was mostly happy with what he’d gotten of the data recordings of course he would have liked more but it was an imperfect universe. Data clean up want his specialty if it has been biological well that works have been different.

The signal form the Risian ship had been a surprise but it didn’t look like it had faired much better than the ship that went in after it.

Then the Captain and the CMO seemed to be having a differing opinion, quite a heated differing opinion. Lance decided he would keep his head down Junior officers don’t want into those sorts of discussions.

He looked over at the CSO, “Sir, of question but do you have any idea how ancient earth sailing vessels dealt with reviews from whirlpools?” Sometimes going backwards and looking at someone else’s work would often help Lance figure out a problem he wondered if the same could be true here.

“Lt. Malone,” Glen asked, “could you also assist NE Coals with communications? Now that we are within range we should attempt short range comms through the distress signal.”

“I think ancient sea-going vessels just avoided whirlpools, if they could,” Glen added. “They would have been weather related or geological-volcanic in origin. They certainly wouldn’t have entered deeper into them, just to see what it was like!”

Glen eventually managed to get around to speaking to the CE. “I just need your help on some engineering aspects of what we have discovered. Firstly, the Risan ship was shipping deuterium. It is likely that the explosion of one of those canisters resulted in the formation of this spatial anomaly. How likely is it that other canisters remain full? And therefore, how likely are secondary explosions to occur? Secondly, given the unique position of the Risan ship, in the eye of the storm, as it were, if we use the Tractor beam on it, won’t that tear the small unshielded ship apart? If so, how can we safely rescue the personnel aboard, if they are even still alive?”

McDuff was keeping an intense eye on his Security Station and the View Screen. Things were beginning to heat up and he wanted to be ready in case he was needed.

Glen mused more on what Lt. Malone had said and his own thoughts on whether there would still be crew to rescue, “Of course, it’s possible that the effects on entering into the subspace rift were enough to kill all biological life, while still leaving parts of the ship’s systems, including the emergency message, intact. The only slither of hope left there is that earlier, when we tried to contact them, there seemed to be a slight change in the broadcast in response.”

“Have we been able to make any contact with them by short range comms yet?” Glen asked NE Coals and Lt. Malone.

Max then responded to the captain’s request, “Captain, there are some items here we need to look at. First, for another explosion of the deuterium canister going off is about 50/50 and we have no way to know which will happen if one of those explodes. Second, I’m afraid if we try and tractor beam the smaller ship out, it might get ripped apart, being as small as it is. Even if we get inside the 200 meter range, I do not believe the tractor beam is the best way to handle that. Transporting might be the best option, but we need to be closer than 200 meters to even make it worth wild. Every 10-20 meters closer we get, the tractor beam lock goes up 5-10% and a transporter lock goes up 2-5%. I am not sure how you want to proceed but I’m afraid more damage might be done if we pull the ship out as its so small and stuck in the swirl. ” Max knew it was important to present all the options to the captain and provide an opinion but ultimately it was the captain who would decide how to proceed.

“Thanks, Lieutenant,” Glen told Max. “So, if we went down the transporter route, would sending in a probe work? What about two or three probes, each carrying some kind of transport pattern enhancers that could boost the signal of the transporter in a polarized ionization field where a signal is known to be difficult to maintain? Do you think that you could jury rig up something like that for us? If we positioned the probes at three points of a plane passing through the Risan vessel would that boost the signal sufficiently?”

“If that is too complicated, then there might be a second option,” Glen added. “I have a some very old stock of ETS emergency transporter suits. They were originally a garment worn by pilots in training at the Academy. They served as both a homing device and transporter pattern enhancer to retrieve pilots who took a wrong turn. These bulky, mesh-lined jumpsuits allow for the emergency beam-out of a person from an endangered spaceship vehicle. I don’t know how many there are. They are in the Cargo Bay in a Giffla-37XZ cargo container, along with the rest of the belonging that I brought aboard the Merrimack but have never unpacked. If we can beam them aboard the ship, we can certainly beam them back again… unless the crew are too injured to put them on by themselves… then we’d need a volunteer to beam over with them…”

• Glen, CO