Posted by Lieutenant M’Mera (Chief Engineer) in Main Sim - Bridge

Posted by Captain John Tiberius Glen (Captain) in Main Sim - Bridge

Posted by Gamemaster Nosferatu (Gamemaster) in Main Sim - Bridge
Snip
The bridge held. Not calm. Not stable.

But held—balanced on a knife’s edge between diplomacy and something far more final.

The Shiarians did not immediately respond. They observed.

Over-Captain Vreth’kan Taruun remained fixed on Glen, his multifaceted gaze unblinking, unreadable. The faint bioluminescent lines etched into his armor pulsed once… then again—slower this time, as if syncing not with the ship, but with the moment itself.

Behind him, Weapons Master T’korr Hakis shifted—just slightly. That was enough.

At Tactical, targeting sensors attempted to compensate—and failed.

Not jammed. Not resisted. Simply… outpaced.

Solutions resolved half a second too late. Firing arcs predicted positions the Shiarian officer no longer occupied—micro-adjustments occurring faster than the system could reconcile. The implication settled in cold and heavy:

If he moved—Starfleet weapons would always be reacting to where he had been. Not where he was.
Across the bridge, the third officer’s presence deepened.

The air around them… bent. Not visibly—but perceptibly.

Consoles near their position began registering impossible returns: overlapping spatial coordinates, fractional phase drift, and momentary duplications of nearby objects that corrected themselves before they could be fully perceived.

At Science, the readings told a quiet, terrifying truth—
The Shiarians were not entirely in the same frame of spacetime. They were anchored to it. Loosely. Deliberately.

In a soft voice, not wanting to startle anyone on the bridge, Zavey spoke to her Captain. “Sir, the Shiarians are not totally present in our space and time…”

Glen acknowledged Lt. Zavey but this was something that he was aware was possible. He’d been alerted to this by Captain’s Logs from other Ships. The Tholian Assembly had been experimenting with interphasic rifts for over a hundred years or more, and some interphasic rifts even led to a parallel universe that was a mirror of our own. It seemed to Glen, that such experiments were dangerous and much like children playing with fire.

Taruun finally inclined his head—just enough to acknowledge Glen’s words.

The harmonic voice returned. “You employ ritual courtesy.” A pause. Not confusion. Assessment.

“It is… noted.”

Behind the words, that same layered resonance pressed faintly against the crew—probing tone, cadence, intent. Not quite telepathy. But close enough to feel like being measured from the inside.

A flicker of light passed across Taruun’s armor—sharper this time.

“You will comply.” Not louder. Not harsher.

Just… absolute.

At Ops, a new alert pulsed—Turbolift systems: unresponsive.

Rana’s order had gone through. But not entirely by Starfleet’s hand.

Across the ship, lift systems reported dual command inputs—one Federation, one… other. Control was no longer exclusive.

In Engineering, power distribution began to fluctuate along non-critical pathways—nothing failing, but something testing tolerances.

In Sickbay, bio-monitors registered slight temporal desync in neural patterns among crew—milliseconds only, but enough to trigger alerts.

And on the bridge—M’Mera stood between predator and crew.

T’korr Hakis noticed. The Weapons Master’s bioluminescence flared—just a fraction brighter. Not aggression. Recognition.

A predator acknowledging another willing to bare teeth. Then—

The third officer moved. Not a step. A shift.

For a fraction of a second, they existed in two positions at once—one beside Taruun, the other several meters closer to the science station—and then reality chose. They were back where they started.
But the message was clear. Distance meant nothing.

Taruun spoke again, his focus narrowing.
“You will halt your incursion into the Aperture.” A beat. “You will remain.” Another. The faintest tilt of his head.

“Or you will be removed.”

Silence followed. Not empty but weighted.

Every system, every breath, every heartbeat aboard the Merrimack seemed to wait—for the next choice

M’Mera remained with eye contact for a moment with the second Shiarian before taking a cautious step back. She had heard the XO’s orders and the Engineering panel was chiming with messages. Her fur began to settle as she stepped back far enough to stand beside an auxiliary console which with a few swipes of her deft paws she pulled up the Engineering schematic. While keeping an eye on the intruders she swiftly got caught up on the alerts. “We arre no longerr the only oness in contrrol of ourrr sship, Captain!” She growled. “They arre alsso and arre tessting ourr ssysstemss!”

GM Nosferatu
Your Darkest Nightmare
OOC: My apologies for the sudden LOA, I was very ill:)

The Captain told Dariusz Pokorski, the Navigator, “Dead Stop Lieutenant! Power down and reroute additional power to shields and structural integrity.”
Dariusz’s hands moved swiftly across the console, his eyes scanning the readouts as the engines powered down. The bridge fell silent, tension mounting as the crew awaited further instructions, every member acutely aware that their fate hinged on these decisive actions.

A faint hum resonated through the ship as energy redirected, strengthening the shields. Outside, the stars seemed to shimmer against the hull, reflecting the crew’s growing apprehension.

The Captain Glen turned back to the Shiarian who had spoken, meeting their gaze with measured composure. “We use welcoming greetings and courtesy, yes. It is our custom to initiate contact with respect and hospitality, as we have found such introductions often help to create harmony among unfamiliar parties. Establishing this initial rapport can usually facilitate better communication and understanding, allowing us to bridge the gaps between cultures and intentions. However, in the spirit of further reassurance, I have also requested my crew to power down our engines completely. This action, as you may observe, will eventually bring our vessel to a halt, ceasing all forward motion. I do this deliberately as a gesture of our total compliance with your protocols and expectations. Our intention here is entirely peaceful; we have absolutely no desire or design to provoke any conflict or misunderstanding. There is no need for you to alter any of our systems.”

After a small pause, Captain Glen continued, “I wish to make it clear that our mission objectives were twofold: first, to conduct some simple cartography, mapping this sector for navigational purposes; and second, to open a dialogue with you and your people. Since it seems that your way is to be very direct and forthright, I will get straight to the point and speak bluntly, as you prefer. We bring urgent news to you, which may not have yet reached your awareness. During our mapping operations, we have discovered a dire and immediate problem with the fabric of the Minkowski space-time continuum throughout this entire region. Our scientific instruments have detected anomalies. Such ruptures would threaten the stability of space-time itself. Unrepaired, such breaches could have catastrophic consequences for every entity and civilisation within this sector. The threat is real but by mutual effort and open dialogue we would hope to resolve this crisis and ensure the safety of all.”

• Glen, CO

Thalos stood at his console, listening closely to the Captain’s words as they carried across the bridge. His expression remained composed, unreadable to most—but beneath it, calculation never stopped.

His eyes flicked briefly to the tactical display.

Numbers did not lie.

If the situation turned hostile… the Merrimack would be outmatched.

His antennae angled forward slightly, registering every shift in tone, every fluctuation in sensor data. He did not allow the concern to surface—not here, not now. Doubt had no place on the bridge.

Instead, he focused on what could be controlled.

Weapons remained ready.
Defensive systems stood primed.
Crew response time—acceptable.

He exhaled slowly, centering himself.

He trusted the Captain’s judgment. He had to.

Still… if the Shiarain chose to attack, Thalos would ensure the ship gave far better than it received.

Lieutenant Thalos ch’Ravik
Chief Of Security
USS Merrimack

Rana for his part had gone into observation mode. For the most part admiring the way the captain behaved in the face of sure and certain extinction at any given moment. This could be where they got the old phrase about mad dogs and Englishmen he supposed. But looking at their history, the English had done a lot on bluff alone. Perhaps the captain could stay true to his heritage?

But observing can do a lot. Watching the Shiarians Rana was reminded of a fishing trip he was taken out on by an Inuit friend. It involved more beer than fishing, but he had learned the oddest thing. His friend was going to teach him to spear fish salmon. It didn’t work for him. He couldn’t catch a one. Finally laughing at him his friend told him the secret. The water distorted where the fish were. One had to bring down the spear in front of the fish. The Shiarians were like that. They were or seemed to be in several places at once. He hoped that someone else had caught this. Just in case anyway.

.> He then heard M’mera getting upset. She only seemed to have two moods. Relaxed to the point of sleep or coming completely unhinged. She was good at her job though and impeccable in everything but her moods. He had little doubt in the captain. He acted slightly perturbed with the aliens. As if they had had the utter gall to interrupt him at tea uninvited. As for himself Rana had finally accepted whatever fate might be coming his way. He stood still and silent ready simply to aid in some fashion any crewmembers or the captain. One thing the shift thing with the Shiarians. They hadn’t attacked. They had come aboard and scanned their systems. They were interested.

Captain Glen’s intention here was to project a calm image that a solution was possible without any aggression or conflict, but his XO was possibly correct when he thought Glen should reign in his over-confidence. That might be giving the entirely wrong impression to their guests here. What Rana could not possibly know was that the Captain spoke in the sure knowledge that the USS Merrimack would survive another hundred years to become a space museum. So, while he didn’t know his own future, he was absolutely certain that the Merrimack was not destined to be destroyed in the Caradthian Expanse. At least, that was what the Captain himself believed, but he had neglected to take into account the advice of Lt. Zavey had just given him that this species was interphasic. When you begin to deal with interphasic rifts and parallel universes, then nothing is quite as certain at all. They could find themselves in a separate reality that coexists alongside this reality with a different future history in which the Merrimack is on its final few hours!!!

Rana Singh Number One

Lieutenant Elyss Zavey
Chief Science Officer USS Merrimack

• Glen, CO

The Merrimack complied. Impulse fell silent. Warp geometry collapsed. Power surged into shields and structural integrity, the ship bracing—not against impact—but against uncertainty.
And still…nothing released its hold.

At Science, the data refused to settle. The Aperture did not remain fixed ahead of them. It drifted—subtly, steadily—despite the Merrimack’s full stop. Or perhaps—they had stopped relative to one frame of reality…
and not another.

Chroniton readings climbed in fractional, stubborn increments.

In the front section of the bridge Over-Captain Vreth’kan Taruun remained motionless. But his armor did not. The bioluminescent tracery across his form split into layered pulses—one rhythm synchronized with the Merrimack’s power grid…the other with something deeper. Slower. Vast. The Aperture.

“You comply,” Taruun observed. Not approval. A measurement updated.

The third officer shifted—and this time the bridge felt it. A distortion rolled outward, subtle but undeniable. For an instant, the edges of reality softened. Consoles displayed overlapping states—data that agreed and disagreed at the same time.

At Ops, control inputs no longer conflicted. They coexisted.
Federation commands executed.
Shiarian commands executed.
Simultaneously. The result was precise… and deeply wrong.

At the auxiliary Engineering station—M’Mera’s board bloomed with layered schematics. Two system states. Two power flows.
Two outcomes. Her claws hovered over controls that now answered to more than one truth.
Readouts didn’t show damage.
They showed divergence. Power fluctuations weren’t failures—they were branches. Every subsystem testing not just its limits…but its alternatives.

The ship wasn’t being overridden.

It was being made to exist in more than one operational condition at once.

In Sickbay, neural desync patterns sharpened. Milliseconds only. But now structured. Crew reacting before stimuli. Then after. Caught between moments.

Taruun’s gaze remained fixed on Glen.
“You misunderstand.” Quiet.
Absolute.
“We do not require your motion to cease.” A fractional pause.
“We required your vector to end.”

At Helm— Velocity: zero. Vector—
…absent.

For a single, disorienting instant, the Merrimack had no directional reference. No forward. No aft. Just presence.

The third officer flickered—and for a heartbeat, they were not beside Taruun. They stood closer—near the auxiliary station. Near M’Mera.
Not threatening. Not advancing.

Evaluating.

Then reality corrected—but not completely. A residual echo lingered across sensors, like a footprint left in time instead of space.

Taruun continued:
“You speak of rupture.” A faint resonance answered from the Aperture itself.
“You perceive damage.” Another beat.
“We perceive… emergence.”

At Science, the data aligned—just long enough to reveal the truth:
The “breaches” in spacetime—
were not chaotic. They were constructed. Layered. Intentional.

Across the bridge, every system registered the same conclusion at once: The Merrimack was no longer being warned away. No longer being tested. No longer even being controlled. They were being held—precisely deliberately—at the threshold.

Taruun’s final words settled into the ship like gravity.
“You will remain.” A pause. Then—
“You will observe.” And at the auxiliary station—

M’Mera’s console chimed with a new, singular alert:

MULTI-PHASIC ANCHOR — LOCK ESTABLISHED

The Merrimack was no longer drifting. No longer choosing. No longer free to advance—or withdraw. They had been fixed—not in space-

—but in state.

GM Nosferatu
Your Darkest Nightmare

And so, Captain Glen observed.

At first, it was simply a sense of disquiet that crept upon him, subtle and insistent, prising open the edges of his long-held certainties. It took him a while longer - an excruciating time, measured not in minutes but in the slow, internal shifting of perspective - to fully realise the error he had been making. The softened edges of the multiple realities that were now visible to him shook his consciousness into a new understanding, as if a veil had been lifted and the universe had revealed its true, intricate nature.

During the years since they had visited the future space station Black Rock on Asteroid 277, Captain Glen had felt invincible. It was not merely bravado or the optimism of command: it was a bone-deep certainty, an almost mystical assurance that fate walked with him. No matter what happened - be that the Bolay First Contact, or the secret meeting with the underground-dwelling Aenar, or even the desperate rescue of the Alstair Sleeper ship - he had always felt the hand of destiny at his side. He had experienced a confidence that whatever might happen to them, they would prevail, because he knew that they did prevail. The timelines had seemed linear, his life a story whose ending he had glimpsed and found reassuring.

Now he could suddenly see that he was so badly mistaken. The truth, made manifest by the Sharian device and unfolding before his eyes, was that there was not one single road to be taken ahead. Very clearly now, these fractured realities in the Minkowski space-time continuum showed several quite different paths were possible. Each path was shaped by the choices he might - or might not - make. They depended upon decisions that Glen would make. Decisions that he had already made within some of these realities, rippling outwards into consequences both expected and utterly strange.

As the Sharian explained, these branches were not mistakes, not ruptures to be repaired. They were, rather, very deliberate and beyond anything he could understand. He would need more time to process what he was seeing here, for the truth was almost unbearable in its complexity. The weight of infinite possibility threatened to overwhelm him. While Sharian technology was incomprehensible, defying all attempts at analysis, he understood now that this was intentional and precise. The Sharians had not only mastered their own reality; they had learned to navigate and shape the multitudinous realms of possibility, and it was this lesson - a lesson of humility and awe - that Glen carried with him.

• Glen, CO

“Ah….ssirr…it ssayss we arre locked…by a multi-phassic anchorr…I am not surre what that meanss but it cannot be good.” M’Mera’s voice trailed off as she stood uncertain what to do. She had had stories of ships facing this but had never done so herself.

Lt. M’Mera CE

Rana was not a man who liked complicated things. In another time he might have been the sort of fellow, who if building a railway through the mountains would refuse to go through high mountain passes and would blast a way through the mountain instead. He disliked complications. It was his personal belief that you could take anything complicated and boil away at least half of its content until you found something simple. And so, he stood there on the bridge now and came to a conclusion. However wrong it was it was all he could get. And with it he looked over at their visitors with a new respect. ” Everywhen.” he said just loud enough for those around him to hear. He was so >amazed that he must repeat the word for himself. ” Everywhen. All places and all times at the same place at once.”

Rana Singh Number One