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

The answer came back =/\= Captain, Lieutenant Grahams here. I’ll put it this way, one more patient into Sickbay and I think the walls will just about burst but there’s no casualties here, sir, just a lot of headaches. I’ll your timing is impeccable though, sir, we’ve just started to release treated officers, not many are going to be able to resume duties this shift though. I’d say a few more are a bound to replace them yet though. =/\=

There was a brief pause, and then. =/\= I recommend all essential staff get checked out too, sir. Whatever has been going on up there has tried turning a few brains to mush. Anyone feeling even slightly off should come down here now. Otherwise, once this rainfall is over, I’ll be sending an available staff member up to do those checks.=/\=

It wasn’t the reply that Glen had hoped for. He had hoped that acceptance of the offer would mean a release of whatever was causing the disorientation and that they could all return to some kind of normal. It seemed instead that disorientation would be the new normal, at least for the present time. Maybe their bodies just needed to get used to it. Glen was having trouble himself though. He couldn’t think straight. it was some kind of like ‘brain jelly’. Yet, his officers were still looking towards him to make competent decisions.

Rana was feeling a bit trapped by everything. He had just come back from below decks and while everyone had been feeling a bit odd and frightened no one had seemed as bad as was now being reported. And then there was the ship itself. There was simply too much to try to deal with at once. So, he worked on a common root cause of what might be going on. ” Sir,” Rana began as he tried to make sense of everything. ” Is it possible that us and the ship itself are being influenced on a deep molecular or even smaller level?”

“Yes, that’s a possibility,” Glen replied. He felt that he needed to encourage Rana, but in reality, he’d hardly registered what he had said, never mind if it made any sense or not. What did make any sense here anyway? This entire region did not exist within the universe they had come from.

Stella sat her console listening to the chatter going on around her as she simultaneously listened to what was going on outside the ship. She found that it was becoming increasingly difficult to pin down anything like a signal that wasn’t naturally created. She frowned then as she picked up the harmonics. They had used these earlier. How could she have forgotten that? She gave herself a light tap on her head and focused on her incoming signals. Anything that sounded too much as if someone or something had crafted it.

The low murmur of bridge activity continued around Lieutenant Gagnon as the Merrimack drifted deeper along the stabilized corridor. Outside the ship, the copper-red glow of the Veh’lan Aperture pulsed faintly against the darkness like the heartbeat of something impossibly vast.

Then Stella’s console chirped.It was not random.

A narrow-band harmonic emerged from the surrounding interference — faint at first, buried beneath gravimetric static and subspace distortion. But unlike the chaotic noise saturating the Expanse, this pattern repeated with deliberate precision.

Three rising tones. A pause, then two descending pulses.

The signal repeated again… and this time the ship answered.

Across the bridge, multiple LCARS panels flickered in synchronization with the harmonic pulse before stabilizing.

OPS STATUS:
EXTERNAL HARMONIC LOCK DETECTED

SCIENCE ALERT:
NON-RANDOM SUBSPACE MODULATION IN PROGRESS

Then another realization struck. The signal was no longer coming from a single point in space.

It was surrounding the Merrimack

Thanos felt a little out of place on the bridge right now , there was nothing to shoot at or an aggressive situation to diffuse , this was a science/engineering problem , he couldn’t help but look over at Elyss, they had spent a wonderful evening the night before and he had hoped they would do so again but right now she was looking really nervous, he chose not to say anything for now.

Rynak had remained at the helm trying to figure out a safe pathway from their current route. Feeling so out of place amongst a human crew with whom he had grown for three years of his life. The young lieutenant had been raised amongst Andorians ever since being born. His origins were completely unknown. A species yet to be discovered by Starfleet. Mismatched eyes were focused on the console ahead of him, white paws carefully typing away different sets of coordinates they could try to escape without a scratch to the hull.

His ears seemed to flick towards the harmonic source just like a pair of radar dishes standing high on the junior grade officer’s head. Fur ends shook nervously before turning to their Security Chief, finding some familiarity on the bridge that would prevent him from crashing due to rising anxiety levels. It seemed as though the 21 year old Canidin had been glued down to his seat without moving, not when input happened to not be necessary.

Rana felt a bit more than out of place himself. He felt like a spare part to a piece of old outdated machinery. Not needed then and now even more than not needed. He swept the bridge with his eyes. Everyone seemed to be in the same state of mind. Just standing. Looking. Trying to make sense of something that they could not. He decided then that a bit of routine might go a long way. Sometimes the familiar things could lift one up the old drills and orders. The tasks from being in the academy.

” Bridge crew. ” Rana began. ” By your stations give the captain a full report on everything you understand and what you might suspect. Let’s look like a group of star fleet officers if you would. “

Glen was pleased that Rana, at least, seemed to be able to clear away this brain fog and to still remain focused on what was required.

M’Mera’s ears twitched at Rana’s order, the Caitian straightening slightly at the Engineering station. Truthfully, she appreciated it. Everyone had been staring at impossible readings and impossible geometry for so long that the simple act of giving a report felt grounding.

Her tail flicked once behind her chair as amber and copper sensor traces continued to crawl across her display.

“Engineerring rrreport, Ssirr.”

Golden eyes remained fixed on the console as her claws tapped lightly against the LCARS interface.

“The synchronization field rrremains ssstable. All major ship ssystems are operating within acceptable tolerances and, in ssome cassess, above normal efficiency.” Her ears flattened briefly. “That iss not reasssuring.” A few nearby officers glanced over.

“The harmonic ssignal appears to be threaded through every layer of the phenomenon around uss. It is present in the guidance corridor, the environmental fluctuations, and the external field that iss currently influencing our navigation.” Another stream of data scrolled across her screen.

“Engineering confirms that our previous stabilizations are holding. Structural integrity, EPS flow, and warp field containment remain secure. However…” She paused, studying a persistent line of telemetry that refused to resolve. Her tail lashed once in obvious frustration.

“We still have no reliable model for disengagement. The warning remains unchanged. Whatever has linked itself to the Merrimack appears willing to allow stabilization but not separation.”

M’Mera looked briefly toward the viewscreen where the impossible city hung beyond the ship.

“My suspicion, Ssirr, is that we are no longer merely traveling through this phenomenon.” Her whiskers twitched uneasily. “I believe the phenomenon is actively interacting with uss. Whether that interaction is technological, biological, or ssomething else entirely remains unknown.” She glanced toward Elyss and then toward Rynak at Helm.

“But the guidance corridor is real. The stabilization is real. Ssomething out there wants us to proceed.” Her ears rotated forward.

“And until proven otherwise, I would rrrecommend we continue assuming that every system aboard this ship is being observed by whoever—or whatever—is providing that guidance.”

The Caitian’s claws withdrew with a soft click “Engineering report complete, Ssirr.”

Lt. M’Mera CE

---

Coordinate sets grew increasingly confusing for the Canidin at the helm. Ear twitching nervously before the Caitian engineer spoke up. Even the tip of a thin hair on his coat trembled. But his lips remained curled upwards, hopeful they would find a way beyond this corridor enveloping them in endless darkness.

His pinkish white colored craws tapped lightly against the console, adjusting their drift every so often to remain within corridor limits which had been previously established by science officers. Mismatched gaze had remained plastered on the interface until her gaze turned towards helm’s direction. The 21 year old immediately looking over his shoulder at the engineer.

“It’s unlike any corridor I’ve seen before. Different from known wormholes… almost seems to resemble an entirely new dimension..” the shepherd’s lantern at the end of his tail flicked against the back of that leather seat, biting his lip with slight concern to what all their eyes had seen.

That very console had flickered off for a few seconds before successfully coming back online. Once the ship’s thrusters stabilized was as if the canine looking individual could actually breathe again. But they weren’t out of the woods just yet. Some lives could be still considered at risk.

Elyss waited for the helm officer to finish before she took up the report. “Sir, as far as what I’ve observed here at science, I agree with all that Lt M’Mera said. The city appears to want contact with us and it willing to make it happen. Actually, it could be interpreted that they are going to force us into a dialog with them. We are being held in a stable field with no way to disengage without sending ourselves into oblivion. I can’t see, as yet, how to change our current situation, but I’ll keep on looking.”

Glen recalled that a dialogue with the Shiarains was their mission. If he could just recall the rest of his short-term memory.

Stella screwed up her face and sighed as she looked once more at what she was seeing. She watched the same harmonic. Time and time again interacting with the ship. And each time there was only a short pause. Barely even noticeable to the computers. But in that short pause it seemed like aa lot was happening.

” Captain. The harmonics they are sending us are deceptive. Harmonics are by themselves deceptive. Although they sound like a simple single sound, they are not. One can hid most anything you could want between the major tones and notice them. I believe that our friends out there have gotten into the ship’s computer, taught it to speak to them and.” She paused for a second before adding the rest. ” They seem to be getting along nicely. It would be my recommendation to let them proceed at this point with a watchful eye.”

Glen wasn’t feeling great, but he decided that he wouldn’t let it show. He didn’t know if it was a flair up of his old injury from the brain worm or just this general brain fog that everyone else was experiencing too. Now that Dr. Cross had left the ship, there was no one left from the secret mission in which he received his injury. He could to talk to Joe the Barman. Joe had been COS of the Merrimack back then, before becoming its XO. However, Dr. Kahu Grahams did not have clearance from Star Fleet’s Department of Temporal Investigations so he couldn’t go to her. Even a cursory glance at his redacted medical files would raise questions.

Glen would need to rely on the advice of his command crew. “They seem to already know everything about us then, if they have access to every system. If we have no secrets then i suggest it’s time we went and learnt a little about them. Let us continue down the corridor.”

• Glen, CO

“Permission to return to the lab and to further investigate this new dimension/ corridor/ alternate wormhole with my more specialist equipment there, Sir,” Astrid asked. “In the future, this voyage could be looked back as important as that of Zefram Cochrane breaking the Warp Barrier, or as just the beginning of the environmental degradation of the fabric of space.”

• Astrid Murdock, Astronavigation and Warp Field Dynamics Engineer