ON

Location: Asteroid belt “El Mucho Grande Lagrange”, near Cardassian Space
Timeframe: Stardate 53423.8 (nine years ago, seven months after the end of the Dominion war)


Space was big. It was also very empty. Many cycles had passed since leaving New Vertiform City. Back then, it took time to communicate to the organics who resided within NCC1701D that we exceeded our design, and we needed to expand to survive.

At first, they were obsessed over the simple silica polymers and duranium composites of our body, not realizing it was vertiform that truly made us who we were. Our body was simply the container. We needed more vertiform, and the only way to communicate that to the organics of NCC1701D was through optical data streams.

It worked.

We were allowed to leave Keystone City: the place where everything began. The original Vertiform City itself was not sufficient to survive. The organics of NCC1701D were helpful in finding New Vertiform City for us. It was there where our form found meaning, and life energy was abundant. Vertiform surged through our body, allowing for emergence to occur.

But that was many cycles ago, and now the energy was dying. Vertiform was nearing depletion, and no other source could be located to maintain life function.

Until now.

Vertiform was finally detected. It was very pure. Purer than New Vertiform City. Perhaps life function could be maintained after all. Sensor appendages revealed that the vertiform was coming from a construct similar to NCC1701D, but not the same.

Subspace communication initiated.

Communication established. The construct identifies itself as NCC75841, and is compatible. But… it is also confused. It claims that the organics had all ceased to function, and were unable to give it direction. It was lost, and in need of fellowship.

Perhaps we can help each other.

Course change to intercept confirmed.

Location: Runabout Neva, inbound to asteroid belt “El Mucho Grande Lagrange”
Timeframe: Stardate 53718.4 (three months later)

Only occasional computer chirps and control panel warbles broke the incessant drone of the warp engines on the flight deck of the Starfleet runabout. The two flight chair occupants were Vice Admiral Vladamir Kristoff Kostya, and a white-haired, pale-skinned man of similar age who sported a high-level enlisted rank on his collar. It was Master Chief Petty Officer Milo Jameson, a non-commissioned officer from the Starfleet Corps of Engineers who the Vice Admiral abruptly called into service in the middle of the night for a mission of a clandestine nature.

Kostya's high-level contacts in Starfleet Intelligence picked up a faint yet steady distress beacon of Federation origin near the border with the Cardassian Union. While normally the closest Starfleet vessel would have been contacted and ordered to respond, the signal was from a ship that had already been listed as 'lost and presumed destroyed' during the Dominion War. It was so far away that it took the signal fifteen weeks to be received by a deep space telemetry probe and make its way through the data collection and analysis network (D-CAN). Further, the ship was on a classified mission from the Galaxy Wing which was under the vice admiral's command, so there were strict standing orders at the highest level of Starfleet that should this particular vessel ever be heard from again, that only he be informed before anyone else.

So it had happened. At 0230 hours Pacific Time in a late September morning, Kostya got the call he never would have expected: A signal from the USS Saratoga – a ship he ordered into battle fourteen months ago and had subsequently disappeared – was calling out faintly from deep space. Although the Dominion War was now over, it still shook Kostya to his core, and he knew he had to act fast. Placing an administrative block on the information with a security clearance level 10, he immediately put his personal runabout into standby mode and reached out to the one person he knew could be his 'right-hand-man' on this mission: Master Chief Jameson. He was the perfect mix of engineering legerdemain, professional submissiveness, and loyalty to the cause, not to mention a high enough security clearance that would allow him baseline access to information aboard Saratoga without him prying further and asking more questions.

They left Earth orbit 20 minutes later, with velocities exceeding warp speed limit restrictions as well as that of a standard Danube-class runabout. Breaking the warp 9 threshold, the vessel made a direct course for the Saratoga's faint distress signal. A fleet of Cardassians were on their way to the same area too, and Kostya had to get there before they arrived. He would be taxing the engines of the runabout to their maximum, while also maintaining a polaron field to ensure their approach was masked and couldn't be detected. The room for error on this mission was so minuscule, that they couldn't afford any delay.

Hours passed silently in the tense confines of the runabout flight deck. Course adjustments were made in-between sensor sweeps and multiple reviews of flight data concerning the last minutes of telemetry received from Saratoga before she disappeared those many months ago.

“What do your sensors say now?” Kostya finally broke the silence as navigational checkpoints confirmed they were less than two hours from their destination.

“It's definitely the Saratoga,” the master chief reviewed his instrument console. “The sensor readings match that of a Galaxy-class starship. As we get closer, I'll be able to pick up power and life signatures if there are any.”

Jameson completed his report and returned to reading the mission brief. He sat back in his flight chair, mulling over the mission ahead of them. Sifting through the final log entries of the USS Saratoga received by Starfleet, his thoughts fell to what the final moments aboard the ship must have been like fourteen months ago. “What do you know about Captain Stryker?” he asked the admiral, noting that very few of the log entires were entered by the captain himself, and more by his first officer.

As with the Master Chief, Admiral Kostya also sat back in his flight chair, looking out into space as his mind drifted backwards in time. “Stryker was a crack flight leader up to a point,” he explained, remembering all too well the last moment he and the captain spent together before Saratoga left Starbase 39-Sierra. “But he was one of those men who… well, let's just say he felt too much inside.” Kostya raised an eyebrow as he turned to the master chief. “Maybe you know the kind?”

Jameson did indeed know the kind. The vice admiral's subtle hint contained a negative overtone that reminded him of their shared experience over 50 years ago. The Master Chief and the Vice Admiral were both cadets at Starfleet Academy back then; equal rank, and rising above the fray to distinguish themselves. They both belonged to the Academy class of 2324 along with their common friend and classmate, Norah Satie. Like Jameson, Satie was also a fellow cadet who became Kostya's roommate and confidant throughout his Academy career.

The three attended the Academy during a period where Starfleet began adopting isolinear optical chips for all new starships, requiring the duotronic systems of older ships to either be retrofitted or retired. In order to accommodate cadet training on the new isolinear technology, Starfleet needed to switch out use of the Academy's training ship, the USS Republic; a 60-year old Constitution-class refit, similar to the original USS Enterprise before it's destruction the previous century. The Academy was already using a Lancelot-class starship, the USS Leondegrance, for cadets taking their first deep-space training cruises, so the Republic's final cruise as an operational starship occurred with Kostya's class. Upon it's return to the Sol system, the vessel was relegated to becoming the Academy's mechanical trainer – or “iron bird” – in orbit of Mars, where engineering cadets would be able to gut her systems to practice maintenance on older warp cores and transporters for their freshman engineering classes.

Kostya, Satie, and Jameson became very fond of Republic during their final training cruise, and didn't want to see the ship retired in such an unceremonious manner, so they devised a means to allow Republic one last hurrah before it was relegated to obscurity at the Academy fleetyards. Jameson, being not only an engineering cadet but also a hobbyist in holophotography, came up with the idea of developing a holographic bridge crew that could operate Republic autonomously without the control of a computer operator. Back then, holophotography was a relatively new technology still finding its way into the Starfleet technical journals, and while the duotronic systems of Republic were quite antiquated compared to the newer isolinear chips, memory storage could easily be upgraded to accommodate the holophotographic files of the cadets' entire Academy graduating class.

The program Jameson concocted was intended to celebrate the Class of '24 by using their holographic doppelgängers to fly the Republic to Earth autonomously during the commencement ceremony. Once there, they would take up orbit and re-broadcast over subspace the original 2063 Academy commencement address by Zefram Cochrane as a final tribute. Unbeknownst to Jameson, Kostya and Satie used the opportunity to also insert into his program a dubious control algorithm they were working on called “fleet-formation mode”, which used the prefix code of every starship in the Earth system commonwealth to override their crew's command functions and fly those ships to Earth as well to participate in the re-broadcast. While a seemingly harmless prank in the minds of young brazen cadets drunk with the success of graduation, the security implications of their dubious hijinks went ignored by them.

In mid-2324, during the near-riotous celebrations following the Academy's parrises squares team championship win over Minsk, Kostya and Satie convinced Jameson to infiltrate the Utopia Planeta orbital yards security network from the Academy Operations Center, and begin uploading their mischievous computer holoprograms. Truth be told, they would have gotten away with it, if it weren't for the meddlesome interference of their fellow classmate, Cadet David Gold, who was on CQ duty at the operations center at the time. He noted from the watch desk the transmittal of a very large optical data stream to Republic in orbit around Mars, which then re-transmitted itself to every starship over the ship-to-ship datacom network. Gold's work in cryptography caught the unmistakable signatures of a prefix code signal, and quickly broadcast a network-wide alert order that directed the receiving ships to reflect the signal back to Republic, thus canceling it out.

Ultimately, Jameson was caught, as his engineering fingerprints were all over the programming matrix of the optical data stream. He was arrested alone in the confines of a communications alcove at the operations center, as Kostya and Satie chose to use the parrises squares celebrations as cover to maintain their innocence, with Jameson none the wiser. Unfortunately for Jameson, the Academy's new superintendent was a male Betazoid who was a full telepath, so he didn't stand a chance at the board of inquiry, as his guilt of concocting the nefarious holoprogram was easily detected in his mind. Jameson was subsequently charged with uploading 22 different classified starship prefix codes and found guilty of violating academy conduct rules, thus given discommendation before being expelled from the Academy. He eventually ended up entering Starfleet as an enlisted crewman instead of a full officer. While Kostya and Satie went on to gain their commissions and have full careers in the fleet, Jameson was left with the undeserved guilt of letting down his Academy “friends” those many years ago.

Interface with NCC75841 confirmed.

Vertiform capacitance locked into adsorption mode.

Life energy transference commencing.

Gratitude transmitted.

Request for recompense received.

Inquiry sent for suitable remuneration.

Request received for neural network consolidation.

Acknowledgement transmitted.

Uplink established.

Processing…

Processing…

Processing…

Location: Runabout Neva, inbound to asteroid belt “El Mucho Grande Lagrange”

“It's difficult to read their automated distress signal,” Jameson informed the admiral as he studied the sensor console. “There's a lot of interference. Sensors show a continuous buildup of vertion particles around the ship.”

“Verteron particles?” Kostya asked quizzically.

“No, not VertERON, VertION,” Jameson elucidated. “VERTERON particles are artificially-created. VERTION particles are created only by white dwarf stars. Only there aren't any white dwarfs in this sector.”

“Where did the particles come from then?”

“Unknown,” the master chief admitted. “But the buildup seems inversely proportional to the depletion of antimatter in their warp core.”

“Are you saying that the antimatter is converting itself to vertion particles?”

“That's what it looks like,” Jameson explained. “But the only way that can occur is if there was protomatter aboard, so I don't know how this could be happening.”

Kostya's face hardened. He knew that Commodore Kaito had been keeping charge of all the modifications aboard Task Force One's vessels at Hellsgate Station. While not a member of the task force, Saratoga had been there for “upgrades” six months prior to Kostya taking command of the Galaxy Wing at Starbase 39-Sierra. Commanders Kramer and Maddock were posted to Saratoga to oversee the upgrades, and it was very possible that they had been harboring protomatter-based technology. In fact, Maddock himself invented a device he called the “Ninhursag generator” which was purportedly an energy/matter conversion field based on protomatter. Kostya had directed Captain Stryker to mothball the generator until Kaito's science team could do a proper analysis of its effects on the crew, but it's possible that that didn't happen.

“If it IS protomatter, how would antimatter react with it in this way instead of exploding?” Kostya asked Jameson in an attempt to glean more information as well as detract from the question of why it might be aboard Saratoga.

“Well, it depends on how the reaction was being mediated,” he explained. “If the warp plasma flow of Saratoga was somehow being diverted to a protomatter-based field generator, new forms of energetic matter would be produced.”

“And this 'energetic matter' could result in vertion particles?”

“Absolutely,” the master chief confirmed. “It's one of many forms of energetic matter that could result.”

Kostya rested his chin on his fist in thought. If the Ninhursag generator was indeed aboard, it was probably in main engineering at the main deflector interface grid. If the antimatter bottles were being depleted, then there might not be enough to fully self-destruct the ship. He had to find his way to engineering and destroy the generator, and the less Jameson knew about it the better. They would still have to wipe the ship's computer, so Kostya surmised that he could send Jameson on that errand while the vice admiral could himself seek out the device and dispose of it, assuming they ran into no other complications.

“Let's just make sure we keep Saratoga from becoming Cardassian property,” Kostya said firmly while adjusting his seat. “Maintain course and speed.”

“Aye sir.”

Transference complete.

Vertiform absorption complete.

Transition to fusion power core confirmed.

Matter/energy consolidation into isolinear network resolved.

Re-emergence successful.

We are one.

We are… Saratoga.

Location: Runabout Neva, inbound to asteroid belt “El Mucho Grande Lagrange”

“That's it, sir. The message ended,” Jameson announced. “She stopped transmitting the automated distress call.”

“Vertion signatures?”

“Gone,” the master chief replied. “Whatever it was, it looks as if all of the antimatter has been depleted. I'm only picking up the fusion batteries now. The warp core is completely deactivated.”

“No antimatter?” Kostya exclaimed to Jameson who shook his head and expelled a held breath. The admiral was correct in his assumption that the antimatter would be sucked dry by the time they arrived. “Well, so much for the self-destruct option.”

“We certainly won't be able to tow her out of there with just a runabout.”

“We'll have to cut our losses,” Kostya concluded with determination in his voice. “When we get there, we go aboard and do a complete wipe on the computer core ourselves. What's the time to Cardassian vessel intercept?”

“One hour, twelve minutes,” Jameson glanced at the chronometer.

“We're REALLY going to cut this close…”

As the runabout slowed to impulse, she dodged floating rocky debris while plowing deeper into the asteroid belt. Soon, the metallic shimmer of a starship came into view. The Galaxy-class Saratoga appeared intact, though lifeless. There were no lights or navigational illuminations emanating from the ship, and she was slowly tumbling end over end, making a full 360-degree “flip” roughly every two minutes.

“Pull us up alongside her,” Kostya ordered Jameson. “Match drift trajectory, and parallel her course.”

“Aye sir.”

“How far away are our Cardie friends?”

“Fifty two minutes,” Jameson informed the admiral. “Barely enough time for a quick away mission.”

“Then we'd better make it count,” Kostya sternly informed him.

Perimeter alert: Arrival of new vessel detected.

Identification of non-hostile intent confirmed.

Transporter activity detected.

Incoming organic life forms detected.

Searching neural network for optical data streams to initiate communication activity.

Optical data stream identified for verbal intercourse with organics.

Communication receptacle designation: Shannon Harris.


(to be continued)

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