CHAPTER 5: Enemy mine (Part 4)

Captain's Log

Stardate: 87638.6

Repairs to the minimal damage suffered by the Horizon are ongoing well under the expert care of chief engineer Sisko, after an uncharted subspace eddy brought our transwarp flight to the very edge of the galaxy. The ship was saved from her predicament thanks to the heroic efforts of our chief of science lieutenant K'Leysha and of our escort vessel under the command of Commander Oseno Jureth.

But the USS Polaris is now missing. An impulse trail is our only clue as to her possible fate and First officer Redding has launched with the help of our Ops chief Lieutenant Leone a search and rescue mission with Dawn and Sunset, our two Delta Flyer shuttles.

Meanwhile, our own search continue from the edge of the Mutara class nebula we are now temporarily stranded in.

Captain Kheren came out of his ready room with another glance at the main viewer showing a thin, iridescent blue line that was the infamous Great Galactic Barrier. He was dimly aware that he was but the third starship commander in History to have come this close to the edge of the galaxy, but the singular footnote he would become in the history books was of little portent to him while so many of his crewmates were still missing.

"Anything new?" he asked to nobody in particular.

"Plenty, Sir, " answered Norbert baoule from the main science station. "But I gather your are not yet ready for our cosmology sensor data. However... I may have something interesting to try, if you would agree, Sir."

"Let's hear it."

The black smiling man showed his sensor imaging screen on his console as he spoke.

"Well, Sir, it's the Syntron Space Sonar. In simplistic terms, it uses tachyons to create a sensor echo we can read when it encounters matter or energy, similar to the old sonar technology that used soundwaves to bounce back on objects and thus detect and identify them."

"What do you have in mind, Lieutenant?"

"Well... you know that, in nature, some animals like bats and sperm whales use the same principles to more or less see in dark environments, be it night time or ocean depths. And our own viewer here on the bridge does create a visual image out of myriads of sensor signals from our sensor pallets. With a few tweaks, I believe I can do the same with our own space sonar within the denser layers of the nebula to read the impulse trail as an echo image of the ship that left that trail."

"Looking for a footprint?" understood the Andorian commanding officer.

"Basically, yes, Captain."

"Do it."

With a nod, Baoule made the modifications to the system's reading and imaging then, after barely a few minutes, looked back at Kheren and got another nod from him. Several minutes went by as the image on the large screen showed a new, pearly line of sparkling dust that went from a point in space right into the blue, red and white-streaked cloud of the nebula. 

"Mister Snow, " then asked the science officer at the copper-skinned man at the helm, " please orient us along that detected path. "

"Station-keeping thrusters firing to correct orientation and angle, " confirmed the helmsman.

On the screen, the view shifted as if everyone on the bridge was following the revealed trail with their own eyes. As the twinkling trail entered deeper into the smoky layers, a vague outline appeared, egg-like in shape.

"All stop," ordered Kheren, understanding what was happening.

"Answering all stop, Sir," answered Aguk Snow.

The view stopped on it and, as more and more emissions from the main deflector dish bombarded taht specific spot, the outline became clearer, more defined, until it appeared as a ghostly white drawing in some blue sand. The image was definitely that of a starship, or rather two. The first one was somewhat boxy and elongated with a rounded front and quite familiar to all that saw it.

"The Polaris!" exclamed the Andorian with a sigh of relief.

Despite the lack of visual details, the escort vessel seemed whole and intact although little energy appeared to come out of it and none from it's own propulsion systems. The impulse trail engulfed it's outline like a wake in water from the other shape that appeared before it, alight with energy outputs from it's own engines but with no tractor beam between them. yet, it was clearly dragging the polaris behind it.

They were all looking at it with widened eyes. Barely a few hundred meters accross, oval in shape with short stubbed pylons and nacelles angled underneath on each side, the towing vessel was not much bigger than the Polaris and looked pretty much insect-like, much like a wide and flat Earth scarab.

They all knew then who had come to take their friends away.

*     *     *

Watching the two shuttles leave the Horizon, Captain Kheren could not help but feel a strange feeling of apprehension, almost something akin to deja vu. The familiar lightning-crisscrossed red and blue haze of the nebula was certainly the main cause of it; recalling to his First Officer the events that had occured aboard his former command in the original Mutara sector was bringing back to his mind another shuttlecraft moving out in the stellar fog in search of another mysterious, barely glimpsed starship. But at the time, he himself had been aboard to directly confront the situation. now, he had to sit back and let others do it, others who's lives he was responsible of. And as little as they knew so far, all of it meant trouble.

"Mister Baoule; if we should believe what we have seen, how do you explain the possible presence of a Jem'Hadar ship so far from known space?"

"The first and most probable hypothesis that comes to mind is that they got caught in the same or a similar subspace eddy as the one that brought us here, " answered the black-skinned man.

"Jem'Hadar ships do not have any better range than our own vessels, " chimed in his brother from the engineering station, coordonating the repairs his boss, Lieutenant Commander Sisko, was directly overseeing. "They could not have simply flown out here..."

"Unless they would have started such an incredible journey almost fifty years ago and that at a sustained warp 9 velocity," suggeste helmsman Snow.

"For what purpose?" then asked the Andorian in the command chair.

"Unknown, Sir," replied Counselor Lyrya in the medical chair at his left hand, the Aenar feeling deeply the unease of her husband. "Jem'Hadars are the pilots of those ships and they are genetically-engineered soldiers; they have neither the inclination nor the skills for exploration... and their bio-engineered dependency to ketracel-white would make such a long range expedition a death sentence... and a particularly shameful one at that, considering their proud holy soldiers mindset."

"What about a Vorta commanding them?"

Norbert Baoule spoke again from the science station.

"Vortas are also genetically engineered to be the intermediaries between the Founders, their creators and self-claimed gods, and those troops. They have no personal motivation outside those responsibilities and planning operations in the field to serve the Dominion's interests. And their hold on the Jem'Hadars depend on their ketracel-white supply. "

"A bugship has no ressources to manufacture any after this supply is depleted," added his bald twin Robert. " If they engaged in such a long journey, they would never have been able to carry enough to survive even just the trip to come here."

"Unless therre was morre than one ship... possibly a Dominion Drreadnought," then said the distinctively purring voice of Mriish, seated at the tactical console. The felinoid  too was feeling her commanding officer's unease in his voice through her sensitive hearing. "But the Dominion has no militarry capability norr objectives since the warr ended half a centurry ago; and therre is nothing strrategically worrthwhile in coming so frar out at the edge of the galaxy."

"Being peaceful isolationists despite their paranoid tendencies with abundant ressources and no compulsion to explore outside of their homefield in the Gamma Quadrant, there is therefore no valid reason for them to come out here," concluded Lyrya in turn. "

"A nav accident like the one that brought us out here as well seems the most probable explanation as to their surprising presence here," said yeoman Blackbird from behind the command dais, "especially considering the sorry state their own vessel seemed to be."

"They might have taken the Polaris as possible ressource for their survival," added in turn the shrill voice of the Edoan Cheonghi, now taking over for Elisha Leône at ops. "or as a mean to get back home. And if the crew was incapacitated... or..."

Kheren had listened to the speculations of his officers while making assumptions and hypothesises of his own. Now, he activated his communicator.

"Engineering; Mister Sisko, do we have impulse power, transporters and shields available? If not, how long before we do? "

"Aye, Sir," replied Sisko. "Everything is back to normal operating status except for warp drive. And, we should have that available after a level one diagnostic. Seeing as our shuttles are currently disengaged, I think we'll have time for that."

The level one diagnostic was the most detailed, and thus also the most time consuming. Also, due to the decreased crew compliment, it had to be performed with a quarter of the usual number of engineers.

"I would give it 24 hours, Sir," Sisko estimated.

"Understood, Mister Sisko, " acknowledged the captain. " Now, what are our tactical options from the viewpoint of our current available power?  We would need shields and phasers while at full impulse if we do have to confront more than the one Jem'Hadar bugship detected so far... and even one might prove very dangerous if we cannot at least raise shields. "

Kheren guessed that his Bajoran chief engineer was quite aware of the USS Odyssey incident that precluded the Dominion War, when a single bugship on a kamikaze attack against a Galaxy class starship deprived of shields resulted in the complete destruction of the vessel with over a thousand lives lost. A close range antimatter explosion from a ship's engine coud do the same even to a huge structure as the Horizon if she could not raise shields and move away fast enough... and Jem'Hadars were notorious for their utter disregard for their own lives if it could cripple the enemy.

The Andorian did not look forward to face such a potentially  ruthless adversary defenseless.

"Captain... something just occured to me. Maybe somebody else is using that ship... " suggested Yeoman Blackbird to the commanding officer of the Horizon as she brought him a PADD to sign with an imprint of his genetic code from a thumbpress.

Somebody else... out here... at the edge of the galaxy... 

The tought felt suddenly very disquieting to Kheren; and he could not explain why. Something was nagging at him from the edge of his consciousness, like a dim memory or the remain of a bad dream from long ago... But his thought were interrupted by the voices around him.

"Which still  does not explain why such a short range craft could be here in the first place," was now stating Aguk Snow watching their position over his helm controls, "or how... or why they took the Polaris in tow and why they went inside that awful nebula..."

"Guess we will have to wait for Commander Redding to find those answers... hopefully," then said ops officer Cheonghi. "In the meantime, captain, all stations are reporting that they should all be fully operational within the hour."

"Good," said Kheren nodding as he stood up from his command seat. " I have a hunch we might need to be ready soon for whatever they find out there. I will be on the poopdeck."

Those who had served with him on the Artemis knew that this was the old Earth navy term he used to speak of his ready room. What none knew however is how bad his hunch made him feel when he looked on the viewscreen at the thin far away line of the Great Galactic Barrier, especially through the disconcertingly familiar stormy haze of that Mutara class nebula.

None except his Aenar wife, Counselor Lyrya.