USS HORIZON: Rendez-vous with the Horizon

The small, spartan Bird of Prey was packed full with the entire crew of the Polaris. There was a double roster of officers occupying the small bridge,  twice the needed technicians in the cramped engine room and just as much at every active station throughout the ship. The rest of the five dozen crewmembers were packed in the narrrow corridors and the bare rooms. Fortunately, Klingons had the habit of carrrying livestock as food supplies. Freeing all those targs out of the holds left enough room to embark four times the usual capacity of the scout ship. They would also provide a nice distraction to those Klingons who would reach the sector of the Guardian. All those long, numerous kilometers of walk through rough terrain would leave them quite hungry.

Having completed the set up of their boobytrap, Aron'Son was the last one to come aboard, with Sheeneea and S'tron behind him. The Andorian woman went straight to the helm and the Vulcan sat beside her at the ship controls station while a Security ensign vacated for the Jem'Hadar the station where was lowered the targeting periscope, just as the low screeching signal of the ship's comm struck their ears.

"Engine room to bridge," shrilled the voice of the Edoan chief engineer with metallic echoes as if he was shouting all the way from the stern of the ship. "You have full impulse at your discretion, Sir. Sorry for not having time to remove the stench but reading Klingon is a bit hard. At least, I can confirm to you that we will not explode in mid-flight."

"If Mister S'Tron's calculations are correct," said Sheeneea with antennae curving inward.

"If Lieutenant's Sheeneea follows the correct trajectory at the proper speed and distance," shot back the Vulcan as if discussing the weather.

He was not smiling, but the banter between them was quite familiar to the rest of the bridge crew.

"Would you have preferred Mister Moore?" offered Valencia Irksos from the sensor station.

Doctor Osaro-Lyth, standing at the left of the high backed, raised center chair, rolled her mesmerizing golden-freckled eyes upward.

"Please; he would have attempted a barrel roll."

"At the breaking point," added Nathaniel Gray standing at Redding's right hand.

The mood-lightening exchange made it clear enough to Redding that they were all ready and eager to be on their way.

Reeding sat with a measure of smugness into the Klingon captains chair.

"Alright every one, operation 'Acme Rocket pack' is a go, lets kick the Coyote." He had earlier informed the crew of the ships new name 'The Coyote' but wouldn't say why.

The small scoutship rose with a roar of it's impulse engine and shook under the intermittent assault of the gravimetric distorsions emanating from the planet as it reached high orbit. despite her deftness at the helm, Sheeneea had  much trouble keeping the vessel in the precise trajectory her navcom had been programmed to display. The graphically enhanced tunnel of light stretching over the equatorial line of the planet kept distorting with each passing wave of deformed space-time.

"This is not going to be fun," she grumbled, hunched over her controls, her antennae pointed sharply forward as if she was about to fight.

"I will manually adjust the flight parameters as best as possible," S'Tron said beside her. "But the unpredictable nature of those energy waves make all calculations approximate at best and perpetually obsolete from one to the next. As illogical as it sounds, your instinct might very well be needed to implement the correct flight path."

"Alright then... there goes nothing."

The engines going beyond full impulse roared as they flew around the planet. It's constantly shifting gravitational field turned it into a nauseating roller-coaster ride that threatened to send them all plunging into unconsciousness with each passing second.

"Passing a quarter of the speed of light... going to emergency impulse," reported the Andorian helmswoman. 

The faster they went, the harder and frequent the space-time distorsions hit them, likes waves into which they were crashing  head on. Already, several officers on the bridge had collapsed and most of them were struggling to stay conscious.

"Zero point five c... accelerating towards zero point six... seven... eight... nine..."

As they neared the speed of light, sights and sounds stretched out from on another and away from their sense of touch and of their own self. Ghostly images and sounds and feelings assailed their senses. For those who had experienced such a slingshot maneuver before aboard the Artemis, the sensation was familiar. But then, the intermittent shock of distorted space-time brought about pain and confusion until, suddenly, they were all thrown off their seat by a final wave and plunged into darkness and silence.

*     *     *

"We have failed."

S'Tron's assessment came out as no surprise to everyone now being revived by the soothing hands and pheromones of Doctor Osaro-Lyth, As they picked themselves up, lights started to return on the darkened bridge as systems automatically came back online. Science officer Irksos nodded with a heavy expression on her dark-hued face.

"The irregular space-time distorsions and gravimetric variances of the planet's gravity well made all adjustments of trajectory impossible. The factors were to random even for the best computers available, let alone those primitive Klingon ones. Any renewed attempt will have no better chances of success. That is, if we can even try again.""

"We are still in orbit, Sir," Sheeneea reported. "drifting into a lower orbit. Impulse is not responding. Activating thrusters to maintain altitude."

"All systems are returning to minimal operational status," The Vulcan ops officer said then. "Implementing level 2 diagnostics."

"No casualties, if you're wondering," the Deltan doctor then reported to her commanding officer. "We have however a large collection of various bruises and stomach spills all over the ship. I do not recommend using the drugs in what passes for an infirmary aboard, unless you want to start another round of retching."

"Engineering to bridge," then resounded the shrill voice of Jheonghun over the comm. "Impulse reserves down to barely five point three percent! We are on auxilliary reactor power and batteries. And we are starting to detect microfractures accross the entire hull."

"We're certainly not be going anywhere far and fast now," mused Nathaniel Gray. "And the Horizon is due only in eight hours."

The ship trembled slightly around them.

"We're still hit by the emanations of the Guardian down on the planet," confirmed Valencia Irksos from her readout. "We only have short range sensors. Nothing detected except for those distorsions."

Another wave hit them and they could almost hear the ship groan in pain around them.

This ship is sturdy but I doubt she will hold together eight hours under such repeated impacts, Commander," Gray observed gloomily. "We can still land... but I bet the Klingons will be waiting for us down there."

"Well... if we start now, we could reach the Horizon on thrusters in about, oh... a few centuries," Osaro-Lyth said in a small effort to lighten the mood.

"Time is certainly not on our side," acknowledged Gray.

"Youre starting to make me rethink my position on questioning Vulcans S'Tron." Redding said with a hint of a smile.

"Drop a message buoy for the Horizon to find as updated as possible, and prepare to take the Coyote in for a landing."  

Redding stewed for a moment longer while the preparations were being made then said "And could somebody check the ship's stores and see if they have any tibious claw left? I could go for a bite."

"Sir... we may have another option," Irksos then said. "The Guardian."

"The Guardian?" Osaro-Lyth wondered.

"You know what the Guardian is, Doctor. And you have seen it."

"Of course I know what it is. It shouted it loud enough!  He's a gateway through..."

The Deltan woman stopped abruptly. Her beautiful eyes widened, her sensual mouth opened then her graceful finger rose in dire warning.

"Now just wait a minute!"

But the dark-skinned woman was now looking straight at Redding.

"This Guardian of Forever is large enough for a starship to fly through. Considering the diminutive size of this Bird of Prey, Sheeneea will have no trouble flying through it's kilometer wide aperture, even under the assault of the ripples in time emanating from it. S'tron's tricorder has the data flow it was emitting and we know from the time of Captain Kirk that it transmits it in a continuous cycle. If we synchronize our approach to this data flow and our planned stardate, we could move out to the current location of the Horizon. In effect, we would be right there instantaneously."

"Why not before?" suggested Gray. "We could avoid the Polaris crash and..."

"And change History," S'tron cut in. "Lieutenant Irksos is right; by returning to the Horizon where it is presently on her course towards here, we effectively rendez-vous with her  and minimize the chances of altering the timeline... as required by our duty as Starfleet officers and the Temporal Prime Directive."

"But... using this time portal... won't it change the future and alter the timeline just as well?" 

"Negative, Doctor," Irksos said. "From this point in time where we are, everything that came before is fixed so as to lead to this point; you change anything before, you jeopardize all that came afterwards that had happened in the timeline, up to this point and beyond. That is why we have our Temporal Prime Directive that not only forbids us to do so, but compels us even to correct any such alteration. However, from this point forward, the infinity of possibilities are open to our free will... like choosing to go back through a few seconds in time to return to the flagship. We cannot alter time before it unfolds because our current actions and decisions are part of that ongoing flow just as it does unfold."

The CMO and the strategic ops officer both nodded together in understanding. Then, like all the others, they looked at Redding to see how he was receiving the science chief's idea.

From the tactical station the Jem'Hadar security officer glowered

"This is NOT a good idea. Time travel even briefly is dangerous enough the Dominion avoids any mention of it. Meanwhile Starfleet seems to throw it around as if it is an every day event."

" Quick to judge, slow to change; that might says something about why the vastly superior Dominion was defeated," gray offered with a crooked smile.

Redding sat there for a few minutes thinking it over. Any action involving time travel was problematic.

"I'm not sure I completely agree with your assessment. While it's true both the past and present time line should be secure the mere fact that were using the gate could still alter the future and is, in fact, what we would be attempting to do."

He shook his head no.

"Our situation just isn't dire enough to warrant an incursion, and if I remember your briefing from earlier, wont we still be drawn back through the Guardian when it's over to restore the time line? How about a compromise.. when we get back to the Guardian I'll send an away team back to the Horizon to brief the captain of the situation, and then you can jump back with any reply."

Redding was really hoping S'Tron could talk him into taking the entire ship into the archway, but his personal desires had to be put in check.

It was Irksos who provided the answer.

"Sir, you are refering to an instance where there is an alteration in the past and sending someone to correct it. This is not the case here. We will not be affecting any event of the timeline before us; we are actually jumping to the present time but through a time portal that will in essence nullify the time required to cover the distance between us and the present position of the Horizon. "

S'Tron then added his own estimate about the situation.

"As for altering the future, Sir... the future is not set, like the past that brought us to this current present time. From our present time onward, all futures are valid and possible; the one that will become our present once getting there is what we will decide to do now... which includes choosing to travel through time as the correct event of the timeline, as this option is now part of our present from which this future will come out. Our time travel option was not the result of a previous time alteration from someone coming from our future and into his own past, our present. Therefore, using it will not change any future decided by our current decisions."

"In simple terms, Sir," Irksos concluded, "we will not be travelling into the past nor the future; we will just remove time from our travelling equation and move the ship instantly from here to there."

"Now I know why I should have taken that temporal mechanics course at the Academy," complained Carmillia Julian, shaking her head.

"That course isn't making this any easier for me to follow this Julian." Redding smiled.

"Alright then, lets do it." Tie in the helm to what passes for S'Tron's science station and prepare to take us in." at least this way when asked later about his decision he can say he was against it.