Blinding, white-hot pain was the only reality that existed. Searing through every fiber of body and mind. Ice picks stabbing through temples and eyes. A man's very soul boiled away in an instant of primordial supernova heat. But only for an instant.
It was over before it began, paradoxically -- but such was the nature of time travel.
The lights on the bridge flickered back on, first dimly, but up to full strength a few seconds later. The deck gave one final parting shudder as the Virgo, carried only by its momentum, navigated free from the last eddies of the temporal rift. Consoles all around the bridge hummed back to life, and everything seemed normal again.
The human bridge component took a little longer to recover. Captain Maruu had somehow managed to hang on to his chair, but Commander Lataro sported a small bleeding cut above his left eye from banging his head on his status console during the turbulence. Jennifer, Benton, K'Lara and Jenara had been thrown unceremoniously to the floor. Johnny, looking somewhat ashen, was helping his wife up, and the rest were pulling themselves up by their consoles. Francesca was so rattled that she hadn't even noticed that Benton was down.
As soon as he found his voice, Captain Maruu ordered, "Damage report!"
Lataro bent over his console and read the incoming reports. "Sickbay reports minor injuries only, Captain. There's minor damage to the ship, mostly circuit burnouts. Looks like we made it more or less in one piece."
"Good...," muttered the captain. He rose from his seat and took a few steps toward the front of the bridge. "Then let's see where we are. Activate main viewer."
Immediately, the main viewscreen swam into focus, and on it was the most beautiful sight any of them had ever seen.
Earth.
"Time index?" asked Maruu expectantly.
Jenara bent over the science station to verify what the time warp had done to them, but before she could answer, Benton spoke up from his station.
"Captain. We're receiving a hail on standard Starfleet channels." He took a moment to read the message on his screen, then continued in a slightly amused tone. "They say we've totally disrupted the outbound space lanes with our crazy maneuver and demand to know what the heck we think we're doing."
Maruu sighed at the incongruity of the situation. They'd just come across four hundred years of time, and the welcome they get is a complaint about traffic violations. Typical bureaucracy.
He smiled and said, "We're home."