Captain's log, stardate 63510.4. The USS Crockett is continuing its survey probe into the outlying regions of the Briar Patch region. We are searching for metrion gas pockets, warp shallows, or any other navigation hazards, but have steered clear of any solar systems as per Starfleet's orders. Once we've charted safe routes, science vessels will be able to more safely negotiate this area and begin exploring in earnest.
We've been out here for three days and have four to go, but I can tell already that my crew will be glad when this tedious mission is over.
Captain Matthew Cross finished his dictation and leaned back in his chair, looking thoughtfully out the front window of his new Cat's-Eye class recon vessel Crockett.
"You love doing those, don't you?" said a woman's voice from behind him.
Cross swiveled his chair to face Lieutenant Josephine Schmidt sitting at one of the auxiliary science stations along the port side of the spacious cockpit. "Doing what?" he asked.
"Those captain's logs," Jo replied, a tiny, mischievous smile tugging at the corners of her lips. "I can tell. Your voice gets all deeper and you get this serious expression on your face." She cleared her throat, contorted her lovely face into a glower, and lowered her voice in a silly parody of Cross. "Captain's log, stardate. We are continuing our mission to search for gasbags and hot air."
A pair of chuckles emanated from the directions of the co-pilot's seat and the starboard science station where Ensigns Dexter Gray and Alex Dalton sat.
Cross raised an eyebrow in a very Vulcan-like manner and smiled indulgently at Jo. "Don't you people have some work to do?" he suggested pointedly.
Jo laughed quietly, then said, "Aye aye, Captain!" She turned her seat back to face her console and began programming the next series of subspace scans into the Crockett's sophisticated sensor suite. After a few seconds though, she turned back and said, "By the way, thanks for letting me and Alex tag along on this mission. Commander Carter and Max haven't exactly been a load of laughs this last week, and Sam's already left for Earth to start her medical training, so it's good to get away for a few days."
"You're welcome. I know things haven't been easy for the Banshees since HQ decided to deactivate the squad."
"Yeah..." Jo sat in sullen silence for a minute, then ventured the question that had burning on the minds of all five Banshees since the second they'd been informed that the Banshee Program had been suspended. "I don't suppose you have any special insight on whether or not Starfleet is going to reinstate us."
Cross smiled and turned back to face his console. "I'm afraid not, Lieutenant," he replied as he checked over his controls. "I wouldn't get my hopes up though."
"Oh," replied Jo. It was the answer she'd expected, but that didn't mean it hurt any less actually hearing it. As the Crockett's computer cycled through its instructions, she relaxed in her high-backed seat and let her thoughts drift back to the day their whole world had been turned upside down.
Sam's farewell party had been memorable, and she'd even gotten a big drunken kiss from the ruggedly handsome El Taco manager guy, but in the end they'd parted, and Banshee Squadron was officially broken apart. Sam was off on her new career, but no decision had yet been made regarding the fate of the other four women. Jo was glad to have the opportunity today to do something useful, and was sure Alex felt the same. At least Matthew Cross and Dexter Gray had landed on their feet, having gotten assigned to this brand new Cat's-Eye recon vessel, the USS Crockett.
An insistent beeping dislodged Jo's thoughts and brought her back to the here-and-now. A frown wrinkled her forehead as she watched the displays on the science console before her begin scrolling unexpected information at her.
"Captain," she said. "I'm getting a very strange reading directly astern."
Cross left his chair to stand behind Jo. "Define 'strange' please," he said. An unknown blip suddenly appearing directly behind their ship was an unlikely and suspicious coincidence and made him uneasy.
"I... I'm not sure. Alex, can you confirm what I'm seeing here?"
On the other side of the Crockett's cockpit, Alex Dalton bent over her own science panel and studied the anomalous readings. "I'm just an engineer, but it looks like some kind of time distortion," she replied.
Cross grunted unhappily. He strongly disapproved of time distortions. If he had the power, he would eliminate them from the universe entirely; they were nothing but trouble. Turning to his copilot, he said, "Ensign Gray, put some distance between us and the distortion. I don't want to risk coming into contact with it. We can run our scans from a safer distance."
"Aye, sir," said the young man. The Crockett banked and sped away from the unusual formation, which was rapidly intensifying and was now visible to the naked eye as a seething vortex of light and energy.
"Captain!" called Jo. "There's a ship coming through the distortion!"
"Shields up!" barked Cross. "Charge the phasers." He returned to his seat and took the helm from Dexter Gray, leaving the Ensign free to carry out his orders undistracted.
The deck under their feet lurched unexpectedly.
"They're shooting at us!" yelled Jo.
"Brilliant observation, science officer," growled Captain Cross. As the Crockett continued being struck by the unknown ship's weapons, he steadied himself with one hand while frantically punching evasive commands into the helm. Two more direct hits pounded the shields making the cabin lights dim as the ship's A.I. automatically diverted power to bolster the defenses.
"Their weapons are incredibly powerful!" reported Dexter. "Our shields are already down to sixty percent!"
"Who are we fighting?" demanded Cross of anyone who had the answer.
"The ship doesn't match anything currently in use by any known race," called Alex. "The computer's doing a full records search." Another blast rocked the Crockett's cabin. "Here it is... Forty meters in length, modular design... It's a 'Suliban cell-ship' -- last known use, mid-twenty-second century."
"Suliban? Never heard of them." The cabin slammed sideways and a display panel above Cross' head blew out in a shower of sparks, forcing the Captain to turn his face away and throw up his arms for protection. "They sure pack a wallop for a two-hundred-year-old ship!"
"Phaser banks are charged, sir!" called Ensign Gray.
"Time for some payback," growled Cross. His fingers did a wild mambo across the smooth black surface of his control console and the Crockett banked in a tight curve and sped directly back towards the small, geometric vessel that was biting at its heels. Four staccato streams of pulsed phaser energy leapt across the void connecting with the cell-ship's shields and making them erupt with multicolored pyrotechnics.
"That's got them!" shouted Dexter while shaking his fist at the cell-ship visible through the front viewport.
"Don't celebrate yet," snapped Cross. "Damage!" he called back to Alex and Jo.
The two women played a duet on their consoles, then Alex reported the results. "A few circuit blow-outs and fried breakers, and random rearranging of the furniture back in the lounge. Our shields are at sixty-four percent and recharging. If you shunt some phaser power over you can have them back to one-hundred percent in under a minute."
"No time for that," said Cross.
Through the front viewport, the weird, alien vessel was circling around for another attack run. It steadied its course and launched another volley of particle beam blasts at the small Starfleet scout ship. Inside the Crockett's cockpit, the four officers had to shield their eyes from the sudden brilliant glare. The forward viewports automatically adjusted their opacity to compensate for excess light, but the Suliban attack was too ferocious and swift and the windows were overwhelmed.
Captain Cross never wavered however, and the Crockett flew straight on through the maelstrom and emerged unscathed on the other side. His index finger stabbed the phaser control and the four weapon barrels blazed hot subatomic particles. The Suliban cell-ship took the full brunt of the sustained counterattack on its forward shields. They sputtered frenetically and finally flashed out altogether.
The cell-ship corkscrewed away in a desperate attempt to escape, spewing a sparkling stream of warp plasma from cracks in its hull. Ahead of it, a new swirling energy vortex suddenly ripped cross the starry heavens, and the cell-ship was heading straight for it.
"They're trying to escape!" exclaimed Jo from her back seat. She checked her instruments. "It's another time distortion. I can't tell where it leads."
"We should let them go," said Alex from the other back seat.
But Captain Cross wasn't about to let their assailants get off that easily. "These Suliban, whoever they are, are going to have to answer for attacking us without provocation. Ensign, lock phasers on their engines."
"Aye, Captain."
Cross steered the Crockett on an intercept course, bringing them much too close to the time distortion for his comfort, but the alternative was to let them escape, and that was completely unacceptable. Just before the Suliban vessel slipped through the vortex, he said, "Fire!"
A single quad-pulse of phaser energy flashed from the leading edge of the scout ship's hull, striking the rear of the target. The Suliban ship lurched and spun out of control. An instant later, Jo called out, "I'm picking up a massive energy surge from the vortex!"
"Get us out of here!" shouted Alex in a frightened voice.
Cross did his best, but the helm fought his every command. As the energy waves from the time vortex crashed over the hull of the small Starfleet vessel, its systems began overloading and going out one by one. The overhead lights in the cockpit flickered and died, plunging the four crew into near darkness. The only remaining light came the few small, mostly red indicators left active on the control consoles, and the angry, swirling vortex outside the front viewports.
Matthew Cross watched helplessly as the expanding shockwave of energy that had slammed into them reversed direction and came rushing back in towards the center of the vortex, dragging the Crockett along with it. He watched as the Suliban cell-ship struck the eye of the vortex and vanished in a brilliant flash of light. Only seconds remained before the Crockett was sucked in too. There was a growing roar in his ears like the end of the world.
"Hang on to something!" he yelled, and then everything turned white.
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