“Every scenario ended in system destruction.”  Thasaz sat at the briefing room table as she walked the senior staff through her latest report. The holographic display at the front of the room displayed each run with red letters confirming the failure.  “We’re still missing correlation with 50 data points.”  She turned to the table, “We’re working to scan the area for any readings connected to this anomaly.”

Walton tapped her fingers gently on the table.  They were no closer to home.  Answers were creating questions.  When she was younger, she’d wondered, as a fascination, what it would be like to be on the Voyager during their experience.  It wasn’t fascinating anymore.  It was turning into a nightmare.  “We will be underway within the hour.  Discuss with your teams – let’s work on finding a way home.”  The staff filed out, but Thasaz remained in her seat.  Walton looked up as the door closed, leaving them alone.  “Commander?”

“This is beyond weird, Captain.  It’s broken the odd meter.  I’m running out of words to explain what’s happened to us.”  She leaned forward, her hands nervously clenching and unclenching, “I’ve been studying science for much of my life – Romulan, Federation – I’ve seen plenty.”  She locked eyes with her CO, “I don’t know what this is.”

Wren felt the weight of her science chief’s confession from across the table.  She admitted, “I don’t either, commander.  The Dragonfly has some of the most complex science equipment around…and we’re trying to discover more about an undiscovered phenomenon that isn’t willing to give us the necessary answers. It’s frustrating.”

Thasaz agreed, “That’s putting it mildly, sir.”

Walton felt a thin smile tug at her lips, “We’re all going to find our way to where you’re at, commander.  As everyone starts to grasp our reality, we will need to find a way to work on this together…and find ways to resist the urge to give over to the panic, fear, and anxiety that’s knocking at the door.”  

Suddenly, the klaxons rang as the lights flickered to the customary red, the voice of Commander Parks shouting from the badge of the CO, “Captain to the bridge!”

It took them thirty seconds to run down the corridor, take the turbolift up to deck one, and enter the bridge where Walton accepted the center chair from her executive officer, “Report.”

Park spoke as Thasaz replaced the science officer at her station: “We detected a surge of tachyon readings along with plenty of others—sensor readings are copies of our previous data points. We went into full reverse to put some distance between us.  It’s reading as an unknown phenomenon, but it hasn’t closed.  It’s been open for one minute.”

Walton stared at the screen.  It was unlike anything she’d seen.  She was both fascinated and horrified by it.  “Thasaz?”

“Getting complete data points now, sir. It’s a…opening of some kind.”  She tapped at the console, tasking her team with taking some of the workload to identify what they were seeing while she scanned the screens in front of her, “It’s unstable – the power levels are modulating back and forth…there’s a connecting point at the end.”  She turned to Wren, “Permission to launch a probe?”

“Do it.  Helm – be ready to get us out of here at warp speed.”  Prentice began to search for a suitable course on the galaxy map he’d been piecing together with his short and long-range sensors.

Thasaz launched the probe and immediately turned to her console, “Approaching the opening…lots of gravimetric waves, spikes in tachyon waves – the probe is…being pulled in!”  She frowned, “The opening appears to have some kind of tractor element or a gravity well that automatically reaches out to pull whatever is there in…acting like a black hole.”  She watched the data continue to feed, “The inside of the opening is stable – the probe reports no gravimetric effect.  It’s nearing an endpoint.”  She tapped at the console and brought up the video transmission as the probe fell into an empty sector of space.  “Sourcing location…”  Thasaz waited for the navigational computer and the probe’s readings to agree where it had ended up.  She felt her frown return, “Results showing…Delta Quadrant – but on the far end.”  A beep alerted her, “The opening is growing more unstable…power levels fracturing!”  They watched as the opening shrank until it blinked out of existence.  Silence fell on the bridge.

Walton asked, her voice strained, “Did we get a complete data set?”

The science chief felt some relief as the data stream scrolled over her screens, “We have a 99% complete data set.  Much more than we had before, captain.”  The relief she felt washed over the rest of the bridge crew, their posture relaxing.

Wren complimented Thsaz, “Good work, commander.  Get your team working on all of it.”

“That’s not good.”  Commander Park remarked as she stood near the warp core with the chief engineer, Lieutenant Commander Miados.  The XO had just been given the report on the state of engineering with one glaring issue.

Miados agreed, “Somehow, in the journey through whatever it was, the core got…jostled?  Shaken up?  I’m still not sure.  The impact is that we’re going to have to drop our warp capability to the middle range until we can get her stabilized and repaired.”  She stared at her warp core, still mystified, “It is downright strange.  As a precaution, I did a full diagnostic of the ship, and I’ve got my people doing a bow-to-stern inspection – nothing else of note has come up.”

Park wondered what the inspection would reveal. Whatever they had traveled through was an unknown phenomenon, and unknown things tended to have unintended effects on ships and crew.  “Keep me updated, Chief.  How’s your deputy holding up?”

Miados felt her symbiont kick, “Tell her the truth.”  For her part, Shealynn did, “You’re asking about how she’s handling the specter of Pandora still hanging over her.”  Park answered with a shocked nod.  Miados grinned.  Subtly sucked.  She and Miados had always agreed on that, at least.  She glanced across the room at the office where her deputy was working on shift schedules, studiously considering requests and conflicts.  “She’s a hard worker, Commander.  She’s dedicated and focused.  She doesn’t let the distractions get to her.”  She allowed,  “It hasn’t been easy.  Crawford shared that she feels afraid every so often but that she feels safe with us on Dragonfly.”  Park thanked her and headed out the doors.  Miados wondered if the question was just a check-in or something more.

“Under…what?”  Thasaz sat at her desk as the nervous ensign handed over the PADD.  She read from the report, “Underspace?”  The young ensign had been voluntold by his group to take the report to Thasaz.  She’d broken the science team into groups to investigate and interrogate the massive amount of data they’d pulled from the probe before the opening had closed.  She asked him, “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Ma’…sir.  It’s a little crazy, I know.  I mean, we’ve been at this for four hours, and Cadet Keiur was getting hangry, and Cadet Lita’s sarcasm took a dark turn, and I’m not good at conflict resolution, and so I got kicked ou..they made me come here, and I don’t know.”

Thasaz raised her eyebrows, her patience near a boiling point.  She asked with such force that it startled the officer,  “Ensign Rayback…do you think this is possible?”  

He clamped his mouth shut, and she watched as he searched the ceiling for an answer.  “Could I have the PADD back, ma…sir.”  She returned to him, and he scrolled through the report, muttering to himself, intermittently shaking his head.  Thasaz watched the clock, amused.  Five minutes later, he looked up, “It’s the best explanation we could come up with.  Nothing makes any sense.  We had to pull records from the Voyager mission to compare…and it’s really similar ma..sir.”

She tapped her fingers on her desk, processing the report she’d read and Rayback’s explanation.  Her science team was young and inexperienced in the nuance of deeper scientific study.  The other side of it was they were more willing to take risks and make a leap that she wouldn’t have originally made.  She’d missed it and done her share of examining Captain Janeway’s and her crew’s missions.  She stood, “Take me to your team.”

Cadet Keiur munched on a snack pack that Thasaz had thrown at her. Cadet Lita sat with her hand over her mouth, as ordered by the science chief.  She’d walked through the sprawling office and found the errant group of cadets and ensigns that she’d grouped together on a lark.  “How did you figure this out?”  A lithe hand went up, “Yes, Ensign Pierre?”

She stood, “We started with all the ideas we thought were possible.” She pointed to the holographic board where they had written a list of what Thasaz estimated to be nearly three hundred different types of phenomena.  “We took the data and eliminated the ones that didn’t fit outright.  That left us two hundred.  We took each and dug into the data even more – that took out another hundred.  Then we had to go one by one with the data sets from it and then ours…that took out fifty.”  She turned to Lita, “That’s where she came in.”

Thasaz turned her head to focus on the embarrassed cadet, “Speak.”

Cadet Lita removed her hands, “I’m a Voyager junky. Some people love Kirk, Sisko – but I couldn’t get enough of Janeway’s journey, her crew, and that ship.  Intrepid’s a hot…good looki…it’s a class of ship that I like very much.”

Thasaz narrowed her eyes, her voice turning into a hefted sledgehammer, “A shorter version.”

Lita Morrison nervously nodded, “I studied their missions backward, forwards, everything.  I memorized each encounter.  I ran the Voyager Appreciation Society at the Academy…right, shorter.  The mission where they encountered the Underspace Aperture was so fuc…so fascinating I kept tabs on it as much as possible.  I’ve been keeping a research file on it because it’s just…it’s so interesting, Commander.”

The science chief measured her explanation.  Morrison had requested to be transferred to the Dragonfly, but she’d barely passed Thasaz’s dossier review and records review, sliding through on a recommendation from an old friend.  She asked, “You think this is our answer?”

“Probably, commander.”  Morrison felt the stare from the Romulan intensify, and she clarified with an answer she knew her chief was wanting, “95%.” A raised eyebrow pushed her to answer further with a sly smile, “98.5% if we really pushed it.”

Thasaz chuckled, startling the team, “There’s the sarcasm I’ve read and heard so much about.  Your team takes first.”  The group cheered, and she quieted them with, “You’ve earned yourself an off shift.  Oh, not you, Cadet Morrison.  We’ve got the rest of the team’s results to review…and then present to Captain Walton.”

The rest of her team scrambled off, leaving her standing there, her mouth hanging open in shock, “I’m…review…Captain?”

Her science chief smiled as she motioned for her to follow her, “Welcome to the big leagues, cadet.”