Iskander al-Kwaritzmi’s personal log, day 36 in the Underspace: last log of the day before going to bed. The recrystallization of the singularity virtualizor is 94.3% done. I am still extremely torn. This means that soon we’ll be able to try to escape the Underspace. If we manage, that will mean freedom and separation. I don’t know how to solve this emotional dilemma.

The alarm sounded during the night.

It was, of course, unfamiliar to Iskander in its sound and specific message — on a Federation ship it sounded vaguely like an electronic trumpet, but on the Koruba it resembled somewhat an insane percussionist — but the general idea was quite clear.

Both Iskander and Dhae jumped up from the bed, naked and confused, groggy from the little sleep. They looked at each other, finding only confusion and fear.

“Is this a red alert or a yellow alert?” was Iskander’s first question.

“We only have one type of alert” answered Dhae, his voice incredibly deep and smoky.

Iskander turned to take his trousers, but in doing so he looked out of the window of Dhae’s cabin. The Undercroft looked different.

That’s a first, he thought for a moment. But then the alert signals came into his head. It had never looked like that: the amount of junk and detritus Iskander could see from the window was extraordinary. Usually they would see a couple of broken ships or unfortunate asteroids, out there, floating in the orange chaos, but now he couldn’t even count the number of dots, large and small, that was to be seen.

“Dhae!” he said, nervously. “Look there.”

Dhae went to the window and looked out. For a moment he froze and his expression showed terror.

“Dhae! What is it?”

The Romulan had to try twice to speak. “It’s… we call it the Undertide. A tide in the Underspace.”

“You have already seen it?”

“It’s the phenomenon that damaged the Koruba. Iskander… we are dead.”

Iskander, looking out, could now see that the junk and detritus came in all shapes and sizes. For a moment he could swear to see a dead Galaxy-class starship: and the whole thing was coming their way.

“It’s actually a distortion in time” said Dhae nervously, ever the scientist. “It’s not an actual tide. The time distortions somehow bond to some of the junk and take it with them.”

“And accelerate them?”

“No, the junk is still traveling at relatively low velocity. But time accelerates around them: from their point of view, they are slowly drifting through space. But, from our point of view, their movement happens thousands, if not millions, of times faster.”

Iskander cursed under his breath.

“I’m sorry, Iskander” said Dhae, looking out. “We are dead. The tide will be upon us much sooner than we realize — time is its ally. The Koruba was almost destroyed, last time this happened. And if not, another of our allies will be hit, and we’ll never manage to emanate the tachyon field.”

“No.”

“Iskander –“

At that moment, the intercom of the ship sounded. A loud voice, towering above the alarm, in a neutral voice. “Sublieutenant Dhae. Code 3. Code 3.”

Iskander looked at Dhae. “Code 3?”

Dhae breathed. “They want us to put the virtualizor back in. What are they thinking? It’s not ready.”

Iskander took his trousers and put them on. “I can tell you what they are thinking: if we don’t emit a tachyon field escape now, then we’re going to get destroyed by the junk flung at us by the Undertide.”

Dhae shook his head. He was still naked, and looked vulnerable. “The virtualizor isn’t ready. It’s probably around 95%.”

“You know what? Sure. And I’m going to run to main engineering and put it back into the artificial singularity engine. And I’m going to make sure that it works.”

Dhae stared at him. “And if it doesn’t?”

“Dead if we stay here, dead if we fail. What choice do we have?”

Dhae shook his head, but couldn’t find anything to object. “Do you need help?”

“I’ll manage. It’s better you run to the bridge and inform them about the status, Dhae.”

Dhae nodded, nervous. “When you are done, please come to the bridge.”

“Am I welcome to the bridge?”

“The engineering position on the bridge is where — hm — monitoring is most efficient.”

Iskander looked at Dhae. He had looked slightly away when saying that. “Are you keeping a secret from me, Romulan?”

Dhae scoffed. “Fine. If we die, then you die at my side. Now go.”

Iskander kissed him lightly and then looked him over. This might be the last time they see each other. But he forced himself to smile. “We’re not going to die.”

The human ran out of their quarters thinking that it was, somehow, justified that the Romulans kept so many secrets. They probably didn’t want the galaxy to know what adorably big softies they were when in love.

______________________________________________________________

The recrystallization process had been around 94.6%. The machine hadn’t been happy to interrupt the process at this point, but Iskander gave it little choice. Working as rapidly as possible he reinserted the virtualizor where it belonged, and restarted the machinery.

It whirred back to life and didn’t explode. The artificial singularity was producing energy within parameters, enough to generate any tachyon field and to go to warp. The question now was how long it would last: hours or minutes or seconds? Iskander had no understanding of how an artificial singularity really operated in time, and didn’t have any useful heuristics. He knew that a dilithium crystal in the same state would probably shatter very quickly, and hoped that the virtualizor wasn’t equally sensitive.

Nervous, he pressed the big button that signaled that the artificial singularity was ready. It was now out of his hands.

He ran out of main engineering, heading for the slowside.

_____________________________________________________________

The bridge was small and had an unusual planimetry. Iskander had recollected that there were two schools of bridge engineering amongst the Romulans: some bridges resembled their Federation equivalents, with a commanding officer sitting in the middle and command panels with chairs positioned around them; and some bridges were dominated by a large central panel around which everyone worked, standing.

This was a bridge of the second making: a roughly dodecagonal room build around a large dodecagonal command panels. In its centre, a column that went up to the ceiling.

It was also crowded. Iskander for a moment wondered if all 17 surviving Romulans were packed in there, but then thought that probably the cook wasn’t.

The Romulans turned to stare at him, with a certain hostility.

“Sublieutenant Dhae” said a Romulan man with the insignias of a Centurion, “did you ask the human to come to the bridge?”

“We need an engineer on the bridge, Centurion” answered Dhae without a trace of emotion.

The Centurion seemed displeased, but finally looked at Iskander and pointed. “Lieutenant, please take that position and monitor the artificial singularity.”

Iskander nodded and went there. He glanced at the monitors: there was all the information about the engineering systems, the ODS grid, the artificial singularity. All within parameters.

“Thirty second until we have achieved position” said a Romulan woman, probably the pilot.

The Centurion nodded. “The alien ships?”

Another woman, probably at the tactical position, looked over her readings. “They are all at the coordinates, waiting for us.”

“Is the tachyon pulse ready?”

“Yes, Centurion” answered Dhae. “At your command.”

The Centurion nodded slowly. He didn’t have a position at the dodecagonal command panel, preferring instead to walk around it and observe what everyone was doing. “Sublieutenant V’Syanisk, open a channel to all, audio only. This is the Koruba. We are going to emit the tachyon beam as soon as we are in position. Do follow our lead. Koruba out.”

“The other ships have confirmed, Centurion” reported Sublieutenant V’Syanisk.

“Position reached, Centurion” said the pilot.

“Full stop. How long until the Undertide hits us?”

“Minutes, Centurion” said the woman at tactical.

For a couple of seconds nobody spoke.

Only at that moment Iskander realized that there was a big screen in the bridge: one could see, lost in the Underspace, the other four ships, and the incoming wave of junk.

Everyone is terrified, thought Iskander. He was too, of course, for that was the only rational state of mind to be in.

Finally the Centurion spoke, in hushed tones. “Science, initiate tachyon pulse. Navigator, lay a warp course out of the Underspace, ready at my signal.”

Iskander could easily see the output in power of the artificial singularity increase enormously as the tachyon pulse was being produced. If the virtualizor was to break, it would break now, he thought. And yet… it didn’t. Twenty seconds passed, during which nobody spoke, and the artificial singularity was still producing energy.

“We did it!” said Dhae, trying not to scream. “No time distortion on our ship! Centurion, we did it!”

On the screen, the ships started vanishing with the typical flash of light of the Warp drive. The Dopterians were the first.

“Go to warp” said the Centurion to the pilot.

They jumped to warp and immediately alarms started blaring. The pattern of starlines on he screen didn’t seem normal.

“The Warp field is not stable” said the pilot, in terror. “We are going to fall out of Warp.”

“WHAT!” screamed the Centurion, completely losing his Romulan calm. “What’s happening, human?”

“The artificial singularity is working correctly” said Iskander.

“I’m detecting massive data corruption in the computer, Centurion” intervened a Romulan who had not yet spoken, a small male, probably the youngest. “Fatal desynchronization of the central server.”

A LOVELACE CASCADE, thought Iskander, now also terrified.

They had travelled. The slowside and the fastside were now experiencing time at the same rate. But the parts of the computer that had been on the slowside and those who had been on the fastside had been programmed to communicate with each other taking into account the time distortion for all of those 36 days. But as soon as the Koruba had moved, the slowside and fastside hardware hadn’t been reset properly, and had started communicating at incommensurate times: some hardware sending data fifty times faster than expected, some hardware receiving data fifty times slower than expected.

The first result was a feedback shutter, a series of local desynchronizations of single machines and devices, mostly leading to error messages or shutdowns. But, if the feedback shutter was too severe, the central computer banks would start being affected: that was a non-lineare Lovelace cascade, a phenomenon capable of completely corrupting the entire computer.

Needless to say, on a starship where everything was done by the computer, that meant death. A slow death. It would take hours for the data corruption to reach something vital like life support or the artificial singularity containment system, but whenever that happened life on the ship would be over.

“IT WAS YOUR JOB TO PREVENT THIS!” roared the Centurion to the young Romulan. “DO SOMETHING.”

“Nothing can be done” opined Iskander quietly. He really hated to be the bearer of bad news, especially ones related to everyone’s impending demise. But he could see now traces of data corruption on his monitors: gradually, the first engineering systems were shutting down.

“We did all of this and we only succeeded to save the Dopterians?” screamed the Centurion. “The plan worked and we’re being destroyed by something unrelated?”

“Are we out of the Underspace, Uhlan?” asked the woman at tactical.

“Negative. If we lose warp now, we’re falling back into the Underspace” answered the pilot.

In a move of absolute unprofessionalism, the Centurion stormed out of the bridge. Everyone started talking and shouting.

Who knew that panicking Romulans are so unruly, thought Iskander, breathing deeply.

Suddenly he became aware that Dhae was standing next to him. They hugged.

Dhae whispered something in his ear. “There is something I want you to know. My name.”

Iskander didn’t understand. “Your name?”

“I am called Ishvanyl.”

Iskander stared at him without understanding.

The Koruba shook violently. Everyone looked at the screen.

“We have lost the warp bubble” said the pilot.

“We haven’t fallen out of Warp” remarked the tactical officer.

The Koruba shook again, and again, but the starlines on the screen didn’t change. Finally it stopped shaking, and it was still going at warp.

Dhae went back to his command panel and took a moment to understand.

“What happened, Sublieutenant? Why are we still at warp?” asked the pilot.

“The shaking was a tractor beam” said Dhae, enormously pleased. “It was a tractor beam!”

The USS Redding, a most humble California-class starship, flew out the Underspace carrying in its Warp bubble a crippled Romulan bird-of-prey.