From Beta to Gamma in less than 30 seconds.

[Annabelle O'Halloran 0]

They were still alive!

 

Anna assumed that as time went on she would cease to be surprised. She continued monitoring sensors and organizing her thoughts while beginning the process of trying to interpret scans taken before and during Reaent’s trip through the wormhole. So much had happened so quickly.

 

It was a brilliant plan, very audacious, and in the excitement, she let the reason for hiding in the shadow of the gas giant planet and courting death from radiation poisoning, slip to the back of her mind: the Proxima. Her signal was so near. And yet so far. Just beyond the huge rogue asteroid; just out of sensor range.

 

Reaent had to get close enough to finally find out what had called them across the Neutral Zone and into this very dangerous and entirely too crowded area of Romulan Space. Four Romulan Warbirds, seven science vessels and four support craft were gathered near the huge asteroid and in the vicinity of Proxima’s signal. And there was something else-sensors reported a heavy concentration of magneton particles and an open wormhole, where, according to data on file, admittedly old and God only knew how it had been obtained, no wormhole existed.

 

And so the plan: A Distraction.

 

Reaent’s fighters launched, cockpits empty, their virtual pilots safe on the holodeck, exploding from warp right into the midst of the Romulan ships. The fighters immediately engaged the Warbirds, slipping in and around the support and science ships, and once the Warbirds were firing back, jumped to warp. And the Warbirds followed, taking the bait and leaving the four support and seven science vessels. The first part of the plan was working. No one had time to be surprised.

 

Wim Murray launched 2 probes into the wormhole; a Class 4 to try and get as much immediate information as possible and a Class 8 in the hope of ascertaining if the wormhole’s transkinetic vector might reveal where the wormhole terminated.

 

As soon as the Warbirds followed Reaent’s remote controlled fighters into warp, the Reaent, with Jon Shamor at Helm, and already disengaged from orbit around the gas giant, went to warp and seconds later dropped into the same area of space previously occupied by the Warbirds. She and Brian Smith began immediate scanning and monitoring the telemetry of the two probes. The Class 4 had performed like a champ but the Class 8, after responding initially, failed.

 

The Rom science ships sent out distress calls and began firing on Reaent. Reaent’s shields held and in turn, the order was given to fire on the gigantic asteroid. Everyone on the Bridge had been stunned when instead of breaking the huge rock into pieces, it was revealed to be some kind of hollow docking facility and inside of it...a Nebula Class starship. Proxima.

 

So much happened in such a short time but for her, that moment stood still, even as Reaent shook with the force of the attack as all of the science and support ships turned their combined firepower onto her. She had spent so much time, too much time, studying Proxima’s manifest and speculating about what might have happened to her crew, that to see the ship in one piece took her breath away and caused her to lose focus. It almost felt like a physical blow when Commander Ridire ordered the Nebula Class ship destroyed, and yet there was no recourse.

 

At the same time, the remote fighters, almost out of receiving distance, finished with a kamikaze run against the Warbirds. The remaining Warbirds turned back, answering the distress calls of the Rom Science vessels. With only sixty seconds ETA on the Warbirds, Captain Michaels ordered immediate evacuation of the area but...Reaent wouldn’t respond. The ship was positioned over a double line of some sort of marker buoys that were transmitting an algorithm over and over that the computer couldn’t interpret. It became crystal clear what those buoys were for when the wormhole suddenly activated and Reaent was swallowed.

 

The wormhole appeared to be an artificial construct. This surmise seemed reasonable based on the dead in the water drone and the over saturation of magneton particles recorded by their Class 4 probe on its way in. The Fleet database contained a reference to an experiment done in 2372 by a member of the Trill Science Ministry. That experiment created a wormhole that lasted 23.4 seconds before collapsing and blowing everything around it to hell when the shields of a Class 4 probe, sent in to mimic an interstellar spacecraft, interacted with the tetryon field. The Romulans appeared to have found a way to stabilize the field. Hopefully, the scans picked up enough data that the computer could create a model that would be able to duplicate the effect.

 

And now, here they were, in the Gamma Quadrant. Two months travel from the Idran system, home of the Bajoran wormhole.

 

It was incredibly exciting!

 

Naturally, she was keeping that thought to herself. The rest of the crew seemed to take everything in stride and exhibited a kind of grim, world-weary ‘We’ve looked Death in the eye and told him to go screw himself but we’re sure he’s coming back’ attitude. They had all seen so much and this was her first mission. She somehow sensed they would look askance if she mentioned how thrilled she was to have survived a trespass across the Neutral Zone, a cruise through Romulan space and a trip through an artificially created wormhole. She sort of got the feeling it was nothing too out of the ordinary. All in a day's work for Reaent.

 

Jon Shamor’s comment that the Romulan's ability to open a wormhole at will was something to be seriously worried about reminded her that the ramifications of having survived the wormhole trip were greater than her joy at having lived to tell the tale. She had no trouble recognizing the serious threat to Federation Security, but the sensors in front of her dazzled with data from the nearby Valladro Nebula and while the computer was analyzing, she basked.