Season 5: Episode 1 TBR065 – Fixed Point

Before they know what has happened the ship is thrown… somewhere! The next memories they have are awaking upon the floor of the bridge. The Potemkin herself had taken moderate damage and the sensors needed to be realigned before they could provide any information regarding space around them. The engineers scrambled to bring the focusing lens into alignment and then reset the programming that refined, sorted and interpreted the vast amount of data collected by their sensors. As the sensors started to come online astrometrics built up a map of local space. The logged the location of pulsars, the Pulsar Grid should be able to tell them, to within a few light years where they were. There was a problem though according to the ships records their distance to the galactic core was wrong.

With the records they had the bridge crew quickly discovered that the reason for the discrepancy was temporal, they had been thrown back in time as well as across the galaxy. Once this was discovered they could pinpoint a time and location. The year 2375 and 50’000 light years from the Federation! In fact, they found themselves in the same systems that Voyager visited years before, the location of one end of the Barzan wormhole. First discovered in 2366 but proved to be unstable. In their records the Bridge Crew discover that Voyager failed to take advantage of a possible way home thanks to a pair of Ferengi who had managed to destabilize this end of the wormhole and deny Voyager a possible way home.

Something triggered inside the Vulcan diplomat and she had a flash of memory. This prompted her to bring up a file within her console’s memory. Opening the file brought up a video message from their old friend, Grand Admiral Carter. The Protectorate officer they had met years before, as they had been thrown so far from him by the Xec Wormhole drive!

She was a hologram that was lit by a strange red glow. She was harassed looking and quickly explained that the Potemkin had been a victim of converging and conflicting technologies interacting in an unpredicted manner. The Protectorate technology threaded throughout their systems, the Tilikaal artifacts in their cargo holds and the Iconian transporter effect culminated in a brief but powerful subspace rift.

Carter looks off screen and nods, saying she didn’t have much time, she wanted them to know that she couldn’t interfere or return them home as they were… she called them a Fixed Point in time and space. Carter quickly explained that any interference was impossible… or rather incredibly dangerous and could result in a space/time rift. Carter had seeded their computers with all the information that the Federation would have had at this point in the timeline. There was also a set of coordinates that had something to do with the Potemkin, although she had no idea what that could be as all the Protectorates records on the ship and current crew had been sealed. Not even her high rank and clearance levels could unlock it, it was unprecedented and she was clearly upset about that!

Setting a course home they would first need to cross an area of space which is controlled by a species only known as ‘The Swarm’ a highly xenophobic race that would attack on sight. The potemkin had all the advancements of the last 26 years and had already been configured to ‘run silent’ so they could creep across the thinnest part of their space, and they did without being intercepted or detected. It was a very tense few days as they warped through swarm space at a low enough speed so as not to send up a subspace flare!

Coming out the other side they scan a massive nebula, hundreds of light years across it would have taken years to get around, their only real choice was to go through. The problem being that the sheer size of the expanse and that their sensors would be slightly impaired once they entered meant they had to stop at a space station at the edge of the nebula. Records seemed to indicate that Voyager stopped here also and were able to procure starcharts which allowed safe travel.

The Bridge crew shopped around, using non-vital items, supplies and resources they traded their way into starcharts and a few other supplies that would enrich their food and travel for a while. Basin had to chase after Elli a few times and Elli had managed to haggle for a piece of alien technology that looked familiar, but just different enough that it was strange and interesting. The Doctor discovered a nice treat that was a hit with the entire crew!