by David Smith
Dave opened his mouth to reply, but shut it a few seconds later. The fact that they were travelling back in time past their previous selves who were still travelling forward in time made visualising the engagement a near impossibility. He’d tried to anticipate problems they might encounter, but his brain couldn’t compensate for that fact that in this instance, cause and effect were actually effect and cause.
If they got anything wrong, there was nothing they could do about it as they’d have gone even further back in time away from the event that they needed to react to?
He gave up when O’Mara put him out of his misery “Ah, you’re worrying too much. We’ve already seen what happens: sit back and enjoy the show!”
Clearing his throat, Dave replied “We’ll be fine. Just launch on the mark.”
“Sorry sir, I just like to be able to see what I’m shooting. I shoot, things go bang: happy days. I shoot, things put themselves back together? Well ….. it just ain’t right.” grumbled the Tactical Officer.
He concentrated on his tactical display and watched as things moving forward in time converged on their predicted positions. “Firing in five …… four …… three …… two …… one ……” There was a dull thump, followed quickly by another. “Torpedoes away! Running hot and true.”
On the screen a distant implosion brought a beacon into existence from a cloud of debris, and two bright dots of light sprang away from it arcing back towards them. They watched transfixed as Tiger’s torpedoes sprang forward intercepting them perfectly in mid-flight a few seconds and all four spangles disappeared without so much as a ripple.
Silence pervaded the Bridge apart from O’Mara who whooped loudly “YEAH!! SPOT ON!! Great shot, ASBeau!”
She paused as everyone stared at her. Slightly self-consciously she added “Relax!! That went exactly like it should have done. We’ve just passed the Tactical Test! Well, I know that we’ve passed the test already, but our previous selves, that is ….. we’re ….. they’re …. just about to pass …… “ Her brow furrowed as even her intellect struggled to find an appropriate tense. “Oh bugger it. It’s all good!!”
There were odd cheers scattered around the Bridge, but at least everyone seemed to relax, taking the Science Officer’s word that everything had gone / would go according to plan.
Dave breathed a sigh of relief. “Ok, there’s nothing more for us to do here. Dolplop, set course for Hole, Sector 244. Maximum warp: Let’s go home.”
Chapter 20
The journey back to Hole was wonderfully uncomplicated. After the stress and strains of validating the ship and then trying to extricate her from a gigantic dust cloud, everyone was more than happy to have a few days where they had absolutely nothing to worry about other than whether the re-match between Esposito and Jarvis would take place.
Dave had spent as much time as he could directing the combined efforts of the Engineering Department and Science Department to try and find a way to alter the drive coils to allow forward movement through space without backward movement through time, but they’d quickly concluded this might not be possible.
Everyone did their own investigation into the matter and Dave and the Senior Staff gathered to discuss their thinking in the Officer’s Mess.
“Ok ladies and gentlemen, here’s where we’re at” Dave began. “We’re still travelling at ultra-high warp speeds, due to an unexpected interaction between our warp-coils and the Tana-built units the engineers installed to get us underway from the dust-cloud. Everyone agrees there’s no-way we can get the system as it is to generate a warp-field that will move us forward through space at those velocities without moving us backwards through time.”
There were nods of agreement all around the table.
Dave continued. “That’s no good to anyone. We have to find some way to get the warp-drive working properly or we won’t be in a position to improve the deteriorating situation at the Sha T’Al / Tana border. As it stands we’re probably breaking every one of the Fleet’s proposed temporal directives too.”
“For those reasons, the question we have to ask ourselves is what can we do that might change the dynamics of the warp-field?”
There followed an awkward silence before Lieutenant-Commander O’Mara spoke up.
“The only potential solution anyone in the Science Department could come up with was to vent plasma directly into the warp-field to try to de-stabilise the secondary warping effect.”
She sighed and ran her fingers through her tousled and unruly red hair before continuing: “Everyone agreed that venting plasma would achieve de-stabilisation, but we spent hours arguing over what effect this would have.”
“Most of us are convinced the high-energy of the plasma will de-stabilise the co-axial element of the field and allow transit in normal time, albeit at reduced speed. But several of the team voiced concerns it could create exactly the sort of unstable worm-hole that threw us three hundred light-years in the wrong direction a few weeks back.”
There were murmurs of discomfort and unease from all around the table.
She shrugged before admitting “I can see both sides, but I can’t be sure which way it will turn out. I got desperate enough to consult the PILOCC, but that was a bit of a waste of time. I waited a whole day for an answer, which is a lifetime in computer processing terms, but Susan just hedged her bets.”
“She told me she’d called on the myriad thought processes of some of the Federations finest minds, and that they generally agreed with us, that plasma would de-stabilise the co-axial element of the warp-field. But then she added that Dr Chandrakar’s thoughts on the matter indicated that the plasma might not de-stabilise the warp-field in the way that the rest of us anticipated, but could cause it to create a worm-hole through the fifth, sixth or seventh dimensions.”
“Susan then added that all of her other personality engrams thought Dr Chandrakar was a pompous tosser who couldn’t think further than his own field of expertise. And that Dr Chandrakar thought the rest of the engrams were simpletons who were too stupid to understand the complexities of n-dimensional geometry. It all got a bit childish then” O’Mara said ruefully.
Dave sighed, “So we’re no closer to finding a solution?”
The Science Officer smiled and said “Well, I wouldn’t say that!”
Everyone looked at her in surprise and she wrinkled her brow to think about it. “Yeah, actually you’re right. We’re not really any the wiser.”
She shook her head apologetically and added “Well, the only other thing we could think of was that it would be safest to travel as we are and drop out of warp close to Hole. Then we just blip the drive for a few nano-seconds while venting plasma, and see if we get any feel for if the warp-field will stabilize without the co-axial component forming. I’m not saying it won’t create a wormhole that way, but hopefully if we’ve pre-programmed a drive shut-down after a few nano-seconds, any wormhole formed will collapse instantly - before we get thrown to god knows where.”
“Hmm. I’ll take that under consideration” said Dave warily.
Olga Romanov spoke up to break the silence. “Down in Engineering, we’ve been running computer simulations and concur with the Science Officer’s view that the Tana relays allow our remaining Federation warp-coils to operate more effectively than as originally designed. They will generate a significant warp-field big enough to enclose Tiger, but the field density at that volume will limit the ship to a maximum velocity of about warp eight.”
There were nods of relief from many of the staff and she pressed on. “That being the case, we’ve come up with a design for a revised power delivery system. By adding a separate power circuit for the Tana coils, we should be able to switch them on and off at will, so we at least have a choice of travelling very quickly and backwards in time or very slowly but forwards in time.”
“That’s good work, Commander, thank you” said Dave. He sat and thought about what he’d been told before making his decision. “If not one has anythi
ng else to add then the plan is as follows: We need to be on-line and ready to intervene in Sha T’Al space as soon as possible. I know it’s a risk, but I’d feel more comfortable operating as close to full capability as we can, so we have to try the plasma-venting idea: Trying to operate when limited to warp-factor eight is just too much of a tactical disadvantage.”
“However, as it’s the safe option, I want the engineers focus their efforts on a way of allowing the Tana coils to be locked-out of the warp-field generation process so that we can at least use the remaining original coils to travel normally through space and time if we need to. “
“The Science Department needs to work with Susan. I want to run simulations for what the possible outcomes are for running the drive as it is, but with us venting plasma directly into the warp-field. If we get really lucky, that could allow us to travel very fast, but without the time paradox issues.”
“Operations team are to liaise with Science and Engineering to work out a way of blipping the drive as a final test of the plasma-venting concept. If we’re going to try that we also need to configure the ship’s sensors to confirm exactly what happens in the few nano-seconds the field is generated.”
Dave held his head in his hands: this whole affair couldn’t possibly be over and done with soon enough. “In any event, we need to get back to Hole, so we carry on as we are until we come up with a different drive configuration. It means we’ll get there before we leave Arcturus, so we may have to lay low for a while, but I’d rather do that where we need to be so we can intervene if the situation becomes desperate.”
“In the longer term, when we do get back to Hole, I suppose we have to find a way to log the incident without making ourselves look daft or incompetent and / or temporally reckless. We’ll need to provide a very carefully worded technical report to Command. Then we order six replacement fleet warp-coils, so if all else fails, we can get the drive system back to normal as soon as we can and forget this business ever happened. Ok, I think we’re done. Thanks people, let’s make it all happen.”
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A few days later, Dave dropped Tiger out of warp for a day to allow the engineers to make the necessary alterations to the power supplies to the warp-engines before they continued on their way.
While they were back in normal space, Dave prepared a requisition for six lovely, standard, Federation-built, brand new warp-coils and was just about to transmit it when he spotted a problem. They were now more than three months into their own past according to O’Mara, which gave him nightmares about cause and effect paradoxes.
He had to make sure that the Fleet’s ordering software didn’t realise that it was receiving a requisition from a second version of USS Tiger, and trigger an alert that something funny was going on. If they transmitted a signal via one relay station while their previous selves were connecting to a different relay station elsewhere, it would be clear to the system that there was some kind of fraud in play as a ship obviously couldn’t be in two places at the same time.
For a while he thought they’d have to get back to Hole and let time “catch-up” with them before ordering the coils, but he knew that the deteriorating situation in Sha T’Al space meant this wasn’t acceptable. Taking a chance he decided to speak to Chief Money before committing to such a lengthy wait.
Chief Money was far more familiar with tinkering with the system to obtain things in illicit manners and had absolutely no qualms about falsifying records to grease the wheels of the machine. However, sharp as a needle, the Chief realised there was an obvious opportunity afforded by Tiger’s warped warp-drive:
“Sir, my understanding is that each day we travel at this speed, we go back about two and a half days in time?” he said when Dave broached the subject.
“That’s about the size of it Chief. What of it?” asked Dave, wary of the hustle that usually followed such statements.
“Well sir, it occurs to me that we ….. that is our other selves …… completed testing at the range about a week ago. If we’ve gone on seven days in our time line, that equates to them going back about twenty days in their time line. Now I’m no scientist, but doesn’t that mean we’ll be passing each other as they travel from Hole to Arcturus and we travel from Arcturus to Hole?”
Dave tried to crunch the numbers in his head, but gave up and called O’Mara. “Hi Aisling, I’ve just been discussing our position in space-time relative to our previous selves. We think we’re about to pass ourselves in transit?”
“Yeah, that sounds about right. Let me just check it …… wow ….. spot on! We’ll be passing pretty close to ourselves in a few hours time! How weird is that??”
“Weird is kinda relative on this trip, Aisling. Thanks, Hollins out.”
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Eight hours later, they waited, all systems powered down, a black ghost vessel in deep space. O’Mara was first to spot the subspace disturbance of a large vessel travelling at high warp directly towards them.
They watched silently as their older selves thundered past them completely unaware of their presence, and as they did, Lieutenant Shearer transmitted a requisition for six brand-new warp coils on a discrete setting to the nearest Fleet relay station.
When the older Tiger had disappeared, they got underway again, and travelled the last few days back to Tiger’s duty station at Hole, Sector 244.
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They dropped out of warp five light-years away from Hole, and tested the reconfigured warp-engines, using only the Federation-built coils to drive the ship. Confident than that they could travel at warp-factor eight without being pushed back in time, Dave called the senior staff back to the Officer’s Mess. “Ok team, it’s crunch time. How’re we looking?”
Olga Romanov spoke first, to confirm the position to those that hadn’t been present during the engine test. “We’ve got a working drive system that uses only the Fleet coils to generate a warp-field. As we suspected, we’re limited to warp-factor eight, which is about half of our usual maximum speed.”
ASBeau expanded on that. “In other respects the ship is as ready as we’ll ever be. We’ve got sensors, shields and weapons all at optimum, but if we’re limited to warp eight, we’ve lost the choice of engagement. If we run into Tana or Sha T’Al ships and they want to fight, we’re too slow to be able to disengage.”
Then came the news that Dave had been dreading from Lieutenant-Commander O’Mara: “We’ve run every simulation we can think of, but …. well …. the long and short of it is we still don’t know what’s going to happen. The PILOCC has devoted ninety-nine percent of her run-time to the theoretical side of the problem and has just gone completely bloody schizo.”
Aisling O’Mara looked a mess. Her hair was even more unruly than usual and her eyes were badly blood-shot. Dave knew she’d been working as hard as anyone could to find an answer to their conundrum. “We got a different answer from Susan every time we asked her the question, and things got so bad we had to shut her down and purge the query in the end. It got to the stage where she was audibly arguing with herself, and I can tell you that for a computer, she has a phenomenal grasp of human slang, colloquialisms and profanity.”
“Taking all scenarios, we came up with thirty-eight percent ending with an uncontrolled wormhole collapsing instantly, with no real difficulty. In twenty-eight percent of the simulations, we could travel in normal time but at limited speed as the plasma did away with co-axial element of the field. In fifteen percent of simulations, the drive operated in normal time, but still allowed us to travel very fast, although we’re still not sure how that happens. At the other end of that scale, in ten percent of the simulations the warp-drive simply didn’t work at all because the plasma collapsed the entire warp-field completely.”
She paused and cleared her voice before continuing. “In seven percent of scenarios, we generated an unrestrained wormhole and ended up anywhere but where we wanted to be.
There were groans all around th
e table and Dave was about to ask for a recommendation when he realised that the Science Officer’s percentages didn’t add up. “That doesn’t stack up to one hundred percent, Aisling. What have we missed?”
The Science Officer flushed slightly and said quietly “Ah. Well I was going to mention that bit in private. We did overlook one possible outcome, but it’s far and away the least likely one, and I don’t think there’s much merit in focusing on it, as it only came out in two percent of the simulations …… “
“We need to consider all the angles on this, Aisling” Dave chided gently.
Her shoulders slumped. “Yeah, I suppose so.” She straightened herself up and putting on what she assumed was a confidence-boosting smile said “There’s ever such a slight worry that showed up in two percent of the simulations. The plasma kinda got …. well ..... a bit …. out of hand?”
“What of it?” asked Dave nervously.
“Well in those very, very isolated instances the ship sort of …… exploded.”
“WHAT??!??!?” said Dave in chorus with everyone in the room except the Science Officer.
“It’s only a fifty-to-one chance!” pleaded O’Mara as pandemonium broke out “And if we tweak the plasma temperature before venting we can drive that down to about one hundred and fifty-to-one. I think.”
Dave slumped forward and banged his head against the desk. How could they have missed that?
The rest of the room was noisy chaos as the whole senior staff vented their frustration on the poor Science Officer, who could only defend herself with if’s, but’s, maybe’s and the odd “don’t shoot the messenger!”
