//------------------------------// // Chapter I: Stardate.... // Story: Star Trek Online: Into The Multiverse // by Admiral Wyatt Stone //------------------------------// Stardate: 82014.4 Location: Edren System Year: 2410 The galaxy has been in turmoil in the past several years. The war between the Federation and the Klingons has been ceased, the Romulan Republic has been formed, now free from the tyrannical Tal Shiar agents. The Iconian War nearly obliterated the galaxy into trillions of scattered atoms... now the newly formed Alliance, formed by the noble, peaceful United Federation of Planets, the mighty, glorious warrior race of the Klingon Empire, and the survivors of the infamous Hobus supernova which cost them their homeworld, the newly formed Romulan Republic, has been in never-ending, blood-filled conflict with the Temporal Liberation Front. These forces, claiming the Federation to be nothing but cold, careless time-travelling murderers, have been making countless attempts at altering the timeline in negative ways. However, the Federation's Temporal Integrity Commission has been preventing such situations from occurring. Yet the fighting never stops, bloodshed has been in several time periods, universes, and even alternate realities, such as the recently known "Kelvin Timeline". The Na'kuhl have been attempting to restore their homeworld thanks to the Tholians, a xenophobic, opportunistic spider-like species that has recently defused their home star, and, the Tox Uthat, the device used by the Tholians to complete the task, yet being built by the Federation from the future, has made the Na'kuhl blame Starfleet for the incident. The Krenim, lead in the TLF by the traitorous scientist Noye, have been trying to eliminate the Alliance for the loss of many-if not one or two worlds in the galaxy, not to mention the world of Tuteria, a world that was lost to the Borg Collective, a race of cybernetic, humanoids that the Tuterians previously attempted to resist, but without the technology needed, they almost fell to the Borg. However, some of them managed to escape and survive and have now become known as the infamous Sphere Builders. These 3 species have been causing several problems for the Alliance to handle, requiring the help of experienced captains and temporal agents to deal with them. The Temporal Cold War isn't the only trouble thrown in with this mayhem, the Terran Empire, the Federation's Mirror Counterpart, has been altering their timeline with Temporal technology, causing many problems, including the extinction of the Mirror Iconians by the Empire's hands. And these problems, although constantly fixed, have been getting worse for some time... A faint, garbled distress signal has been intercepted by 5 starships, one of which being the U.S.S. Chestnut, an Excalibur class vessel with enhanced strength to her arsenal, have been called to the field of war once again to face the temporal terrorists. On Commander T'Vrell's communications console, a low-tone beep chirped on her comms and a red dot flashed on the map on her display console. "Admiral, we're picking up a distress call from a convoy, lead ship is known as the Beowulf. Shall I put it on the viewscreen?" Admiral Wyatt turned in his chair upon hearing the news, he had a groomed style of brown hair on his head, green pupils on his eyes, and mutton chops on his lower face. his uniform was similar to the Sierra uniforms, with the main officer dept. color (varying from red, yellow, blue) being yellow and the usually black outlines between the yellow and gray on the main part of the uniform being a sky blue. he had a brown Tactical Department Combadge on his chest area on his uniform, and his arms had brown security officer armor attached to his uniform. "Yes, T'Vrell, put them on." He said to his Vulcan comms officer. The viewscreen blinked once before a picture appeared, besides static covering the screen the room looked like it had taken sufficient damage. Fires had been seen on several parts of the room and sparks flew from the wall cracks. A man was seen on the screen and was attempting to press buttons on his console as he spoke. "To any ships in range, this is the leading convoy ship Beowulf, in command of Commander Jacob Trask. We are a non military convoy under attack by unknown forces. They've just arrived out of nowhere, scanned us without our permission, and have started attacking my ships! We won't last long without assistance! Please, anyone, he-" The screen cut to complete static, no good signal would do the trick. Admiral Stone then asked his first officer and fellow academy classmate, Elisa Flores. "How long do we have before we lose the chance to save them?" Elisa looked to her console for a moment, then turned and said, "We're close enough to make it within 25 minutes, that is, if we use our slipstream drive." "Do it." Wyatt said to her, and after she plotted course for the convoy, she said to him, "Course set, sir." "Engage." With the order, the ship went to warp away from their previous location, flying at max warp to their target. They could only hope they'd be there in time. ................... The warp field ceased as the stretching stars returned to their normal state upon arrival at the convoy's location, the warp nacelles' blue glow receded into the engines as the ship slowed. The entire area was ablaze with orange-yellowish beams that were known to Starfleet as phaser beams, and dark green beams which were recently identified as "chronoplasma" beam weapons. Debris also covered the battlefield, pieces of Na'kuhl starships and freighters were spotted all over the place. several of the freighters went running from the sleek, red vessels that threatened them, while a few Federation frigates stood by, trying to hold the position so the transports could escape. The Beowulf was spotted by Wyatt's feline-humanoid officer, Mioiil, a Caitian female. The lead ship was still intact, but several large battle scars were visible on her hull, scans identified the damage to be caused by a type of plasma beam. No doubt the Na'kuhl making another most likely failing attempt at altering history. "What's the Beowulf's status? Is she able to go to warp?" Kapor, the Chestnut's Klingon science officer, answered his question with a bit of worry, "Perhaps, her engines have low power. If we send an engineering team aboard to heal her scars, she may have a chance." As he was about to reply, Wyatt was cut off by a transmission from a nearby frigate, voiced by an apparently panicking male officer, "Bismarck here, those scummy devils are packing a punch! We ne- AAAAAHGGGHH-" An explosion sounded as the signal cut off, followed by a brilliant explosion in the distance. A sleek, red frigate type ship appeared out of the blast, facing towards the Chestnut with its weapons charging. "Tadaari raider dead ahead! Firing Quantum torpedoes!" A wave of glowing, gold-colored objects shot straight towards the frigate, the vessel was instantly impacted not too long once they'd been shot from the torpedo bay. When the explosions cleared away, the ship remained where it was before, but with a red shield-like anomaly around the vessel, no weapon could break the shield, and to the right, another ship of the same design appeared nearby, but it looked almost like a specter. "Hard to starboard, take out that distortion, then finish the ship off!" The crew leaned to the right as the ship turned, now facing the ghost-like form of the frigate they had just struck. The Na'kuhl were clever when they designed their temporal technology, the device they had just used was some kind of distortion module, the ship would activate it and create a false duplicate of itself, while the real ship hosted a shield around itself, making the user invincible as long as its decoy was existent. The distortion was blown away with ease, but taking the chance the raider charged a green, plasma-like weapon towards the Chestnut, the wave around them expanding outward farther and farther. "Evasive maneuvers, pattern Gamma Six! Lock all weapons and fire!" The Admiral yelled before the cruiser immediately dodged the assault in mere seconds before a blast of plasma energy fired out from the ship. One freighter was unlucky as it was struck and quickly vaporized by the plasma wave. The Chestnut fired a few orange-colored Phaser beams and red-colored Antiproton beams at the target, then striking it with a few more radiant Quantum torpedoes, and finally, sending it to oblivion with a Cluster torpedo, which got a very close distance to the frigate, then broke apart and released mines to finish the job. The ship turned to port to face a battlefield consisting of several pieces of debris from destroyed vessels, Alliance ships firing beams and bolts at the red ships, while they retaliated with green beams and large blast waves that the Chestnut was nearly ended by. "Let's see if we can pull off the heat from our friends over there, fire torpedoes, full spread." The Chestnut turned towards a nearby Klingon command cruiser, fire burning off of the hull as damage was visible on its right wing. A wave of torpedoes flew towards the red-colored vessel, this one larger than the frigate before, impacting the ship but doing less damage. "Taking this destroyer out will have to be done with two hands this time." The Daemosh class warship returned fire with a few plasma beams and torpedoes, damaging the front shields of the ship. "Minor damage, nothing broken. Phasers locked.... firing!" The viewscreen showed the beams hit the port shield of the destroyer, the shield was broken through as the beams made their way onto the hull, scraping away the red paint and leaving a few burning decks left from the blast. A console beeped a few times until Kapor saw what the problem was. "Plasma wave charging, taking evasive action!" The ship jolted to the right, knocking some of the crew off of their feet as the ship made an almost miraculous dodge away from the blast. It got them, but even though only the edge of the blast hit them, it still hurt the ship like hell. The crew immediately got back to their feet as they raced to their seats before they could get hit again, "Damage?!" Wyatt ordered upon the crew's readiness. "Hull is at 55%, engineering teams are reporting! Minor casualties, and engine power as been drained!" Lon answered as sparks shot from his console. "Admiral!" Elisa said as the crew looked up to see another green wave charge up and aimed right at them. But before it could finish them off the wave faded as the ship was obliterated by a few disruptor blasts and photon torpedoes. The Klingon vessel they'd come to assist took them out before it could get them. The screen then faced the Na'kuhl fleet, this battle would be quicker than previously thought, as there were only eight ships left. The allied fleet quickly engaged the remaining ships, tearing some of the ships apart with ease while some still flew with minor black scars on the hull of each remaining vessel, and magnifying towards some of the ships, some even had a few Na'kuhl bodies floating out in the debris. The Chestnut had only one ship to deal with, the command vessel, an Acheros battlecruiser, larger than any of the other vessels in the area, the Chestnut alone would be instantly blown from the sky if they faced such a ship, being a typical cruiser variant and the Acheros being a battleship of sorts, she was no match for that kind of fight. "Admiral, I suggest we form up with our friends near the other Na'kuhl, might give us a bigger fist to throw." Wyatt saw the lone cruiser charging its weapons and thought of another option. "No, not yet, Zarva, do we have our friends at the ready?" The blue, bald Bolian woman looked to her Commanding Officer and smirked a bit. "Just give the word, I don't think they'll wait all day." "Call them in!" The Admiral replied as she tapped a button on her console. A beep played only seconds after as a voice spoke from the comms panel. "We're ready to waste some scrawny beasts!" The voice yelled out as the viewscreen showed four ships arriving onto the field. These ships were piloted by pirates Wyatt and his crew had helped out back at Nimbus III when dealing with a famous Orion criminal named Hassan. The ships consisted of a Breen cruiser, an Orion Warship, a Hirogen frigate, and a vessel that belonged to an undiscovered species. The five ships now surrounded the Na'kuhl ship, giving it no chance of escape. "Weapons hot and locked, sir." Lon said as he faced the screen, awaiting his cue. "Fire." Wyatt replied. The five ships all fired several different weapons at the battleship, weapon types varying from Polaron, Disruptor, Tetryon, and Phaser-type weapons, the Na'kuhl ship was taking critical damage almost immediately. The ship managed to save itself ,however, by activating another distortion and charging up another shield. Sir, our other friends are coming to help out!" Elisa said as she looked to her console and saw four other ships heading their way. They too fired at the distortion and swiftly erased it from sight. The crew then looked back to the Battlecruiser, fire and warp plasma exited through broken parts of the ship as torpedoes broke through its hull. "Helm, full astern!" The fleet made the same move as the ship started to break apart and finally let loose a large explosion, breaking some parts of the ship off of it. The ship then exploded again, this time a larger size and also very powerful if one were to stray too close. A Scorpion fighter unfortunately failed to avoid the blast and not too long after became the ships last victim. The blast faded away as the ships came to a stop, acting like sitting ducks around the broken bodies of freighters and temporal ships. "Damage report." Wyatt said to Lon, awaiting his answer. "Our hull's been fixed up a bit, thanks to our engineering teams, power has been lost on several sections on decks 7 through 9." "And the casualties?" The Admiral asked worriedly. "We lost 32 crewmen onboard and.. two freighters were destroyed." Although the loss of life was lower than he expected, he'd lost some good people in this fight, almost 500 people were counted in the total. "Sir, I'm getting a signal from one of the freighters." T'Vrell said calmly as she saw a signal being picked up in the comm traffic. "Put it on." Wyatt replied, and a female voice spoke through the console. "All ships, this is acting convoy commander Hathai Dano, thank you for your timely assistance. I'm sure Mr. Trask had explained the situation a bit before you got here, these ships just came out of nowhere, scanned our cargo loads and just, opened fire. We couldn't figure out why they fired nor could we talk to them, they wouldn't listen to us. Also, Mr. Trask was injured during the assault, I believe that's why his transmission to you was cut off shortly after, but may I ask that one of you could send a medical team down here please? He needs treatment immediately. Thanks again." The transmission then ended with a low tone of static before shutting off in silence. The four ships that arrived with the Chestnut warped away into the distance while Wyatt gave his thanks to his pirate friends before they did the same. The Admiral looked at the fleet of damaged freighters, now preparing to continue their job of delivering cargo once they had a medical team onboard the leading ship. "Kapor, beam a medical team onboard the Beowulf, then set a course out of here." Wyatt told him, and he replied by pressing a few buttons and activating a comms panel. "Medical team, report to Transporter room 3." He said over the intercom as he shut it off and tapped a few buttons on his console. "Course laid in for Starbase 234, sir." Wyatt smiled a bit before replying to him. "Punch it." With the word given, Kapor then tapped a button on his console as the ship started to hum in a low, rumbling tone. The ships warp nacelles charged their energy, the energetic noise of antimatter flowing into the engines. Then, in a bright, blue flash, the ship stretched for a moment before flying towards the far out stars in the distance, heading off to their next destination. ....................... The sight of the big, blue and green planet in front of the window that showed the solar system was such a beautiful sight, starships and shuttlecraft would pass by, the continents glowing with city lights, and of course, the peaceful feeling of seeing the many stars that in the Admirals mind would possibly contain millions of new species to discover and meet. In a large office that held several gold models of starships and several of the Alliances finest diplomats sat Admiral Jorel Quinn, the leading officer of Earth Spacedock. He had a uniform colored mostly in black, with a line of red encased around a few smaller yellow lines on the upper part of his uniform. He wore grey hair and had a set of buckled mutton chops on his face, sporting a grey color as well. Today would be a bit of a break from galactic issues for the Admiral, as he sat in his chair enjoying the view of an amazing sight in the window. It had been about a year now and the Federation had been through quite a lot; the war with the Klingons took many good lives away, but that was resolved when the Undine, a shapeshifting race of doppelgangers that were difficult to reveal as imposters thanks to their isomorphic injection techniques, nearly eliminated the Federation and the Klingon Empire by using the Jenolan Dyson Sphere gateway to attack the two worlds, it nearly cost them Earth Spacedock as it had taken a heavy amount of damage during the assault, forcing the two to join forces once more. And they nearly lost again when the Iconians, a race of highly advanced beings nearly eradicated them back in the war, until an ancient device known as the "World Heart" was returned to them, allowing them to leave them all in peace and rebuild their broken home. All of that he'd been through with his allies and colleagues and he finally had a bit of time to himself, no combat to deal with, not a single weapon being fired at his home or any of his ships, it was relaxing, to know that the threat was dealt with and that everyone could finally have some time to see the universe. A beep played from his comms panel, interrupting his peaceful rest. He tapped a button on the panel and answered. "Yes? Is there something wrong?" He said to the waiting officer on the channel. The officer replied with an apologetic tone. "Yes, my apologies for interrupting your time sir. I've gotten a message from Admiral Stone." The Admiral built a faint smile, it'd been a while since the incident with Noye that he'd gotten to talk to him. To him, he felt like Wyatt, like many of the other cadets, was a part of his family, he'd helped him all the way through his journey into Starfleet Academy, and now it was like he was already on his path of life. "What's he been doing? Is something wrong?" The officer on the comms replied with a calm tone. "No, nothing is wrong, the Admiral just got finished dealing with what we've revealed to be Temporal marauders." The Admiral frowned when he heard the word "Temporal". First Noye betraying them all, and now the fabled "Temporal Cold War" was already crawling close to them. "The Na'kuhl again, probably, or Noye must've built his fleet very quickly." He tried to keep his calm demeanor on his face as he asked the officer again. "Good, at least he's keeping our lives straight on the correct path. Anything else?" The officer replied back. "Yes, we've gotten a message from a nearby science vessel, they say they've found a humanoid female onboard, possibly a stowaway. She seems to have quite a bit of knowledge in science, but she calls it "magic" for some reason, and she talks in some kind of "Third-person" perspective. They wish to bring her here, do you want them to come here?" This was certainly unsettling, a similar incident happened with frigate fighting with the Borg at Sienae. except it was six of them and they were now Starfleet officers at this point, going through simulations of several missions Admiral Stone went through long ago. "Yes, call them here, I think she may be related to a similar incident." The officer answered back. "Yes Admiral, I'll send a message to them shortly." "Thank you, Lieutenant, Quinn out." With that, Quinn tapped a button on his console, shutting off the communication signal. This day would apparently get less and less restful, as he now had to get ready to meet a new friend. "I hope this temporal war won't get us by surprise, otherwise, the Alliance is doomed." Quinn sat in his chair as he gazed at the star-filled universe, wondering if his wish would come to fruition, but most of all, what it was that was bringing these unknown people into their realm.