The Lighthouse
Posted on Tue May 19th, 2020 @ 4:04am by
Mission:
Cruel Meridian
Location: Moruvo Class Transport
Timeline: MD 06: During the Events of "Ring Around the Rosies"
669 words - 1.3 OF Standard Post Measure
Following along in loose formation, the Hrongan transport ship stealthily flew along in the Majestic’s wake. Together, the two vessels approached a region of space made infamous by the folktales of space-going matriarchs and patriarchs telling stories to their children about the ghost ships of the Tulian Expanse.
No one really knew when and where the stories originated from. There were some who disregarded the tales as works of fiction designed to scare young children at night with little to no factual basis. Others claimed to have witnessed peculiar events in and around the Expanse, causing some captains to plot large detours around an otherwise unremarkable area of space.
“Comrade Arva, what is their current course and heading?”
“The ship Majestic continues towards the rendezvous point with the Sozon Empire. Velocity is the same, they clearly are unaware.”
“Perhaps. Or perhaps they have better means of detecting the time rifts and mitigating their effects.”
Maqoz knew the truth. Seven years ago he had been a lowly security officer on a Tulian destroyer attached to a battlegroup whose leader refused to deviate around the Expanse. The hope was that they would be able to make up the time they had lost during an unexplained and unscheduled stop along their patrol route and arrive at their checkpoint in time.
By the time they realized something was wrong, it was already too late. The mistake had been made.
The fact that Maqoz’s ship was the rearguard in the formation and that the commander ordered a timely full stop prevented him and his crew from experiencing the temporal anomalies suffered by the other ships in the group. They watched in horror as the lead vessel disappeared and reappeared on sensors in increasingly random patterns and intervals. Communication attempts were made in vain. Post-factum analysis revealed that not only had the ships been moving around in three-dimensional space, but also in time.
Attrition destroyed the entire battlegroup except for the vessel that Maqoz was on. Even now, as the Moruvo continued to trail the Majestic, he felt the unease creep over him like a fog bank rolling ashore in the night. Seven years ago, after his debrief, he had been prohibited from discussing the event. The Tulian news cycle attributed the destruction of the battlegroup to a Sozon attack. Maqoz watched in disgust as his fellow crew who perpetuated the falsehood rocketed up the chain of command.
The seeds of the Hrongan Union had been sown that day.
“FULL STOP!”
An impossibly loud klaxon blasted across the bridge. Hrongan diarchs heard that sound in their sleep. During training, temporal alerts were discussed ad nauseum. Countless days and nights were spent working on the crew’s reaction time, as well as methods to detect and mitigate any effects should a Hrongan vessel become ensnared in the Tulian Expanse.
At great expenditure to the dwindling coffers of the Union, each ship had been retrofitted with a temporal beacon. Once deployed, it served as a lighthouse, guiding lost vessels away from the doldrums of temporal purgatory and back into “normal” time. The Moruvo was one of the few to still have its beacon aboard.
“Report!”
“Time appears to be linear, comrade. We appear to have stopped prior to the horizon.”
“Good,” Maqoz sat in one of two center chairs across from Arva and watched the viewscreen. The Majestic disappeared from view, only to reappear, sometimes in duplicate or triplicate, a moment later.
“Arva, will they live?”
“Thirty-one of their days have passed. There is no sign that they have recognized the issue.”
Maqoz sighed heavily. A decision needed to be made.
“Continue scanning. We will use our final temporal beacon if it becomes necessary to show this Starfleet the way out. The mission demands it to be done.”
“For the Union.”
“For the Union.”
Maqoz & Arva
Hrongan Union Diarchs
Moruvo Class Transport
