BAROSSA SECTOR – The USS Kitty Hawk successfully rescued Amity Outpost’s support vessel from a gravity well, while Ambassador Vataix was hunted by a Hirogen on a candidate colony planet.
A spatial anomaly with unusual properties, located inside a gravity well at the far reach of the Barossa Nebula, proved strong enough to pull in and trap the Independence-B (NCC-1776-B). In the hours after their entrapment, the crew of the Defiant Class vessel affected repairs to the stricken ship, restoring systems including sensors.
The crew were shocked to discover that the lifeless, void-like anomaly contained hundreds of duplicate, “reflection” versions of their ship. Each reflection existed within its own temporal “bubble” and was not contactable via standard methods of communication.
With no apparent way out of the anomaly, the assigned Commanding Officer LtCmdr. Wil Ukinix took a shuttle to visit two of the reflection Independence-Bs for assistance. The crew encountered versions of themselves, each encounter disrupting that reflection ship’s timeline and changing their temporal experience forever.
Outside the anomaly, the USS Kitty Hawk, captained by Roshanara Rahman, sent in a Class-6 probe to attempt contact with the Independence-B crew. However, the probe ”split” into hundreds of reflections of itself, causing the probe to malfunction and target the hulls of reflection vessels – sometimes fatally. Ens. Nathan Richards was hit by a probe during an operation on an outer hull of a reflection ship, resulting in his arm having to be amputated and replaced with an emergency prosthetic.
The Independence-B managed to escape the anomaly when the Kitty Hawk’s runabout craft Kwando fired an anti-graviton beam into the anomaly, allowing Amity’s support vessel to tractor itself out. “One’s training kicks in and you focus on the tasks required to fix your vessel and escape,” shared helm officer Lt. JG David Flint of the experience. “But the horror lingers and, in the quiet moments, makes you question your sanity.”
The rescue was not without cost. Ukinix, still inside a shuttle in the anomaly emitting antimatter pulses at the anti-graviton beam to ensure successful escape, was transported out using the experimental “MST project”, Starfleet technology designed to beam an entire ship from one point of space to another.
After initial failure, it fell back to identifying Ukinix’s hybrid Human/Betazoid DNA for a lock but materialised two versions of him – Human and Betazoid. There is no confirmation from Starfleet of whether the split is temporary or permanent.
Meanwhile, Ambassador Niarivi Vataix visited a candidate Betazoid colony planet known as Fana 6519-G, a mostly tropical planet with attractive beaches. During her personal inspection of the world in tandem with Betazoid government mediator Tani Lekasa, secretly planted sensors were triggered, alerting an unknown lone Hirogen hunter of their presence. Vataix’s assigned Starfleet security detail were killed by the hunter, leaving Vataix and Lekasa to fend for themselves. Fortunately, time was on their side, as they were able to wait out on the planet until Amity’s fleet of the auxiliary craft were able to arrive, disturbing the Hirogen which fled the planet.
“The appearance of a Hirogen hunter in the sector was unexpected as the Hirogen have been unresponsive to our overtures since Amity’s opening,” said Ambassador Vataix. “We are reaching out to the Hirogen to begin a dialogue, and we remain committed to reaffirming peaceful relations between our two peoples, renewing the truce established by Admiral Janeway over twenty years ago.”
Written by Kit Ivanovic
