hapter VII: A Day in the Life Personal Log, Gregorian 2349
"Captain O'Sullivan to Ensign Sharra, do you read?" Those simple eight words might not seem like much at first glance but hearing them at what both my alarm and biological clock were vehemently telling me was three in the morning was nearly enough to send me into an apoplectic rage.
Instead of giving in to my very tempting urges I simply took a deep breath to both steady and wake myself and through grit teeth answered, "Sharra here Captain."
"Report to the Bridge." The comm-badge chirped back without a single ounce of sympathy at my very real plight, cutting off just in time for the room to resonate with my annoyed groan.
I pinched my nose and let out a long list of expletives at the captain, evolution for giving me the necessity for sleep and whatever the hell we had encountered in space that presumably necessitated my conscious presence. Inadvertently I was reminded of those scenes in TNG where the ship would receive some urgent communique and Picard would get woken up by the comms to receive it, off the top of my head I can think of about nine times that happened in the show all of them with very serious ramifications for the overarching plot.
Turns out real life isn't like that at all, it's much worse, the reality is space doesn't give a shit about anyone who has the balls to travel through it, let alone about anyone's circadian rhythm and even though the U.S.S Helsinki, that is to say the ship I'm currently serving on, doesn't encounter nearly as much bullshit as any Enterprise we still get our fair share of weird shit out here.
"Weird shit that I apparently have to deal with." I thought with an annoyed glare at nothing in particular as I put on my quite frankly ridiculous looking and even less functional jumpsuit, hell, the thing didn't even have pockets and it is way too comfortable for something that a pseudo-military organization would adopt as their uniform, I'm not even exaggerating when I say it is softer than the silk pajamas I was just wearing.
But finally after a quick and very unsatisfying facial rinse in the sonic sink I walked out through the sliding doors of my quarters and out into the cramped hallways of the U.S.S Helsinki, my yellow engineering uniform somehow expertly blending in and contrasting with the pastel color the designer chose for the paneling of said hallways that was apparently standard across all Bradbury-Class ships.
Soon enough I reached the Turbolift doors and like all the others that weren't private quarters on the ship, they opened automatically once I was standing half a meter in front of them.
"Take me to the bridge please." I intoned pleasantly yet still groggily after having my sleep interrupted, partly my fault since I'd been pulling several all-nighters recently trying to design my own version of the Mjolnir Powered Assault Armor, but so far every material I tested couldn't hold up after four to five phaser shots, let alone a Klingon disruptor…
After a short and I mean short waiting time, the lift reached the bridge, "I'd give the Federation that at least," I thought with a small smile despite myself, "they make good elevators." The eyes of everyone who was on the bridge turned to look at me before confirming I wasn't a threat and returning to their assigned duties.
"Ah Ensign, thank you for coming." Is what the captain said, but what he actually meant was written all over his face. What the hell took you so long?
I offered no explanation, instead, I snapped to attention and saluted him, not by pressing the side of my hand to my forehead, but rather by clicking my heels like the Prussian aristocracy used to. "Ensign Sharra at your service captain," I answered with a serious expression and sincerity I didn't feel.
Captain O'Sullivan frowned at my mannerism, while ordinarily, it'd be a sign of respect, Starfleet despises militarism and Captains more often than not hate being seen as soldiers instead of explorers, so even though he was offended he couldn't complain, if it had been anyone else I might've shown some actual respect, but the guy was the kind of commander that liked to swing his dick around by using Captain's Mast to make up absurd rules that interfered with the crew's private time and he'd been hounding my ass since I first got on his ship.
"Thank you, Ensign," Arev, the Vulcan first officer intoned diplomatically, "your record states that you wrote a thesis titled 'Stages of Civilization; And their Characteristics' during your time in the academy, is this correct?"
The captain and a few other officers that were on the bridge grimaced involuntarily before schooling their expressions, most of them that is. That Thesis had been controversial when I published and controversial is putting it mildly.
It basically detailed my version of the Kardashev Scale, which didn't exist in this timeline, but expanded to account for the more advanced races that somehow transcended their home universes, so basically a scale modified to account for the Q Continuum and other incredibly powerful civilizations in the Star Trek Universe. Yet for some reason, the idea that a race's level of advancement was solely correlated with their energy consumption was one that the Federation as a whole broadly despised and my paper was often critiqued by people who argued that cultural works and guiding philosophies were far more important.
"Yes Commander, may I ask how that pertains to you requesting my presence?" I answered politely.
An unseen signal passed between First Officer and Captain and the latter barked out a sharp, "On Screen."
The viewscreen flickered on to reveal, a space station? An intricately constructed one to be sure, but nothing too out of the ordinary, it seemed to have windows and looked like a cross between Deep Space 9 and the city where the Jetsons lived that is if the said city had been spray painted white.
I merely raised an eyebrow at Commander Arev and at my questioning look the viewscreen rapidly flickered to display the technical specs of that station.
"Those fucking madlads," I muttered under my breath, awed despite myself, but then again who wouldn't be. According to the information our sensors had picked up the station was made up of what at first glance seemed like a googolplex of semi-autonomous nanites with a decentralized artificial intelligence responsible for all of them, the processing power of each nanite was something that outclassed Data's by over a factor of ten and if that wasn't impressive enough the whole station was a sort of Dyson Sphere built around a White Dwarf star that was so small I would bet money on it somehow being artificial.
"As you can see Ensign," the polite yet monotone voice of Commander Arev jolted me out of my thoughts, "these people whoever they are, are much more advanced than ourselves, given our mission to explore new life and new civilizations it behooves us to make contact with them."
"I still fail to see why you require my help Commander; did they ask for envoys to meet with them or something?"
"Exactly the opposite," the Captain answered gruffly, "we've been hailing them across all frequencies for about three hours now and they haven't responded at all."
"I assume that there are life signs aboard?"
The Captain gave a hesitant nod, which prompted me to raise my eyebrow once again, this time it was the Security Officer, Brenok if I remembered the name correctly, who answered the unspoken question.
"There are, however, sensors indicate them all to be in some unknown form of Stasis."
"Ah, so this was it," I thought with an out of place smile on my face as the facts rapidly became clear to me, this was a species that was not too dissimilar from a few kinds that I'd read about in sci-fi novels back in my first youth. A species that had reached a certain level of technology and then simply plateaued because of advanced virtual reality or something else like it. They no longer saw the need to explore or innovate, content to allow their technology to sustain them while they entertained themselves in fantasy worlds that the otherwise unnecessarily large processing power at their disposal ran. There was something about these kinds of species that they all shared, they didn't like to be disturbed.
The thought that we might accidentally provoke their wrath should have filled me with fear, but maybe because of my gut feeling that these aliens wouldn't kill us since doing so would invite more trouble than it was worth or perhaps simply because contrasting with all the shows that I loved in my youth serving on a starship as an engineer was akin to serving on what basically amounted to a cruise as a glorified plumber, only sans the drinking, gambling and overall camaraderie due to the Synthenol, Captain's Mast and my controversiality respectively, to put it simply I was bored so I only felt a nervous anticipation.
The realization made me bark out a short laugh.
"Something funny Ensign?" The Captain's attempt at a glare would've made me laugh even more had I been a lesser man, I was once glared at by an angry Chinese Police officer, this is nothing.
"Not at all sir, it's just that…" I began leadingly.
"Yes?" The ever-stoic Commander Arev prompted.
"We're like ants compared to them, put simply they have no reason to interact with us. To use an analogy, it would be as if a monkey demanded entry into the bridge to begin throwing its dung everywhere as an attempt at diplomatic contact. As such, I categorically advise you to do absolutely nothing." The 'like you usually do' was only implied through my tone.
The expression of everyone on the bridge soured, with the notable exception of Commander Arev who raised an eyebrow in much the same manner as Spock would've and the Captain whose skin turned so many different colors that I wouldn't have thought it possible for a human.
"Is that all Ensign?" He managed to hiss out through grit teeth.
I merely gave a shallow nod.
"Dismissed."
"Sir!" I clicked my heels once again and walked back to the Turbolift, resisting the urge to show off my shiny metal bird to everyone on the bridge, Q knows it got me in trouble enough at the Academy…
I quickly made my way to my quarters knowing what these idiots were probably about to do and once there I found and got into the brace position in the sturdiest corner after putting on my prototype armor.
-oOo-
What Commander Arev was feeling now could have been described as helplessness had he been human, as a Vulcan however, the only thing he actually felt was a numb sense of dread deep in a pit of his stomach.
It was understandable, given that as soon as the Away Team along with the Captain had beamed over to the Space Station, one of its many protrusions broke apart like shattering glass and a swarm of nanites that could somehow fly faster than any Federation Shuttle and had the firepower to match, made their way to the U.S.S Helsinki, wreaking havoc all the while.
"Commander, shields are down…", Lieutenant Brenok began with his usual firm and businesslike tone, "80 percent?!" But when he read out the percentage his tone rose a few octaves in alarm, a natural response given that the shields had sustained this amount of damage in under 5 minutes, the energy output for that particular feat alone was something not even worth contemplating.
Before Arev could bark out orders to the Chief Engineer to attempt to restore the shields, the bridge and indeed probably the entire ship lurched wildly beneath them, sending both the Lieutenant and a few Ensigns with less than stable footing sprawling to the ground and forcing Arev to grip the armrests of the Captain's Chair so hard that his knuckles turned white.
"Evasive Maneuvers, Alpha Gamma Theta." He finally managed to calmly instruct after they had gained a small moment of respite from the swarm's relentless assault, the Ensigns did as asked, meanwhile Brenok regained his footing and once again manned his station.
"Lt. Brenok, status report?"
To his credit, the Tellarite tactics officer rapidly regained his professionalism and answered with a crisp, "Decks Seven to Eighteen have been hit the hardest sir, and our phasers," he narrowed his eyes in shocked disbelief, "haven't even scratched them."
Arev furrowed his brow in thought, "Chief Engineer Baelin, full power to the engines, get us out of here, maximum warp."
"Sir!" An Ensign whose name Arev couldn't quite recall at that moment objected, "the Captain and the lieutenant…"
"Are most probably dead by now Ensign, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few," Arev responded impassively.
"Aye sir…" he responded sullenly, yet obeyed orders all the same and as the ship turned back to the nearest Starbase like the Devil himself was on their heels.
A Vulcan cannot feel fear, and Arev himself was no exception to this rule, the closest he came, however, was when he sought out the Ensign who had advised against attempting to make contact with the still unknown civilization for help with the after-action report.
Arev had asked him whether Starfleet could expect most if not all Type-2 civilizations to react in such a violent manner, a question which sent the Andorian into an almost hysterical fit of laughter as he responded with: "That wasn't a violent response, that was a warning shot."
Arev could've sworn that that statement made his blood turn to Ice if only for half a second.