Fractured (Mission)

Fractured
Season:	[[Season 3 ({{{sim}}})|Season 3]]
Episode:	15
Date:	February 4, 2389
Span:	N/A
Template:Mission

The Away Teams have returned, and the crew is not much more the wiser. Aside from new communication methods, and a few small clues, the intrepid crew of the USS Black Hawk-A start attempting to make heads or tails of the new information.

Suddenly, the ship is rocked by a massive wave, disrupting the warp drive and forcing the Black Hawk immediately to sublight speed. Not only does the crew have to get the ship moving again to advance to their destination, they also have to figure out why the ship, and each other, has been divided amongst different temporal zones.

Summary

Following their adventures in the Alpha Trios system, Captain Geisler orders the Black Hawk into a nearby nebula where he believed it would be shielded from wandering eyes long enough for the crew to figure out the next steps. Geisler calls a meeting the next morning, giving the teams plenty of time to rest, reflect and process on their separate endeavors. Several ideas were presented in the meeting, and a course of action is selected, as well as other objectives were determined.

Before the crew could begin to execute, the ship is rocked by an external force. The power blips out, and the ship plunged into darkness. Among the first to recover are Lieutenant Commander Djinx, Lieutenant Di Pasquale, and Lieutenant Geisler. As they assess the situation, they learn that the Captain, who'd hit his head on the conference table during the turbulence, and other members of the senior staff are not present. It is initially believed that the Captain was taken to sickbay. The group soon determines that a move to Engineering is appropriate as communications and other vital systems are non-functional. Upon arrival in Engineering, Lieutenant Kemm, the engineer on duty, reports the known extent of the damage, and reveals he is missing crew. The team works together and restores auxiliary power. It is quickly determined that over three-quarters of the crew are missing, the warp drive is totally inoperable, and theta radiation is slowly seeping into the ship. Djinx, Di Pasquale and Geisler learn that they are also the only three senior officers aboard.

Second Time Zone

Lieutenants Alexander and Winner come back to consciousness on the flight deck. It too, like the rest of the ship, is devoid of crew. They're also surprised to learn that many of the tools are not working due to insufficient charging, and that there is a fine layer of dust on practically everything. They manage to power up a fighter. Using its sensors, they learn that a quarter of the crew is alive, a quarter of the crew is dead, and that the rest of the crew is missing. They also detect that the quantum signatures are also out os sync, including their own. They soon determine that the ship and everything around them has aged over twenty years. They use the fighter's comm system to contact the rest of the crew, including Doctor Kij, who is now the ship's senior most officer.

Meanwhile, the ship is boarded by three invaders just as partial power is restored. The intruders quickly kill the engineering crew, lock themselves down in Engineering, and disable the ship's life support system. Lieutenant Blake, Warrant Officer Griffin, and Petty Officer Torg make their way to Engineering only to find it locked down and several crew members had been killed. Doctor Kij and Senior Chief Rylan join them and hatch a plan to retake control of the ship. The intruders are beamed to the brig where they promptly commit suicide, having lost their chance to take the ship.

Outside the ship, Lieutenant Alexander and Ensign Moretti perform a combat air patrol and discover the intruder's vessel, roughly the size of a runabout. The vessel appeared to be ancient, but they still disable the vessel as a precaution should the invaders left behind an insurance policy. Work then resumes on patching life support and figuring out what happened to the ship.

Third Time Zone

Captain Geisler slowly comes back to consciousness, but it takes the intervention of Doctor Abrams to reveal that the Captain is suffering from a concussion. Commander Teixeira, Lieutenant Commander Walsh, Chief Stephens and Ensign Khan work quickly to determine their status, only to find Lieutenant Geisler, and her unborn children, dead on the bridge. Her remains exist only of a tattered uniform, hair, and skeleton, something that only years of decomposition can render. Captain Geisler reacts negatively to pain relief medication for an unknown reason, forcing the doctor to use practical methods to treat the captain and his wounds. Chief Stephens and Ensign Khan soon reveal that only a quarter of the crew is present, and that half the crew is dead. After a review of the logs, it is determined that they are fifty years in the future, and the Black Hawk had been left derelict for decades.

Fourth Time Zone

Lieutenant Parks had been patrolling a corridor when the turbulence hit the vessel and power loss began. By the time she collected herself, the ship calmed down, allowing her to resume her duties. No one, however, answers her communications. Elsewhere, Senior Chief Rasputin finds her office complex coated in dust and devoid of people. She soon is joined by Ensign Dagee, and the both of them head for the bridge. Once there, they discover the bodies of Captain Geisler and Lieutenant Geisler, both of whom appear to be dead for years. They are soon joined by others, including Doctor Road, Lieutenant Cooper, and Ensign Crehan who then lead attempts to restore power.

Below decks, Lieutenant Parks and Ensign Mackie arrive in Auxiliary Control where they find a power generator and instructions on how to restore the ship to partial working order. Following the directions, Ensign Mackie manages to restore power in a matter of minutes. Contact with the bridge is established, and the final log entry was played. In the recording, Captain Geisler details what fate had befallen them, including the deadly theta radiation that the crew hadn't yet to feel. The log confirms that there are not any more survivors of the senior staff, and that Doctor Road is now the ship's ranking officer and de facto Captain.

Getting Oriented

In the first time zone, Lieutenant Kemm detects five separate quantum filaments and determines that the ship had collided with each one, individually damaging the ship. After deliberation with the available crew, Commander Djinx authorizes an attempt to move the ship out of the nebula in order to get it functional again. Lieutenants Di Pasquale and Geisler take both of the runabouts into the nebula. Both vessels establish successful tractor locks and start to slowly move the ship. This effort, though initially showing signs of success, starts to tear the buckling hull. Soon thereafter an alarm sounds on the bridge; antimatter containment has started to fail. The tractor effort is immediately ceased, and the antimatter starts to stabilize. Further investigation reveals that the antimatter is in a state of quantum flux thanks to the filaments that had been lodged into the pods.

Several decades ahead of the towing attempt, Ensign Mackie detects new instability in the antimatter containment. Further study reveals that the logs are rewriting themselves, starting with an attempt to move the ship decades prior. Acting on a rough theory that the antimatter may be the key for everyone's survival, Doctor Road, acting Captain of the Black Hawk in this timeline, authorizes Mackie to experiment with the antimatter, turning it into a rudimentary communications device. The theory works, and within just a few short minutes, the different portions of the crew spread across time start to communicate with each other. Lieutenant Kemm, inspired by Commander Djinx, Lieutenant Di Pasquale and Lieutenant Geisler, hatches a plan to bombard the antimatter pods with nucleonic particles in hopes that it will reverse the direction of the quantum filaments and retrieve the crew members stranded in the future. Captain Geisler, fifty years ahead of Lieutenant Kemm, approves the plan and orders it into action.

An hour later, the plan is ready. Engineers in each of the four time zones activate their nucleonic particle generators. As the antimatter is bombarded, the rotation of the quantum filaments are reversed. Those displaced by time are subsequently returned to the present. The filaments are then dislodged from the antimatter, allowing the warp core to be reinitialized at last. Captain Geisler orders the ship to immediately depart the nebula as to prevent further accidents, and then orders all the crew to head for sickbay for radiation treatment.

Recovery

The process to bring everyone home wasn't entirely successful. The ship entered the Convergence Zone with 780 crewmembers. When the ship departed the nebula, only 742 souls remained. Among the missing were three of the ship's department heads.

Timeline

Assembled

• 0900 hours: Debriefing

Divided

Time Zone 1 (present day)

• 0930 hours: Ghost Ship
• 1015 hours: Soured Milk
• 1030 hours: Frayed Nerves
• 1045 hours: Pinned Down
• 1100 hours: Need A Tow?

Time Zone 2 (5 years later)

• 0930 hours: Disoriented on the Flight Deck
• 0930 hours: Blackout
• 1015 hours: Fight For Control

Time Zone 3 (50 years later)

• 0930 hours: Disoriented Command
• 1030 hours: Status Report
• 1045 hours: Alone
• 1100 hours: A Look Outside

Time Zone 4 (70 years later)

• 0930 hours: Meeting in the Corridor
• 0940 hours: Gathering in Security
• 0945 hours: We're Not In Kansas Anymore
• 1000 hours: Off to Auxiliary Control
• 1030 hours: Assessment

Reassembled

• 1130 hours: Ghosts
• 1300 hours: Time To Go Home

OOC Information

Mission 15 began on July 4, 2018. Since that time, 44 posts have been published.

External Information

Complete Mission Logs for Episode 15: Fractured