Chapter 2

On the Earth to Alpha Centauri Route, U.S.S. Carolina, 2163

"Captain's Log, supplemental, United Earth ... um, Federation Starship Carolina. We are continuing to survey the area around the P1040 anomaly, better known to the travelers of the Earth-Alpha Centauri space route by the rather theatrical name of the 'Doom Cloud'; this anomaly is suspected of having destroyed at least three freighters before ships were equipped with subspace sensors capable of detecting it in enough time to avoid breaching the anomaly. We have now reached the outer limits of this energy cloud—which we have discovered to be focused around a tear in subspace—and are continuing to survey outwards with our new sensors to see if we can detect any other variations in the subspace domain locally."

Captain Chapman thumbed a control on his chair's control panel, closing out his log. He rolled his eyes and sighed mildly.

"Anyone else almost wish we were still fighting the Romulans?" he asked wistfully.

His science officer, Martha Cooper, shook her head.

"We're not a warship anymore, remember?" she asked her captain, a slight hint of amusement in her voice. "No more battles, no more lobbing fusion torpedoes back and forth, no more disruptors tearing apart our shield grid. Kind of a relief, really."

"No more excitement," Chapman said, sighing once again. "The Daedalus class vessels were made to be warships, pure and simple. We can go toe to toe with any three or four Romulan warships. Our shields are stronger than a Klingon Bird of Prey's, our torpedoes hit harder even than the Andorian Mark IV's, and our phased laser cannons pack ten-fold more power than the old NX –class ships. And what are we doing now? Conducting scientific surveys."

"In this case it's fairly important work," Ensign Cooper reminded him. "The Federation has very little information on subspace anomalies. While something like this doesn't pose much of a threat to us—our shields can certainly handle a little stray electromagnetic discharge here and there after all—there are still many freighters and scout ships we have in operation that could potentially fall victim to something like this."

Captain Chapman sighed once again, rubbing the back of his neck with his hand in an attempt to stave off a tension headache.

"Is this what working for the Federation is going to be?" he asked, not necessarily to anyone in particular. "Wandering around, doing charting and scientific analysis, that sort of thing? Not exactly what all of us originally signed up for."

"You did accept a commission in the Federation's Starfleet," the executive officer, Vladimir Alexandrov reminded him. "We were all given the choice of whether or not to transfer our service when the United Earth government donated our vessels to the Federation."

"Oh yes, what a choice," Chapman grouched, "stay in the U.E. Starfleet, which currently has a whole ten outdated ships left to it, or join the new Federation Starfleet, which is composed of almost the entirety of the former U.E. navy, in addition to a couple of Vulcan scout ships, a few Andorian warships, and basically is going to be carrying out all deep space exploration and defense from this point forward. I get it, Commander, I really do ... I even think this Federation thing is a good idea, when it comes right down to it. Still, it would be nice to be doing something a little less mundane."

"We're coming to the checkpoint for this leg of the mission," a young crewman from the navigation console informed the captain. "Shall I set a course for distance sampling?"

Captain Chapman nodded, rising from his command chair and approaching the navigation console, as much to keep himself awake as to check on the work of the crewman.

"Take us out one billion kilometers, complete a scan cycle, then four billion, eight billion, and sixteen billion kilometers," Chapman commanded the crewman, also making sure the helm officer was noting his directions. "That should be more than thorough enough according to our mission parameters. See if you can get the engines to Warp 4 between those legs—I know that gives us limited time for acceleration and deceleration at those kind of distances, but it will be a good test of the new dynamic anti-matter injection systems and whether we'll be capable of the kind of in-system jumps that the engineers claim we can handle."

"Aye sir," said both the navigation and helm crewmen simultaneously, the helmsman with a bit of a smile. It wasn't often that they were allowed to test the limits of the engines.

"Engage," Chapman ordered, gesturing briefly towards the viewscreen.

The Carolina slid into warp without so much as an inkling of motion felt by the crew, but there was a perceptible thrum conducted through the floor as enormous energies were created by the matter/anti-mater reactor.

The Carolina came out of warp only briefly to complete a new series of scans, and then lunged back into the subspace domain.

"All results typical outside of the cloud barrier," Ensign Cooper announced. "Honestly, it's no wonder that freighters have been destroyed by this before—outside of the confines of the actual cloud, there's not so much as a trace of its influence or presence."

Captain Chapman nodded as if he was paying attention, but really he was examining a readout on his chair's display of the power curves as they jumped into and out of warp. He was pleased to see that the Carolina was performing exactly to specification and was not struggling whatsoever with the sharp accelerations and decelerations. The inertial dampers were working a little harder than they typically had to, but there was no perceptible delay as they adjusted power—if there had been, the crew certainly would have felt it quickly enough.

After a few more cycles of scanning and warping, Ensign Cooper turned towards the captain with a smirk on her face.

"Scientific survey completed, Captain," she informed him. "We can proceed to Starbase 2 per mission orders and receive our next assignment there. See, that wasn't so bad, was it? Didn't even take a full day to complete the—"

An automated alert signal from her computer caused Ensign Cooper to whirl around, her brow knitting together as she examined her display.

"Sir, very faint but clearly not natural power signal detected," Cooper announced. "It's within a metallic mass of some sort—too big to be a probe, but way too weak of a power source to be a vessel. Not receiving any standard friend or foe identifier. It is at the extreme edge of our range; about five hundred thousand kilometers back towards the cloud."

"Transmit standard greeting in all known languages," Captain Chapman ordered as he tugged his uniform into place while standing and walking over to lean against the bulkhead next to the science console. "And Cooper, see if you can get a higher resolution scan. Helm, approach the contact at one-quarter impulse."

"Aye, sir," registered from several corners of the bridge.

"No response to our greetings; I transmitted in the clear, sweeping all known languages as well as lingua-code sir," Shranka, a light-blue skinned Andorian at the communications console informed him.

Ensign Cooper tapped a few controls on her console, focusing in a few sensors.

"Compiling a visual profile sir," Cooper reported, her flingers still flying across the controls in order to clear up the image. "If I had to guess, this looks like the forward tug-section of a J-Type Freighter ... pretty damaged though, just look at how mottled that hull looks. The level of power I'm reading from it wouldn't even be enough to maintain basic life support."

"A J-Type freighter?" Captain Chapman asked, his left eyebrow raised slightly. "I haven't heard of any reports of a mayday call or loss of contact with any J-Type ... in fact, J-Types shouldn't even be along this course. Most of them haven't been refit in twenty or thirty years, if that ... they don't have shields, only minimal hull plating ... they are supposed to stay well clear of the P1040 anomaly. Most of their navigation computers are programmed to give a warning if they even get within fifteen billion kilometers of the thing."

"The thing is Captain," Cooper noted as her eyes widened slightly as they approached the vessel and she was able to get clearer images of the hull. "That warning is only programmed in because of this vessel and the two that followed her into destruction ... the hull markings on the side of the freighter indicate that it is the E.C.S. Olympus. That was the first ship ever lost to the P1040 anomaly, over sixty years ago."

Chapman shook his head in wonder, examining the image as it became clearer on Cooper's display.

"I can't believe it," he muttered. "A sixty year old wreck. It's still moving at a decent speed too ... they must have attempted to clear the cloud and it's been drifting on that momentum for three generations since. How in the world does it even still have a power source operating? Ensign, bring up the specs."

Cooper tapped a couple of controls and then inserted a magnetic tape from a drawer beneath her console into the reader next to her console. While a ship's computer could hold massive amounts of data, during the Earth-Romulan war it had been decided that much of a ship's critical information would be held in library tapes that were easily destructible in the event of capture, and these tapes were highly encrypted. The practice had saved terabytes worth of classified information from falling into Romulan hands.