Tales From The Shuttle [Part 3]: Into the depths

Posted on Sun Jun 22nd, 2025 @ 5:19pm by Captain Taiga Aisaka & Commander Jennifer Daxer & Commander Chisato Nishikigi & Major Chiyo Shimada & Lieutenant Jasad Yuvek & Lieutenant Nezuko

1,712 words; about a 9 minute read

Mission: Andromeda
Location: Unknown

Previously on Star Trek Tokyo:

"For all know, they could have all died out centuries ago, but their automated systems still come online any time a sentient being comes onto this. . .station, base. . .or whatever the hell this is." He added

"Who's to say something actually happened?" Daxer asked in reply. "As large as it is, it's possible they're just somewhere else in the sphere. Either way, I think our best option is to keep going."

And now the continuation...

[One hour later]

The doors opened before them, to reveal a strange semi-circular room. Along the curved walls strange looking computer consoles worked away. They each projected a holographic screen and a strange language scrolled on them.

The flat wall had two doors at each end, and a huge window covered by some sort of blast door. The doors on either side had red lights above them and a faint humming could be heard.

Nezuko didn’t want to touch anything just yet but was keen to connect to the computers with her tricorder. She had made progress since her initial failure with the drones and thought a stable, secure, translatable connection to this structure’s computer interfaces might now be possible.

She looked over at Major Shimada for permission to proceed.

"Be careful:" Chiyo advised. "There may be more automated booby traps. Guns up, people!"

"Right then," Chisato nodded as she shifted her attention over to Nezuko. "Care to take a crack at this one, Lieutenant?"

The Amphea nodded and got to work. Fingers on one hand tapped away at her tricorder. The screens on the monitor started changing. The connection was being established.

A moment later, Nezuko put on the main display a map of the tower complex they were in, with a few specific rooms labeled brightly in red.

"Any possibility that one of these projections might lead us to the Omega Molecule so we can get out of here?" Lieutenant Yuvek.

"The longer we stand around, the more opportunities this place has to kill us." He complained bitterly.

"Well, provided I'm reading things correctly..." Chisato muttered as she cross-referenced the display with the readings on her PADD. "That red box there on the left should be where we are right now, and this big red dot that's flashing over here..." -her finger moved to indicate at the dot in question- "...That, right there, should be the Omega Molecule."

"Then, I'd suggest everyone take a step back:" Chiyo said. "Because I think it's time we accomplish the mission."

The room instantly changed, showing a projection of a planet. Blue and green, with swirling clouds. Several continents were visible, everything from frozen poles to deserts. A mushroom shaped starbase hung in orbit over one large sprawling continent and several starships zoomed around, some leaving the area with small flashes of warp drive

"My god..." Chiyo paused. "Is that...?"

"Earth," Chisato gasped. "And a live feed, by the looks of it."

She indicated towards a tiny shape that at first glance resembled a Defiant-class, but with a curvier, more streamlined design.

"See that?" she remarked. "That right there is a Sao Paulo-Class Tactical Escort; they only recently rolled that class out a couple of months ago, back when we were still stranded in the Karlax Nebula."

"I heard about those things." Chiyo admitted. "There's talk of introducing a marine-centric variant."

"I don't think these new Starfleet ships are an important conversation right now." Daxer suggested with a shrug. "Killer technology kinda makes it a bad idea."

If they can see Earth, they probably know everything about us, Nezuko thought. But she didn’t sign or type anything to that effect.

"Question is, what is a live holographic feed of Earth doing in some nondescript power plant all the way out in the Andromeda Galaxy?" Chisato speculated.

"Unless that's the point:" Chiyo remarked. "And this place isn't nondescript, but rather... Central to an operation of some sort..."

Lieutenant Yuvek studied the screen intently. ". . .whatever this place is, why haven't we encountered any other forms of defense or activity? There is no way the Federation would just allow intruders to casually stroll into Starfleet Headquarters with only a handful of sentry bots as a security force." He commented.

But he couldn't deny what he was seeing before his eyes.

The image changed, the live feed of Earth was suddenly snapped away from sight. This time it was replaced by a large Orange and red planet. A shattered moon was in high orbit and its fragments had created rings around its once spherical surface. The planet looked much rougher and just like Earth, ships were in orbit. These ships however were all similar, more militaristic and mainly coloured green and orange. A starbase hung in orbit, with several pointed symbols painted in red on its hull.

"Qo'noS?" Chisato stole a nervous glance over towards Nezuko. "What do you reckon all this is about?"

This time she typed her thoughts so they could be read aloud. “The capitals of the two most powerful nations in the Milky Way,” Nezuko said. “Live feed. Espionage. Maybe worse.”

"They've obviously been watching us..." Daxer said somewhat absently, as she practically stared through the hologram. She'd been putting pieces of the bigger puzzle together since the mission had begun, and she definitely didn't like what her logic was telling her.

The Vulcan woman had also remembered a report from an encounter the Enterprise D had with an Iconian gateway, thinking it looked very similar to what she'd seen in the tactical logs. "The Elachi that I tried to negotiate with told me they were taking orders from another race... the ship was brought through a gateway into a Dyson Sphere... This looks like Iconian technology. What if the Iconians are still alive, and giving orders to the Elachi?"

The six of them fell silent as they all came to terms with the grave implications of Daxer's hypothesis.

"The Iconians, working in cahoots with the Elachi, and possibly the Tal Shiar and the Confederacy of Independent Planets... but for what gain?" Chisato asked. "Something's not adding up here; after who knows many millennia of inactivity, why would they suddenly show up now to start playing a heavy hand in galactic politics?"

"Maybe they're not interested in entering galactic politics, but rather dominating them?" Chiyo proposed.

"What I saw made it look like they're trying to wipe us out." Daxer said with a raised eyebrow. "It's possible they want our galaxy for themselves. Either way, the implications are astoundingly bad."

“Live feeds not just for espionage” Nezuko’s tricorder said. “Painting targets. Omega could power weapons of mass destruction, with near instant transgalactic delivery. No warning. Spines of Federation and Klingon Empire broken.”

The image changed once again, this time to a planet where a massive space battle appeared to be taking place: Starships of both Federation and Klingon design exchanged volleys with Romulan and Elachi vessels. The planet itself was shades of muddy brown land masses and polluted green oceans. The heavily polluted atmosphere had a dull crimson glow.

"Seems like they're targeting friend and foe alike:" Chiyo commented. "That's Braxus; the capital of the Confederacy that you mentioned earlier, Commander. Looks like they're already not having a great time though..."

The image switched again this time showing a huge planet, black and luminous green. A huge blocky complex surrounded the entire planet as well as cubed ships, spherical ships and hanging over the planet a huge rhombus vessel which seemed to be coordinating the entire planet.

Nezuko's experience with the Borg was limited to her visit to the crashed cube in the nebula, but she could recognize it as well as anyone else. But these images, the capitals of the Federation, the Klingon Empire, the Confederacy, and now the Borg Collective, she couldn't help but wonder... The enemy of my enemy is...

The image changed again. This time showing a different map of the Milky Way galaxy. Hundreds if not thousands of tiny symbols were fitted across the map. Many of them were grey in colour, as if indicating something was offline. Several were red, including one over the Iconia system, yet a few more were blue and glowing, including one in the Remella System, the site of the Elachi Nursery.

"A roadmap for an invasion?" Chisato speculated.

Nezuko couldn’t help herself. She had to see something. Was Amphei Prime a target? The scale was hard to read. She just needed to zoom in. Two fingers inside the holo map and spread her fingers…

As soon as Nezuko's fingers made contact with the holographic image, the map changed. It began to fizzle and became fuzzy. Then one by one the grey symbols changed to red before shortly switching to blue. They spread out across the Galaxy from the Remella system. A strange alarm sounded, lasting only a few seconds before silencing.

Strange text appeared above the map, switching languages and symbols, one by one. Borg, Klingon, Romulan, Vulcan, Andorian, Japanese, other languages that were unrecognisable and finally it stopped on English/Federation Standard before becoming still.

"Gateway System Reactivated. All Gateways Online and Ready"

"God damnit, Nezuko!" Chiyo said. "That's the last time I let an Amphea touch something!

"Shut it off, Lieutenant!" Chisato ordered frantically.

Nezuko typed frantically on her tricorder. She was still interfaced, but nothing she was doing was working. Eyes wide, she tried more and more possible overrides, but…no result.

She shook her head to the others, not sparing the time to type ‘not working’.

The blue symbols one by one started turning a different colour. This time they turned green. Once again they spread out from the Remella System across the entire Milky Way Galaxy. The text changed again, once again going through multiple languages before settling on Federation Standard English.

"Gateway Network Open."

An alarm began to sound and a purple coloured translucent forcefield appeared around them, trapping them in a circle.

To be continued...

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