Saturday 15 May 2021 – 1800hrs ~ 2100hrs GMT
Commander Kenneth Mikhael Executive Officer
Lieutenant Commander Ezekiel “Zeke” Pride Flight Controller
Lieutenant Elli-Navine Chief Engineer
Lieutenant Alexander Artopolis Chief Medical Officer
Lieutenant Scott McIntyre Chief Tactical/Security Officer
Podcast: To Boldly Roll The (Mis)Adventures of the USS Potemkin
(this report 1456 words)
TBR#008= 100.3 mins/@60wpm ~6,018 wds
A world with a bluer sun aftermath… again!
Agent Timothy Harris turned the object around in his hands while he sat at one of the desks in the open office. Around him over agents of Department of Temporal Investigations were mostly busy with paperwork or with investigations they could do from the comfort of the office.
Tim is, like many others he was a man who could keep time. Not only keep time but he has a sense of absolute time. So, when he loses track of it while examining the lighter it is a big deal, so much so that the entire office is put into lock down pending a temporal review. As it turned out the lighter was nothing more than its intended purpose, to tell time. However, it carried a tiny chroniton charge which was enough to mess with Harris’ sense of time; a very disturbing experience for him to be sure but beyond placing it in a lightly shielded box on Titan nothing else happened. They could place when it had come from, or even if it had traveled through time, it could easily have come through the long way just locked away in a chroniton field to protect it from the rigors of time.
Hundreds of years ago that every same lighter was sold to a young man in central London. It was custom made, there was an inscription, but it was so fine that you could not see it. When asked about this unusual method the young man said that it was for him alone. “No one else needed to see it.” And with a smile left. He would go to war just a few months later, he and that lighter fought in some of the biggest battles of that devastating war. They both returned home to England where he joined the police force. Once again, he and that lighter saw some of the worst humanity could deliver upon one another. When his first-born child turned 18 the lighter was passed to them.
For more than 300 years that light was past from father to first born child, and it became known as the gift of curses, for each owner found themselves in the worst of the fighting, or at the most deprived crime scenes; yet they would all live to old age.
Over those years the light became imbued with time, not in any meaningful manner but it was enough to allow the owner to ‘see’ danger coming, just enough.
The Protectorate Pt 2
The repairs to the Potemkin took only a few hours with the help of the Protectorates drones and repair crews. Tennsy Carter had authorised several upgrades to the ships warp drive, sensors, and shields. While they would not be anything new to the Federation, they did improve the Potemkin beyond her design specs. The Captain was given one last chance to visit with Admiral Carter, he declined but allowed an away team led by Commander Mikhael to beam back aboard.
What they were told would shake anyone, by the late 33rd century the Protectorate calculated that there were only 6 possible futures. And only 3 or 4 of them would see the continued presence of the Federation and the Federation was vital in what would become the largest war the galaxy had ever known. The Tenzim would find their way to the milky way and quickly break through any resistance a post federation galaxy could offer. Which of these timelines that would coalesce was dependant on several ships in the intervening years, the Potemkin was one of these ships! A ship and crew that were pivotal to the Federation, and Starfleet surviving into the 34th century.
It was time to go, Admiral Carter received word that a small flotilla of Tenzim ships have broken through the front and were on route, a Protectorate corvette was tasked to take them home, but they had to leave in ten minutes, or they could be tracked back to the milky way. As a parting gift Admiral Teensy Carter offered a Quantum entangled communication device, it would reach her anywhere she was in the Universe with instant communications. To Elli, to whom she saw a little of her daughter in, she gifted a pocket universe with a FTL computer within. A limited device, even by Starfleet’s standards but would allow her to solve complex problems when the need arose.
The ‘small’ Protectorate Corvette turned out to be almost three time bigger than the Potemkin, a big blocky ship with two ‘arms’ reaching forward. It was within these arms that the Potemkin was docked via means that defied sensors, there was no magnetic field or physical contact. Even so, when the Protectorate ship began its hyperspace jumps the crew felt little more than the normal lurches associated with that mode of travel. It took mere hours to travel the quarter billion light years, a fact that was over shadowed when the crew discovered that the corvette had slowed down for their sakes.
The Protectorate Aftermath
Starfleet had many, many questions. The Crew were allowed to continue their trip into the unknown, but they should expect continued questions and even visits from ranking Brass. Not only was the Tenzim a threat they must prepare for but first contact with the semi-mythical Protectorate had been made. For centuries nothing more than whispers had been heard, the Protectorate is so shrouded in shadow that most species do not believe they even exist, well now the Federation knows they do.
In the far reaches of the Super cluster Protectorate ships seed weapons fire into the void, even the thousands of gigantic ships of the Protectorate battle group were outnumbered, millions of small black seed shaped ships; each no larger than a runabout shoot across the distance firing pulses of cobalt blue pulses. It was a battle like none the Milky way had ever seen, yet it was but a small clash on the vaster battlefield.
The Devourer returns!
A month after their encounter with the Protectorate and the Potemkin and her crew find themselves on the path of another distress call. This one full of fear of the devourer, which will return soon; and maybe for the last time and will feast upon their planet.
As the Potemkin dropped to normal space it is only the lightening quick actions of the Pride saved the ship from pancaking on the side of a starbase sized rock. Sensors indicated that the surprise asteroid field that trailed the planet was once a large moon but was little more than a navigational hazard now. Even from this distance, there are clear scars upon the surface, a great canyon miles deeps and hundreds of miles long surrounded by three large, deep craters arranged in an equilateral triangle.
A discussion on how best to deal with this and not breach the Prime Directive… again took place. Soon there after an away team beamed down, using the latest in holographic disguises they did their best to blend in… apparently that is what they were trying to do anyway. The pub was mentioned a few times as a source of information. They even decided they would fabricate money instead of mugging someone! Elli, who was back on the ship and the Captain both decided a less direct approach would be taken, thus the nearest library was sort after, and they were soon able to discover some more facts about the entity or object called The Devourer. It visited every 500 years and landed; the one image they could find depicted a scene from orbit with a giant creature. More than a thousand kilometres tall with three legs.
Long range sensors picked up just such an object coming deeper into the system, it matched the basic parameters of the creature described. It was on a direct course of the 4th world in the system, one that resembled Mars in the late 21st century, a red world with a healthy coating of green mosses, the early stages of life already covering much of the planet.
Not wanting to be seen by it lest it have hostile intentions or see them as a meal Pride completed a micro jump into a near by asteroid ring, reaching it just as the creature did. The site was both magnificent and terrifying, without slowing the massive creature barreled through the ring, casting aside ‘roid bigger than some moons. The rocks just smashing into the thick hide, shattering into trillion of pebbles. As it cleared the ring the front half of the creature parted into three parts, three legs and it began to slow as it approached a proto-M class world, on a direct course to feed upon it.