These Are the Voyages

Episode 2×6 “Entropy’s Demise”

By Anthony Jennings

From These Are the Voyages

Airdate: February 15, 2025

Her survey mission complete, U.S.S. Lexington (NCC-1709, Constitution class, Scientific and Survey Operations) cruised across the border of claimed Federation space en route to Starbase 25 for her scheduled refit. In sickbay, Dr. Grelox (Denobulan M, Chief Medical Officer) found himself distracted; his Romulan pen pal Taleria had abruptly ceased contact, and enough time had now gone by for Grelox to be worried. Discreet inquiries through the neutral Nyberrites, who had facilitated their communications, turned up no trace of her. All this preyed on Grelox’s mind as he and Lt. Aisha (Risian F, Ship’s Counselor) had to decide whether to return their three recuperating officers to duty following their life-threatening injuries on Thelema.

Cmdr. Sabin Trall (unjoined Trill M, Chief Science Officer) had recovered enough to be cleared, but Grelox decided to give Cmdr. Athytti sh’Shaine (Andorian F, Executive Officer) and Ens. Samson Gao (human M, Security Officer) some more time in outpatient treatment and rest. They were disappointed, but accepted the doctor’s judgment. During their lengthy recovery time off the duty roster, Sabin and Athytti had resumed their romance from the Academy, but since the intervening 18 years had made them very different people, they decided to take it slow. Athytti gave Sabin a kiss on the cheek before he left sickbay, pulling down his uniform sleeves after Grelox’s testing and wandering toward the turbolift to give the bridge crew the good news.

This relaxed moment was interrupted by Lt. (j.g.) Xellein (Orion F, Communications Officer) paging the senior staff to the observation lounge. Sabin took the turbolift to Deck 2 instead, where the senior staff (minus Athytti) had assembled for a real-time transmission from their squadron commander, RAdm. Banna Stoker. Stoker ordered the Lexington to proceed at once to the Federation winemaking agricultural colony on Carina VII, where strange temporal phenomena were threatening the colony. Many colonists were experiencing rapid aging, structures recently built were collapsing, and the colony’s grape crops withered and died. The colonist’s safety and survival were Stoker’s paramount consideration, but she was also worried that the temporal phenomena could portend a larger threat to the Federation, especially since the colony was near the Romulan Neutral Zone.

Arriving in orbit, Sabin’s scans indicated low-level sensor interference coming from tachyon emissions. Sabin and Grelox suspected the tachyons were somehow related to the temporal anomalies but could not formulate a hypothesis about how without more information.

Capt. Mary Birdsong (human F, Commanding Officer) brought an away team of Sabin, Grelox, and Cmdr. Thalon Quilar (Andorian M, Chief of Security) to the colonial capital of Morgan’s Hope to meet with Governor Syreeta Sebastian. After a somewhat hurried exchange of the necessary greeting protocols, Syreeta took the away team to meet Wes and Aurelia Mackley, whose son Efren was one of the most severely affected colonists. Efren was six months old chronologically and developmentally, but his body was that of a six-year-old child. Indeed, Grelox’s examination indicated a perfectly healthy six-year-old human patient. Grelox estimated that, if the condition continued, Efren would age a year for every month that passed. He was able to rule out progeria, as the colony’s medical center had done, and could not detect any sign of pathogens or poisons, leading Sabin to infer that the cause was environmental. Grelox had the Mackleys beam up to the Lexington for observation by his medical staff.

The away team split up at this point to cover more ground. Sabin and Thalon returned to Morgan’s Hope to examine structures which had prematurely collapsed due to metal fatigue, while Birdsong accompanied Syreeta to the vineyards in the countryside beyond. One of those structures was a warehouse used to store empty barrels. The barrels themselves showed signs of rotting wood due to age and rust on the steel bands. It should take decades for those to occur, but none of the barrels is more than a few years old. The warehouse itself was built several years ago, but the tritanium showed over a century of decay, which accounted for the structural collapse. Trying to get a closer look, Sabin inadvertently knocked a girder loose where the remaining ceiling was weak and was knocked unconscious. Thalon had him beamed up to the Lexington to treat his injuries.

Meanwhile, in the vineyards, Birdsong and Syreeta met a Vulcan colonist named Se’irrah whose grapes had matured in a single day, then withered and died overnight, representative of many of the vintners on the colony experiencing similar troubles. Birdsong was something of an oenophile, a native Washingtonian who enjoyed getting out to the Yakima Valley in college. She could tell that the seasonality of the grapes had been disrupted, as this was the right season for harvest yet the grapes had withered. Her tricorder revealed no herbicides, pesticides, or diseases. This corroborated Sabin’s theory that the cause must be environmental. A taste of wine from Sei’rrah’s cellar was disgustingly sour from air exposure, which should not occur for decades although the wine was only two years old and the bottle was properly sealed. (Contrary to popular belief, most wine does not improve with great age and is best drunk young.)

Thalon and Syreeta approached up the garden path and knocked at Sei’rrah’s door, informing the Captain that Sabin had been injured and sent back to the ship to recover, as well as their findings from the collapsed structure. An angry colonist who Syreeta identified as Zane Kroll stormed into the cottage, demanding that the away team investigate Romulans intruding on his property. Syreeta sighed in exasperation, telling them that Zane had been spreading unsubstantiated rumors about Romulans for months. However, Zane’s description of the intruder’s V-shaped forehead and uniform piqued Thalon’s interest.

At Zane’s vineyard, the away team identified several vines that had been cut, one uprooted completely, and a narrow, deep hole in the ground between rows. Birdsong was unable to make any sense of the hole, but the cuttings and uprooting appeared to indicate someone had been taking samples. Thalon noted scuff marks nearby, which Zane said he had attempted to follow into the nearby hills where he lost the trail. 

Sabin and Grelox beamed down to rejoin the away team, with Ter’Rec directing the Lexington’s sensors to support the tracking attempt. Sabin was able to follow the trail, leading the away team to a cave system outside the settled area around Morgan’s Hope. At one time the entrance had been well-camouflaged but at this point nobody had bothered to conceal tracks in and out, as if in a great hurry. The interior was full of expedition equipment and science labs of obvious Romulan origin. Thalon and Birdsong drew phasers and swept the area for threats, and discovered a bomb on the main power generator. Due to the delay in sweeping the base on foot, the bomb was about to detonate, and Birdsong called for emergency beam-out rather than let Thalon attempt to disarm it. All four away team members materialized back in Transporter Room 1 as the explosion destroyed the base, equipment, and most of the hillside.

Athytti summoned the senior staff to the briefing room, where despite being off-duty and in civilian clothing, she had established a real-time communications link with Admiral Stoker. She repeated to her shipmates what she had already told the Admiral: she thinks she knows what is causing the temporal anomalies. During the 2256-2257 war, she was transferred from the Department of Temporal Investigations to Section 31, back when the latter was an official branch of Starfleet Intelligence and not a rogue terrorist organization. Her unit was attached to U.S.S. Hamilton (NCC-1145, constitution class, technical testbed), conducting tests on a temporal weapon which could artificially age matter, bypassing shields and defensive systems. The tests were conducted in the outer Carina system, far from the Klingon war zone for security, and something went terribly wrong when the weapon was turned on. The crew lost control of the chain reaction and had to abandon ship. Stoker provided logs from the Hamilton’s escape pods which seemed to corroborate this account. The Hamilton appeared to be vaporized in a flash. Section 31 falsified records to make it appear that Hamilton had been decommissioned at the end of the war. Yet here she was, apparently thrown forward in time and leaking tachyons from the malfunctioning weapon, which could be the source of the anomalies on Carina VII. 

Without delay, the Lexington left orbit under impulse power, bound for Carina X and the Hamilton’s last known position in the gas giant’s rings. Birdsong ordered yellow alert, knowing the Romulans had a head start. Sure enough, they found the Hamilton adrift, damaged and disabled and pouring out tachyons. The tachyon emissions were intense enough to make beaming onto or off of the Hamilton essentially impossible, and deadly even to attempt. Rather than go aboard and try to stop the emissions at the source, the crew decided to tow her into interstellar space where no inhabited systems were near enough to be affected by the temporal anomalies around the Hamilton, then call for help from the Starfleet Corps of Engineers to safely disable the malfunctioning weapon or destroy the ship. Ter’Rec modified the Lexington’s tractor beam to compensate for the tachyon interference, allowing him to grab the Hamilton and tow it.

As the Lexington began her departure from the Carina system under impulse power, I.R.W. Belorax (T’Liss class), decloaked, raising shields and powering weapons, but not yet obtaining a target lock. When Birdsong hailed the Belorax, the skipper turned out to be Grelox’s pen pal, Commander Taleria (Major NPC). A tense exchange followed, with Taleria recognizing Grelox on the bridge and accusing the Federation of developing temporal weapons of mass destruction in violation of over a dozen major interstellar treaties. The Belorax, of course, had violated the Neutral Zone and spied on a Federation colony, which were acts of war. Concerned that more Romulan ships might be present nearby and still cloaked, Sabin scanned for neutrino traces but was unable to determine anything definitive. Birdsong prevailed on Taleria to de-escalate the situation, with Taleria agreeing to leave the system if a Romulan boarding party on the Hamilton was allowed to return to the Belorax. Grelox presumed this was so that the Romulans could bring back plans for the temporal weapon for further development, but Ter’Rec did not care since the weapon was a failure and a technological dead end. Sabin was skeptical that Taliera was even telling the truth, and scanned the Hamilton for Romulan lifesigns, attempting to compensate for the tachyon interference. Instead, before Sabin could learn anything, an enormous chain reaction of tachyons and chronitons began to race out of control from the Hamilton’s stardrive section. Birdsong concluded that the temporal weapon was undergoing a catastrophic overload, and warned Taleria just in time. Ter’Rec released the tractor beam, and Lexington and Belorax moved to a safe distance just in time, as the Hamilton was ripped apart by the weapon overload in a shower of debris and enormous tachyon emissions. 

The Belorax, unable to engage her cloak, fled toward the Romulan Neutral Zone at maximum warp.

Sabin then noticed that the positions of the stars were different, as were the relative orbits of the planets in the Carina system. Reestablishing communications with Morgan’s Hope confirmed Sabin’s suspicions: the weapon discharge that destroyed the Hamilton had also sent the Lexington and Belorax forward in time. The date was April 1, 2286, nearly 15 years in the future. The Lexington had been reported lost and presumed destroyed, and the entire crew declared legally dead. Her mission was considered a success, as the temporal anomalies on Carina VII ceased with the destruction of the Hamilton, and life on the colony had returned to normal after that. 

The Mackley family, also declared legally dead, beamed down to Morgan’s Hope to make a new start to their lives. As for the Lexington, due for a refit even before temporal displacement, Starfleet Command ordered to the Lighthouse Cairns Fleet Yards orbiting Cait for crew debriefing by the Department of Temporal Investigations while a berth was prepared to put the ship in drydock for assessment by the SCE. Spacedock would have been a more obvious choice, but Earth had its hands full recovering from another time-travel incident with a whale probe just a week earlier. A lot had happened in 15 years, and the crew would have a lot of catch-up learning to do.

Brian: Birdsong

Fred: Sabin

Geoff: Ter’Rec, Thalon

Peter: Grelox

Modular laboratory focus: n/a

Crew support used: 4

Lexington damage: n/a

Casualties: 1 wounded

Shuttlecraft destroyed: 0

On the next Star Trek Adventures…

3×1 “Bacchus Irresistible Call”