SD241907.12 || PLOT LOG || "Into the Black"

Posted on 12 Jul 2019 @ 9:59pm by Captain Mallory Thorne

806 words; about a 4 minute read

=/\= Begin Log =/\=

"Captain's Log. Stardate 241907.12.

"Our most recent visit to Providence Station is now complete, and we are setting out on our patrol. We're already about seven hours away from the station. We're going to follow up on some rumors of trouble. Personally, I'd be happy to avoid any more unusual ships coming out of Romulan space, but you never can guess out here..."

The USS Odin was making its careful path forward, the sensors earning their pay while everyone else kind of sat around feeling like they weren't doing the same. Not that anyone was idle on duty. Everyone had their jobs to do, and everyone was doing those jobs. It could just feel like they weren't doing much when everything was quiet.

Which naturally meant that things needed to stop being quiet.

It seemed to happen out of nowhere, and one might say that's what actually happened.

The Odin lurched hard to one side, dislodging more than a few crew members from their places. It didn't stop there either. The ship was being dragged through space, hard, and making the vessel shake. The lights flickered on and off while everyone struggled to get back to their stations and the inertial dampers struggled to keep everyone stable.

"Report!" Mallory shouted over the rattling and shuddering as she grabbed the armrests of her chair and pulled herself back into her seat, clinging to them to maintain her position.

"We appear to be caught in the gravity well of an uncharted black star," Lieutenant Malena shouted back, the innate purring quality of her voice making it slightly difficult to hear her over the noise.

"Well, get us out of it," Mal shouted back. It was clearly one of her most intelligent orders to date.

There was a long, uncomfortable (physically and mentally) silence before Beryl called, "I can't break us free, sir! We're being drawn in!"

Mallory nearly shouted something entirely incoherent, but she knew that it would be both unprofessional and thoroughly useless in that moment. She was the captain, and she had to think like the captain, and she had to think like the captain really, really fast and right now.

"Bridge to engineering," she shouted. "We need absolutely everything that the ship can give us to power out of this gravity well!"

"Yes, Captain!" returned the stoic and perfectly-easy-to-be-heard chief engineer.

"Put all our power into the engines. Take it from other systems if you have to, but break us out of this," she ordered, trying to sound like she knew what she was doing.

Malena and Beryl acknowledged the order together, and the violence of the ship's trembling increased. A panel over the auxiliary science station popped out of the ceiling, and the internals fell down with a haze of sparks and a puff of smoke. Fortunately, no one had been standing at that console at the time.

The shaking grew worse.

"Report!" Mal shouted again.

"We are beginning to pull loose," Beryl replied--

That was when the ship really pulled loose.

The Odin wrenched itself free of the black star with such force and fury that it catapulted it loose. The ship not only left the gravity well, but went skipping across space and time...

* * *

Everything had gone black.

Mallory opened her eyes to a pounding headache, made all the worse by the alarm klaxons that were rattling the ship. She blinked slowly, trying to get used to the fact that there was stuff going on around her other than the pain radiating from the center of her skull. Holding her head in one hand, she looked down and saw that she was on the floor again.

How does that keep happening? she wondered blearily. She lifted her head and looked around, seeing everyone else in much the same condition.

"Report," she managed to croak. "And someone shut that damn noise off."

After a few more moments, silence returned. The ship was still and quiet now.

"Report," she repeated, hauling herself back into her seat.

"We...have moved," Beryl said, sounding just as groggy as Mal felt. "We are... That can't be right."

Mallory frowned. "What?" she asked, even though she wasn't really sure she wanted the answer.

There was a long pause. "According to the computer, we're...at Earth?"

How the fuck did that happen?

"Sir," Malena said, now also returned to her duty station. "We also... There are too few satellites. This does not compare with the modern day information for Earth's outer sensor grid. I am not sure we are in our own time either."

Mallory just stared at them for a moment. "Then where-- I mean, when are we?!"

=/\= End Log =/\=

OOC: Notes incoming! Check your emails. :)

Captain Mallory Thorne
Commanding Officer, USS Odin

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