Episode 2. Outta Time, Outta Luck

Story

602 years later. Space stretched before us, black and unfathomable, pierced here and there by the cold light of stars. A void so vast it seemed able to swallow our lives without leaving the slightest trace. In that absolute silence, only the dull pulses of the ship beneath our feet vibrated, a rhythm that might have been soothing if not for the tension tightening my chest. Like a sixth sense, a silent alarm in my mind.

We had come to answer a simple distress signal emitted by an S-12 civilian freighter. A brief call, cut off in the middle of a garbled transmission. On site... nothing. Not a hull fragment, not a debris field drifting away, not even a residual ionic signature. As if that ship had never existed.

I stared at the main screen, trying not to give in to the worry knotting my stomach. Every passing second made the darkness more oppressive, more alive. I had that feeling... a presence. Lurking there in the dark. Malicious. Invisible... but terribly real.

Suddenly, an almost imperceptible vibration crossed the deck. An icy shiver climbed the back of my neck. The consoles blinked alarming red, casting restless shadows over our faces. A heavy silence fell, almost sacred, as if the universe were holding its breath.

Then my first officer's voice cut through the air, sharp and fast, saturated with adrenaline.

On the main screen, the Acheros now appeared, immense and threatening. Its black hull seemed to absorb all light, like a hole in reality, its asymmetrical structures radiating a faint blood-red glow. I had the absurd impression that it was staring at us, judging us, insects lost in the void.

A crackle reached us from engineering, followed by Scotty's hoarse, exasperated voice. Even from that distance, I could already picture him covered in soot with a screwdriver between his teeth.

A bitter smile pulled at my lips. Sometimes that was what it took to survive the moment.

I saw his hands tighten on the controls, his eyes bright with a feverish gleam. He lived for those moments when he could dance on a razor's edge.

An alert beep sounded across every console. Red flashed, flooding the bridge like an omen of the end of the world. I felt my heart accelerate, pounding against my ribs with the force of a phaser cannon.

Tom Paris rolled the ship to port, beginning attack maneuver Beta. The main screen pivoted, revealing the armored flank of the Acheros. Its asymmetrical structures glittered with unstable red lights, like a sick organism ready to vomit hatred.

Golden beams split the darkness, striking the Na'kuhl shields in an incandescent flash. The impact shook the entire bridge. The consoles overheated, releasing the acrid smell of burned metal and isolinear components. On screen, their blood-red shields flickered under the blow, but did not fail.

The next instant, a blackish-red energy lance crossed the void and struck our forward deflectors. The shock threw us forward. I caught the armrest, breath knocked out of me.

The phasers struck again, this time with increased intensity. A blue arc of energy burst across the enemy hull, throwing incandescent fragments into space. For a moment, the Acheros seemed to waver, as if seized by mechanical convulsions.

Two photon torpedoes split the night and struck the aft section of the Na'kuhl ship, tearing away a whole section of its external structures. Streams of glowing plasma spilled out like machine blood, scattering into the dark.

I saw the Acheros pivot on its axis and move away at full power, its engines casting a dark red light that pulsed in the void.

The ship vibrated as we dove after them. Their engines left a residual trail behind them, and we followed it like a burning thread in the dark.

On screen, a vortex formed brutally ahead of them, swallowing the Acheros into a bluish tear. Its edges vibrated with such intense energy that even space seemed to scream in silence.

The vortex swallowed us. The consoles crackled under the energy overload. My stomach turned under the violence of the turbulence.

Blinding flashes burst across the bridge, red, then blue, then white... and suddenly, everything was calm again.

I raised my head. Before us, the sight chilled my blood. Dozens of Na'kuhl signatures appeared on sensors. Everywhere. All around us.

The first impact shook us violently. Then a second. Alarms howled, the hull groaned like an old tree about to break.

A white light. A dull roar. Then nothing. Silence.

The ship's walls dissolved pixel by pixel, giving way to the black, bare walls of the holodeck. The smell of burning, the smoke, the fear... all of it had vanished. Only Lingua remained, materialized before me, and the holographic arch at the rear, through which T'Met silently entered.