Third Place Winner Stardate 20209.14

Time - By Capt Tam Otlan

© 2002 by Federation Space and the author pen named Tam Otlan

Sharakah was pacing back and forth in front of the doors of the council chambers. Today’s session was going to be a stressful one and he was not looking forward to walking through these doors. Menalain had ended yesterday’s session with the promise of bringing forth proof of a new threat to their very existence and that they would have to act soon to stop it.

Sharakah had heard the same kind of cryptic warning before from Menalain, and the last time, his information had been accurate. It was the last time that the Precigian race had gone to war. The Precigians were a race of people made up of an entire galaxy of life forms that had joined together to become one race more than a million years before.

After millennia of war and hatred, their galaxy was brought together when the explosion of their twin suns had threatened them. By working together and realizing that they were all going to be incinerated by a mutual cosmic threat, all hostilities ended and eventually the races saw that their differences were not as important as their mutual survival. Their teamwork paid off and they were able to stabilize their suns through the technological breakthroughs they made after joining together.

The only conflict they experienced now was when someone from beyond their galactic barrier tried to attack them. The technology they were now capable of had always been advanced enough to push back any aggressor. The fact that Menalain had made such a threat again meant that they might have to prepare for another war.

A large group of people came around the corner to appear in the corridor leading to the council chambers. At the front was Menalain, surrounded by the rest of the council, all trying to gather information from him regarding this threat. The look on his face was one of concern, and while he hadn’t meant to throw the council into panic, that is exactly what Menalain had done.

As they approached Sharakah, they all slowed and looked to the man who led the council. Sharakah was the oldest member, and had been elected to be the Chancellor more than seventy years before.

“Chancellor, I have come to explain the threat I spoke of in yesterday’s session.”

Nodding slowly, Sharakah could feel himself wither slightly. No matter how advanced their race was it seemed as though there would always be the potential for disaster. He prayed that in this case, Menalain would be wrong.

“Very well. Council is now in session, anyone who is not a council member must leave this corridor and not interrupt us until we exit the chamber.”

A large portion of the men and women present turned and quickly left the hallway, many were aides and family members of the council, and they knew that sometimes a session could last for more than twenty-six, of their thirty hour day.

When the hallway was empty of all but council members, Sharakah turned and with the power of his mind gave the command that triggered the doors to open. Only the Chancellor was able to open the doors, giving him the ultimate control over when the session’s started and finished.

The council followed Sharakah into the large chamber and took their places in the oval-shaped ring that surrounded the Chancellor’s podium. When they were all seated, Sharakah closed the chamber doors and brought the session to order.

“Session number seven hundred and twelve of this, our seventy-third year in the rule of Chancellor Sharakah, is now in session. I will break with the tradition that says we must go over the standard day’s events and proceed directly to what is forefront on everyone’s minds. Councilor Menalain, will you tell us of this threat you spoke of in yesterday’s session?”

Menalain stood, and placed his hands on the polished marble surface that circled the entire chamber. It served as a desktop for the councilors and had been there since the first council was established so long ago.

“Thank you Chancellor. I have brought with me today the proof of a new threat to our very existence, if I may?”

Looking at Sharakah, he waited for the nod to continue before activating the chamber’s holographic projectors. A moment later a three-dimensional representation of the known universe appeared in the center of the room. It floated two feet above the marble ring and allowed them all to see the image directly in front of them.

“This is the universe as we have explored it. We have fully explored more than a hundred galaxies and the threat we face is coming from section B-22. The ‘Milky Way’ galaxy as the species that live there call it.”

Loritu barked out a harsh laugh as she saw the galaxy he was describing.

“Are you serious? The races that live there have not even fully explored their own galaxy and you believe they can come here? They would have to pass through several other galaxies to even reach our borders. This is preposterous.”

Several of the other councilors were nodding their agreement as Menalain became more animated.

“No! Do not underestimate what I tell you, for I will explain. Many of the species in that galaxy use warp drive as their main method of propulsion. A few others use transwarp. But I have reason to believe that they will have a breakthrough within the next hundred years that will enable them to find us! Their technology will advance faster than they can prepare for it. They will have ships that can reach our galaxy, and weapons that could harm us, but they will not have had the time to properly study what they do. They could end up destroying us all with their ignorance.”

Sharakah had not laughed at the threat as others had. Regardless of how outrageous it seemed, he knew that Menalain was one of their most gifted scientists.

“Councilor Menalain, explain to us what you have discovered that led you to this belief.”

“Very well.”

Using the telepathic control that all Precigians were capable of, Menalain activated the time stream computer that they had used to avoid various disasters in their galaxy. It could predict the future by reading the cosmic strings that flowed throughout the universe. While it was not always completely accurate, the time stream computer had an error rate of less than twelve percent.

The view of the known universe had changed to show the Milky Way galaxy, as it would appear in twenty years. It showed a Federation starship running a speed test with its newly designed engines and travelling from the Alpha Quadrant to the Gamma Quadrant in less than a day. Next it moved forward only three years to show the brutal wars that were occurring all over the galaxy. Large, green colored ships with double hulls were vaporizing golden starships manned by reptilian beings by the dozens.

Klingon ships were traveling to the Delta Quadrant to destroy K’Zon ships, while the Federation fought wars on all fronts, trying desperately to keep hold of the fragile peace that it once remembered. The Tholian race had been completely exterminated, as had the Vulcans living on the homeworld. Only those who were in Star Fleet had survived.

The Pakleds, Ferengi, Bolians, Baku, Bajorans, Talaxians, and even the Ocampa had all been wiped from existence in the few short years since the Federation gave the wonderful new warp engines to the galaxy. The only two races that had not been in constant battle were species 8472 whom had retreated to their own fluidic space forever, and the Borg who had adapted to every weapon and engine that had come near them and then had vanished from the Milky Way galaxy in a mass exodus.

“Stop! This is madness. You really believe that these races will band together and come here? They will destroy themselves long before they become a threat to us.”

Menalain looked towards the outraged Loritu and shook his head sadly. He could see the tears of horror streaming down her face at what they had witnessed. The gray-brown skin that all Precigians possessed was instead chalky and dull on the faces of the council. They had all been horrified by the destruction of so many beings in such a short amount of time.

Changing the view again, the images showed the galaxy, as it would be in seventy-five years. The planet Earth was a tumbling collection of debris, as were almost all the once-populated worlds in the Milky Way galaxy. Every race had taken the fight to their enemies and used planet cracker weapons to destroy those worlds. All civilizations now lived in space. Their new engines powered by a constantly regenerating power source that no longer required any fuel, or dilithium to operate. Once an engine was started it would maintain maximum power output, forever.

The empires and federations and governments were all gone. The galaxy was a collection of ships that all acted independently. Caring not for their fellow man, nor for themselves. If they encountered a weaker ship, they would attack and steal anything they found of value. If they encountered a stronger ship, they would run. Things went on like that for another twenty-five years.

The screen changed to show the Milky Way galaxy as it existed a hundred years from now. It showed huge fleets of starship, more than ten thousand in all, moving at speeds that would be considered impossible by the engineers of today. Impulse engines no longer existed. Warp drive no longer existed. Even transwarp was considered pitifully slow compared to the sheer speed they now traveled.

All the ships were of a common design. A large diamond-shaped primary hull that rested on a squat neck leading to a huge secondary hull with six nacelles at the end of long struts. They looked like an aggressive version of the old Federation starships, but instead of white, or gray or dove blue paint; all the ships were blood red. They measured more than ten thousand meters in length and held crews of tens of thousands. Every ship was heading out of the Milky Way galaxy, trying to find other galaxies, other places where they could rebuild the federations that they once had.

A moment later the picture stopped moving and the council chamber was plunged into silence. Everyone was shocked by what had changed in such a short amount of time. Gone were the pirates of the past, they were now an organized mob branching out to find new places to conquer. The room remained silent until Sharakah finally spoke.

“Is that all, or did you discover more?” His voice sounded old, even in his own ears. Gone were the hopes that perhaps Menalain had made a mistake. A hundred years from now they would have to worry about these people coming here to find them, and when that time came, who knew what would happen?

Even Menalain was not unaffected by what he had shown them, his eyes were red and puffy from the tears that he couldn’t stop and his voice sounded strangled. Many of the Councilors no doubt thought that he had not seen this before now, or that he had come forward as soon as he learned this. What they didn’t know was that he had watched this same thing more than a dozen times, praying that the computer would project a different outcome.

“No Chancellor. There is a bit more.”

The picture began moving again and advanced forward another fifty years. It showed the galaxy the Precigian live in being overrun by these enormous red starships. Their energy beams cutting into the crust of the many planets in the system. Their angry torpedoes exploding into the ships the Precigians had build to defend themselves. The bodies of their people disappearing in flashes of light as the horrible weapons of this new Federation took its toll on their piece of the universe.

The projection showed the complete annihilation of every living thing in this galaxy in less than a year. When it was over, most of the New Federation’s fleet was gone, leaving only a few badly damaged ships to limp through the system. Whatever they had left their system for so long ago, they had only taken destruction with them. The Precigian defenses had almost been enough to destroy the enemy invaders, but alas, they were simply too powerful.

The holographic projection stopped and the room was again silent, the picture in the air before them wiped away from their sight but not from their minds. Menalain used his sleeve to wipe the tears from his eyes and swallowed hard to try and speak.

“That is the new threat that faces us, and it must be dealt with before it causes the end to everything that we know and care for. Those barbarians cannot be allowed to come here and destroy us. They would put an end to a history that spans millions of years in less than a single year. Unless we do something about it.”

Most of the Councilors were nodding in agreement as they tried to wipe the horrific images from their minds. Even the once skeptical Loritu was in agreement with Menalain’s assessment. They would need to do something now before it was too late.

Sharakah covered his face with both hands and scrubbed hard before standing to address Menalain. “What do you propose to do about this possible enemy? They are collectively scattered throughout their galaxy. By the time they are joined together, it will be too late to stop them. What can we do to change the future that you have shown us?”

Menalain swallowed hard again, and choked out his reply. He had asked himself that same question when he first stumbled upon this information and had worried that no matter what they did, it wouldn’t be enough to stop the destruction that was coming for them. When he did find a solution, it was almost too awful for him to contemplate. Only after viewing the projection many times, was he finally able to accept the fact that they would have to do something, or face extinction.

“We have to kill them all. If there is any chance of them developing this new method of travel, they will cause our destruction. That cannot be allowed to happen, so I suggest that we destroy them all. If the Federation does not design this engine, maybe one of the others will.”

Sharakah shook his head. “We ourselves have such a method to travel. We developed it millennia ago. All of the things that you show them being capable of, we too are capable of. They simply have a larger force than we do. Even with their overwhelming number, the projection shows that we nearly defeated them. Who’s to say that in a hundred and fifty years that we will not be able to defend ourselves from them? Especially now that we know they are coming.”

“Chancellor, they will defeat us. Our weapons are superior, but we do not breed the way they do. We live for much longer than they do, and have fewer children. If we were evenly numbered, we might have a chance. But they are like insects the way they breed. We cannot withstand their numbers. Our only option is to destroy them before they destroy us.”

Sharakah was about to speak when Loritu stood and addressed them both. “I hate to agree with Menalain Chancellor, but he is correct. They will leave us no option but to strike first to save ourselves. Maybe we can simply cause them enough harm to slow them down. Destroy their federations to slow them down and cause them to start over.”

Another Councilor stood and shook his fist as Loritu. “We cannot fight them like that. We have to destroy them outright. If we simply go to battle with them, we will alert them to our existence and they will want to seek us out. We could bring about the very thing we are trying to stop.”

Menalain nodded. “Xetshuy is right. We cannot fight them one on one. It will take us millennia to hunt them all down and wipe them out. But I have a solution that will allow us to eliminate them from here, without sacrificing ourselves in the process, or alerting them to our existence. Unfortunately, it will kill them all. No one in that galaxy will survive. That is why I hesitated to mention it before.”

Sharakah frowned and sat back in his seat. “What weapon could possibly destroy an entire galaxy Menalain? I know of nothing with that much power.”

Menalain also sat and looked down at the cold marble before him for several minutes before answering. It was obvious to everyone there that he was reluctant to speak of such things, but he had brought this knowledge to them, and would now have to follow through with his report.

“I have found…a way to create a gravimetric wave that will cause every star in a galaxy to go nova at the same time. It will create a shockwave that will destroy the entire galaxy and everything in it. It will then cause the galaxy itself to implode.”

Sagging in his chair, Sharakah could feel himself becoming nauseous at the thought of such mass genocide. “How is such a thing possible?”

A harsh barking laughter caused everyone to jerk in his or her seats. Menalain smiled angrily as he answered. “It’s much easier than you could imagine. I’m amazed no one has thought of it before. You’d be surprised what you stumble on as a scientist. I learned of this…weapon decades ago. I sealed the records of it on a memory crystal and then smashed it so that no one could ever learn of it. Now it may be our only hope.”

“H-How long will it take to implement this plan? And if we do this, what are the universal effects of destroying a galaxy?”

Sharakah couldn’t believe he was actually asking such a question. It seemed ludicrous and impossible to simply wipe a galaxy out of existence at a whim. They would have to take steps so that it could never be done again, by anyone.

But then what happens if we are ever faced with such a threat again? Maybe we should allow nature to take its course. If these people are meant to kill us, maybe it’s wrong for us to stop them.

Shaking his head, he realized that he and his fellow Precigians deserved to live, and no one had the right to take their lives away from them without a fight.

“I can implement the plan rather quickly. I simply need to take one of our warships to the edge of our system and cause a stabilized overload in the engine core. By changing the harmonics to a certain frequency, I can create the gravimetric wave and ‘launch’ it in their direction. It will travel outside of our space-time continuum the way a tachyon does. When it reaches their galaxy, it will set off a chain reaction at a speed so fast the entire galaxy will implode within an hour. They will all be dead before they know what hit them.”

Pausing a moment to let what he described sink in, he answered the second question.

“The aftereffects of destroying their galaxy are that it will destabilize the universe a bit.”

“What!?” Sharakah thought he must have heard wrong.

“The universe is set up in a very specific way Chancellor. It was never meant to have one of its galaxy’s destroyed by a sudden, violent burst of power. It will affect the entire universe. Though from my tests, it will not cause the destruction of any other planet or system.”

Sharakah was stunned by what they were suggesting. In the history of their joined existence, the Precigians had never taken war to anyone, and now they were discussing the possibility of destroying countless trillions of living, sentient beings. The thought of it made him wish that they had never invented the time stream computer. It had always helped them in the past and had allowed them to make minor changes to their future that impacted them greater later on. Now it was going to be the tool they used to keep themselves from being destroyed through war.

I cannot make this decision lightly, nor will I allow such a plan to go forward without first considering other options. Even if we have to wait until the last minute to implement his plan I will not be the Chancellor who sent an entire galaxy screaming to their deaths.

“Councilor Menalain, what was the probability factor of this happening according to the computer?”

Menalain’s six fingered hands were shaking hard enough to make small tapping sounds on the tabletop as he answered.

“The probability of this scenario being accurate was seventy-nine percent.”

That figure shocked the council. They had never heard of such a low probability being given by the computer. It was almost always accurate into the ninety-percent range. The twelve-percent error rate it had was from when it was first built and had made several mistakes. Since then, they had refined it to be much more accurate.

Sharakah stood and addressed Menalain only.

“Seventy-nine percent is the lowest probability in history. What were the results of the other twenty-one percent?”

“There was a sixteen-percent chance that they would come here and want to open a peaceful dialogue that would lead to the further growth and advancement of both our species, and there was a five-percent probability that they would never design this new drive at all.”

While the odds were still against them, Sharakah, and much of the council breathed a small sigh of relief at the figure. It meant that there was still a chance that they would never have to face this threat, however slight the chance.

Sharakah addressed the rest of the council. He had come to a decision that he hoped would allow them another option to destroying the entire Milky Way galaxy.

“This is what we will do. We will send two of our scout ships to explore and observe the beings in that galaxy. They will act as our reconnaissance force. We will keep them there until they can either confirm or disprove the threat those people pose to us. They will remain in that system for the next ninety years. If they return with news that the events Menalain have shown us have begun, then and only then will we take actions to destroy them. If they cannot prove that scenario, they will return here and we will continue to simply observe them from afar.

I make this order so that it will stand for the length of this assignment. Let no Chancellor after me disobey this order, as is my right as current Chancellor. We will give these people the benefit of the doubt until it is no longer reasonable to do so.

Councilor Yoven, choose your two ships wisely. Be sure that their Commanders understand that this is a fact-finding mission and not a preliminary strike. I want to know as much about them as possible. We will not become the most horrific mass-murderers in history without absolute just cause.”

The council collectively sighed and sat back in their chairs. Many were covered in sweat and appeared to be nauseous. Sharakah looked up at the large holographic display that showed the exact position of their suns to act as a clock. He expected that many hours had passed and was shocked to realize that only an hour had passed since they had entered the chamber.

“This session is now over. Let no one speak of what we have seen here. I do not want the panic that would be caused from such a discussion going public. Remember that all of this is a mere possibility and should not be taken as a fact of what will become.”

They all rose and left the chamber as one, Yoven stopping Sharakah just outside of the doors.

“Is there any other orders you would like for me to give the crews of our scout ships? They will be gone for many decades and communication over such distances is problematic.”

“Yes, tell them to be careful and to be generous in their assessment of these races. I do not want their mission to be colored by the fact that we have seen these people rise up and destroy us. In fact, only tell them what they need to know to make an accurate report. Between those two ships, they should be able to determine what is happening there. Also tell them to focus mainly on the United Federation of Planets as they are the origin of this new engine design.”

“Yes Chancellor.”

When Yoven was gone, Sharakah leaned against the wall for a moment before making his way home to his family. He wanted to spend as much time with them as possible.

The Milky Way Galaxy, Alpha Quadrant. Current Stardate.

Captain Matthew Thrawn was sitting in his command chair aboard the USS Dauntless. He had been impressed with the ship the moment he had taken command of her and was still surprised by some of the advanced technology the Federation was using in their newest ships.

Giving his orders to the various bridge officers, he looked down at the PADD he had brought with him to the bridge and began reading over what was scrolling across the screen.

Recently he had been kicking around several new ideas for an improved warp design. He wasn’t quite sure what it would lead to, and indeed thought it might just be a pipe dream to invent a new type of propulsion, but he couldn’t seem to let the idea go. Punching in some more information, he could almost picture the drive in his mind and the possibilities it could create if it worked.

Matt couldn’t help but smile as his imagination pictured a new type of ship streaking across the stars faster than even the Dauntless could ever hope to see. Going over the information again, he continued to make minute changes as the Dauntless flew on.