Uncomfortable Encounters - Meeting The Past

Posted on Wed Jun 1st, 2011 @ 1:57pm by Captain Alexander Gunning & Commander Dietrich Reinhart & Captain Liarra Von

Mission: In Defiance Of Orders
Location: USS Excelsior - Transporter Room, Main Bridge, Captain's Ready Room
Timeline: May 7th 2291 - 30 mins after Directive Violation

[ON]

Gunning kicked his heels on the transporter pad. Matsumoto was undoubtedly right, this would be impossible to explain to the busy-bodies from Temporal Investigations but under the circumstances, there wasn't an awful lot he could do.

Liarra could tell that her friend and captain was nervous about going over to the Excelsior, but there was little she could do too. All she could do was listen carefully and watch her words, making sure neither of them told more than they had to.

The blue shimmer of the transporter came on almost without warning and suddenly, standing before him was a man whose portrait he had seen adorning the walls of many an Administrative Level of many a Starbase. One of the men who had gone down in history as part of the crew of the Enterprise.

Gunning took a step forward. "Captain Sulu." He said, reaching out a hand to the older man. "Allow me to introduce my Second Officer, Liarra Von."

The words coming out of his mouth were almost alien to him. This man was dead. Or at least... he should be dead. Or was he dead? He hadn't even been born. Not even a thought in the head of his great-great grandparents. The whole thing was enough to make one's brain burn.

Von had never met Captain Sulu, although his exploits on the Enterprise were legendary even back then. He would go on to have an amazing career as a captain, adding long lists of discoveries to his name in Starfleet records. It was an honor to meet him, but Liarra knew that telling him so could be disruptive to the timeline.

Sulu did not know how to respond to the man. He was not familiar with the rank or style of uniform. It was obvious that they were very advanced, but they maintained the same themes of his time. The Captain, or whatever rank he was, kept up the same methods of greeting that he was familiar with. Hikaru stepped forward as the younger man came down from the pad to greet him. He did not need to be a mind-reader or a Vulcan to understand the emotion and utter confusion that his guest was feeling.

"Yours is an impressive ship, Mr Gunning." It was an understatement. Dmitri Valtane estimated the ship was capable of sustained velocity of over Warp 9. His Excelsior pushed 8, comfortably, and was several times the size of the Jackal. Indeed, impressive.

"Thank you, Captain. May I say, it is an honour to walk the halls of the USS Excelsior" Gunning replied, not quite sure what he meant.

Sulu, though, felt the need to get on with the reason why he was there. Tea and biscuits would be great, but when neither of them were certain how the temporal barrier was breached, the conversation had to turn to solutions. "We need to start going over sensor logs to find out how this can be reversed."

Gunning felt himself almost snap to attention. "Agreed."

Sulu turned and headed out the Transporter Room's doors. "Follow me, Captain Gunning." He wanted to limit the number of crewmen who would see their temporal-drift guests. Hikaru had already ordered all personnel to their quarters or duty stations - in a sense clearing the corridors. He was grateful for the short walk and turbolift ride to the Bridge and his ready room.

Valtane was sitting in the Sulu's chair. His own attention turned to the door to witness what people looked like at some point in the future. The same, as he figured. The Excelsior was maintaining its distance from the smaller Jackal, all the more because crew at windows will tell stories.

Liarra let her gaze wander around the bridge of the Excelsior. She had seen the ship at the fleet museum, but at this time she was still considered brand new. Part of her envied this crew, having the chance to forge into the unknown in a time very different than her own. She would have loved to take a turn at the tactical station, to feel what it was like to fight through the battles of history. She took a look over at the conn, but her gaze quickly shifted away. Sitting dutifully at his station was her old flame Kintuv Alev. She knew that he was on this ship, and she knew that he was a security officer, but she didn't know he was a part of the bridge crew. She promised her CO that she would stay out of trouble, so Liarra instead tried to focus on the meeting with Sulu.

The Excelsior's Captain took his seat behind his desk and leaned forward, anxious to go over the circumstances which lead them to their current predicament. He gestured to the two seats in front of him for his new guests.

Less than two minutes later, Alex was sitting in the office of Captain Hikaru Sulu. A strange situation if ever he'd experienced one. The other man sat resplendent in his red tunic while Gunning felt like he'd be better off in his dress uniform. He shot a glance to Von. As usual, she looked completely unfazed.

Liarra could sense Gunning's feeling of awe as he walked through the ship. She wasn't quite sure what she felt. Her symbiont had lived through this time, through her previous host Karina, and she could remember this time like it was yesterday. Although she hadn't served in Starfleet, Karina had been on an Excelsior class ship before as a journalist. It was a remarkable time, and although Von had interviewed several starship captains during that time, never had she met with one like this. She fought hard to hold back any emotion she might have felt, and let Alex lead their side of the meeting.

"I think we might be well-served approaching the Archaans for help." He said. "In my time, this anomaly must have come up several times. They might have some idea of how to reverse its effects." Alex offered.

Sulu looked confused. This was their first time in this sector of space and they had only preliminary readings of the planet and the species. Through their travels and word of mouth, the Federation has heard of the Archaans. Nothing more. "And how do you suppose we breach to them that for the first time in their planet's history, two Federation vessels from two different time periods need help?"

"In our time, the Archaans are responsible for much of the tourism in this region of space. However, their science academies are second-to-none. They might know of some way to reverse the effects. If not, we're going to have to collapse the threshold of the anomaly to prevent something like this happening again."

It took Sulu a moment to realize that Gunning had the advantage of almost a hundred years of history to support his argument. He did not frown, but the Captain's gut feeling that he was one of the most important explorers in Starfleet seemed less important when dealing with the man and woman across the table from him. "I imagine that we will just have to contact these people and hope that there is something."

But the older captain, theoretically older in two ways, looked out his window at the Archanis System's star. "Back in 2286, in one of my last missions aboard the Enterprise, we performed a high speed warp transition around Sol to bring us back three hundred years." Sulu did not know whether or not the time travelers would have any idea about the mission. In fact, Sulu was not permitted to speak about it at all due to the critical information that came out in the following investigation.

Gunning had heard of the manoeuvre. It was hugely risky and he would be damned if he was leaving here before he knew the anomaly was collapsed. If not, what was to stop the Ritorians coming back through it? The damage they could do would be... enormous.

Liarra nodded. "The maneuver was mentioned to us at the Academy, mostly as a guideline for things not to do. I'm sure it's no violation of the timeline to say that the Enterprise was notorious for her temporal incursions."

Sulu said nothing and made no movement. His face did begin to redden slightly but it would have been easily missed.

"It's definitely an idea, as long as you can provide us with the level of calculations we'd need to make sure that we hit our own time-frame." Gunning said, drumming his fingers on the arm of the chair.

"I've done it a couple of times and I might be a little rusty but I should be able to help your helmsman calculate coordinates to get you home." Sulu replied.

"However, in the meantime I still think we should make contact with the Archaans. I'm not in a position to say exactly what their situation is. I'm afraid our main library computer is non-functional. My chief engineer informs me that we've had to transfer its power reserves to other systems to keep them online. First contact has been made, hasn't it?"

Sulu nodded, still statesman like, still making Gunning feel like a jumped up little kid on some adventure that was way out of his depth.

"Then I suggest we make that a port of call before we make the jump for home. I'd like to make sure that more people from our time don't end up corrupting yours..."

[OFF]

Commodore Alex Gunning
Commanding Officer

Lieutenant Commander Liarra Von
Second Officer

Captain Hikaru Sulu
Commanding Officer - USS Excelsior
[NPC: Played by Dietrich Reinhart]