The Unexpected

[Cmdr JFarrington 0]

The Unexpected

 

It wasn’t exactly the reaction she expected. Even his reputation for weirdness didn’t prepare her for it.

 

Jami Farrington had always wanted to meet Captain Hermann Weyl. Though his work was always hush-hush super-secret and no one ever knew exactly what he was working on, his reputation had grown within the scientific community as one of the most creative innovators in the field of starship propulsion. And he was reclusive, which garnered all kinds of rumors bordering on legend, which, in turn, made meeting him all the more intriguing.

 

Reclusive and creative was one thing, but this?

 

Even in the glorious 3-D HD technicolor of Manticore’s viewscreen, Weyl’s face showed stark white and his eyes widened in... terror? His hands clutched the arms of Coxeter’s command chair as if in a death grip just before he recoiled, bolting out of it, trying to hide.

 

Coxeter was traveling on impulse, and tactical sensors showed their tesseract drive had been disassembled. It looked like they’d have a long trip home if Manticore didn’t make like a tug boat, or at the very least see if they could help. And they’d been sent to find them, so they sent a hail.

 

Weyl’s anguished scream echoed as far as the Delta Quadrant, lingering well after he stopped and curled into a semi-fetal position behind his command chair.

 

A palpable silence fell on Manticore’s bridge as the crew stared at the screen, trying to process what they’d just seen, to put it into context and come up with some kind of reasonable explanation, after which came Admiral Atragon’s tentative query...

 

“Captain Weyl? Is everything all right?”

 

...followed by Commander Precip’s dry Bolian report. “We are still at red alert status, Admiral. And I am glad to say that.”

 

Jami was glad as well, as she took stock of Coxeter’s bridge crew via Manticore’s viewscreen. Behind Weyl, Coxeter’s chief engineer seemed frozen in place, his hands on the main engineering console, his expression mirroring Weyl’s, though he had yet to assume a fetal position. Jami half wondered if he’d faint, and if he did, if he’d hit his head.

 

To the right, the operations officer sat, mouth open, her face almost as pale as the captain’s. On the left, the helmsman knelt beneath his console, access panel in hand, caught half-way to inserting it, his eyes a blank stare as though he couldn't process what was happening.

 

The same scene played across Coxeter’s bridge, emotions from dumbfounded to abject fear, with the sole exception of a Vulcan science officer who blocked the entrance to the lift as she furrowed her brow in concentration, her eyes fixed on Jami.

 

Weyl’s last words came as a shuddering, frenetic, “No....” ...at which point communications were cut and a quiet query came from T’Prise at Manticore’s science station.

 

“I assume that this sort of behavior is abnormal for Captain Weyl?”

 

“His reaction was severe, and no one on his bridge thought it was unusual. And they are taking apart their ship’s engine,” Atragon said in reply before ordering an away team to investigate the possibility that the tesseract drive had caused some kind of mental aberration.

 

Jami relaxed at her position and puffed out a long sigh. This was not the way she imagined meeting Captain Weyl, and definitely not the reaction she expected.