The Particle Physics of a Pocket Universe

[Tachyon 0]

“The Particle Physics of a Pocket Universe”

Cdr. Scott Coleridge

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If words had been racing through his mind, if his mind hadn’t been emptied moments before by the rising wave of terror that began in his gut, then they would have been something along the lines of, “Not again.” Not again. Scott Coleridge was a subspace and warp field theorist by training—a theorist. His first and only encounter with a wormhole had left him scurrying away from starship duty, content to serve aboard a station, where such phenomena were in short supply. Or so he had thought. Lately, he wasn’t so sure—first subspace transporters, then Aegis’ abrupt visit to a pocket of subspace. And now this. Scott knew that going on this shakedown was a bad idea, but he had been blinded by the attractive AQS propulsion system. Now he was paying the price.

 

When the ship had lost power as it was extruded into subspace, Scott attempted to restrain his mounting discomfort and take an objective view of the situation. Random visits to subspace don’t happen; their increasing frequency in his life was not a mere coincidence but a sign of more sinister machinations by the Breen. The signal the ship had been tracking was a lure, or even if unintentional, it had to be related to the mechanism that had brought them here. Yet—and this was what frustrated him the most—they had not come here the same way Aegis, and presumably the ghostly Breen fleet, had arrived. As the lone Breen ship opened fire, Scott knew that their best chance was to escape back into normal space. With nothing to contribute from the tactical side, he turned his attention to this dilemma.

 

The antiprotons had seemed obvious from the start. Bombarding a warp core with proton bursts would jumpstart a matter/antimatter reaction by altering the intermix. Antiprotons would alter the reaction in a different way, and when combined with the effect of a ship’s deflectors, would be sufficient to alter the shield geometry in a way that made the ship quite unpalatable to the continuum of this manifold. The ship would be rejected, spit back out into “normal” space, where they could go on their way.

 

There was just one problem with Scott’s brilliant plan: the ship had no warp core. The Romulan-designed AQS reactor was a marvel in many ways, but one thing it was not was a matter/antimatter reaction. Antiproton bursts would just make the singularity annoyed. The elation that had suddenly started to erase his terror was quickly replaced by dejection and chagrin as he instantly began to berate himself for not studying the AQS specs more thoroughly. There was probably a solution somewhere, but there was no way he could come up with it in time. Fortunately, the ship had warp-capable shuttlecraft aboard, and with some extra work, the plan would still be feasible.

 

Things seldom go to plan, of course, Scott reflected as he sniffed at the recycled air in his environmental suit. That now-familiar terror had returned, but was mixed with something like excitement—though maybe that was adrenaline. He was going to see a Breen ship! It was an opportunity that few members of Starfleet had ever had. Most of their knowledge of Breen technology came from salvage obtained during the war, and that was now years out of date. Moreover, the Breen had until recently been missing, so no one had expected to see a Breen ship again. No, whatever the danger implicit in this mission, it was accompanied by a unique opportunity, and that was enough to raise his spirits. Plus, Breen ships had warp cores—or at least something enough like a warp core to serve the purpose. If he could read the Breen systems and decipher how to prep the core. If there weren’t still Breen alive, anxious to apprehend them or kill them or force them to listen to whatever modulations passed for off-key Breen opera. If this subspace manifold, which up until now was reassuringly similar in its physical laws to their own space, actually admitted the existence of antiprotons.

 

No, this was no ordinary shakedown cruise. Scott resolved that when this was all over, and if they survived, then he would spend a long time on the holodeck doing something decidedly not related to astrophysics—perhaps a long, peaceful canoe trip. Or maybe nice spa visit. Anything that didn’t involve trudging through an alien spacecraft in a bulky suit, playing with the particle physics of a pocket universe while Breen breathed down his neck. Scott had now served a long time as an engineer on Aegis, and he was well acquainted with the grubby duties of plasma conduit cleaning and ODN realignment. He knew the sections that would break down the moment you turned your back and the sections where, if you had to, you could let maintenance slide. He knew how to attach a Ferengi power converter to a Federation EPS capacitor, and he could do it in less than three minutes. Despite all these practical accomplishments, however, deep down at heart, Scott was by training and by inclination, a theorist. Breen ships, subspace trips … they were all too real for him.