"Infinite Darkness."

[FredM 0]

“Infinite Darkness.”

 

A Lt. Travis “I like shiny buttons!” Kroells

&

A Captain Fred “Touch me and I’ll demote you back down to Cadet” Michaels production.

 

Travis stood there, speechless…slowly taping his console, his right arm dangling in an odd position, his shoulder dislocated again. He looked over to Lt. Revolone, sprawled out on the floor…unconscious, but breathing…

 

He continued to look around for a moment; the bridge was a mess, panels blown out, and cables lying all over the place…

 

Fred Michaels slowly got up, his head throbbing, but lucky that that was the only thing hurting, he quick looked around at his bridge. Revolone was knocked out to his left, Kroells, who for some reason always got hurt in these situations, was to his right, manning the main science console…But, where was Shamor? He looked around, he was no where to be seen. The Captain glanced around the bridge, shaking his head "Status report..."

 

Travis sighed and turned to his captain, “Do you want to know the bad or the worse news first?”

 

Michaels chuckled and shook his head, walking back towards his chair and tossing his right arm up in the air. "Hit me with your best shot Mr. Kroells....can't be too much worse. Just get the viewer on." he said softly.

 

Kroells stood there, as if defying the order, “Sir, the view screen is on…” The Captain, in the midst of sitting down, stopped and glanced forward at the darkened viewer. "This isn't a time for jokes, Lieutenant."

 

Travis slowly walked down from the science console, and next to the captain, arm still dangling and bobbing as he walked. “Sir, what your seeing is what's out there…We’re in what us scientists like to call the null expanse.”

 

Fred turned to face Kroells, the look of perplextion on his face, “What are you talking about?”

 

Travis sighed, but still kept a dead serious face. “Sir, I going to be as blunt as I can be…we’re not in the Milky Way galaxy any more. By my calculations…we’ve traveled more then 268,323,560 light years. This infinite darkness is the region of null space, between galaxies, where nothing exists.”

 

The Captain slowly relaxed his arms and fell into his seat. He'd been an engineer almost all of his career. It didn't take much to know how long it would take to get back to where they were. Fred paused...running his hands down the length of his arm rests several times while continuing to stare at the darkness on the viewer. He slowly glanced at the science officer, "Get an estimated distance to the nearest galaxy..."

 

“I already have, the Andromeda galaxy is about 50 light years away…” Travis paused for a moment, thinking what else there could be said, “Sir, with your permission, I'm going to head down to Sickbay…see if they have time to fix up this shoulder again…then…I’m going to have the entire department working around the clock, we’ll figure out why this happened, and how the hell we’re going to get back…I swear to you we’ll figure this out.”

 

The Captain nodded slowly, no longer looking actually at Kroells but past him. Travis slowly walked away, his arm still bobbing along, and quickly entered a turbolift to start his trek to Sickbay. Fred looked back at the viewer, somehow hoping the image had changed since the last time he'd seen it. They were now at least four hundred years away from getting anywhere near home. Yet, they were only about two sectors away from the Andromeda Galaxy...a two week journey at their maximum cruising speed.