"The End"

[FredM 0]

"From the end springs new beginnings." - Pliny the Elder

 

 

It was slow, but it was happening. The sound of transporter beams materializing people onto the padd was practically nonstop. It had been for the last hour. By this stage, almost half of the crew had been recovered from the Class-N world. Furthermore, several shuttles had been sent down to the surface to begin tractoring escape pods back to the ship. It had been a decision Michaels was uncertain of.

 

Even as the first shuttle had successfully returned to the ship, the Captain had been staring at a monitor looking at the now silent monstrous object that sat before them. For reasons no one could even imagine, the songs from this giant beast had stopped. The interference with power systems, ended. Had they successfully communicated with it? Had it found something? Was it's big brother about to show up?

 

Any one of a million scenario filled the Captain's head as he walked down a corridor and entered a turbolift. The ship was slowly returning to normal, at least, normal under battle conditions. Fred had ordered the shields remain down and the weapons offline. After all, the Probe wasn't upset with them at the moment. Be a good idea to keep it that way. As Michaels entered the lift he leaned against the side and glanced at the diagram on the rear of the car. "Bridge," he said softly.

 

For a solid forty-five minutes, he had served as a Transporter Chief. In his entire career, it had actually been one of the few things he almost never did. Luckily, he hadn't lost anyone to the vacuum of space. At least, he didn't think so. These comical thoughts ended when the lift doors open and the Captain found himself on Deck 3. "Oh for crying out..." he muttered. Glancing towards the ceiling of the car, Fred took a deep breath and sighed. "Computer, bridge," he again said...attempting to restrain the anger in his voice.

 

As the lift again started to move, Michaels attention turned to more serious concerns. While it had appeared the end was in sight, they had managed to come thru it all right. Yet, this left them right where they had started...still 25,000 light years from home. As the Captain stepped off the lift and onto the bridge, he glanced around slightly and saw the majority of the consoles were now back online. It had been a stark contrast to the way things had appeared the last time he was here, not that he was complaining.

 

Moving towards the center seat, he glanced towards the science area and Travis Kroells. Fred resisted the urge to groan and simple wetted his lips as he sat in his chair. "As soon as the rest of the crew is aboard, I want to suspend escape pod retrieval. We'll get back to it later. Prepare to perform a full battery of scans on the Probe. We need to find out what's going on here...for more reasons than I can count," he said to no one in particular.

 

The object twenty times larger than a Starbase was set to be either their salvation or their doom. One way or another, Captain Michaels was certain the answers to the questions were right in front of him. The only question was, would they be able to get them?