Time Jumps And Ghosts
Posted on Sat May 3rd, 2025 @ 4:18pm by Lieutenant Commander Tarian Aloria
Edited on on Wed May 7th, 2025 @ 4:37am
1,126 words; about a 6 minute read
Mission:
In The Nick Of Time
Location: Astrometrics - Deck 5 - USS herodotus
Timeline: MD001 1200 hrs
After he finished getting some of the last minute information and updates from the secured temporal database back at DTI Headquarters, Tarian decided it would be a good idea to get started on the information for the time jump that the Captain requested earlier that morning. As both men knew, while they hoped that it wouldn't be necessary, a time jump wasn't out of the realm of possibility. So, Tarian wanted to make sure that he got ALL of his calculations correct before they arrived. That way, he wouldn't have to do any by the seat of his pants and possible allow for more error in the jump itself.
Tarian had done several split second calculations over the time that he had worked with the DTI and Starfleet. But, he knew that the more variables that came about, such as a potential conflict where the ship might be attacked, the harder it was for most people to concentrate. Tarian knew that coming into a situation prepared allowed for him to help everyone else and allow for the best possible time jump back to 100 years ago.
Tarian decided to head down to Deck 5 and use some of the Astrometric sensors to gather some data about the star system that the Herodotus was heading to. Before he left his office, Tarian downloaded the information that he got from the DTI database. While it didn't have all the answers, it had previous sensor scans of the system that Tarian could use to compare to modern ones and allow for him to crunch numbers better.
A hop and skip later, Tarian found himself in Astrometrics. The officer on duty greeted Tarian warmly when he entered and told him that if he needed anything, to let him know before getting back to work. Tarian nodded politely and thanked him before taking a seat at one of the side stations.
Tarian pulled up some of the sensor scans that the Herodotus had been making while en route to Kroatia. For all intents and purposes, it was a truly beautiful world with a lot of natural resources. For Tarian, it almost looked like Denoubla if it had more land mass, or even Trill itself. Running his hands over the controls of both the panel in front of him and the PADD in his hand, Tarian pulled up the information to compare side by side. He wanted to see what the sensors told him about Kroatia, both years prior and about today.
The good thing was that there wasn't a lot of stellar drift from the past to the present. At least, nothing that the sensors could say now and Tarian let out a little sigh of relief. Since he was calculating a time jump, one of the things Tarian knew he had to account for was how much stellar drift occurred between the two frames of time. Since so little happened, Tarian easily put that information in and moved onto the next part of his calculations.
Tarian looked down at his PADD and scrolled through some of the preliminary calculations that he worked up during the meeting a few hours prior. They were still pretty on par with when and where they wanted to go, so Tarian went ahead and started to put those calculations into Chronal Travel System, which was the system that allowed for the ship to anywhere and any when they wanted.
Tarian also accessed the Chronal jammer system, which was the system that allowed for the Herodotus to jam the sensors of any ship within approximately 300,000 km. One of the things that Tarian wanted to make sure of was that if and when they would jump backwards in time, there would be no traces of them as soon as they arrived in that time. Tarian put in a code to the jammer that if they were to jump back to the Kroat homeworld any time in the past for this mission, the Chronal Jammer system would immediately activate for all ships, no matter if they were Kroat, Federation, or others.
As he was finishing up, the console in front of Tarian started to beep with the following message in bold type: INCOMING CHRONAL SENSOR DATA.
Tarian quickly saved all of his work and pulled up all the most recent scans that the Chronal Sensors had to offer him. Since they were getting a bit closer, Tarian was hoping that this new batch of temporal data would give him and the rest of the crew a little more information about what might being going on around Kroatia. What Tarian saw wasn't much, but it was slowly allowing him to piece together more of the puzzle and allowed to make sure the Herodotus made a quick, safe, and painless journey back in time.
The data began scrolling across his console, allowing Tarian to see any and all Chronal reading and subspace harmonics that the ship's advanced sensor were able to catch surrounding Kroatia. While this might make some officers' heads spin, this was where Tarian thrived. As he looked over the incoming information, Tarian narrowed his eyes as he realized that a specific pattern was beginning to emerge from the data.
Temporal echoes.
They were faint, but they were definitely there. They were almost indistinguishable from the normal background chroniton noise that they universe gave off. But, they were definitely there and quite old from what the scans were telling Tarian. The scans appeared to show that the echoes were over 500 years old, but at the same time, they were 300 years into the future. Tarian tried to enhance the signature from the echoes, to see who might've done the jump and figure out what happened, but they were almost too fragmented to analyze.
This was starting to play into the whole issue at hand with the Kroats. They said they never sent a message asking for help, but Starfleet received one. Tarian thought about it for a moment before saying, "Computer, I'd like you to run an analysis on these new readings and figure out where...and when they came from. Let me know when the analysis is complete and send it straight to my office."
The computer beeped and replied, "The analysis will take 4 hours, 13 minutes to complete." Tarian shook his head slightly and said, "Alright, that will give me some time to finish the rest of my work on the calculations."
With that, Tarian quickly went back to work on the calculations and waited anxiously as the computer helped to figure out a bit of a mystery.
A Post By
Lieutenant Commander Tarian Aloria
Chief Temporal Operations Officer
USS Herodotus DTI-30656
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