On Silent Feet They Came Part I
Posted on Sat May 30th, 2026 @ 12:36pm by Captain Thorrin & Lieutenant Commander Tarian Aloria & Lieutenant Sivek & Lieutenant Addison Talbert & Lieutenant Junior Grade M'Ressa & Lieutenant Junior Grade Talin Nira
Edited on on Sat May 30th, 2026 @ 12:46pm
2,112 words; about a 11 minute read
Mission:
In The Nick Of Time
Location: Bridge - Deck 1 - USS Herodotus
Timeline: MD006 1130 hrs
Thorrin sat in the center chair as he leaned his head on his hand. This was done not out of boredom, but simply something he did when he was lost in thought. As much as he hated getting into the thick of it, he hated being in the dark even more. That is how he felt at the moment, in the dark with nothing to do.
Nira sat at Operations with Security and Tactical routed quietly through her console, present but inactive for now. Most of her attention remained on the ordinary rhythm of the ship: power flow, internal systems, communications, sensor telemetry, and the steady link to the away team’s last known position. Nothing on the board looked urgent, which somehow made her trust it a little less, but she kept her hands relaxed over the controls and continued to monitor.
Sivek remained at his station, his hands resting lightly against the edge of the console. Every number was where it should be. He moved through them methodically--power distribution first, then structural integrity, then the temporal core. He didn't feel rushed. Each system answered in its own time. The was holding steady and the containment fields were perfectly aligned.
Of course, there was that faint irregularity along the dorsal grid which he had to keep adjusting every few minutes. Any other engineer might have simply noted it and moved on. Not Sivek. He was meticulous.
He reminded himself that the ship had crossed time and so there should be no expectation that everything would feel ordinary afterward.
Tarian was sitting at his usual seat at Temporal Mechanics. Since the Chief Science Officer was down there on the planet, he was doubling up as Acting Science Officer for the duration of her time down there on the planet. This was part of what he hated. The silence. Part of his heritage was that of El-Auria and that meant he liked to LISTEN. Not to silence, but the spoken word. Even though there could be something found in the silence, the silence wasn't speaking much at the moment.
Inside Medical, Addison was making an entry in her personal medical journal. She'll enter it into the computer as well. She just liked the feel of writing things down into a physical log, using a pen. In her own room she had a inkwell and a quill pen, with parchment paper.
Inside the journal she wrote, I did some research into different herbs, for different healing properties. I've got to keep in mind when going back into time, not to pick up anything that is, well Earthly wise, thought to be extinct? Could there be some plants that are similar, that could be found on another planet?
She reached out for a moment, to touch the piece of amazonite she had upon her desk. Thinking of her home, wondering just how they were doing.
M'Ressa sat cross legged at her station, studying the local star systems on her personal display, her tail flicking absentmindedly behind her. Reaching forward to change charts, her paw phased through the console for a moment before she quickly withdrew it. Clearly she was getting close to needing another dose of her medication.
Tarian's console started to light up like a Christmas Tree. He turned back to his own station and tapped a few controls on it. There was a massive temporal wave displacement happening on the other side of the planet using a similar technique to how the Herodotus made their trip back in time. It wasn't exactly the same, but Tarian could tell that there were similar properties to how they made it to the past.
Tapping a few more commands into his console, Tarian looked into it and there was a faint, but unmistakable chroniton wake bleeding through the magnetosphere. His expression tightened as he turned back around to look at the Captain.
"Captain, I'm detecting a concentrated chroniton wake from a build-up of chroniton particles on the far side of the planet. It's partially masked by the planet's magnetosphere, but the signature is too structured to be natural. The scans are telling me that it looks like a similar wake to something we'd produce when we travel through time," Tarian said as he looked back at the scans once more to make sure they didn't disappear.
Turning back to his station, his fingers danced across the controls as he pulled up a layered temporal scan. The display shifted from the standard sensor data to a web of distorted spacetime vectors.
"More information now. There's definitely a ship over there," Tarian continued before looking back at the Captain. "Temporal displacement field is active, but a bit unstable. They're riding a chronition inversion wave, similar to what we used to get back in time like I mentioned. But, their phase variance is off by nearly second microcochranes."
Thorrin's head darted to the temporal station. "Full scan now. Sound Red Alert throughout the ship. Shields up arm weapons."
Sivek leaned closer to the display built into his station, the amber light washing across the severe lines of his face. Data seemed to spill downward in dense vertical readings as he examined the preliminary sensor readings.
"Captain, there is something about that vessel's drive architecture that is fundamentally different from ours," the Vulcan engineer explained.
"Sivek. Now is not the time for Vulcan duplicity. If you have something out with it." Thorrin's words were short and his tone clicked. Gone was the genteel southerner.
The Vulcan engineer almost bristled at Thorrin's words. For a moment, he considered pushing back against the Captain's abruptness but thought better of it, deciding instead to focus on other tasks. Perhaps the El-Aurian required more alcohol, Sivek mused internally.
Nira’s fingers were already moving before the red alert klaxon finished its first cry.
The calm, ordinary shipboard rhythm on her console vanished beneath a wash of priority alerts. She pulled Security and Tactical out of passive routing and brought them fully into her Operations display, her eyes flicking across each line as the bridge lights dropped into red. “Security and Tactical are live at Ops,” she reported, keeping her voice level. “Raising shields now. Weapons coming online.” Her hand shifted across the controls, locking in the shield grid first before she brought phasers and torpedo systems from standby. “Away team link is still holding.” A beat, then her jaw tightened slightly. “Whatever that is, Captain, it has not hailed us.”
As the red alert klaxons went off, Tarian looked at Thorrin and said, "That might be part of what I saw in the future. That almost like temporal echo or something? If they came back in time, changed the past, and went back to the future and their drive was acting up, it could've left a wake in the past that lasted until our time."
"Perhaps, or it could be that they end the Vwaarti and one person left on the planet got a distress call out." Thorrin replied. His brain went about a mile a minute as he tried to think what was next. There was no way of hiding from another temporal ship. They had to see who and what they were. "Tactical. I want full scans. I want to know who they are and what they can do. In the meantime open a channel."
Nira kept one hand on the Tactical overlay while the other moved across the communications controls. The open line indicator blinked once, then steadied.
“Channel open, Captain,” she said, eyes still tracking the sensor returns as they sharpened across her display. “No identification beacon that I can read yet. They are definitely aware of us.”
"Commander of unknown vessel. I am Captain Thorrin of the USS Herodotus. This planet is under our protection. Please state your reason for being here." Thorrin stared at the viewscreen. "M'Ressa get us around the planet I want to see what we are dealing with."
M'Ressa nodded, “yes sir, proceeding at full impulse” she replied, inputting a course around the planet that used gravity to pull them around the other side.
Aloria stayed at his station, but watched between the main viewscreen and the Captain. He was curious as to what might come next.
As the Herodotus was moved into position slowly a large vessel was seen on the viewscreen. It was dark, angular, and had a predatory appearance. Its hull was long and asymmetrical, and it seemed to resemble a massive armoured dagger which drifted through space. The coloration of the ship was a metallic bronze with glowing amber and crimson lighting embedded along its segmented surface. This ship was built to appear intimidating. But beyond that it looked ancient, as if it was a floating fortress built for some old and nameless war.
Instantly, Thorrin knew what that ship was and who built it. You couldn't command a timeship without knowing the Krenim. But, what the hell were they doing here was what he thought at the moment. "Lieutenant Talin target their weapons and shields. Hold fire until my command. I say again. Commander of unknown vessel I am Captain Thorrin of the Federation starship USS Herodotus. Please acknowledge with visual communication."
“Aye, Captain. Targeting their weapons and shield systems,” Nira replied, fingers moving with sharp, economical precision across the Ops console. The Tactical overlay was not her usual battlefield, but systems were systems, and she understood how to make a ship tell her where it was vulnerable. “Their shield geometry is irregular. Layered. I’m trying to isolate the emitter pattern now.”
The Herodotus had barely settled into firing position when the enemy vessel answered for itself.
A line of deep violet light snapped out from the Krenim ship, too fast and too clean to be a torpedo, too dense to be any phaser pattern Nira recognised. It struck the forward shields with a hard, ugly flare, bleeding silver-blue static across her display as the console barked warnings back at her.
“Impact, forward shields,” Nira called, bracing one hand against the console as the deck trembled beneath them. “Unknown directed energy weapon. It punched hard, but shields are holding.” Her eyes narrowed at the readings, irritation sharpening through her calm. “Captain, their weapon is leaving a chroniton residue across the shield grid. It’s not just trying to break through. It’s trying to desynchronize us.”
Aloria was hanging onto his station as he ran some scans of the vessel that was attacking them. There was some static discharge from his station that he had to avoid, but the data quickly came in nonetheless. Aloria looked over at Thorrin and said, "That ship is ancient. Estimates make it out to be at least 1,000 years old! But, it has been repaired and rebuilt in a million different ways over the years."
There was little time to act and Thorrin knew it as the weapon impacted the shields. This was a hell of an enemy to have a new crew tango with. "Activate the Chronal Jammer and return fire. Its the Kren..." Thorrin's clipped New Orleans accent was cut short as the burst of bright light clouded his vision. His head felt like was going to explode from the intense amount of pressure in his head. His breathing quickened as did his pulse. This is death. Something that does not come often to an El Aurian. he thought. Without a further word his eyes rolled back into his head and he fell first to his knees as he gripped his chest. Then he fell face down on the deck in front of the command chair.
A Joint Post By
Captain Thorrin
Commanding Officer
USS Herodotus DTI-30656
Lieutenant Junior Grade M'Ressa
Chief Flight Control Officer
USS Herodotus DTI-30656
Lieutenant Sivek
Chief Engineering Officer
USS Herodotus DTI-30656
Lieutenant Addison Talbert
Chief Medical Officer
USS Herodotus DTI-30656
Lieutenant Commander Tarian Aloria
Chief Temporal Operations Officer
USS Herodotus DTI-30656
Lieutenant Junior Grade Talin Nira
Assistant Chief Engineering Officer
USS Herodotus DTI-30656
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