| Author | Message | ||
     Captain_Daren |
'Bound' Inside Captain Daren's Ready Room, the flashing yellow lights indicative of the ship's heightened alert status lit the darkened chamber. He sat alone in the large chair near the desk looking out the floor-to-cieling window nearby. The view contained no stars or planets as was normally the case. Instead the lone Captain looked out upon two stretched singularities glowing and hovering very close to the ship. Too close. There was no imminent danger from them however for the radiation levels were within tolerances. What did concern Daren were the two docking tendrils that were currently holding the ship in its place. Silently, keeping the singularities in his peripheral vision, Daren read over the newest sensor sweep from within the Longshot object. They had approached the platform that hung in the center of this area which very much resembeled standard Federation technology with the intent to dock. Given the ships current condition the ability to shut down briefly and dock was a welcomed sigh of relief. Sometime later however when he had given the order to undock Daren had been surprised, as had everyone, to find that under no circumstances would the tendrils release their hold on the ship. Transmission of a normal federation undocking command signal went unnoticed by whatever was holding them. The idea of beind tied down like this inside an object the size of a large asteroid was very unsettling to the Captain. Should an emergency arise the ship would have no way of maneuvering. Daren's first reaction was force. He ordered the ship into full reverse. Pulling at the tendrils did nothing though. They seemed to be able to ignore any stress put upon them in this manner. Next came weapons. With then tendrils too close for the ship to fire at them herself, Daren called upon a nearby Banshee patrol to lend a hand. Doing it's best, even the Banshee's strongest phasers had no effect on the tendrils. A full surface scan of the tendrils revealed that while they appeared similar in design to normal Federation moorings the alloy they were comprised of was quite advanced. An Engineering Team was dispatched in EVA suits to examine and attempt to disable to tendrils where they met the ships hull. After several hours of hard work the team had absolutely no success. The stress was beginning to weight heavily on Daren's mind. The tendrils were creating no apparent danger to the ship other then its proximity to the singularities and the lack of movement anywhere within the space. The report in his hand showed what the Engineering Team had discovered: the tendrils were composed of some unknown alloy that resisted all attempts to cut it or break it. There was also a percentage of false matter in the tendrils further complicating things. Daren lightly tossed the PADD to the desk and it slid across the shiny surface. He slapped his commbadge: "Daren to Bridge..." The Bridge was noticably devoid of many of its senior bridge officers due to the various teams out exploring Xanadu below. Farley had been manipulating some data on the Bridge Engineering console when the call came from the ready room. "Bridge here, Captain." "The report from the Engineering team doesn't fill me with delight Mr. Farley, anything new on our ongoing puzzle?" Farley took a few seconds longer then normal to respond. "Sir, I've been going over some of the deep tricorder scans from the team. The resolution is much greater then anything the ship itself has been able to detect with the sensor blackouts." Farley sent an image to the Ready Room... Daren was slightly surprised when his Ready Room screen clicked on and displayed the area where on tendril was attached to the hull. The image showed more then any sensor scan he had seen in a few hours, a cross-section of the tendrils themselves. "Commander Farley, that tendril is hollow..." Daren quickly lept from his chair for the bridge. Captain William Daren Commanding Officer <ic> USS Coronado NCC-97901 Sim Executive Officer |