Chasing the Void
Posted on 19 Nov 2025 @ 8:34am by Ensign Mira Quinn
1,336 words; about a 7 minute read
Mission:
The Displaced
Timeline: slightly before the former post
=/\= Science Labs =/\=
Determine the cause of the rift.
Mira Quinn was surprised when Sorvak selected her to lead the effort. His confidence both steadied her and reminded her of the scale of the task.
Sitting at one of the consoles, she began with the basics. She checked the Arawyn’s science-sensor readings of the region where the alien vessel had appeared. Space, subspace — nothing but ordinary background radiation. She expanded the search pattern in eccentric spirals, widening the sweep, hoping for even a trace of exotic particles. Nothing. The rift had left no residue.
Not that she had expected it to. But it would have made her job a lot easier.
Next, she turned to the sensor logs from the time of the event. She synchronized the science logs with Engineering’s structural-integrity telemetry, pinpointing the exact millisecond of emergence. That gave her a frame to work from.
The Arawyn’s sensors were always active, mapping space in their standard grid pattern. But once the incoming signal had been detected, the bridge — and Sorvak in particular — had retuned the science array toward the harmonic disturbance. As a result, she had extensive, high-resolution data on the moment the rift opened: subspace folding inward, harmonic spikes propagating outward, a gravitational shear preceding the breach.
Then… normalcy. As if nothing had occurred.
“Computer,” Quinn said, “analyze all logged readings associated with the rupture. Compare with known subspace anomalies in the Federation database.”
The computer produced several partial matches — warp-field catastrophes, slipstream failures, spatial distortions caught by far-flung exploratory vessels — but none matched the harmonic structure of this rupture.
Mira sat back slowly, frowning at the empty space above the screen.
She could not determine the cause. Not yet. She couldn’t even categorize it as natural or artificial. Whatever it had been, she had never seen anything like it.
She considered going to Sorvak and making that report. Going up to the Chief’s office and telling him she had nothing — and couldn’t think of a way forward.
He might be able to point out other avenues. She would have liked to come to him with something.
Pushing her chair back, she looked around. Everybody else seemed deeply focused, absorbed in their own streams of shifting data. She glanced toward the Chief’s office.
What she needed, she decided, was to clear her mind.
=/\= Ten Forward =/\=
Walking through the ship did little to help; inspiration stubbornly refused to surface.
She moved to the replicator and ordered a Vulcan spice tea — something to wake her up, something different, and something that would make her think like Sorvak.
Turning, her mind still on harmonic spikes and vanished anomalies, she collided with someone. The tea splashed in an arc.
“Whoa!” he yelped.
“Oh! Sorry!” She spun back to the replicator. “Small towels!”
Once they materialized, she handed them to him and set her cup on the nearest table.
Tallish, yellow uniform, a single gold pip. An ensign. She hadn’t seen him around before.
“Sorry — I wasn’t thinking,” she stumbled out an explanation. “Or rather… I was thinking about something else.”
“No worries,” he said, blotting his uniform. “Replicator will fix it.”
“Corin,” he introduced himself. “Engineering.”
“Mira. Science,” she said. “When I’m not redesigning uniforms.” A brief smile.
Then her gaze drifted to the stain — and something about it clicked. A mark left by contact. Something passing through, leaving a trace behind.
Corin noticed her faraway look. “Hey, you okay? I think I'll live, you know.”
“Yes — sorry.” She blinked. “I was just analyzing the rift in the lab, but now I'm thinking that maybe I was looking at the wrong thing. Maybe the rift didn’t leave anything. Maybe the *ship* did.”
Corin grinned. “Like a stain?”
“Maybe.”
“Well,” he said, “if you’re up for it, everyone’s in Engineering now staring at scans of that ship. I was just taking a break."
"We can check the sensor feeds there," he added.
=/\= Engineering =/\=
Mira felt very much out of place with all the golden-colored uniforms around her, but she followed Corin in.
He stopped by one of the consoles on the far wall. "We can link here to the defector array and take a look at that ship."
Taking a chair, he started bringing up the telemetry.
Mira leaned in as the ship appeared on his screen, data streaming across it. "Can you focus on the hull?"
The diagram of the ship on the screen turned around and several points appeared. "The hull itself is from a material the computer doesn't recognize," Corin said, reading off the screen.
"Tell me about it," Mira muttered. Then at Corin's upturned face, she realized she'd spoken aloud. Another small smile. "I mean, that's par for the course on this ship."
"Right." Corin turned back to the console. "Here," he got up and gestured Mira to sit. "Take a look."
Mira hestited, but then sat down.
"It's a beautiful hull," Corin said, eyes still locked at the console. "They've got something vein-like going through it and it's still active."
Mira checked the telemetry coming in as the deflector moved over the ship's hull. A small beep from the console notified her when the computer noticed what she'd been looking for. Again, the diagrams on the viewscreen changed as the computer focused on parts of the hull that showed harmonic distortion patterns.
"Wow." That came from Corin, though Mira felt the exact same way.
"Hey, look at that," Again from Corin. His finger traced the patterns.
A set of arcs… no, more like distorted circles, each one offset slightly from the next. Eccentric, but intentional. Pointing inward.
"Computer, trace the distortion pattern to its source."
The ship's diagram once again changed - this time moving into the ship, peeling it layer by layer. And then another beep as the scan stopped.
"What happened?" Mira asked.
"I don't know." Corin checked the telemetry. "Sensors aren't picking up anything in this section," he once again pointed at the screen. "Right here."
"What do you mean, not picking up?"
"The deflector's not picking up any shielding. It's just.... there isn't anything in there. No ship, no space."
Mira frowned. "Space itself is a vacuum, how could there be no space?"
She had studied astrophysical phenomena of every shape and size, but they were all in space. There was always background radiation, residual particles... something.
Corin shrugged. "I can't explain it either."
"Okay... let's try thinking this through," Mira said. "Whatever we're dealing with, it's artificial, isn't it? The pattern geometry is too structured."
"But that's.... " Corin leaned closer to the display. “Okay... what if the rift opened inside the ship?” he said slowly. “The hull would have flexed around it.”
Mira turned to look at him. “So the distortion lines are actually the hull… buckling?”
Corin grinned. “Exactly. That’s why the pattern looks structured. The hull is structured. You’ve got something chaotic meeting something orderly.”
“Okay… so maybe not artificial? If the structure comes from the hull reacting, not the anomaly itself…” Mira traced the inward-bending arcs with her finger. "If the rift opened inside the ship, then we can say it originated—”
“Very probably,” Corin cut in.
Mira nodded. “Very probably originated right here. And if so… then right where the rift appeared, the space inside the vessel might have been briefly displaced. And this—” she gestured to the blank region “—is the scar.”
They exchanged a look. They were on to something.
"We should loop in the-" Corin started when his combadge chirped.
“T’Rel to Arlen — where did you leave the plasma alignment calibrator?”
Corin let out a long sigh. “It’s by the—… ugh, never mind. I’ll deal with it.”
Then to Mira - “I’ll just be a minute. Don't go anywhere.”
As if.
Mira nodded and turned back to the viewscreen, still staring at the impossible absence inside the alien ship’s structure.
=/\=
Ens Mira Quinn
Science Officer
&
Ens Corin Arlen
Engineering Officer
apb Mira
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