|||---What happened between the Enterprise E and the G and what happened to F? Good questions…
In the early 25th century the USS Enterprise E was commanded by Captain Jean-Luke Picard. Not too long after Picard ordered the destruction of the USS Juno (though Picard and his crew new it to be a mimic ship), Picard was put under heavy scrutiny (see the novel A Time to Be Born). There was a lot of political pressure to court-martial Picard and strip him of command, but Starfleet decided the best thing to do was promote Picard to Admiral (under Picard’s protest of course) and put him behind a desk. They gave the rest of the command staff other assignments on different ships, and Commander Riker was sort of pressured to take captaincy of the USS Titan. Starfleet assigned the Enterprise E a completely new command staff under the command of Capt. Wade Randall.
The first mission give to the Enterprise E after the change in command was what seemed a routine patrol of the Romulan Neutral Zone. About a week into the patrol the science officer picked up a strange reading coming from the Umbrudia Sector which lies within the Neutral Zone. Capt. Randall decided to take the Enterprise in to investigate. After sending word to Starfleet, they headed in...That was the last that was ever heard of the Enterprise or its crew... For years after both Starfleet and the Romulans sent dozens of ships to investigate, but not one ship was heard from again upon entering the sector. All long range sensor data was confusing. Actually it wasn’t confusing it was strange. The data said that there was no such system. It was now a blank expanse, no planets, no, life, no nothing. In the end both races agreed to quarantine the Umbrudia Sector and the outer lying systems.
About three decades later, Starfleet launched their newest starship the USS Enterprise F. The latest ship to earn the name Enterprise was of the prometheus class with ablative armor, regenerative shields, and multi-vector attack mode. Hoping these defenses would be enough against whatever was out there, Fleet Admiral Marana Blake took the Enterprise and 46 other starships including other prometheus, sovereign, nova, and defiant classes to figure out exactly what happened to the Enterprise E and the hundreds of other starships that have been lost around the Umbrudia Sector over the years. It was at this point in time when history ceased…
|||---Year 2477, 14th Fleet Charley Wing on temporary reassignment to investigate circumstances surrounding Umbrudia Sector, Admiral Marana Blake commanding.
The Admiral sat uneasily in her chair. It was taking all she had not to fidget. The new command chairs were so damn uncomfortable. Other then the chair, she was quite impressed with the rest of the design of these new Prometheus class starships. The bridge was very small compared to sovereign and galaxy bridges, but the open circular layout allowed less people to operate more. Also, much of the ships functions were controlled by the computer. The ship could almost run itself. A report from the navigational officer snapped her out of thought…
“Admiral, we are now entering the Umbrudia system.”
The Admiral took a deep breath, “Signal fleet: Red Alert. When we drop warp anything with weapons heated gets fired on.”
“Drop warp. Fleet formation gamma-five. Keep it tight.”
“Sir, no ships or anomalies in immediate area,” Reported the con.
Blake released the breath she was holding in, “I want reserve power to the sensors. Tell me what the hell is going on out there.”
Time seemed to skip a beat as she waited for the crew to analyze the incoming data. One of the science officers spoke up. “Sir, even at this range we are still getting the same readings as the long range sensor arrays. The three solar systems in this sector just do not seem to exist anymore. What should be dozens of planets and three stars is nothing, but a void. Not even any readings pointing at an explosion, black hole, or other catastrophe to explain it.”
The Admiral had to smirk, seems they would have to do this the old fashioned way. “Lay in a course for the last know coordinates of the closest solar system, three-quarter impulse. Send a class IX-RS probe ahead of us. ”
The shields shimmered as the fleet started forward. Formation G5 is a defensive formation derived from the ancient Romans of Earth. The starships were in a very tight formation which overlapped their shields creating a larger stronger shield.
As they moved closer, the con officer commented, “What is wrong with space? It looks like it is moving.” Blake edged forward in her seat. It wasn’t moving like it was alive…it was more like looking at the surface of a pond in the moonlight after a pebble has fallen in. As she was deliberating the state of space, the probe hit the anomaly with…with a splash?
“Well that’s not normal,” The words escaped Blake’s lips before she could real them in but quickly changed gears. “All stop. Report.”
“Still reading nothing abnormal. The probe was just there then it wasn’t.”
“Red Alert, ahead one-quarter impulse, reserve power to shields, and hold formation and course. We won’t figure out what is going on here being timid. Con, read out the distance to where we lost the probe.”
“150,000 k…100.000 k…50,000 k…10,000 k…”
Then they hit it…at least they hit something. There was no impact. The bridge became distorted like looking though a glass of water. It was gone as soon as it appeared and the sensors came alive as a mass of dozens of alarms and alerts rang across the bridge.
“Sir, there is a massive anomaly coming from the center of the system between the three stars. There are also multiple sensor contacts around the anomaly which appear to be starships, they are…” The ensign paused suddenly and just stared at her display mouth hanging open.
“Report ensign!” The Admiral’s order came out a lot louder then she had wanted, but it snapped the ensign out if her daze.
“S-Sir, there are thousands of them if not hundreds of thousands. The smallest is ten times our mass!”
“Easy Ensign and hail them.”
“No response.”
“Sir, there appears to be some sort of wave heading this way from the anomaly.”
“Put it up on the main monitor.”
The Admiral quickly stood up and approached the screen for a closer look. At first it didn’t seem like anything was there. There was a shimmering much like the wall they had crossed but this was more like a wave moving through water…it was beautiful…and it was coming on them fast!
She whorled around, "Deploy ablative armor! Evasive patt..." Before the Admiral could finish the order, the wave struck the ship...
...Pain…that was all that went though Admiral Blake's mind when she regained consciousness. Not the normal pain one would come to expect from years of combat experience, but a pain that seemed to burn clear through the body and her skin tingled like it was electrified...but she had to push that aside. She was in command and was not afforded that luxury. The admiral forced her body to sit up and look around.
It was then Blake realized she was blind.
Blake yelled for a sys rep…there was a horribly long pause that seemed like eternality…then…she heard the worst possible voice: the Computer. She had an answer about the state of the bridge crew.
“The ablative armor 57 percent deployed. 89 percent of Beta and Charley sections…missing. Remaining damaged sections… purging. Alpha section’s main power…offline. Reserves at 23 percent. Internal sensors…offline. External sensors…online in eight seconds. Crew status…unknown.” Weapons…offline. Defenses…ablative armor will fail in 34 seconds.
The computer’s description of “missing” for the rest of the ship was very strange, but clarification would have to wait. She needed to organize the rest of the fleet.
“Computer: fleet status and positions,” she ordered as she found the command chair and fell in it. Now it felt like a velvet pillow to the pain.
“Fleet Status…unkown.”
Unkown? “Computer clarify, are external sensors working?”
“…Sensor diagnostic complete external sensors operating at 79% efficiency. No fleet starships in range.”
Impossible! It would take almost an hour at high warp to get beyond that range, “Computer where did they go and when was contact lost?”
“Unknown, sensor contact with fleet was lost at moment of impact with the anomaly.”
Gone…just gone…what could make dozens of starships simply not be there?
“Computer, save all sensor data and ship’s logs to an emergency com buoy, and launch immediately. Priority one. I don’t care where you have to get power.”
This was not happening. It was just too unreal. She sunk into the chair loosing herself in the insanity of it all.
“Incoming hail from unidentified vessel,” announced the Computer.
This really snapped the Admiral out of her daze. Forty years and now someone wanted to talk? Under different circumstances that would have been funny. “Computer, open channel.”
A very raspy and high-pitched voice grated through the com: “This dimension will be purged of its organic infestation.”
The admiral had only a few seconds to contemplate what they meant by “infestation” and then the pain was no more…
|||---Present day, Deep Space Research Station 12X , somewhere in the beta quadrant.
Completely wiped out…47 starships gone less than a minute, but that was just a footnote to things to come. There is not a lot of recorded history left about what happened in the next few years after the incident. What little about the events after that com buoy made it back to Starfleet is basically just a collection of subspace signals, personal logs, recovered computer cores from thousands of races and cultures, and the memories of those that have survives.
We came to know the invaders as the Creetá. An insect/lizard looking silicon based entity that came from what we now call the 135th dimension. I use “we” to describe the remaining elements of what rudimentally defines what is left of life in our universe…Duotrigintillions…that is not a word I ever thought I would ever use let alone to describe a death toll and that is just wild estimates. The Creetá were as ruthless as their weapons were effective. Not only could they travel across dimension barriers, but they use that power to commit genocide on a scale no one could ever imagine. Out of the 144 dimensions the Creetá have wiped out 17 of them…not even a speck of life can be found.
But the Creetá ran into a road block in this dimension during their crusade to “clean” all organics. Due to the snap reflexes of a single office The Enterprise F had been able to partially deploy its ablative armor before the dimension wave hit the ship. All the sections not covered with armor were scattered across dimensional space, but it gave Admiral Blake enough time to get word out.
For some reason along with Ablative armor, the new phased cloaking technology is a complete mystery to the Creetá. Both of these systems are the only reason why you, I, and many others are alive today. The Federation had started installing phased cloaking fields on many of the deep space research stations long before the Creetá attacked, but only five stations were online at the time. One of those was this station; Deep Space Research Station 12X, It was responsible for testing new starships and other technology. It was also the station that had developed the new ablative armor which was the only protection starships had against the Creetá in the early years seeing how phased cloaking technology required power only a space station could provide. It is at this station were construction of a completely new approach to Federation starship design was being built: Dreadnaught Carriers. They are a massive class of starships which are basically flying cities. The real primary reason for these huge starships was to provide enough power for installing phased cloaking on a starship.
The new warp cores basically take the comparable power of 15 sovereign class starships to initiate the cloak, but it worked. This new starship gave us the ability to leave the confined of the space stations and venture forth; though, the real goal in everyone’s mind was the ability to finally take the fight to the Creetá. The first class of these new ships is the XFire. Being the first starship to be build after the insanity and being a new hope for the universe it seemed only fitting to give it a name of legend: Enterprise.
It is the year 2528 my name is Joshua Galloway, captain of the Federation starship Enterprise registration NCC-1701-G. Our mission is the defense of our dimension, and we are at war with the Creetá!