Out of Sequence
Posted on Sat Oct 10th, 2026 @ 3:59pm by Petty Officer 1st Class Dalen Rhys & Lieutenant Wynning Pi
Edited on on Sat Oct 10th, 2026 @ 3:59pm
2,419 words; about a 12 minute read
Mission:
Mission 1: Through the Janus Gate
Location: Main Engineering | USS Resolute
Timeline: MD004 - 0617 hours (Concurrent with “Into the Drift”)
The first warning was the deck shifting under Dalen’s feet.
Main Engineering lurched around him. The warp core’s steady thrum broke for half a beat, blue light catching between pulses before the chamber alarms found their voices.
Dalen caught the edge of the operations console and pulled the power grid onto the display. The core was stable. The EPS network was not.
Power had jumped through six separate relays during the impact, bypassing the normal distribution sequence entirely. For less than a second, the same energy appeared to have occupied both the primary and secondary grids.
Then every reading returned to normal.
Almost.
Dalen frowned at the timestamps and ran them again.
“Chief,” he called over the alarms. “You’re going to want to see this.”
He pushed the record towards Wyn’s station. Two identical power events, registered seven-tenths of a second apart.
The second had been logged first.
When the deck shifted, Wyn had to make himself freeze. Feel the shifting and try to pick up all the information he could from Resolute herself. The problem with that was that the ship had built in modulators and inertial dampening fields that compensated, leaving it to the sensors and computer to tell him what was going on. Wyn braced himself into his work chair and was glad his coffee hadn't spilled. When the alarms went off and the Petty Officer called out his name, Wyn sealed his work mug and slid it into a holder, then pushed himself to his feet and moved out into ops.
Taking momentary stock of the compartment and making sure his people were ok, he said, "Computer. Silence those alarms to a dull roar." Deciding to see what the human equation could tell him, he said, "What's going on Petty Officer Rhys?"
Dalen shifted the display towards Wyn. Six EPS relays flashed across the schematic, then lit again in reverse.
“The core’s fine. So are the main power feeds,” he said. “But the ship recorded the same surge twice.”
He enlarged the timestamps.
“This one happened when the wave hit us. This one is identical, except the computer says it happened seven-tenths of a second earlier.”
Dalen looked back at the relay map.
“That could be the Janus Core. We already know it produces chroniton energy, so it may not just be pushing power through the ship. It may be knocking parts of the system slightly out of step with time.”
He brought the affected junctions forward.
“I need Engineering to check these relays physically. If they carried power twice, then the grid really did respond before the impact. If they only carried it once, then the wave scrambled the records.”
His eyes returned to the reversed sequence.
“Either way, the ship remembers something happening before it actually did.”
"Was kind of expecting a temporal glitch of some sort. And it's not surprising that it's linked to power waves," Wyn said thoughtfully as he brought up the data from the instances." Glancing toward the PO, he said "Get JG Fox to file the request so it's registered through both chains of command. But I'll assign teams to get going on this now." He brought up the duty roster and cycled through the current assignments, then sent a priority to several of his personnel to drop what they were doing.
Wyn assigned five of the relays. "I'll take a look at the sixth personally," he commented and brought up the ships schematics and traced them out. He still didn't have the whole thing memorized. "Should take about fifteen minutes to get into that part of the ship and another twenty or so to pull things apart." Cocking an eye toward the PO he asked, "Want to go take a look?"
Dalen was already reaching beneath the console for his operations kit.
“Thought you’d never ask.”
He sent the request through to Fox before closing down the display, then checked the kit by habit rather than necessity. Tricorder, field probes, isolinear tester. Everything in its place. He slung the strap over one shoulder and gave the relay sequence one last look before stepping away from the console.
“Lead the way, Chief,” he said.
They made their way toward the self appointed tasking, the two winding their way through various corridors and riding a couple of turbo lifts. While in one of the latter, Wyn said, "It’s going to be interesting, and I use the term loosely, if these power cycles are carrying temporal displacement with them," Wyn said. "Interesting like that I’d rather back off a few million miles and send in remote probes."
Dalen adjusted the strap of his kit as the turbolift carried them on, his expression tightening slightly.
“Yeah. I’m quite happy letting a probe be the first thing to find out what ‘temporal displacement’ feels like.” He glanced across at Wyn. “Especially if being closer means the ship starts disagreeing with itself about what happened first.”
They emerged from the turbolift and Wyn wound his way to an access panel that his PADD claimed was the correct one. He began removing the panel and looked into the access tube and said, "About six meters that way. I hope." Glancing up to Dalen he said, "What happened first...reminds me of an old earth comedy skit about a game called baseball and the players. Might have to dig that one out again. We may need a laugh after this shift." Grinning, he ducked and began crab walking his way into the access tube.
From within the tube, his voice sounded, "Watch your head, petty officer."
Dalen ducked after him, pulling the operations kit closer against his side before following into the access tube.
“You lost me at baseball, Chief. Rugby I can work with. Put thirty men on a field, give them one ball and let them argue about possession properly.”
He lowered his head as the clearance tightened.
“But if this shift ends with you explaining an ancient comedy routine to me over a pint, I’ll count that as a successful outcome.”
After fifteen meters and Wyn's thighs were burning some before the reached the primary access and could stand. There wasn't a lot of room for two but they'd make it work. Wyn pulled his PADD from his forearm, unrolled it and pressed it to the bulkhead. "Go ahead and pull the panel while I set up the trace schematics and isolate the relay and get it into test mode."
Dalen shifted sideways to give Wyn what little space the access point allowed, then crouched in front of the panel.
“On it.”
He opened his kit, selected the driver and worked his way around the fasteners. The last one released with a soft click and he caught the panel before it could drop against the deck, turning it sideways and easing it into the narrow gap beside him.
The relay assembly sat exposed behind it, looking irritatingly ordinary.
Dalen leaned closer, tricorder already in hand.
“No scorching. No blown isolinears. Nothing obvious, anyway.”
"Shouldn't be," Wyn said half grumpily. "We, that's a royal we mind you," he said with a slight grin then, "We were just through this section six or seven days ago." He thought for a moment as the tricorder ran through the system checks. "Tell me something about yourself, Petty Officer. Something that you don't mind sharing of course. This is going to take a few minutes to cycle."
Dalen gave the relay another look before easing back against the bulkhead as much as the cramped space allowed. It still felt like an odd place for introductions, but with the diagnostic crawling through its cycle there was little else to do but wait.
“I played a lot of rugby growing up,” he said after a moment. “Still follow it when I can. There’s something reassuring about a sport where getting flattened by somebody twice your size is considered a perfectly reasonable way to spend an afternoon.”
A faint smile tugged at his mouth before his attention drifted back to the tricorder.
“Your turn, though. Wynning isn’t a name I’ve come across before. There a story behind it, or did your parents just decide you were going to spend your life explaining it?”
"My parents," Wyn began as he patiently waited for the tests to cycle, leaned a shoulder back against the bulkhead. "Wanted my sister and I to have unique names. Something that would make us stand out so they dredged up old names. I believe mine is something from ancient Germanic and Welsh areas on Earth. My sister, Willamina, may have gotten off with the better choice but you grow into these things." At the mention of Rugby he'd brightened and said, "I chase the pill around a little myself. Seen any good games lately?"
Dalen looked up from the tricorder at that, a little more interested than he had been a moment before.
“Welsh, is it? That explains why it sounded familiar without me being able to place it.” He glanced back to the relay as another diagnostic line ticked over. “You might have to tell me what it means once we’re out of here.”
At the rugby question, his smile came easier.
“Caught a match last time I was back on Earth. Nothing professional, just the local side where I grew up. They still turn out every weekend like they have for generations.” He adjusted the tricorder against the open panel. “My brother plays as well, so if I’m home and he’s on the pitch, I usually end up there whether I planned to or not.”
He looked across at Wyn. “What about you? Proper club rugby, or are you one of those dangerous people who only plays when someone produces a ball?”
"Play when we can. Pickup games are fun. When I watch, I watch. Nothing else short of a core breech will get me to not watch till the end," Wyn admitted. "I wouldn't say I'm dangerous on my best days. But it is fun." His tricorder trilled and he looked at it, semi annoyed as it picked up known variance in the containment field emitter. "We know about that. It's fine," he murmured sighing.
He'd need to write another program or that would continue to flag unless and until they rebuilt the thing and he didn't really see the need yet. "Ok, think we're into the meat of it now," Wyn said louder. "Shuffling through the field dynamics.." Then he froze the feed and projected it onto his PADD and pointed. "What's that look like to you?"
Dalen leaned closer to the projection, following the two traces where they crossed.
“Chronitons I recognise. That other one... tetryon?”
He looked towards Wyn for confirmation. “Subspace.”
His attention went back to the readings.
“So it wasn’t just a power surge. Whatever hit us carried a temporal effect and disturbed subspace at the same time.”
Dalen frowned at the relay.
“That would fit the Janus Core, wouldn’t it? Same basic ingredients you’d expect if something was putting stress on spacetime.”
He glanced at Wyn.
“Or have I wandered far enough out of Ops that you should stop me?”
"Doesn't hurt to wander out. Until it does," Wyn said as he pulled the data onto his PADD, which he tipped flat like a plate on his hand and activated the holo projector bringing the feed up before them. He spun the data slowly, enlarging the stress points and said, "Looks like it," Wyn murmured as he expanded the screen and ran it through a visual cue. "There's some odd...vibrations almost within the wave itself. Kind of like when a water drop falls into a still pond. The ripples usually head out smoothly. These ripples look like they're pulsing too." He glanced at Dalen, his lips pressed together, then twisting as he thought. "It's almost like aftershocks. But, these aftershocks pulse differently. I suppose that could be them hitting different timelines all at once."
Wyn shook his head then and said, "More like a stringed instrument...the strings keep pulsing even when you move on...and these are sounding through an unknown number of time threads." Then he smiled wryly. "Maybe. In theory."
Dalen barely had time to register the change in the readings before the ship kicked hard beneath them.
The narrow access space made it worse. His shoulder struck the bulkhead and the operations kit skidded across the deck, banging into the opposite wall as the lights dipped almost to black. Somewhere deeper in the Jefferies network came the metallic complaint of stressed fittings, followed by the sharp clatter of something loose finding somewhere else to be.
Dalen caught himself against the open relay housing and stayed there until the deck settled beneath his boots again.
“That was a bit more persuasive.”
He retrieved the tricorder from where it had nearly escaped his hand. The display was alive with fresh warnings, but nothing immediately suggested the relay in front of them had failed. Whatever had just happened had been much bigger than the little corner of the power grid they were examining.
Dalen started gathering the test leads back into his kit.
“I think we’ve learnt what we’re going to learn in here for the moment.” He glanced towards the access tube they had crawled through. “And I’d rather not be halfway along that when the ship decides to do that again.”
He secured the kit and nodded towards the way out.
“Let’s get back to Engineering. We can watch what the rest of the ship is doing from somewhere with enough room to fall over properly.”
Wyn caught himself as the deck shifted and felt like it was going to be stirred. He managed to turn and get himself wedged against the access panel and tube passage, before going head first into the open panel. Glancing at the Chief, he nodded. "Yes. I think that'll be better... and hopefully safer. Though that may be a relative term."
Dalen gave him a look as he shouldered the operations kit.
“Relative works for me.”
He ducked back into the access tube first, moving a little faster than before. Whatever the ship was heading towards, he had no intention of meeting it wedged sideways between two bulkheads.
Lieutenant Wynning Pi
CEO USS Resolute
Lieutenant Wynning Pi
CEO USS Resolute
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