The Switch

Space cracked and ripped apart in six places, warming the void with the termini of warp-jumps.  Space held no sound, nor smell, and no heat.  Yet momentarily, it burned and crackled in those six fissures, as if Dante's hell had opened, spitting sparks and brimstone into the black.

Warp holes were different from starship transit.  Not quite wormholes, anyone looking down their cold maws, if they could see in warp speed's highly elapsed time, might have noticed an agitated sargasso, a roiling infinity within, subspace protracted, stretched harder than usual.  The parallel realm of subspace, where the law of physical science stated that mass could not exceed light broke down, was, like normal space, not an absolute vacuum.  Subspace had layers, strata; fields and varying properties.  Starships sailed the 'outer' layers: Standard warp.  Subspace communications traveled deeper, with slipstream and other forms of transwarp faster and deeper yet.  Those who could navigate the deepest realms could travel farther and faster still – until, perhaps, the very boundaries of the universe became insufficient to constrain them... for subspace was more than most imagined.  It was the gray area between different universes, the quantum realm of multiple branching realities.  Those who could see and classify subspace at a glance, by shade and nuance, would have called this the deepest layer of all.

It was difficult to imagine a time when all of that space was empty.  How simpler the world must have seemed then, thought tactical ensign Nozirev.  At times it had been almost as deserted, even in the Starfleet era – left defenseless at critical times when hostile probes or invading aliens took advantage of the opening, with near disastrous results.  Decision-makers learned a valuable lesson from those days.  Earth could not be left so defenseless.  'Never again', they said – and since the first Borg incursion, it never was.  The only successful piercing of the protective grid happened in the last year of the Dominion War, eleven years ago, when the Breen launched a suicide attack on Starfleet Headquarters.  Not a single Breen ship survived the assault.  It was only hoped that, whatever threats came Earth's way in the future – perhaps it was inevitable; Earth was the Federation's capital world – they would be of a comparable nature, and that the level of technology Starfleet amassed from its diverse exploration could be used to deal with them.

Somewhere in the active sphere sat Arcadia, long silver-gray hull pointed along a circular holding pattern with the rest, tethered on gravity and geosynchronous orbit.  The raw spread of blue girdling the planet below – oceans, seemingly bluer than blue – split with a giddy rush of clouds, a white ocean of cotton to match the blue, purer than fresh snow – pulled into swirls and streamers, over continental swaths of green, gold and brown.  Her beauty seemed muted somewhat to Nozirev, watching the dancing army of hulls on long-range sensors.  The BSA – Earth's Big Sensor Array; they actually called it that, a throwback in nomenclature to the Very Large Array once based in New Mexico – picked up Arcadia's sensor-link and relayed the images back.

The flash of an indicator light on his console broke his attention from the scene.  He sat up.  What did the main computer think was so important here in the heart of the Federation, that it had to disrupt the spell?  Loading a sensor-fed dataview, he studied the shapes and schematics in the electronic grid and glanced at the ring of command chairs before him.

An attractive young woman sat in the middle chair – light coffee skin, raven hair pinned around the head poking over the slate-gray head-rest.  The current command watch officer, Lieutenant Celina Corgan.  A few purposefully loose strands touched her burgundy collar, under her uniform's purple padded shoulders.  On the arm of that chair, an identical indicator was flashing.  She noticed it too.  Swiveling to face the Tactical embankment, she eyed Nozirev.

Strangely, the flickering pattern of light did not end as his brain formed and told him it should have.  Stephen April's mind took another moment to wrap around the electrophorescent strips lining the transporter room, aft of the bridge – blinking in quiet insistence, soft magenta hues pulsing for attention.  Magenta, not quite red... not quite red alert.  Auto-alert had activated.

His attention it certainly had.  The transporter chief's, also.  The green-skinned petty officer stared at it for a moment, confused by its subtle demand, then looked at April.  Just activated, then.  April ignored the transporter chief's mutter, "Here we go again", hoofing off the transporter pad in three long-striding steps, out the door and onto the bridge.

April sensed the immediate tightness in the air, a tension a captain sensed readily, attuned to the atmosphere aboard his vessel.  The line of uniformed officers manning the Arc's operational command center was focused a little more intensely than usual.  It was not an emergency – yet – but they, like he, had their attention drawn.  The officers at Tactical and Sciences both seemed particularly urgent, verbalizing data.  Their discourse highlighted an external concern.  If that was not enough, the holosphere hovered at the center of the room.  He moved to the familiar holo-projection, activated when conditions warranted widespread attention on the bridge.  Scaled three-dimensional images of Earth and Earth's moon had been surrounded – by 'bogies', objects of unknown origin, in this case convoluted shapes resembling interwoven helixes, each a cluster of smaller, identical shapes, occupying equidistant positions around both bodies – all outside the range of orbital traffic.

Jeremy Haskins intercepted him, having entered the bridge mere moments ago, updated by Corgan.  "Captain, you've returned just in time."  April followed him to the holo-image.  "They started popping out of nowhere in the last three minutes," Haskins reported.  "Devices of some kind."

"Nowhere?" April said.  He found it hard to believe that they could have made it all the way through Federation space – wherever they came from – without detection.  Possible, yet it seemed unlikely.  The Federation's galactic sensor grid was an electronic fortress.

Unless they came not through Federation space.

"Probes," a tall, rugged man called out from the science officer's booth.  He looked like he should be a security guard, as big and husky as he was, yet wore science teal.  He called himself Libra, April had learned – an interesting individual, one of Starfleet's rarer birds.  He wore a hard, determined air, broad shoulders and shadowy mien accenting the implication.  "Design and configuration unknown to our database," Libra continued.  "Unmanned; no detectable bioforms.  Generating concentrated phase-conjugate energy plasma, possibly a power source."  The big science officer frowned at his console, looked to April.  "Quantum emissions are distorting subspace throughout the area."

"Weapons?"

"Not according to my understanding.  They don't appear intentionally hostile, Captain.  They're deep-scanning on widefield frequencies.  That, and it looks like they're 'talking' to each other – some kind of automated internal telemetry.  This subspace signal I'm reading looks like a retrograde transmission.  I'd guess, sending information to wherever they came from."

"Nothing more hostile than that?"

"Nothing more.  Still, the quantum interference may make it impossible to communicate on subspace bands."

"Locate the transmission source."

The science officer tried, and failed.  "Unable.  The signal disappears."

Into nowhere, April thought.  "Ensign," April addressed the young man with dark blond hair at Tactical.  "Try hailing them."

"No response," Nozirev said.

"Tap into their datafeed.  I want to know what they're sending."

Fate met the Tac man's attempt with a similar reluctance.  Nozirev shook his head.  "Transmission encrypted."

"Stay on it."  If Arcadia couldn't read it, then few others could either.  April studied the holosphere.  Ever-changing, shifting arrays of data-strings swelled to include uplinks from Starfleet, indicating by now that they were fully aware, as was every other facility in the system with sensors – all sharing information.

Collective attention on the bridge rose a notch in time with holospheric movement: The probe clusters circling Earth and Luna began to split apart, into their smaller versions, then again, and again, smaller and smaller still, until dozens blanketed both worlds.

April strongly suspected what kind of a reaction he would get, but issued the order anyway: "Get me Starfleet Command."

He knew it was a bad time; every Starfleet ship captain present would be on the bench, trying to obtain orders or authorization for what they felt they should do.  They did not have the luxury of being the only ones here, with the inherent autonomy to act as they saw fit.  Starfleet Command ran the show in Sector One.  Ships not under restriction of duty and orders were already clearing out – a stream of private and commercial traffic, breaking into warp.  A Ferengi trader whizzed past, leaving a brown blur as it shot to warp.  Some stayed.  April silently sent a measure of gratitude.  If this was a prelude to attack, they might need to evacuate, and they would need every ship they could get – though it was impossible to evacuate the entire Earth; billions of lives were down there, with tens of thousands more in the lunar settlements.

"Starfleet isn't responding, Captain," Nozirev said.

Quantum interference again.  April thought to channel com signals through the ship's quantum deflector; that might make a punch without causing unpredictable and unwanted backlash effects... then applied the notion to transporter targeting scanners.  He passed the idea by Libra.  The science officer nodded, surveying his instruments.  "That might work, sir."

April momentarily wrestled with his conscience, then gave in.  "Do it."  He looked to Nozirev: "Beam up everyone you can from Earth."

"Location?"

"Start with San Francisco.  The Federation Council building.  Then Starfleet Academy."  He glanced to Lieutenant Vincent Movasi, on duty at Ops.  "Work your way out from there; grab as many civilians as possible."  Movasi relayed the instructions to transporter rooms as he and Nozirev went to work, coordinating their efforts.  April went to his chair and thumbed a button.  "All hands, this is the captain.  Evacuation Emergency, Condition Epsilon."

The terms of Condition Epsilon: Nonessential personnel were to go to quarters, stay out of halls and turbolifts.  Transporter rooms would lock onto lifeforms on Earth's surface, beam them up en masse, not quitting until they reached the ship's limit of 1500 persons.  If they worked quickly, using all available transporters, they would reach maximum capacity in five minutes.  It was going to get crowded in the Arcadia.  Security's job was to report to the transporter rooms, guide evacuees to safe areas and keep corridors clear, making room as they came in.  Auxiliary craft activated in the shuttlebay, adding their own transporters to the process.  Medical went on stand-by to treat anyone happening to be in need of medical attention.  All large shipboard areas – the shuttlebay, Stellar Cartography, holodecks, the rec room – would be converted into makeshift living areas.  April realized he might be jumping the gun, acting prematurely.  He could live with that, and accepting responsibility for disrupting 1500 people's lives if this turned out to be nothing.  He would not live with having stood by and done nothing, when he could have.

"Send a broadband alert," April said.  "We need every available ship in the vicinity to get here on the double."  Probably Starfleet had already done that, or tried, but it didn't hurt to be sure.  "Tell every ship on site to stay put, by Starfleet order.  We need them to start beaming up everyone they can fit aboard."  Though civilians weren't required to automatically obey such an order – Starfleet wasn't a military dictatorship – he hoped the authority of such a directive, and circumstances, would compel their compliance, if not a desire to help those in potential distress.  It was possible many stayed simply for 'the show', intrigued by the sudden turn of events, lured by the mystery.  It wasn't every day one got to see something like this.

Waiting, April studied the 'probes', if that was what they were, up close, zooming a portion of the holosphere onto one of the clusters, wondering if their design was functional, aesthetic or both.  The scene called out the scientist in him.  Sensor beams bounced back, revealing the objects' size and configuration, but little of their interior composition.  At the same time he fought a mental tug of war with an aroused suspicion.  Mysteriousness did not necessarily signify a sinister urge.  Alien design meant alien thought went into them, and alien designers, whoever they were, might think differently.  This could be their method of initiating first contact.  Yet first contact could be peaceful, or hostile.  Earth had had its share of both – and had been probed in past times more than once with malicious intent, from the Xindi to V'Ger to the Whalesong Probe.  He was unsure if he should be charging weapons or trying to find new ways to communicate.  "Can we beam one of those aboard?"

Nozirev worked his controls then slapped the console in frustration.  "Sorry, sir.  They're deflecting imaging scanners."

April should have known he would say that.  "Calm down, Ensign.  I didn't say I wanted to beam one aboard; I just wanted to know if we could.  Any word from SC?"

"Not yet.  Captain, I'd like to make a recommendation," Nozirev said.  "If we use phasers or photon torpedoes to destroy one or more of them, it might—"

"Negative."

"Pardon, sir?"

"That means 'no', Ensign."

Nozirev blinked heavily in confusion.  He knew what it meant – but from the looks on his and some other officers' faces, it was a sentiment they shared.  They didn't understand.  April didn't have the time or patience to explain that he had dealt with such phenomena before.  He knew the risks of tampering with quantum energy fluctuations, in ways no one else could, from days spent hopping universes.  Disrupting a quantum field as it formed could result in a dangerous fallout... disrupting molecular bonds at the quantum level.  Such acts had been known to wipe out entire star systems, leaving quantum fissures in their place.  Not worth the risk.  Whatever was taking place here, he theorized a transference of quantum energy – which all might survive, if allowed to proceed to its conclusion.  Trying to stop it by introducing more powerful energy into the mix, on the scale of phasers or torpedo yields, could be very bad.  Earth, the Moon, and everyone and everything in their midst – including Arcadia – could be destroyed in such a conflagration.

And so he stood, trapped by helplessness, forced to watch.  Unable to intervene by conventional means.  The most Arc could do was get people out before the process reached its end – whatever 'end' that would be.

"Captain, I'm reading a surge of quantum particles throughout the formation," Libra said.  "They're building up to something."

"Helm, break orbit."  April stepped beside Mala Hendriksson at the conn-sole.  "Full impulse."

Haskins appeared at April's elbow, said in a low tone, "Are we retreating, Captain?"

"Not at all," April said.  "But I don't like being surrounded by alien devices of unknown origin, without established intent."  He said to Hendriksson, "Take us to a safe distance, out of range of those devices – but keep us in transporter proximity."

"Captain, I'm receiving a transmission," Nozirev said.  "From Starfleet."

"On the viewscreen."

The leathery face of a gray-haired Asian man appeared, in admiral's bars.  He had thin, slanted eyes, a tawny complexion.  Unlike the recent Karsh, April recognized him immediately.

"This is Admiral Minh at Starfleet Command, on an emergency transponder," the elderly man stated.  "If anyone's receiving this: Alien devices of unknown origin have surrounded the Sol Three system.  They're generating massive levels of quantum interference; we cannot initiate transporters to evacuate.  It may be impossible to send further messages.  This message contains an information packet, what little we have, in the hopes that someone out there may know what to do with it.  It isn't much, but perhaps you'll find who's behind this and why.  We don't know the intent behind these orbital devices; it may or may not be an attack, but—"

Minh's visage vanished, replaced by the logo of the Federation Starfleet herald, and the words 'transmission interrupted'.

"Captain, they're reaching critical—" Libra started... but couldn't finish the sentence.

A disorienting wave of nausea overtook April.  He became aware of the bridge tipping sideways, and for an instinctive moment thought it odd that the room turned like that when he was standing perfectly still.  Then it seemed to stretch, expanding toward him, as if he was moving towards one wall, but every wall at the same time, in the direction he was facing.  Not just the walls: The chairs, the consoles, the people, the length of red railing that ran along that side of the bridge around the ring of central chairs... all jumping towards him, or he towards them, from several different positions, along several dimensional axes.  His entire field of vision twisted, turning on its own axis at dizzying angles, like taffy being pulled.  He wasn't alone.  The ordeal seized other bridge officers in its merciless grasp, and, he would later find, throughout the ship – bent, lurched over at their posts, holding their heads, falling to their knees on the deck, faces grimaces of pain and discomfort.  A burning welled up inside April, fire in his chest, searing his esophagus; before he knew it he was on his own knees, vomiting on the floor.  Again, he wasn't alone – everyone with a digestive system proceeded to lose their lunch (those who ate lunch, or whatever they digested).  Through the terrible taste in his mouth gone dry, he croaked, "Raise... shields..."  Though he had no idea what to raise shields against, or if it would work.

The agony started to subside.  April sat up on his knees, panting, trying to catch his breath.  A quantum displacement wave had hit, compromising inertial dampeners.  It felt like he had been kicked in the lungs, the wind knocked out of him.  His mouth tasted like a heap of targ dung, or what he imagined it would taste like – except worse, lightly seasoned with something peppery.  He blinked several times at the holosphere.

Where should have been one moon was not one, but two.  A grayish-brown disc, comparable to Luna, and a red, smaller lump, a third of the way around the planet.  'Earth' itself had been transformed – replaced with another world, similar in appearance, but... different.  Continental outlines were altered; clouds flowed in different patterns.  Smaller oceans.  Clumps of scattered light along coasts and rivers, marking Earth's major cities on the night side of the planet, were gone.  Long trails of light crisscrossed the planetscape, both land and water.  Definitely not Earth – at least not the Earth they had known.

April briefly lingered on thoughts of family, his family he had just left on Earth, after Neria's funeral.  Had any been rescued?  Were they lost?  He could not afford to entertain such thoughts; his concern switched to his ship.  Reports trickled in from all departments, the crew in similar distress, but intact, as were ship's systems.  Next priority: Check astronomical beacons.  Were they in the same universe?  Computer cross-correlation confirmed that they were.  But residual quantum traces emanating from the planet and its two moons told a different story: These new bodies were not from this universe.

In the holosphere, ships that pulled back in time were still there.  Orbital platforms had vanished with the earth and moon.  The 'probes' had gone as well – perhaps wherever Earth and Luna went, assuming they went anywhere, or perhaps destroyed.  Probably the latter, along the boundary layer they themselves apparently generated.  Between experienced intuition and crew reports, April pieced together what transpired: A quantum transition, on a planetary scale.  Moving an entire planet... That took tremendous energy.  More than Federation science or technology could provide to date.  Whoever did this knew what they were doing: Taking Earth only would have caused gravitic fluctuations, destabilizing Luna from orbit; they had replaced the planet and its satellite.  Not just any planet could do it: It had to be the same relative size and mass as Earth, class-M.

What next?, was not a question so much as a matter of course.  April immediately set to follow that course – in the words of Minh, to find who was behind this, and why.  "Libra," he moaned, crawling up into his chair.  "Scan..."

"Scanning now, sir," Libra said, leaning on his console.  He paused at a glob of puke on his instruments, nose wrinkled in disgust.  No doubt the stench inundated the entire Arcadia by now, if they completed their evacuation process.  Air filters would clear it, but not soon enough.  What a revolting turn of events for the evacuees: To be abruptly uprooted from work and home, then have their guts turned inside out.  Libra wiped warm substance off a scanner with a finger, looked at his hand and unceremoniously wiped it on his uniform, already speckled with vomit.

"Get someone in here to clean this up," April sighed to Movasi, whose expression said he might throw up again any second.

"Bioscans can't penetrate the atmosphere," Libra said.  "But... detecting massive cities, technology... and, ships... leaving the surface...."  His mouth fell at a sobering chunk of data.  He looked up.  "Generating slipstream signatures."

April stared at him, then the holosphere.  The ships were emerging from all sides of the planet.  Streamlined, flattened conical designs, not unlike Arcadia: Basic slipstream design configuration – with golden colored hulls.  Several instantly launched in yellow streaks, out of sight.  Corollary data influx confirmed it: Slipstream.  All armed, more data indicated, with weapons at least comparable to, if not better than, Starfleet's.

April's heart skipped a beat.  An invasion force?  If so – and equipped with slipstream – the Federation didn't stand a chance.

The remainder of the rising fleet took curving trajectories, turning towards the Federation craft left in the wake of Earth's disappearance.

"Captain, receiving a new transmission," Nozirev said.  "From the... from that planet."

"On screen."

"Audio only, sir."

Audio.  April drummed fingers on the arm of his command chair.  A society with that level of technology... Perhaps they were culturally paranoid.  Not every species valued visual communication, or found it necessary.  "Let's hear it."

An apparently male voice filtered over bridge communications speakers, sounding polite, benign... almost apologetic.

"We hope that you can and will find it in yourselves to forgive us for committing this awful deed, so that we may peacefully coexist with your federation of planets, from now and into the future.  Know, however, that should you consider this an unforgivable transgression and react accordingly by attacking the Covenant, will be forced to respond in like fashion.  We will not hesitate to defend ourselves.  We have monitored your Federation; our technology is superior to yours.  You have seen ships departing from our planet.  Consider these envoys of the Cirean Covenant, sent to ensure compliance with our request.  We do not wish you to engage in a war which you will surely lose.  If you leave us in isolation, we will do the same.  Do not visit our planet or send transmissions which attempt to influence our people, and do not attempt to reverse the transference.  We will consider such attempts as hostile acts.  Surely you have many questions.  Such questions that we can answer, will be answered in time.  Until then, let us share and respect our mutual right to privacy, sovereignty and territorial space.  On behalf of the Cirean Covenant, I am Yort, representing the People's Assembly."