"We're getting a blip. Sector 03-45-98-2397."  The quiet hum of activity came to a halt at the ensign's words. "I'm forwarding the readings to you. Ma'am."

"Thank you, Ensign." The woman leaned back in her chair, her dark eyes smiling slightly at the barely repressed excitement in the ensign's tone. It had to be a glitch in the sensory equipment, but most young officers dreamed of being on the scene of some breaking action. Her eyes lost some of their mirth. He would learn the horror soon enough, hopefully without the cost being too high.

Youth aside, Ensign Jamison wouldn't have been chosen to work in Section Z had he not been both bright and thorough. Even though they were impossible, Captain Taneisha Caldwell looked over his readings with care. 'Well, at least he didn't miscalculate' she noted with increasing dismay at the thought of yet another sensor diagnostic.

"Ma'am." The cracking in the ensign's voice jerked her from the calculations to see one of the walls ripple, as if the plasti-steel was nothing but water. 'This isn't a glitch,' She thought, ruthlessly crushing the cold knot of fear which had settled in her stomach.

Jamison punched buttons rapidly, recording the phenomenon, streaming it through proper channels before staggering backwards, almost tripping over himself in his desire to get away from the advancing distortion.

'It's taken the docking bay' she noted with a sinking feeling.  Ten people including the Admiral's niece had been on the docking shuttle not to mention the number of people who might have been on that deck. Caldwell feared this wasn't a coincidence. "Completely new technology." She muttered softly as she punched in numbers. "How the hell could they have let this happen?"

"Ma'am?"

"Guess you got to see some action after all, ensign." Captain Caldwell said, acknowledging him with grim humor, her weak joke doing little to take the edge off the tension in the room. "Ken," she asked, looking over at the bridge Engineer, "I think I've got a route out of here, do you concur?"

"Yes Ma'am." He responded, glancing over the schematics.

"Good. Let's not waste any time then."

*_*

Voices. He heard voices. Female, he thought, as he tried to ignore the pulsing heat that moved through his veins, centering itself in a dull throbbing headache.

"You didn't have to handcuff him to the couch you know!"

"You're the one that gave me the lecture on my safety. I couldn't leave him unrestrained and unattended. Even so, we both know people who could easily have escaped that, ill or not."

Silence. Then the sound of footsteps moving towards him, felt a cool hand on his forehead.

'Great. I must have drank more than I thought.' He mused, attempting to bring his hand to his head but strangely unable to move it. 'This has to be the worst hangover of my life.'

"I shouldn't even have worried about you." The other woman, above him now, spoke with what seemed an edge of wry humor. "You sure beat the hell out of him, Une."

"Will he be alright?"

"Yeah. I checked him over fully. Nothing more than a few bruised ribs though there is the possibility of concussion, so you'd best wake him once an hour. He's going to have the hangover of his life though; he must have drunk half his bodyweight before he fell on your doorstep. The important thing is to give him liquids. I've already gotten some fluids into him, so he should be okay until the morning, but try and get him to drink as much as possible."

Silence again. He felt uneasy, listening. No humming. Ever since he'd gone on this vacation he'd always heard the constant buzzing in the walls. His memory stirred. No beeping. No clonk of the unremitting air filter.

He forced his eyes open a little. The light struck bright and painful and he shut them with a groan. "Where am I?"

"Just outside of Sank." Was the last he heard as unconsciousness claimed him again.

Something was very, very wrong.

*_*

The warm paneled wood office with it's collection of well worn, if archaic, hard bound books sat in complete contrast to the cold despair of the man before her.

It had only been forty-nine hours since the incident but Admiral Hartley seemed to have aged years since she'd seen him last week. His sister's child was gone, possibly dead. The admiral had practically raised his niece since both his sister and her husband had died in a shuttle accident when the girl was only seven. This seemed a distorted reflection of the tragedy. Except now the worst had happened on the admirals watch. Taniesha saw more than sadness in his still form; she saw a heavy burden of failed responsibility and guilt.

"Sit down, Taneisha" The man's head inclined towards a chair. "I need to know what happened, not a report but the events as well as your impressions."

She knew what he was asking. Some already thought him insane to harbor the idea that the people caught in the distortion were alive, that this might have been something more than freakish chance. Because he was an admiral, few said anything directly, but it was already established that technology so dangerous could not have been developed under their noses.  That would be a thumb to the system they had in place, a system that had worked effectively until now. The Committee that oversaw them would not view this position with kindness.

But Taniesha Caldwell was more than just another Captain fearing reprimand. Through the years of being the Admiral's protégé she had become his friend as well, and she answered him as such.

"The distortion was unlike any I've ever seen. By all rights, it should have been impossible to develop such a unique system of temporal manipulation without setting off some alarm. No remains were found. Whether this was some freak accident or deliberate action, I don't know but I believe it is very possible at least some of the missing personell are still alive."

She paused, "Permission to speak freely sir."

"As always, granted."

"Most here wouldn't agree with my analysis. They will follow orders, of course, and they'd want nothing more than to find the crewmembers alive, but many have already given up." Brown eyes met blue, conviction passing between them. "Send me. Give me a team." She spoke quickly. "I know you've had me jockeying a console for a reason, but I have always been effective in the field with these sort of assignments. I also have the benefit of having witnessed the distortion directly." The rest of the words remained unsaid, 'I am committed to finding who or whatever is responsible. I will bring them home.'

For a moment, his usually piercing eyes shimmered with emotion. Communication was without words, merely the understanding of each other they had built over years.  'I couldn't ask you; I can't repay you risking yourself for what could easily be a personal vendetta.' 

He nodded. "You'll report to Commodore Braeden. Take whoever you need."

*_*

This wasn't the way she'd intended to spend her evening, robe tied up around her waist, feet encased in winter boots, mucking through the now muddy grass in front of the house. Une had left Sally to watch her patient for a few minutes while she searched for the object the man had been carrying, if only to prove to herself she hadn't been crazy in assaulting him. Scanning the ground before her with a flashlight, Une hoped it hadn't sunk beyond retrieval into the wet dirt.

Squish.

'Inelegant' she could almost hear Treize, his eyes twinkling behind the arrogant demeaner he rarely let slip, even for her. 'You should have kicked it on to the porch.'

Squish.

Even her memories were laughing at her.

Squish.

She froze. At the edge of well of light something metal reflected back. She centered the flashlight on it before stepping closer, bending forward, extricating it from the mud. Holding the object to the light, Une felt a moment's fear. It seemed nothing more than a glorified, slightly oversized stopwatch.

'Remote detonator.' Her first thought, but while it displayed the time prominently, month and year, it seemed to have malfunctioned showing the year with four numbers instead of the common three used in After Colonization dating. And it wasn't counting down. Even odder, it didn't seem to have anything to carry a signal: no antenna, nothing.

Whatever the object's purpose, even if it was nothing more than some jogger's fad that had failed to catch her attention, Une had every intention of sending it to the lab and having it checked out. She'd show it to Sally first though. The woman had some experience with explosives and was qualified to give a second opinion. 

Une walked quickly back to the house. She had the sinking feeling that this had just become Preventer business.