It went bang
A scribble for the word 'bubble'
By Gumnut
14 Jun 2006

"We are losing integrity."

"Damnit, Scotty, we need more power!"

"I'm givin' ye all we've got, Captain. Would ye like me to get out and push?"

Kirk swore, more for the sudden shift to starboard and the corresponding whack to his elbow than the sarcasm of his chief engineer. "Do your best, Mr Scott."

He ignored the muttered 'As if I'd give anything else' and closed the connection. Turning his attention to his science officer, he uttered the required mantra. "How much longer do we have?"

Face buried in the hood of his viewer, Spock answered in the same irritatingly calm tone he had answered before. "Fifteen point two three seconds, sir."

He held back the urge to swear again, they didn't have the time. The ship shuddered once more and Uhura, who had been assisting Spock stumbled enough for the Vulcan to reach out and grab her arm. "Ten seconds."

"We're going to make it." They had to. The wave of exploding sun behind them couldn't be the death of his ship.

Of all the stars the Enterprise had to be surveying, it had to be one that had been 'enhanced'. That had been Spock's term for what had been done to the thing. A simple survey of uncharted space. Nothing unusual. Facing the unknown was an everyday occurrence aboard this ship. The unknown just didn't usually blow up in their faces.

Well, not usually. There had been that time when…oh, and the incident with the Yrui…and the Frennie cluster…and last week…had that only been last week? Hmm. Okay, so it did blow up occasionally. Just not like this.

Spock had theorised, in the two point five seconds he'd had to survey the star before it novaed all over the place, that its core state had been altered. How that was possible he had no idea, but he had no doubt Spock would get several scientific papers out of it and be muttering about it for weeks…once they made it out alive.

Because whatever had been done, had not only altered the star's existence in real space, but also its state in subspace. The nova, once triggered, had expanded into subspace…which included warp space. So an explosion and disruption that could normally be outrun by a simple application of any degree of warp speed, now required every watt of power they had to keep ahead of it.

He prayed they were far out enough for the explosion to avoid other shipping, Federation or no.

"Five seconds. Our speed is insufficient, Captain."

"We're going to make it."

But the words were taken from him as a claw of energy wrapped around the ship's warp bubble and crumpled it.

The bridge lights failed. For a moment there was absolute silence, the only light, the fading impressions of console switches.

And then Kirk's world simply exploded.

-o-o-o-

TBC?