<USS Avalon> Tradeoffs

Josh powered up the warp engines and cleared the bay as he quietly acknowledged 
the message informing him what his sensors had told him mere moments before. It 
was time to go. Blowing out the breath he'd held he set his course and piloted 
Copernicus away from the Avalon and toward the anomoly, carefully cloaked and 
shielded. He monitored the sensors and shields carefully, adjusting every few 
seconds to ensure the maximum probability he'd remain undetected, while hoping 
the engineers aboard Avalon did the same.
 
He wondered if Annabelle had awakened yet.
 
Enough, he chided himself silently. This was not the time for distractions. 
 
Long, slender fingers flew swiftly and surely across the console, making one 
minute adjustment after another without pausing, his eyes fixed to the nav 
console and scans. He frowned as the distortions became more obvious. He keyed 
a message to the Avalon engineers advising them to monitor the tachyon and 
chroniton shieldings even more closely than he's previously directed, sincerely 
hoping that the extra scanners he'd developed would be enough to maintain a 
lock on him in this timeline as he entered the wormhole, knowing full well that 
the odds were against him making it out of the danger zone entirely on his own. 
Though  he'd neglected to point it out during the meeting or at any point 
since, he knew that anyone with engineering and science backgrounds could see 
it if they looked. His Galileo class shuttle was older than the Avalon, it's 
hull weaker, its power grid more easily damaged even with all the upgrades. He 
could only hope it would hold together long enough to detona
 te the
 charges and get close enough for the Avalon to get a tractor beam on her. 
Perhaps then he'd have a slim hope of repairing what was left of her once they 
were aboard. If they made it aboard.
 
 
He had to make it back, he thought. He'd promised Annabelle he wouldn't leave 
her. He'd given his word, as he had once before to the brother he'd lost, and 
he had no intention of breaking it.  
 
Shaking off any further thoughts of failure, he turned his attention fully to 
the readouts as he began riding the temporal waves further in, careful to 
remain cloaked and heavily sheilded, mindful of the temporal contamination that 
could be taking place in various alternate timelines as he sailed through them. 
He approached the wormhole at last and steeled himself to enter, preparing the 
charges and locating their targetted positions within the anomoly itself. 
Drawing a breath then, he entered and set to work quickly. How ironic it seemed 
that in an anomoly wherein time was breached, timing should still be so 
critical. And yet it was everything. One fraction of a second error is all it 
would take to close himself in, crushing himself and his ship as the wormhole 
drew in on itself.
 
He'd just deployed the last of his charges, initiating the detonation sequences 
and turned the shuttle  to run like hell when he felt the jolts of phaser fire. 
One. Two. Three. Sheilds, communications, navigation. Down they fell like 
dominoes despite his best efforts to maintain them. He felt the tug of a 
tractor beam as it enveloped his now helpless shuttle and considered his 
options quickly as he worked on reinitializing his navigational controls and 
shielding enough to at least try to break free of whatever ship now held him 
hostage.  He could be reasonably sure the Avalon hadn't been them firing upon 
him, so that left only two other possibilities.  He'd been captured by either 
a)the Maqui thieves, who would no doubt be less than pleased to find him here 
trying to close up shop for them. That option seemed unlikely, as they'd be far 
more likely to just destroy his shuttle than disable and capture. Which left 
option b) he'd been captured by an unknown future element, for wh
 om his
 presence would be culturally contaminating. Bringing nav back online, Either 
way, he thought as he noticed the timer representing first of the charges 
reaching the end of its appointed time, his departure had been delayed just 
enough to make the possibility of escape no longer even remotely plausible. 
Going to the replicator, he got himself a large mug of coffee and sat 
crosslegged upon the deck, sipping it carefully as the charges began to explode 
and the now-unstable wormhole began closing in around him, taking solace in the 
only positive left to him then. His mission would be successful. The wormhole 
itself was at that very moment being destroyed. The timeline in which is 
beloved Annabelle lived would be secure.
 
However, he thought as he gently carressed the St. Christopher medalion around 
his neck, it appeared that he wasn't going to make it home after all. 



Of all the things that I have lost 
I think I miss my mind the most...

                
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