“Commander, sensors are showing some…odd tachyon and chronoton surges in Earth’s atmosphere!” she said.

He looked back to her station with a frown…remembering the days when her station was next to the helm and he didn’t have to crane his neck around to talk to her.  “Location?”

She frowned at the readings for a moment.  “Western Hemisphere…North American continent…seems like they’re localized somewhere close to the Rocky Mountains.”

“What sort of surges are they?” he asked while standing up, curiosity killing him.

“Of the severe kind!” she stated.  Another alarm suddenly caught her attention.  “Sensors are now showing an anomaly…and some sort of a craft just came out of it!  It’s caught in the gravity well of the anomaly, though…” She looked at him in horror.  “It’s being torn apart!”

“Beam any life signs out!” he stated in alarm, moving back around the railing to her console.

She shook her head.  “I can’t, there’s a lot of tachyon particles coming from the anomaly.”  She looked at him.  “We have to get closer…and I mean a lot closer!”

His mind immediately told him what she meant as well as the answer.  He quickly moved back to the front of the bridge.  “Vendar, transfer the coordinates to helm.  All hands condition blue, prepare for planetary re-entry!”

He didn’t move to the command chair as many no doubt expected…instead, he did what he hadn’t done in a long time.  “I’ll take us in, Ensign,” he said, nudging the helmsman out of the chair and quickly taking her place.

The coordinates were already there; all he did was set a course and kicked the ship up to full impulse for a moment.

“Vendar, transfer emergency power to the confinement beams, try to narrow it…”  He looked back at her for a moment.  “We need to get that person or persons out of there as far away as possible.  Let me know the moment you have them.”

“Aye, sir.”

He looked back to the helm and saw that he had done so just in time.  He turned the ship hard to the side and decreased power to the impulse engines…but not by much.

On the view screen, he could see the familiar white-blue of a temporal anomaly…a color they seemed to often ‘favor’.  What bothered him most was how close they were getting…and how fast they were getting that close.

“In range in five seconds!” Vendar stated.  The ship started to shudder suddenly as the Dragon quickly entered gravimetric turbulence.  “Three…two…one…transport in progress!”

“Engaging lateral thrusters!” Chris shouted above a roar he hadn’t even noticed was there until now.

That’s when he realized that it was too little, too late…because that’s when the ship lurched hard.  On the view screen, the anomaly was suddenly in the center again…and it didn’t take them long to pass right through it…

The cargo bay door finally opened at their command, signaling that the entire ship was finally clear with full life support.  K’Taul lead the way in, knowing his ship better than the Admiral did…even though he’d been in command of it for less than a month still.

Much of the bulkheads were eroded…but they were strong enough to where they were still there.  The carpet was gone, however, leaving a metal deck that his uniform boots clanked loudly on.  The tilt of the ship didn’t bother him now, with the structural integrity field online, they were able to safely turn on artificial gravity…although there were a few decks that it wasn’t even functional on.  As a result, they had taken off their environmental suites and wore their simple uniforms.

“Do you think the turbolifts work?” Admiral Perkins asked.

“Worth a try,” he replied, shrugging easily.  He quickly led the way towards the nearest one, and within moments, they were in front of it.

To their dismay, it still wasn’t functional, which meant a rather lengthy climb ahead of them…unless…

“I don’t know about you, but I want to find out what happened…and I want to know it now,” he stated impatiently.  K’Taul quickly tapped his comm. badge.  “K’Taul to Meridian.”

“Go ahead, Captain,” James immediately replied.

“We need a sight to sight transport from here to the bridge,” he ordered.

“Aye, sir…when ever you’re ready.”

“Energize.”

The familiar tingling sensation and bright light engulfed his senses…and a moment later, he was on an all too familiar bridge.

K’Taul looked around in slight awe…the bridge was an absolute mess!  It wasn’t because of erosion, either…it was clearly damage from energy surges.  That could mean any number of things…combat, energy surges outside the ship.

Wanting to know just what had happened, he moved to the command chair and sat down.  K’Taul noted that his panel was already up, so he simply pushed in his command codes.

Immediately, he brought sensor records up and had the computer search for any temporal anomalies that were encountered.  The latest one, according to sensors, was right before the ship crashed…  That must have somehow caused the crash…

The next one…the time he saw made his heart leap into his throat.

He quickly tapped his comm. badge and said in an alarmed voice, “Captain K’Taul to Dragon, come in!”

There was no reply…

“Trikal to K’Taul,” James suddenly replied.  “I just received word…that the Dragon disappeared into a temporal anomaly…she’s gone, sir.”

They were too little…too late…

“Impulse engines are offline!” Chris shouted as the view screen suddenly reactivated.  They had passed right through the anomaly…and ahead, he still saw Earth.  That meant that the anomaly wasn’t spatially based…instead it was somehow anchored to Earth, and it was with Earth in whatever time period this was.

“Main power is also failing!” Vendar shouted across the shaking bridge.

He didn’t have much he could do right now, he’d have to find a place to land before the main thrusters went offline…  “Vendar…find out when we are!”

“Already on it!” she responded quickly.

He didn’t know when they were…but that didn’t matter much, he still would have to put the ship in a low and out of the way place.  He smiled as he thought I always wanted to park a ship in a canyon…

His sensors quickly found him one, four degrees to starboard.  He quickly altered course and began to slowly pull the ship up and slow it down.

The clouds were very dense ahead of them…but he knew the ship would be able to take a little lightning.

They entered the clouds in less than a minute, where they found a lot of turbulence.  The crew couldn’t feel it due to inertial dampers, but he felt it as he tried to keep the ship on course.

Finally, they were through and were flying through the rain.  Below they could all see rolling hills…and soon they left the rain and even the clouds.  Within minutes, they were approaching a mountain range.  The Rockies?  They don’t look right…

“Commander,” Vendar started, awe in her voice.  “I…I’ve analyzed chronometric particles in the area…” He looked back at her for a moment to see a shocked look on her face.  “Although I can’t get an exact estimation, I’d say we’re back around the time when humanity was still very primitive.  Probably around the time that cliff dwellings were built, maybe even just before then.”

Chris never paid much attention to the section of his history class that dealt with this time period.  He was, however, fairly certain that there weren’t any humanoids living on this continent yet.  He seemed to remember being told that Natives hadn’t crossed over the land bridge yet into this area…but even his history class could be wrong.

Landing in a valley would mean they wouldn’t be seen from a distance if they were stranded here for a long, long while…so they would have time to do what ever they needed to hide the Dragon.

To his dismay, the thrusters started to slowly lose power.  He quickly increased to compensate…but soon enough he knew he wouldn’t be able to compensate.

Relief washed over him as they passed over the canyon.  He stopped the ship, rotated it twenty degrees to port…then extended the landing ‘legs’ as he called them.

He didn’t even input the command to start dropping, the thrusters simply started to lose power…and he had the controls as high as they could go.  Slowly the ship lowered into the canyon…but its velocity was increasing.

“All hands, brace for landing!” he stated quickly.

He didn’t give them much time…suddenly, the thrusters gave out completely, causing the ship to go into a free fall for about fifteen meters.  It wasn’t much, but it was enough to cause an unnerving jolt.

“Main thrusters have lost power,” Vendar reported the obvious, her voice shaken.

Chris stood up and sighed, staring at the canyon walls…  The Dragon had barely fit into the canyon…in fact, he might have even scraped the starboard nacelle a little…

“Secure all stations,” he ordered, moving back to the command chair.  “Let’s try to conserve what power we have left.  Match our structural integrity field with the planet’s atmosphere and disengage life support.  Open all outer hatched…and let’s get some air flowing through here.”

“Aye, sir,” Vendar replied, quickly keying in commands.

“Harriman to engineering, what’s going on with our power supplies?”

“I’m not exactly sure,” Lieutenant Commander Jurand Sall’s voice replied.  “We just started losing power for no apparent reason…sensors aren’t detecting anything that would do it.  I’m going to have to go through all of the pieces of the warp core with tricorders and the like to find the problem…”

“How long will that take?” Chris asked, fearing the worst.

“I’m not sure…I’ll have to go through the warp reactor, injectors, storage tanks…the injectors alone will probably take me an hour just to go through each!”

“Keep me advised on any progress,” he stated.  “For now, the rest of us will start on repairs…Harriman out.”

He sighed and clenched his fists, frustration hitting him.  He looked at Vendar, who shrugged innocently, then spun around and sat down in the command chair.  This was going to be a long day…

She was beautiful, whoever she was.  Chris leaned over her bio bed to get a better look at the face…and noted that it wasn’t familiar in the least.

He leaned back and looked to Commander Kara Trieal, who was tapping in commands on the bio bed control system.  “What’s her status?”

Kara narrowed her eyes for a moment in response.  “She has some internal bleeding, broken bones…or should I say had.  I’ve already repaired most of the damage to her body.  I don’t know if I should revive her just yet.”

He nodded and looked at her again.  “She’s human?”

She nodded.  “Yep, uh huh.  I ran her DNA through the computer, no recognition.  Now I’m just running her face through to see if she is from any past records…but she could easily be from the future.”