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“Err we’re pretty shot up here command, plasma bolts have totalled most of the plasma handling to the main core, and we have only about half of the driver elements on line.”

            “Situation safe for extraction?”

            “Yeah this would be a good time, the remainder of the fighter group has given chase, all safe for extraction.”

            Over one hundred and fifty light years away the extraction officer started to key in commands, these commands flashed along optical waveguides, and bridged the synapses of half a dozen wormhole datalinks to one of the massive space megastructures, a one-gate generator, which although another thirty light years from the stricken ship, could still pluck it from its current position and return it to Federation space.

            “How about your crew”

            “Just me, the rest were transferred to other ships in the squadron, just following the ‘captain goes down with the ship tradition’.”

            “Nice to see the old ways are being preserved” The commands previously sent had reached their destinations in picoseconds, now a few seconds later new options were present to the extraction team, a hundred fusion generators were beginning to fire up, huge toroidial manifolds that run throughout the one-gate generators began to warm up, plasma waves surging through manifolds whose lengths were measured in kilometres. “Can you verify you have enough distortion capability for targeting.”

            “Yeah. We’re holding enough distortion, the rest of the fighter group has moved off enough to give you a nice catchment area, I am forwarding you revised coordinates, shouldn’t make much difference, but the plasma leakage through some of the hull breaches has changed our vector.”

            “Receiving new coordinates, standby for extraction protocol.”

            “Standing by.”

            The huge one-gate generator although powerful and astonishingly precise still required help in targeting an object a few tens of metres across nearly two hundred light years away, fortunately it’s targets are uniquely able to assist it’s task. The very field distortion generators that propel the ship provide the distortion well that captures the nascent wormhole conduit, this reduces the task of pinning down the ship greatly, and centres the wormhole around the ship better than any targeting sensor, the alternative is to shuttle across to the gate a facsimile of the ship’s communication wormhole, which is tedious, long and not always available.

            The extraction officer turned to the half a dozen other people in the glass sided office who supervised the more technical processes involved with long distance wormhole generation.

            “We alright?”

            The consensus was for a go, the target destination was a ship facility above Tempes, not a usual destination, but rather freakly had the best available births for emergency extraction. Nonetheless the One-gate station began processing the information for the wormhole. The extraction officer turned back, “We’re getting ready at this end, your target is a construction birth at Tempes, just hold steady and keep contact we’ll be getting targeting consensus from the ‘gate station soon.”

            “Yeah I’m familiar with the procedure”

            “Theoretically or actually?” New lines of information began to crawl across the screen in front of him, and overlaid on top of these, on his very vision an interpretation of the space with the target, the gate and the destination joined through by pulsing lines.

            “Actually”

            “Actually? How many times actually?”

            “Only once” Around him the air was clearing though the acrid smell of burnt optics and plastics, apart from the panels around him, and the distant voice the wrecked ship was doing a good impression of being a ruined derelict, though despite the apparent inactivity micro-machines were already beginning to stabilise the major systems.

            “I should hope so, this is not somewhere where you want to be known as a frequent flier”

            “Hah”

            One hundred and eighty light years from the One-gate station space was beginning to deform, this subtle curvature joined up with the larger one of the damaged craft and slid down towards the centre of its drives.

            “Ok we got targeting on you, just to remind you, before we get started proper, we will probably disrupt wormhole communication, so when you arrive you’ll have to use open comms.”

            The One-gate generator was beginning to reach maximum power, second by second grams of matter were being consumed to power the immense field distortions, whose strength was such that generator itself was positioned at a trojan point ahead of one of the inner planets, rather than around it as the fields would wreak havoc on any near satellites or ships.

            “Roger. You better warn Tempes that we’re in pretty bad shape.”

            “They know.”

            One-gate extraction, although hideously energy expensive, and a big strain on the operating lifetimes of the wormhole generators, was saving lives, and to some military thinkers, more importantly not leaving ships for Mawa-Rei examination. The other benefit was that repairing damaged ships, or breaking them down for parts was making important differences in the rate of ship production.

            Around the stricken craft a new curvature was beginning to develop, at first spreading out, but suddenly intensifying as it expanded beyond the ship. Navigation controls in the bridge flickered and erred as space around them begin to warp out of recognition. Then a faint juddering began to shake the ship, that juddering was so peculiar to the process, because it was one thing that inertial damping could not easily smooth out, as the new wormhole throat was also feeding from the ships spatial distortion elements. The shaking grew more intense, among certain ship crews, especially the older battle hardened ones there was a belief that unless you had not felt the rattle of a One-gate generator you were not really starship crew. It was about this moment that the captain realised his seat webbing wasn’t working, he struggles with the emergency harness, of course before he could complain, the comms channel failed.

            “Nnnn”

            The spatial distortion settled but just when the power of such a field could be appreciated, the power levels jumped into new indices as the wormhole was punched through the distortion, and enveloped the ship, a split second later the ship was in a new space, the hull that was in the benthic depths of deep space was now basking in the light of a sol-like star, the leaking plasma from the ship began to spread out surrounding the ship in a veil of luminescent gas.

            “This is Tempes control. You have arrived two hundred kilometres ahead of the foundry, do you require assistance, we have dispatched a tug crew from the LPO gate platform where you have arrived.”

            “A little help would indeed be welcome”

            A new world hung before the damaged sensors of the craft, blue seas and brown continents revolved beneath a filigree of clouds. This of course went un-appreciated as at that particular moment the stresses of the transit saw fit to rupture a plasma reservoir which had put the ship into a spin, if this wasn’t enough the gravity system wasn’t working.

            “Now please.”

            “Closing with you in a few seconds, but you must arrest that spin before we can grapple on to you.”

            “I’m trying,” The spin and half a dozen plasma leaks had sent the ship not only into a 1-axis rotation, but rotations along three different axes, if this wasn’t hard enough to correct with minimal drive systems, the orbital deflection had put the craft on an early re-entry, a situation that was already compounded by the fact that they were only in low orbit. “I’m going to need help soon, I don’t like my trajectory, I don’t think I can stop my spin. Can you try and grapple now?”

            “No we don’t have the setup, can you stop your spin by distortion?”

            “Don’t think so, lost a lot of plasma conduits, including drive support, also have lost most of the functioning drive elements for the jump. Can you stabilise me by field distortion, if not physically?”

            “We don’t have that kind of ability, these are only simple ships, we’re sorry.”

            “I think you’d better call up some more sophisticated craft.” There was not in fact that much hostility in his voice, he had began to come to terms with the fact that Tempes was beginning to live up to rumour, mostly in the fact that it was a backward and isolationist research colony. This was in was in fact a greatly exaggerated opinion of Tempes, admittedly the research stations hadn’t really changed in the last fifty years, and the planet was still little closer to wider colonisation. In addition to the now apparent woes the next kind of rescue craft would take several minutes to mobilise and rendezvous, probably by which time he would be riding down to the surface in a cloud of plasma. “This might be a stupid question, but have you a teleporter?”

            “Yes, back at base, but I don’t think it would be much good.”

            “Why not? Surely not range?”

            “No not range, vector, it can’t account for you rotation, it has spent a few decades moving people off the surface, and that took a lot of fiddling to get it to work”

            “Dear God, how old is it?”

            “Its one of the exciting custom built ones from the Trenoc expansion era.”

            “Nothing else available?”

            “Nothing in line of sight. I don’t suppose you have any escape vehicles?”

            “None that I’d trust, and frankly without g stabilising I can’t get at them.”

            “Can you make it down to the surface?”

            “What you mean without any drive systems, power, g stabilising, and instrumentation? I’ll have to make do won’t I?”

            “Fraid so” Already the edges of the spacecraft were beginning to incandesce from atmospheric friction.

            “Just great, for the record remember to say I didn’t want to ok.”

            “We’re so sorry.”

            “I’m afraid that doesn’t cut it really, just tell me you can get a rescue team down to the crash site.” He struggled with the flight chair’s harness. Re-entry was pretty much as uncontrolled as I was at the dawn of the space-age, well it was when you had no way of controlling your descent. With luck the integral hull design of this craft was designed to withstand this, as he remembered from training. There was a series of videos showing hulls smacking into desert plains, nose first, and always sticking out of the sand at a jaunty angle, like a stray dart. This memory didn’t exactly comfort him. “Do you know where I’m going to land, or what I am landing on, not that it makes a difference.”

            “Yes we know where you are going to land, it is either sea or land”

            The atmospheric friction was beginning to change the craft’s descent, becoming even steeper, the leading edges were beginning to glow brightly now, vortices of plasma curling off behind the plunging vessel.

            “Sea or land, that’s pretty comprehensive you know.”

            “Well its coastal, so shallow sea or foothills.”

            “Right.” There seemed a narrow possibility that he might hit the few meters of sand on the potential beech, and despite the quite probable imminent disaster this amused him. “If you don’t mind I’ll break off to focus on gliding this thing down.” He very cruelly cut the exchange before they could reply.

            Already the craft was beginning to shake, one thing at least was that in these modern days some sensors were able to penetrate the plasma inferno, most of these had already been lost, but a gravimetric altimeter seemed to be functioning, as a source of terminal amusement he had the computer extrapolate the changing altitude to a digital countdown. He was hoping that somewhere in the buried and failsafe hardware was an autonomous landing procedure that could land this battered craft. The shuddering grew more intense, the countdown figures raced.

            He woke, for want of a better word, it was not quite consciousness but it was not timeless oblivion, in his ear he could distant sounds half muted, occasionally snapping into sharp clarity. He had supposed that he must have survived the reentry, it was strange he could not feel any pain at all, in fact he could not feel anything, he began to see on the edge of vision glimmers of light coming in and out of focus.

            There was another moment of discontinuity, he did not know how long he was out for this time, he could not even put a number on how many times he had risen from unconsciousness’. But this time was different, the light and sounds which had been distorted and out of focus before, were beginning to resolve into recognisable shapes, though the balance of colours still suggested some dream like quality. At least this time he felt pressure, he had his body back, as far as he could make out he was sitting slightly reclined, he tried moving his arm to feel the material but the response was very numb, though definitely there. He thought he heard a female voice in his ear, but again the black of unconsciousness opened up on him.

            This time his senses were much clearer he was reclined on a old style wooden sun lounger, though he appeared to be on some sort of shaded balcony overlooking a forest. Something must have shaded the sun for a moment as an oblong of sunlight lit up the end of the balcony, as he focused on it new detail seemed to appear, at the edge there were a series of shallow planters, and although he could see the shapes the flecks of colour he could see indicated flowers. He had not considered much about what must have happened to him, somehow his mind was always too clouded, but now he began to give real thought about where he was, or what had happened to him. As these questioning thoughts worked there way through his still blurred mind, a female voice called to him, as if it had responded to his doubts.

            “Be calm, do not try to move.” The voice was so calm and reassuring, and almost autonomously his body began to sooth even without any conscious consideration.

            “Your reentry onto our world was a violent one, though you did manage to wrest control, and brake your descent the impact was still great, and the ship had already sustained a lot of damage. Although we rushed to preserve you there was already much damage.”

            His vision was acting very peculiarly, most of the room around him was nothing but a blur, but wherever his eyes focused new detail began to emerge, but would soon devolve as his attention wandered from it, he was wondering what injury or drug could do this to his senses.

            “We know life and machines very well, and we know enough of your craft to arrest its destruction and reverse the damage, such work is easy for us, but your body was a lot more complicated, and unfamiliar to us, and so we had to be caution in attending to your wounds.”

            His mind was becoming clearer now, though there still remained a feeling that his thoughts and senses were being suppressed, as the unseen woman spoke fleeting questions appeared in his head, but so briefly that he could not articulate any of them, he was content enough to hear her calming voice.

            “It took some time for us to successfully reverse the damage, though this took many attempts, and several times your body’s biochemical processes stopped, during these times we found healing was impossible. Eventually we took all the information you ever were and constructed you anew, your processes could not repair themselves quickly enough for us to consider leaving you alone.” In the corner of his vision he saw a body shape emerging, as he tried to focus on the speaker the background around her flicked into focus revealing the patterns of the tree canopy or the shapes of the clouds, but her body remained indistinct, almost silhouetted against the light from outside. He thought the restrictions on his mind to articulate one single question.

            “Why can’t I see you?” His voice was but a whisper, and perhaps not very distinct, though in some way the voice of reality was supplanted in this strange world by all the body and strength that he sorely lacked at this moment. The shadowy figure paused for a second, somehow the depths of shade in her silhouette shifted, like so many brushstrokes applied to a canvas.

            “I have no physical existence,” the speaker paused, “in as much as I have no body or form, I only assume this shape in your head, where your mind demands a presence. All of what you see now is a simulacrum half composed by your own mind, the rest by mine.” The speaker moved much closer now, although she was no more distinct, she knelt, or at least her silhouette suggested this, her head brought close to his. “It is strange, when we were tending to you, your mind automatically created scenes and sounds, even though you were unconscious, it was strange seeing such creation completely unbidden by conscious thought” there was almost a trace of curiosity perhaps even admiration. “In some ways the differences between us are not so great.” The kneeling figure stood up again and walked towards the distant balcony, he willed his body to follow, but it remained as numb to orders as it had been before. This time when she spoke there was a note of resignation, regret, sadness, “already they search for you, and they get ever closer, we must leave you” The figure paused at the edge of the balcony, “we have so much to learn about one another, but we shall always be waiting.” At the end of this final phrase the figure extended her arms, and her silhouette grew lighter, until it was a brilliant white, yet no more distinct than before, however its shape was changing. After a few seconds it had changed from the shape of a woman to an avian form, which now glided over the green canopy of the forest, the scenery around him was growing lighter too, heading towards a perfect white.

            When he awoke this time the stink of the forest was in his nostrils, automatically be brought his hand up to rub his eyes, and to his amazement there was no resistance to his movement, although bleary eyed at first, his vision snapped and became crisp, he was lying on his back, on some sort of moss, staring up through a network of branches above him. He became aware of the shouts of fellow humans around him, he tried to call to them, but he only managed to utter a drawn out number of syllables, he was still feeling a little confused. In a peculiar priority over the situation he was acutely aware of a sensual fragrance, and turned his head to try and find the source, a little way from him, wedged between two pieces of rock, a pale blue flower was nodding in the slight breeze, a he made a move for it, he heard a shout.

            “There you are!” the sound of thudding footsteps grew nearer, “ we have been looking for you for ages, we found your ship but you weren’t there, we figured you had to escape because of radiation or something-” He let the torrent of words wash over him, registering none of them, he continued to turn on his side and reach out for the flower. “- Hey, I say there are you alright, you don’t look too good.”

            As he pulled himself towards the stem, his nose filling with its fragrance, he saw in the distance ahead of him a silhouette, but only for a moment as it had disappeared as quickly as it had arrived, but a single voice in his head, blanking out the babble of the rescuer, “Farewell, child”. For the umpteenth time today he passed out again.