Alpha Quadrant: New Moon Rising

“What’s going on?”

Commander Li Chen’s voice was almost too quiet to be heard among the din of alarms and voices carried electronically over communications panels. He strode into the Combat Information Center quickly, adrenaline pumping. Already he was regretting those last few laps in the pool. He could feel himself fighting muscle fatigue, and knew without looking that he was in for a rough time now. Judging from the data scrolling across the numerous screens in the CIC, it was going to be a long night.

“Sir.” Lieutenant Jenna Proxis handed Chen a datapad filled with text. “The latest status reports. We’ve picked up gravitational anomalies in the Rigel system. Dangerous ones.”

Chen glanced at the datapad, saw that it was a tremendous amount of information to absorb, and from the sounds of it, he didn’t have the time. “What sort of gravitational anomalies?”

Lieutenant Commander Xi Quin Xa stood up from his console, his three eyes tracking various pieces of data at once. It always unnerved Chen, even though he would never show it, that the science officer always seemed to be watching him. “Commander, sir, we’re getting conflicting reports of a strange event happening near Rigel Seven. Just looking at the raw data, it looks like the planet’s gained a new moon in a matter of hours.”

Chen’s brow furrowed. “That’s not possible.” A new moon? That would certainly explain the gravity problems, but still... “Recheck your data.”

“I have, sir. And the media broadcasts from the capital city seem to bear out the data. At least in the sense that gravity’s being affected in a major way. Tides are going crazy, science experiments have gone awry, satellites are off-course. Our long-range sensors show something affecting the gravity of the area, but there’s nothing of any great mass to account for it. I can’t explain it, sir.” Xi looked more confused than Chen had ever seen, which was even more disconcerting.

“What ships do we have in that area?” he asked the duty officer.

Ensign Parmenter checked a datapad in his hand. “The Welbourne and the Biloxi are closest, sir. But they’re several days out.”

Chen took a deep breath. Control. Try to figure this out. Rigel 7 was a trading outpost, near the border of disputed space. “Does Intelligence have anyone on the ground there?”

Proxis grimaced, her face darkening. “If they do, they haven’t told us.”

Chen rolled his shoulders back twice to loosen them up, then went to the food dispenser and programmed in a request for herbal tea. He knew he was going to need its calming effects, if not the caffeine.

“Tanno, send a signal to Intelligence. Let them know what we’re seeing, find out if they have any live assets on the ground who can assist.” The communications officer nodded and turned to his console.

“Xi, let’s see a visual.”

The main screen dissolved from an image of the space outside the station to a view of the planet six light-years away. With computer enhancement, Chen was able to make out the planet and its two moons. “Now overlay the gravity readings.” Red lines scrabbled across the screen, skewing and waving around the planet like a drunk painter had slashed the screen with a frayed brush. Chen whistled to himself softly.

Proxis stood behind him. “It’s definitely not natural, whatever it is.”

Xi turned from his console to face them. “I concur. This event has happened too quickly to be something random or indigenous to this area of space.”

Chen nodded. If it wasn’t natural, that meant someone had caused it. And Chen had a good idea who. He traded looks with Proxis, who nodded slightly. She was clearly thinking the same thing.

The Chu’a.

Enemies for decades, the Chu’a had caused all sorts of mayhem for the human race venturing forth into space. First explorers, then colonists, had felt the wrath of this xenophobic race. And all because the first humans to break the hyperspace barrier had been at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Chen started to think faster than hyperspace himself. “All right. We know it’s affecting the tides and the satellites. What kind of effect is this gravitational flux having on the planet itself?”

Xi consulted his data again, peering studiously, furiously at four screens and a datapad. He looked back at Chen. “If my calculations are correct, there will be a three degree shift in the arc of the planet’s orbit.”

Dead silence in the room, save for the occasional report from the lower decks over the comm channel. No one spoke for almost a full minute as the implications set in.

“My God...” Proxis breathed. “What’s the population there now?”

Xi barely glanced at the datapad in his hand. “Approximately three hundred million.”

Chen thought furiously. “Three degrees...”

Xi nodded. “It does not sound like much, but considering we are talking about a planet’s orbital path, three degrees is enough to destroy the ecosystem completely. The effects won’t show up immediately, but when the planet reaches apogee, it’s likely to have another ice age.”

Proxis nodded. “And at perigee, the atmosphere will burn off. It’ll swing too close to Rigel.”

Three hundred million people...Chen put his human fallibility aside. He had to be the commander for now. Worry would come later. “Get the word out to all available ships for an evacuation. No drill. Get as many people off the planet as quickly as possible.”

“Aye, sir.” Tanno’s hands flew across his board.


The evacuation ships were slow in coming, but the residents on the planet were even slower in believing that disaster was imminent. Those who did accept the news were quickly swept aboard ships that could barely contain them. On the way out of the system, every ship commander looked for some cause for the gravitational anomaly, some clue that could help the Alliance avert disaster. But no one saw anything.


Over the course of days, Chen and his staff watched as Rigel 7 shifted in her orbit, knowing that they were so far powerless to stop it. And even if they could, how would they correct it?

“I need options, people.”

No one spoke. Xi almost looked embarrassed. Leave it to the Zazma to feel it was his fault. Chen always thought it was a flaw in the species. But his science officer was one of the best, the highest rated non-human in any scientific field.
Proxis looked angry, betrayed. She was taking this personally, too, Chen knew. And why not? The Alliance had been attacked. They were sure of it. The Chu’a had developed a new weapon. Had to be.
But there was no evidence to prove it.

“Sir --” Tanno spun around from his console. “One of the passengers of the last evacuation ship is insisting that he speak with you.” He listened for a moment. “Says he has critical information.”
Chen looked at his senior officers. Intelligence. “Have him brought here.”

“Aye, sir.”


“You won’t be able to stop it, Commander. This has already gone way beyond that.”

He was unkempt, bedraggled. Chen thought he looked like a bum who hadn’t had work in a decade, but that was probably intentional. No one noticed the impoverished. The man was clear-eyed, which was Chen’s first clue that he was an Intelligence operative. He stood near a display screen showing the gravity fluctuations around Rigel 7 and tapped on the panel with a dirt-encrusted knuckle. “I managed to get out right after hacking into a control computer in the capital city. Someone was bought to look the other way, and a new satellite was put into orbit. It’s got a cloak, so no one spotted it. But we’ve put two and two together. Information came out of our source at Zul. This thing’s called a gravitic resonator.”

Chen thought the very name sounded evil. “What does it do, exactly?”

The agent sat back down. “It keys into all of the gravity sources around it -- planet, moons, asteroids, what have you -- and generates a resonant gravity field using the same harmonics. Basically amplifies the amount of gravity and sends it in a particular direction.” He looked back at the screen. “Rigel Seven is dead. There’s no way we can stop the change in orbit.”

Proxis leaned forward. “What about using the device itself to correct the damage?”

The agent shook his head. “We already thought about that. The resonator is keyed to operate only when four distinct Chu’a brainwave patterns are present, along with a particular code key which we haven’t been able to steal yet. You can probably imagine the amount of hair that’s being pulled at Central Command.”

Chen nodded. Not to mention at Station 51, the main Intelligence facility.

Rigel 7 was a casualty. Chen’s job now was only to get as many people to safety as possible. The Alliance would have to regroup to counter this new threat.

The Chu’a had won this round.