Concord {Star Trek Enterprise fan fiction}

Chapter 1

“Urgence! Sortez! C’est trop dangereux!” 

The scientists at CERN scattered in all directions. It was one of the final engagements of the Third World War, a good 600 million people were dead and, for whatever reason, the Eastern Coalition was bombing that region of Switzerland. 

“This is insane,” complained a British physicist, “this has been a peaceful area for how many years? And we are this,” he held his left thumb and index fingers about two centimeters apart in order to demonstrate, “close to finally replicating the damned Higgs boson at will!” 

“Je ne sais pas,” replied a French colleague. 

There was another explosion. 

“Evacuate!” yelled the Brit. 

Rwandan, British, French, Chilean and Malaysian scientists joined others running out of the building as bombs fell all around them. 

There was a flash, and another explosion. This one was a direct hit to the Large Hadron Super collider. 

No one could have known – not the Eastern Coalition and not even the scientists – that the attempt to reliably replicate the Higgs had, instead, dredged up unstable chronometric particles. This created a temporal interphasic rift, and all life on Earth vanished. 

That happened in 2053, but it lasted for a few nanoseconds. Most people who experienced it felt it was a minor hiccup in their lives, if they even consciously understood it at all, or remembered it. 

But the chronometric particles spread, and some of them, a good century later, made it to where a certain ship was on a certain mission, for what would be known as the Xindi War had just started. 

=/\=

There was no warning. The Klingon ship fired and the Enterprise was hit in the starboard nacelle. The ship rocked. 

“Return fire!” bellowed Captain Jonathan Archer. “Get Duras!” 

The Armory Officer, Malcolm Reed, aimed the phase cannons and fired back at the Klingon vessel, which was targeting the Enterprise’s warp core. 

“Helm about!” yelled Archer, and Pilot Travis Mayweather complied, steering the ship into a barrel roll to get the Klingons off their tail. 

“Fire at will!” Archer yelled. 

“Sir! We are out of torpedoes!” Malcolm answered. 

Jonathan whacked a console on his armrest. “Tripp! I need more speed! We need to get to Earth and deal with the attack! The last thing we need is Klingons!” 

“Aye, Cap’n!” came Chief Engineer Tripp Tucker’s voice from Engineering.

“Captain! The Klingon ship is venting some sort of gas!” called out T’Pol, the Vulcan at the Science station. 

Jonathan looked back at her. “Can you identify it?” 

She looked up. “No, sir.” 

There was a chime. “They’re hailing us,” said Communications Ensign Hoshi Sato. 

“On screen,” Jonathan said, a little bit calmer now. 

“Earth vessel,” commanded a large Klingon male, “surrender and prepare to be boarded. We will be lenient if you give us Archer.” 

“Not a chance!” Jonathan answered. Dammit, we don’t even have a complement of MACOs yet! He motioned to Hoshi to cut the transmission. “We’ll pass out hand weapons if we have to. Malcolm, get to the Armory.” 

“Right away, sir.” He got up 

Jonathan stared back at the viewer. The Klingons weren’t backing off. Had they, perhaps, been the species that had fired on Florida and South America, killing an untold multitude of humans? They had to find whoever had coordinated that attack. There was no time for diversions and interruptions. He needed to get back to Earth and be debriefed, pick up a squadron of MACOs and drop off some of the less military crew. And then they had to head back out there. “Damn Duras,” he repeated, “No time for this.” 

There was another hit. This one rocked the Bridge, and Malcolm fell to the floor. 

“Sick Bay!” Hoshi yelled, “We have a medical emergency!” 

And that was the last thing that Malcolm heard.