"Team, we're in second place," Anzyl announced, his voice tight with focus as the senior staff gathered in the conference lounge. "The field is down to the final sixteen. Most of the fleet either redlined their cores or simply couldn't handle the Gamma endurance stages. They're DNFs." (*Did Not Finish)
He tapped the monitor, displaying the second to last leg of the Tour de la Galaxie.
"The Delta Out-and-Back. We start in the Alsuran Sector at the Jenolan Dyson Sphere." He paused, a slight chill running down his spine. "We're deep in Borg space now. This is the longest and most dangerous leg yet. We head south through the Kobali System—the last friendly outpost in the quadrant—then three sectors down to the Yantasa Sector. We perform a U-turn around Pasarka VI, right in the heart of Hirogen hunting grounds, and then race back to Kobali for this evening's ceremony."
He circled the southern pivot point on the map. "This is why I called this meeting. We have to make a 180 degree turn at the bottom of the loop. How do we do it without losing our momentum?"
Qiln looked up from his padd. "A reminder, Captain: there is a mandatory checkpoint in the outer orbit of Pasarka VI. You can have no active warp field when you cross it."
"We could launch a gravimetric displacement charge," Tey'un suggested. "Latch onto it with fore and aft tractor beams and pivot."
Qiln shook a finger. "Disqualified. No projectiles. No weapons. No exceptions."
"I could pull an Immelmann loop," Lusaalli suggested, her hand carving an upward arc in the air. "I've always wanted to see if the Nexus could handle a vertical pivot."
Tey'un scoffed. "Only if you want us to end up as pancakes. The centrifugal force would shatter the inertial dampers. We'd be looking at hundreds of Gs per square inch."
"So a classic hard turn is out," Neil sighed. "Even at full impulse, we'd slide for thousands of kilometers, bleed all our speed to zero, and then have to fight ten million tons of inertia just to get moving again. The structural shear alone would rip the nacelles off."
Veirik, the ship's tactical officer, stood up and studied the stellar charts. "Is there only the one checkpoint? No 'No-Warp' corridor like the Beta Bend?"
"Correct," Qiln confirmed. "The only requirement is to be at impulse with a collapsed warp bubble at the moment of crossing."
Veirik's eyes darted between the planet and its sun. A slow smirk spread across his face. "Nolan, can you calculate a slingshot vector?"
Nolan, the Saurian Chief Science officer, rubbed his scales in thought. "A solar slingshot? It's possible. We could maintain warp velocity past the planet, use the star's gravity to whip us around, and head back toward the checkpoint. But turning at those velocities..."
"We don't turn at warp 9.9," Tey'un interrupted, catching Veirik's drift.
"We drop to a lower warp factor to tighten the arc around the star, then accelerate on the outbound leg. At the peak of our exit velocity, we kill the warp drive and... coast."
"Coast?" Nolan stammered. "At warp velocities? Without a bubble?"
"Newton's First Law," Tey'un muttered. "An object in motion stays in motion. If we collapse the field at the right micro-second, the star's gravity and our own massive inertia will hurl us through the checkpoint like a relativistic bullet."
Anzyl grinned. For once, the Nexus' ten-million-metric-ton mass wasn't a handicap—it was a wrecking ball.
"Lusaalli, can you aim a ship traveling multiple times the speed of light at a single point in space?"
Lusaalli looked at Captain worried and concerned, "I'm good, Captain. But for this maneuver, we're talking micro-second timing? It would take a machine, a super computer or a..."
Veirik stood, and just smiled.
—
Sixteen ships screamed away from the Jenolan Dyson Sphere, their hulls reflecting the pale light of the massive structure. Escorting them were wings of Delta Alliance warships, kept on high alert for any Borg interference. Within seconds, the void was filled with the iridescent streaks of Quantum Slipstream drives.
Inside the Slipstream, the race was grueling. These were the sixteen fastest ships in the galaxy, and every second represented light-years of distance.
One by one, the experimental drives began to redline. Ships dropped back into standard warp, their crews watching helplessly as the leaders pulled away.
—
"Exiting Slipstream!" Lusaalli called out. "The Borg Cube is still ahead of us!"
"By how much?" Anzyl barked.
"Twelve light-years," Veirik reported.
"Punch it! Full protocol!" Anzyl commanded.
—
The top three were now clear of the pack: the USS Nexus, the Borg Cooperative's Tactical Cube 05, and a Romulan Durgath-class dreadnought, the RRF Ba'Sro.
They were light-years apart in distance, but only seconds apart in time.
—
"Approaching the Pasarka system," Lusaalli said, her voice steady. She stood up, vacating the helm. "Ready when you are."
Veirik stepped forward. He didn't just sit; he honed himself in like was one with the ship's interface, his Illyrian physiology shifting into a state of hyper-awareness. To him, the bridge began to move in slow motion.
The Nexus thundered past the checkpoint at maximum full warp, ignoring the planet entirely as it aimed for the sun.
—
Behind them, the Borg Cube dropped to impulse, performed a standard 180-degree reversal, and began the slow process of re-accelerating.
—
Veirik's fingers became a blur. "Dropping to Warp 4", he thought—speaking was too slow now. He banked the Nexus into the star's gravity well at sixty-four times the speed of light. The ship groaned, but the subspace bubble protected them from the lethal G-forces.
As they swung around the far side of the sun, Veirik felt the gravitational tug. Increasing to Warp 9. The ship accelerated, slingshotting out of the solar arc.
"Now."
Veirik collapsed the warp field. The Nexus was no longer "warping" space; it was a ten-million-ton projectile traveling at hundreds of thousands of kilometers per second. Without the warp bubble, the stars, the bridge, everything began to stretch into eternity, —they became streaks of pure white light, and everything behind was non-existent blackness. Pure unmitigated faster than the Speed of Light.
The ship crossed the checkpoint in a literal blink. No warp bubble. Impulse engines only. Race requirements met.
Before the sensors could even register their presence, Veirik slammed the warp drive back online. The Nexus re-established its bubble at Warp 9.98 and vanished back toward Kobali.
The entire bridge crew sat in stunned silence. In less than half a second, they had performed a U-turn, accelerated to relativistic speeds, coasted through a checkpoint without a field, and jumped back to maximum warp.
By the time the Borg Cube had even finished its turn, the Nexus was already sectors away.
—
"Did... did that just happen?" Domm stammered at the KNN desk. He and Assia were staring at the sensor telemetry in disbelief.
"I... I don't know," Assia whispered, utterly baffled. "Referees? Was that... legal?"
The officiating staff scrambled, reviewing the drone footage and the Nexus' flight recorder. After a tense minute, the head referee gave a slow, bewildered nod and thumbs up.
"It's legal!" Domm shouted. "The Nexus has just executed the single most mind-boggling maneuver in the history of spaceflight!"
"That puts them in a lead that shouldn't even be possible!" Assia cried.
Before any protests could be lodged, the Nexus engaged its Slipstream drive, its victory not just earned, but cemented in the laws of motion.