The Transition Zone

Posted on Mon Aug 17th, 2026 @ 10:52am by Commander Percival "Percy" Tapper
Edited on on Sat Aug 22nd, 2026 @ 8:09am

2,177 words; about a 11 minute read

Mission: Escape Velocity
Location: Athletic Facilities, Deck 5
Timeline: 4 Days Before Launch

Percy had gone beyond his usual workout time and now seemed to be engaged in some physical argument with his quickly-tiring body.

He was on the rowing machine at the aft corner of Eventide's athletic facilities, pulling the wooden handle toward his chest with determination. In some way, he had convinced himself that with the delays from Cochrane Shipyards he could burn through the frustration with a daily gym visit. To hell with middle age, he'd thought.

Sweat had darkened the collar of his gold-coloured, Starfleet-issued sleeveless workout shirt. His hair was now wet and had fallen over his forehead. His beard was no damp and appeared a somewhat defeated--almost like a small shrub after a rainstorm.

An athlete he was not. He had never been an athlete. He'd spent far more time in archaeological trenches than running obstacle courses, and while some of the younger scientists kept fit, to Percy, there was always one more book to read. One more lecture to attend. One more conference with an assortment of edible overindulgences.

The display on the rowing machine informed him that he had exceeded his recommended exertion level by sixteen percent.

Percy halted, letting the handle and cord fall harmlessly from his grip.

"Traitor," he said with a gasp.

He reached for his towel which had been left neatly folded on the bench next to him. Before he could put a hand on the fabric, the ship's comm opened up. The voice of a young female came through.

[Commander Tapper, you have an incoming priority transmission from Starfleet Command.]

Percy brought the towel to his face and wiped his brow where a slick of perspiration had threatened to fall into his eyes. He quickly dabbed at the remaining beads on his cheeks, beard, and ears. He was in no rush to be answering anyone back on Earth. They were four days to launch--finally. And somehow, the team on Cochrane were still running diagnostics on the warp engines.

Eventide was simply not ready. As of the previous day's count, there were still a further twenty-seven crewmembers to arrive and at least ten positions that had yet to be filled--including that of Chief Engineer.

"Can you tell them I'm unavailable?" Percy answered wryly, coming to his feet with a slight groan.

[Negative, Commander.] The young woman handling communications duties returned his verbal serve effortlessly.

"That's what I thought."

Percy slung the towel over one shoulder and walked carefully to the nearest comm panel on the bulkhead. His legs felt like gelatin and his knees were crying-out for relief.

Upon reaching the panel, he tapped his command authorization code and the transmission's header appeared with Starfleet Command newly-redesigned logo featuring the ubiquitous Starfleet delta turned sideways over a planetary body.

He tapped to accept the transmission but halted upon recognizing a priority code. A conversation in the middle of the gym--despite being relatively quiet--was off the table.

"Looks like I'll need to take this one in a more private setting, crewman."

[I'll reroute the transmission to your quarters, sir.]

"Thank you."

The walk back to his quarters was short enough that by the time he'd arrived at his door, his mind was no longer on the post-exercise stiffness and was now solemnly curious about who at Command would be reaching out.

He stopped just inside the door and looked down at his shirt. For a brief second, he considered changing.

"Forget it," he said to himself, seeing the sweat bleeding near the armpit and across the chest.

He stepped toward his desk and tapped the computer terminal to bring up the transmission before wiping some of the sweat on his left temple away.

Admiral Cunningham J. Sterling appeared on the screen.

Sterling was fifty-nine years old and looked like he could have been designed by a committee to represent Starfleet at important functions. His silver hair was cut close to the scalp, his uniform was immaculate, and his face had that indescribable handsome quality some men are born with. There were a few lines around his eyes, but age seemed to have arranged them with dignity.

Beside him sat Admiral Celene Golodov.

Percy couldn't help but smile at her presence on the call.

"Admirals," he said, deciding to toss the towel down on his desk to give them his full attention.

"Commander," Sterling said.

Golodov leaned closer to the camera.

"Percy, you look terrible."

"Good morning to you too, Admiral."

"You look like you've just run a marathon without any training," Celene teased.

If Percy had been any younger, he might have taken the comment to heart, but at forty-seven years he had become mellower and accepted the comment with a grin.

"Rowing machine," he corrected.

Admiral Sterling's expression remained neutral. He was simply waiting for the preamble to finish without a word.

Percy seated himself and almost considering apologizing for his appearance, but just like the shirt-changing idea, he let it go. Sterling might interpret an apology as a weakness, and Percy had come to learn from word-of-mouth that the man suffered very little from subordinates.

"May I ask, has our launch timetable been changed once again?"

Sterling folded his hands and exchanged a look with Golodov.

"Your orders have been amended."

Percy considered his next words. Despite being two weeks behind schedule, their first mission--a sort of shakedown cruise--was to stress-test Eventide's new warp engines with a trip to Bolarus Prime, a potential Federation member.

Picking up a data PADD, Sterling began scrolling. "The latest operational report from Commander Kikuchi of Cochrane Shipyards indicates that you are still on-schedule for a launch in four days. Eventide's shakedown cruise has been scrubbed."

The first thing that came to Percy's mind was one of the more cruder swear words in the English language.

"Admiral," he said calmly, "I'm sure you're aware that without proper testing of our warp engines, we might be limping to the nearest Starbase in a matters of days."

Sterling exchanged a look with Golodov.

"We're aware," Sterling said firmly, "but something has come up."

Percy must have appeared dubious to them and felt his brow furrowing.

"One of our deep-space relay stations has been receiving a signal from the outer regions of the galactic disk."

His brow softened and his brain turned over a few times while they sat in silence.

Golodov seemed to be watching Percy carefully, waiting for a reaction.

"The Galactic Barrier," he said finally.

Sterling nodded and Percy leaned back in his chair.

"I was under the impression the Barrier was theoretical."

"That's an interesting word," Sterling said. "The Barrier has been visited by at least three non-Terran vessels that we know of."

Percy nodded, recalling the mystery surrounding the barrier. "A Vulcan survey vessel visited the Barrier over one hundred years ago--the Juresh, and--"

"--and the Klingons," Golodov interjected. "Though, their visit was hardly for scientific reasons and obviously, we have no access to their data. If data does exist, I doubt any of it would be useful considering it occurred four hundred years ago--when Beethoven was barely walking."

"And the third non-Terran visit?" Percy inquired.

"The Zakdorn," Sterling replied as though the mere mention of the species was enough to satisfy the question.

Percy pushed his chair out and came to his feet. His mind was already turning over what was being placed in his lap: a brand-new, untested starship with wonky warp engines being ordered to edge of the Milky Way. It was beginning to sound like a mission that would have them traveling at warp for decades.

"With all due respect, sirs, I'm unsure how Eventide is expected to traverse twenty-six thousand light years simply to investigate a phenomenon that we're all very aware of and clearly poses no immediate risk to the galactic core."

Admiral Sterling opened his mouth as if to potentially admonish the archaeologist-turned-starship commander but Golodov simply placed a hand over his and smiled, an indication she had a better approach.

"Percy, we've received a signal from the Barrier."

"A signal?" he replied, fascination evident in his voice.

"A very strong one." Celene Golodov was not a woman to exaggerate or use hyperbole. She was the most matter-of-fact Admiral that Percy knew and was why she had succeeded Admiral Sonak of Vulcan as the head of Starfleet's Operational Sciences Division.

Percy stroked his damp beard. "Am I able to analyze the data?"

"We're sending you the full packet," Sterling said.

Golodov smiled. "It's not a naturally-occurring one either. This is someone intentionally trying to get our attention. The Ferengi, the Klingons, and probably just about every minor power in the quadrant with a subspace communications array has picked it up."

Percy blew out his cheeks. "And the twenty-six thousand light years issue?"

"Eventide is to proceed to the Luujak Nebula in the Zakdorn system upon launch. Upon arrival, you will be briefed on exactly how a one-hundred year journey to OD-CTZ will only take about seventy-two hours."

"OD-CTZ?"

Sterling nodded. "Starfleet Science is no longer referring to it as the Galactic Barrier anymore. Older terminology will only be retained for operational purposes, but the scientific designation is Outer Disk Coherence Transition Zone."

Percy made a face and snorted faintly. "That's... terrible."

"Scientific terminology isn't a popularity contest, Commander."

Admiral Golodov touched a button on the desk in front of her and diagram appeared on Percy's screen. The image of both Admirals minimized into the lower-right corner. The Galactic Barrier appeared and began to rotate. It suddenly split into a cross-section, showing a broad central plane and gentle, undulating curve toward its outer regions.

Percy leaned forward.

"We don't know the exact origin of the signal nor have we been able to decipher its content." Golodov cleared her throat. "You have four days plus the three days it will take you to arrive in Zakdorn space. Feel free to study everything in the mission packet."

The three-dimensional image of the Barrier on his screen fascinated Percy, though it was a branch of science he was almost entirely unfamiliar with.

"The archaeologist in me wishes he could simply scrape away the outer bits of the oh-zee..."

"OD-CTZ," Sterling corrected.

"Yes."

Golodov's voice broke-in again. "The Milky Way isn't a flat disk. We've known that for quite some time. The outer disk is warped, and there are three large-scale ripples and assymetries in its stellar and gaseous distribution. The farther we go from the galactic center, the less useful our primitive models become."

"Fewer stars?"

"Fewer stars, less gas, less orderly magnetic structure. The gravitational environment becomes increasingly dominated by the halo. Dark matter, stellar streams, old populations, remnants of smaller galaxies. The disk gradually loses its identity as a coherent rotating structure."

Percy squinted at the outermost portion of the diagram.

"You're saying the Barrier is where the disk becomes less like a disk."

"That's one way of putting it," Golodov said.

There was a pause as Percy made a mental note to have Eventide's civilian Subspace Physicist sit him down and give him a crash course on stellar geometry.

"What does coherence mean here?"

Golodov answered immediately.

"It means that the large-scale systems that make the galactic disk predictable begin to lose their usefulness in predictive models." She paused. "Percy, imagine walking across a frozen lake. The ice is one solid thing when it's thick and continuous. At the shoreline it becomes thinner, more broken, and you sometimes see holes or crevices because of the influence of the water beneath it. You're still on the lake, technically. Therefore, any assumptions about the lake become less and less reliable the closer to shore you walk."

Percy smiled gratefully at the explanation. "Anything else, Admirals?"

The diagram disappeared and both Sterling and Golodov reappeared fully on the screen.

"Get to the Luujak nebula as soon as Eventide is ready. In the meantime, brief your crew. Starfleet and civilian specialists alike. Study the packet. We need answers."

"Understood."

"Good luck and godspeed, Commander."

The transmission ended and Percy found himself gripping the back of his desk chair. Part of him was excited but there was a slight ambivalence to being forced to the edge of the space. Orders were orders, however, and whatever was waiting for them in that nebula in Zakdorn space, Percy knew he'd have a good group ready to face it with him.

He tapped the comm button on his desk. "Tapper to Bridge, please have Lieutenant Commander Jameson and Lieutenant Hunt meet me in my Ready Room in thirty minutes."

[Yes, sir.]

Percy closed the channel and lifted one arm, taking a sniff. He was in desperate need of a shower and a change of clothes before any meetings.

---

Commander Percival Tapper
Commanding Officer
USS Eventide

 

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