Now that I learned geometry, I found the missing piece of Google-Fu required to recover the final bit I like the most:

Humans: so, uh, funny story

Vulcan Science Academy: Let us guess – you’re not here to return the two warp cores we loaned you for experimentation, and you’re here to tell us that both of them were destroyed at once while you were trying to turn a sun into a torus again

Humans: well, half right

VSA: Wait, what is this

Humans: This is sixteen warp cores

VSA: How is this

Humans: Turns out that at the center of the stellar toroid there was a subspace anomaly that--

VSA: PLEASE don’t

Humans: --caused a refractive tachyon emission that--

VSA: This is literally impossible in every sense of the word

Humans: -- depolarized the warp fields and in short--

VSA: Just no

Humans: -- the warp fields got cloned and we ended up with four.

VSA: But you brought back sixteen

Humans: We had to repeat the experiment a couple of times to make sure it wasn’t a fluke

VSA: What about the “stellar toroid” of yours

Humans: It’s now a stellar triquetra

StarTrekHumansAreFuckingBonkersAndTheyGetMadRespectForIt.