CH. 2
Just beyond the outer reaches of the dangerous field known to Starfleet as the Tempest Plasma Region, a small starship decelerated to a near stop. She was a lithe and angular design, with upswept, wing-like engine struts and a sleek saucer profile. She bore obvious armor plating, covering the more vulnerable sections of her warp nacelles and her outer hull. Twin torpedo tubes jutted out from a cleft section in her forward saucer, their size in proportion to the rest of the craft lending testament to the small stature of the ship. She was less than two hundred meters in length, but bore an enormous armament.
The USS Tenseiga, NCC-3056, was, for all intents and purposes, a warship. Labeled an escort vessel, her official duties were given to the protection of trade ships and patrolling Federation borders. Today, she was on a search mission. Pieces of a week old battle were spilling from the roiling masses of light red gas before the tiny combat vessel. Most of those twisted chunks of burnt metal were alien in origin, belonging to the Ya’wenn. Tenseiga was here for the few pieces that did not belong to the alien fleet.
On the bridge of the Tenseiga, Commander Benjamin Thomas all but clambered out of the command chair to get a good look at the view screen. He halted just aft of the combined helm/navigations console and gawked at the floating bits of metal that were parting themselves from the plasma storm. His blue eyes strained to seek out any sign of Starfleet designed alloys or hull sections. Every piece was blackened or tanned to a ruddy color. There was no outward sign to point the commander to any specific piece.
Ben glanced to the main sensor station.
“Surall?”
“I am scanning, Captain.” The Vulcan officer replied. The console before her, for all the modernistic appearance of the touch-pad controls and computer generated monitors that the station offered, truly was far less advanced than what she’d had aboard the Endeavour. Such a small, uncomplicated combat vessel could not hope to carry as expansive an array of scientific instruments such as what a line explorer possessed. Tenseiga was less than a quarter the volume of their previous starship. And most of her space was devoted to engineering and combat applications.
Commander Thomas waited impatiently beside the helmsman, Lieutenant Bronstien, continuing to watch the main screen. Bronstien looked up at the giant man who hunkered beside him. Ben had been plagued by the death of their former commanding officer, Commodore Ford. He continued to be plagued, in fact. The majority of the first few days since the battle had seen Thomas at the bottom of several bottles of hooch. He’d barely come up for air long enough to hurl hateful accusations at Ambassador Spock for his decisions which had shaped the battle. Were it not for the foresight of Admiral Sharp, Thomas would have remained at the bottom of the bottle.
The Admiral had given Thomas a much-needed kick in the ass. He’d ordered Thomas back onto active duty, told him to put down the bottle. When reinforcements for Starbase 23 had arrived, he’d emplaced Thomas as the CO of this ship. Newly commissioned, Tenseiga hadn’t even been fully manned when she and her sisters had come to the base. Her slated skipper remained in the Earth Sector, and hadn’t been due to take his ship on her shakedown cruise for another two weeks. Till further notice, this ship belonged to Thomas.
The decision had been controversial, especially given Thomas’ proclivity toward rash behavior. The incident involving the supposed Commodore Shiloah was just the most recent example of some very poor decisions. Command had balked at the idea of giving this man a ship of his own. But Sharp had swayed them. As Chief of Starfleet Operations, with words carried weight. Ben had gotten the commission. And it was the best therapy that could be provided the commander. Get back out here…look around.
Maybe even find his friend’s body…
Bronstien knew this last was among Thomas’s top priorities. He hadn’t voiced the concern, but the lieutenant knew it weighed heavily on his mind. The lieutenant could read it in the giant man’s every movement.
“Controls answering All-Stop, Captain.” Johnathan informed him. Ben looked back down at the helmsman and nodded. He still didn’t like being referred to as the ‘Captain’. He was this ship’s master, now, though. He was the captain.
“Alright…” He said absently, then looked back over to the small science station. Surall was laboring over the myriad of controls, gleaning every scrap of information she could from this ship’s scanner array. Finally, with the most subtle shake of her head, the science officer turned to face Thomas.
“Metallurgical scans reveal no trace of standard duranium or tritanium composites as found in Starfleet technology. All hull materials seem to match what we know of Ya’wenn construction methods.”
Ben seemed to sink in his boots. His meaty hand fell from the back of Bronstien’s chair to his side. “Keep scanning. Weapons officer, load a Type Three probe and ready to deploy it into the Tempest field.”
The junior grade lieutenant that headed Tenseiga’s tiny security department nodded back from the starboard tactical console. This ship sported two distinct weapons control stations, labeled Tactical I and Tactical II. Lieutenant Kurita manned the number two station at the moment, where the torpedo armament was mainly controlled. It was not long before the small Japanese man glanced back.
“Probe ready, Captain.”
“Fire.”
The tiny Tenseiga rattled with the expulsion of the two-ton probe into space. One wouldn’t have even felt a shimmer from aboard an Excelsior-Class ship. Thomas had served on ships this size before, but it was still going to take some getting used to again. He returned to the slim, fan-backed white command chair. Could he ever get used to all this? Command of his own ship? It felt so alien and so…temporary.
By his rank, Thomas belonged on a full sized destroyer or better. A frigate or perimeter action vessel such as this was, was technically a billet meant for a lieutenant commander, or even a senior lieutenant who had a great deal of experience. But Thomas had needed something to occupy him lest he turn into an alcoholic, and no larger ships were available for him to command. He thought nothing of the oddity, though certain other officers had made mention of the discrepancy.
“Captain…” The youthful voice of their comm officer, Lieutenant Smith, sounded from directly aft. Beyond the size of the console, Tenseiga offered much the same communications suite as Endeavour had possessed. She was, after all, intended to hear through all manner of fleet generated interference. “I’m picking up a faint signal…”
Ben swung his chair round.
“What type?”
“Not sure… I need more power to the comm array.”
Ben looked to his right, to the portside engineering console. At a gesture, he ordered the noncom there to relay the power management orders to the main engine room. A small ship like this operated under tighter power constraints than their larger cousins. It wasn’t long before Mister Smith had the power he’d requested.
The tall young man bent close to his station and pressed the microphone close to his ear as he listened. After a few tweaks to the transceiver controls, Noah looked back with confidence to his CO. “It’s a ship disaster beacon, sir. Coded to broadcast every ten minutes, and it’s been reconfigured for directional transmission.”
Ben’s eyebrows raised in surprise. He couldn’t help but feel that odd tingle of hope that the impossible might have occurred. That a disaster beacon had been set to directional broadcast meant that the sender didn’t want to be found by just anyone… “What ship, Mister Smith?”
“Endeavour, Captain! It’s the Endeavour!”
“Where away?”
Noah turned fully back to his console as he gathered every crew person’s attention. He manipulated the direction finder’s controls, narrowing down the possible origins of the signal. “It’s fuzzy, sir. But I think we should turn to heading 075 mark 017. I can’t read the distance.”
Ben whipped about the face the main screen. All that really showed out there was a great wall of fiery plasma. “Navigator, what’s out that way?”
The ensign manning the station next to Bronstien read slowly over the readouts before him. “Just a big mass of ionized particles, Captain. The cloud bulges out some four hundred thousand kilometers astarboard of us and goes on for over a parsec. Something might be transmitting on the other side of that.”
Lieutenant Bronstien leaned over and checked on the kid’s monitors himself.
“Confirmed, Cap’n. I think it clears on the other side.”
“Then bring us around, Helm. Ahead full.”
Tenseiga responded, rotating easily on her lateral axis and shot ahead at a quarter the speed of light. Johnathan Bronstien reveled in the maneuverability of this small ship, hardly able to keep the grim little smile from his face. Endeavour had been a huge, lumbering beast, slow to accelerate and hard to turn. In comparison, this ship was the proverbial hare racing before the tortoise. As a born pilot, he could not help but enjoy driving this craft. He did so, however, with a shade of regret.
The lieutenant deftly drove the escort around the circumference of the gaseous outcropping. As it began to recede off the left-hand edge of the main viewer, darker, emptier space loomed out beyond. The vast mass of the Tempest fell away from sight as Tenseiga rushed onward. Within an hour of long, silent bridge operation, the last vestiges of the violent storm had faded till barely a glow lit the viewer.
Bronstien finally allowed his eyes to drift up from the console blinking and chattering before him to study the main screen. Thomas rose out of the conn and resumed his standing space between the two flight control stations. The astonished look on his face made it apparent he thought he’d seen something.
“Interference now clearing.” Surall chimed in. “Lateral sensors have reflected off a solid object…”
“Getting the disaster beacon again.” Smith reported as well. “Signal has now switched to a constant pulse. I think her sensors have identified our transponder…”
Ben looked over to the science station.
“Are you detecting any evidence of active sensor emissions from the contact?”
“Negative. I have focussed the telescopic array onto the contact. On visual.”
The main viewer switched to a picture of a blackened, rent starship whose insides stared out through a plethora of breaches at naked space. Her hull was blasted into a cratered, moon-like expanse of twisted metal. Long stretches of unprotected internal volume shone piteously. She had been blown to pieces by uncounted torpedo hits and then burned till no silver metal remained.
Her basic lines and most notable details remained, however. The USS Endeavour slowly pushed herself through space at a dead crawl, propelled by her own, dim impulse drives. The crew of the Tenseiga stared in open amazement. Ben stabbed a finger toward the comm station.
“Smith, open hail!”
“Frequencies open, Captain.”
“Commodore Ford, this is Thomas on the USS Tenseiga! Please respond!”
The big soldier stood silent, bounding in his enthusiasm as he awaited the impossible response. After seeing the ship, the thought of Ford’s survival did not seem so far fetched. Thomas continued to gape at the viewer. Enthusiasm waned.
“Commodore Chevis Ford, can you read?”
“Now getting massive readings of Theta Band radiation.” Lieutenant Surall reported from the sensor console. “The ship has likely been bombarded by more than three days worth of heavy rads… Any human left aboard, unshielded…”
Thomas looked back to the brown skinned Vulcan woman. He didn’t feel any anger toward her for her words, but he felt as though she had betrayed him. He looked back to the wreck moving across the screen. “Helm, close in on her and pace her course. All sensors to ascertain Endeavour’s condition.”
“Aye.”
Ben faded into the back ground on his own bridge, slipping back and sliding down into his command chair. He did not want to think that his friend had fought to survive the Ya’wenn, then fought longer to save his ship…only to then die as she passed through waves of lethal radiation on her way out to clear space. Was Chevy over there…sitting in his own command chair…manning his bridge in an everlasting vigil?
How would Thomas handle the sight when he went over there…seeing his friend in that chair, or worse, laying in a heap on the deck? Well, Ben thought, whatever’s over there, I gotta see it.
Tenseiga caught up with the chugging hulk and fell in beside her. For all her dilapidation, Endeavour was still impressive in scale. She completely dwarfed the Akyazi-Class escort. The mere fact that the huge starship was still capable of self-motivation spoke chapters on her toughness.
“Theta radiation is leveling off,” Surall stated as they watched in respectful quiet. “I estimate she will be inhabitable within two point one seven days. I also read undamaged internal space. The bridge is compromised, but many sections of the saucer interior remain intact. Endeavour retains low level emergency power. Her impulse drive is operating on a pressure reversal from the phaser reserves.”
“Skipper had to work overtime to pull that one off.” Thomas thought aloud. “He would have needed several hours to rig that kind of system. Any chance he could have took another escape pod after he aimed the ship here?”
“No escape pods appear to have been launched after our departure.” The lieutenant responded. “I am unable to extensively scan the shuttle bays due to the remaining radiation. All bay doors show as closed.”
“We saw the old girl explode, right?” Helmsman Bronstien said suddenly. Breaking through his awed malaise, he turned away from his controls to look at his captain. “She blew up as we were running the hell away.”
Thomas glanced Surall’s direction. The Vulcan retargeted her visual array to the lower slope of Endeavour’s engine section. The hull there was pitted, cratered, and had massive sections missing, marring the once sleek lines.
“Her warp core has been ejected. Likely this was the origin of the blast we recorded.”
“Computer ejected the core...” Thomas said. He drew a challenging look from his science officer.
“The commodore may have ejected it before the automatic system initiated.”
“No…Chevy would have aimed it at the Ya’wenn if he’d done it by choice…” Ben regained his feet and circled his command chair. He halted aft, near the communications console. “Smith, signal Starbase 23. Report that we have found the Endeavour and she’s intact. Advise we’re gonna beam over a survey team to ascertain Commodore Ford’s…ultimate disposition.”
Smith nodded back. “Aye.”
Ben looked over to science once more.
“The radiation bad enough to pierce our EVA suits, Surall?”
“Indeed, Captain. RAD Suits from the engineering department would provide ample protection, however, despite the much shorter life-support resources.”
“RAD suits it is, then. Bronstien, Surall, you’re with me. Smith, you have the bridge. Get engineering to round up two repair teams to look Endeavour over.”
“Aye,” The comm officer said as he stood. He hesitantly took the conn and began to relay the orders down to engineering. Surall finished imputing a series of sensor commands and joined her captain and helmsman at the portside lift.
***
Hopefully this will generate some results
--thu guv!
Topic: Story Number 10! Of the Survivors... (Read 14967 times)