You know, reading it back and musing about it, i found why i like it. It's because a "minor" incident spiraled into one huge steaming pile of sh*t in such a short time AND having a definite effect on people's lives. That's what I missed in most series (not just trek). Big consequences of relatively minor actions.
CH. 3
Chevis Ford stretched out on the cool plastic tubing of his collapsible beach chair and looked out over the impossibly wide vista of ocean before him. The empty beach ran for kilometers on either side of him. On a planet composed of long, winding peninsulas and wide islands and archipelagoes, it was easy to find an empty beach. Even during the tourist season.
Boats shot by on the wind-whipped sea, driven by tall white sails as small crews enjoyed the weather. Sun shone down brightly and gave the beach a warm temperature around eighty-seven degrees Farenheight. A squall or storm line was visible on the horizon, maybe twenty kilometers off. It was moving inland and would be near to Ford’s beach within a couple of hours. He was intent on watching it come.
Out on the water, one small sailboat coasted to a near halt on the choppy waves. Its canvas was being lowered by machine. Ford could not see anyone on deck. ‘Must be going to the head’, Ford thought with a wry grin. ‘I’d probably bring her to a halt if I was the only one aboard her and just had to go…’
The commodore thought back on the night before. Anya had made the entire trip out here to this planet entirely worthwhile. After his problems on 23 with Andrea… A frown creased his face. He’d not wanted to think about his CMO.
Ford had been falling in love with her, he was pretty sure of that. They’d spent every off duty moment in each other’s company. They’d made love nearly every night, reveling in the thought of ‘sneaking’ around in front of the crew. Not that they could really keep their affair secret. But the idea of such a romance was enticing and they merely fueled the masquerade for the fun of it.
Then came his return from imprisonment and torture. She’d run away from him. She would not return his comm messages. The one time he’d come to her quarters, she hadn’t answered the door chime. The computer had given her location as being in her cabin, but she’d refused to speak with him.
So he’d given up on her. Whatever problem she had been having with his supposed death and capture had been terminal to their relationship. He was not able to speak with her about it. No one else had been able to either. Chevy could do nothing about the situation. Save brood about it.
These unwelcome thoughts simmered in the resting officer’s mind as he stared blankly at the wallowing boat a kilometer away from him. He couldn’t wait for Anya to get off her shift at the little curio shop she’d mentioned. He thought about dropping by there to see her before seventeen hundred… But he did not want to seem bothersome. Too much attention might annoy her. She told him she’d drop by his condo later that night.
A tiny flicker of light reflected off something aboard that little boat. Ford squinted through the tinted glass of his shades at the craft, wondering what it could have been. He could make out glass windows along the sides of the cabin of the sailboat. But the flash had been from farther abaft. The flicker came again.
The uneasy feeling of being watched came to him just then. Chevis found the sudden thought humorous. Just who the hell would want to watch a pasty fat guy sitting on the beach? That made him smile. He hoisted up a beer from the ice bucket sitting in the white sand beside him and took a long swig. Besides, even if someone were watching him out there, wasn’t that just what he was doing right back at them? His eyes had barely come off that boat since it had sailed up.
But then, why had that boat come all the way out here just to halt? She hadn’t moved inland with the waves in the ten minutes she’d sat luffing… She must have set anchor. But why there? The occupant wasn’t fishing. There still wasn’t anyone on deck… Unless that dark shape at the stern was a person…
Where the flashing was coming from.
Ford frowned, suddenly feeling self-conscious. Was there some kind of voyeur out there taking a strange interest in him? He tugged at the blue, button-up silk shirt that hung over him. He felt like getting up and leaving. Let the person keep watching an empty beach.
‘Bein’ a guest at Palace D’Jarn done made ya’ paranoid, Chevy,’ the commodore admonished himself. ‘No one’s watchin’ your fat ass.’
Finishing off his Killian’s Red, Ford creaked up out of his chair and turned away from the boat. To hell with them out there. He’d watch his rainstorm from the condo back porch. He gathered his folding chair and beer bucket, abandoning the beach for home…
***
Lieutenant Noah Smith bounded down the long stretch of engineering hull to the point where his friend stood. Lieutenant Bronstien, in his white EVA suit and magnetic boots, stood before a naked rift of internal structure, facing the keel of the Endeavour. As a communications officer, Smith hardly ever got to venture forth on work details such as this. He’d never stepped foot on the outer hull of this ship. He’d only ever been EVA three times before; each of which had been a training exercise. He found this exhilarating.
“Hey, Johnathan!” He called out over the short-range comm frequency. The helmsman turned at the waist and looked back ‘up’ at him. He raised a hand in a short wave and turned back to the trio of work pods that were uncoupling a seven-meter long length of duranium hull paneling from the skeleton of metal beneath it. Noah slowed his low-gravity jaunt and tapped the controls on his belt to increase the magnetic pull of his boots. Now more firmly planted to the ship’s skin, he sidled up along side his friend and chucked him on the shoulder.
“Hey, man. Need any help out here?”
“You’ve never done any of this before.” Bronstien replied. His voice was short and tired sounding. Noah ignored the impolite edge to the pilot’s voice and shrugged.
“Neither have you, compadre. All you’re doing is pointing to which panel you want took out next. They’re doing the real work.”
Johnathan looked sidelong at the comm officer. The face staring back from the lightly tinted visor was one of consternation and tiredness. John had been on the work detail for two days now and had barely stopped. This was the primary reason for Smith’s venture out onto the outer hull. Noah had reached an impasse with rewiring the communications data relay and could not continue work till the engineers installed a proper voltage regulator. So he’d come out here during the wait to help or at least entertain his Academy roommate.
“I’m also spotting for tangled components, damaged buckles and exterior maintenance modules…” The lieutenant sighed over the open comm. “…and other assorted sh*t. I love Commander Davenport.”
“I’ll be sure to spread that around, Lieutenant!” Came a voice Smith did not recognize over the comm link. Noah looked up to one of the free-floating work-bees that were hoisting the blackened hull panel up from the ship. The pilot inside was smiling back from behind his control board as he laughed inaudibly. Noah waved up at the unhelmeted pilot.
“Won’t do ya’ no good, Senior.” Bronstien was bantering back to the engineer. “Everyone knows you’re my hot mama.”
“That’s our lil’ secret, Lieutenant.” The man laughed. “You know how the brass views officer-enlisted fraternization.”
“You keep my secret, Senior, I’ll keep yours.”
“That’s affirmative, LT. I’ll be seein’ ya’.”
The enlisted man gave another wave and began to rotate his pod about above them. The work pod towed the hull panel away with it, leaving the other two to continue. Bronstien ignited a work light and walked slowly to the edge of the chasm and bent down to closely examine the long members of tritanium structure which had just been exposed. He let the light linger on each uncoupled attachment buckle.
“Aren’t we removing those?” Asked Smith.
“I’m looking the base pads over. If they aren’t damaged, all we have to cut off is the buckle.”
“And if they are?”
“Then the job gets a little harder. What’s the news on the main computer?”
“Regulator and processor damage only. The mainframe and memory storage system is intact.” Smith replied. “Got lucky there. I hear the Chief Engineer wants to scrap the old girl…”
Johnathan turned suddenly to look back at him again. His displeasure with the idea was very apparent. “Yeah, I was there for part of that conversation.” He confirmed. “Never heard of an engineer that wanted to haul her own ship to the scrap depot. Bunch of bullsh*t!”
“You sound mighty attached to a ship you were transferred off of.”
The lieutenant’s shoulders sagged a bit. Smith realized then that his friend wasn’t entirely happy with his new assignment. “You don’t like the Tenseiga? I thought you’d like a more maneuverable ship to helm.”
“Kinda got used to this ship…” Johnathan paused. Smith remained silent and let him finish. “Now she’s in pieces… And the woman in charge of putting her back together doesn’t want to!”
“You gonna request a transfer back?”
“I don’t know if I can. It’ll be months before I could anyway. Might not want to then. The Tenseiga’s a fine ship.” The helm officer stood from where he’d hunkered and waved up to the nearest work-bee. Then he pointed to the next hull panel aft of where he was. The pods floated that way with puffs of directed gas and lowered themselves closer to the burnt and pot-marked hull.
The pair of lieutenants watched as the pods extended their mandible arms and reached beneath the flat sheets of thick duranium. Flares of brilliant light burst out in cones, causing the visors of their helmets to darken in response. Johnathan took his tricorder from his belt and snapped it open, scanning as the work-pod pilots sliced through the buckles.
“So we’re gonna armor the hull?” Smith ventured, trying to coax out more conversation. The helm officer’s helmet bobbled with a nod.
“Yeah. Diburnium-Bacinite alloy ablative armor.”
“That’s experimental.”
“We’re getting the first run of it, I hear. On its way from Tellar now.” The lieutenant paused, moving as quickly as he could closer to the threshold between the panel he stood on and the one being cut off. He leaned in and lowered his tricorder head to the flat expanse of metal. “We got a problem!”
“Problem?”
“Yeah… I’m reading a deuterium pocket near the hull…”
“What do we do?”
Johnathan was now waving the work-pods away, stepping as close to the edge of the blazing hot metal as he dared. “Break off! Break off!”
***
Commander Davenport watched the resolving simulation over the shoulder of the chief engineer as she ran the computer terminal before them through the program. On the screen, a plate of silver metal was being stuck by a 2.8-megawatt particle beam and boiling away at the flash point. A graphic to the left of the visual representation showed the particle disintegration as the beam burned its way through the alloy. The heat and radiant energy was being distributed over a wide plane of the armor plate even as it was being burned through.
The two officers had been in the Starbase’s main computer chamber for the last seven hours, diligently examining Starfleet’s experimental information on the new armor Sharp had ordered. They had barely taken a breather or even spoken to each other. The tension of the first few moments had bled away as they’d forced themselves into their work. Neither wanted to address the rift that was developing between them.
“The alloy resists the equivalent of a Type-Eight phaser strike for six seconds without penetration.” Tolin observed as the simulation ended its cycle. She dialed up the program that broke down the atomic structures of the metal during the firing sequence. They analyzed the molecular disruption at a much-slower-than-reality speed. “It’d take a Ya’wenn magnetron cannon nearly twice as long to punch through. They rely much more on thermal radiative effects than the particle disruption of a phaser.”
“Yeah…” Davenport leaned back from the screen and tried to stretch the stiffness from his spine. “But how does it stack up against a photon torpedo?”
“The experiments did not focus on missile ordnance. The armor wasn’t designed to fend off Starfleet technology. Our own weaponry…” Xia didn’t hide the extent of her exasperation over Jarn’s forces gaining Federation weapons.
“We’ll have to come up with our own sims on photonic detonations—“
A loud squalling alarm cut Davenport off mid-sentence. He looked toward the ceiling as Tolin tapped the comm key near her wide console. “Yes?”
“Commanders, there’s been an explosion aboard Endeavour!” Said one of the young ensigns assigned to the operations deck. “Two injuries and one fatality reported!”
***
Topic: #11: White Rabbits (Read 20119 times)