- Stardate: 55570.5 (Jan, 2379)
Darkness, lit only by the occasional spark or flickering console. Commander Jason Anthos blinked to make sure he still had vision. He looked over at the closest officer, Science Officer Baldwin, who was nursing a rather nasty cut on her head, presumably when something above her had exploded, sending shrapnel everywhere. “Someone give me a status report!” He demanded, as was his duty as First Officer.
“Helm offline!” Kinzia Perim, at the Helm answered. “No thrusters, impulse or warp power. No positional data, I can’t even tell if we’re stationary or drifting.”
“Massive system failures across the board.” someone said from an ops console, “Sensors are fried, and the computer seems to vary from sluggish to non-responsive. I can at least tell you is that we have life support running on emergency power, beyond that…Sorry.”
“Right.” Anthos said, looking around in the dark for the Captain, he saw him lying on the ground next to his overturned Command Chair, “Captain?” he said kneeling. But the CO was unresponsive. “Captain Young?” Anthos put his fingers on the Young’s neck, checking for a pulse. There was one, very faint. Anthos automatically tapped his badge, “Bridge to sickbay, we’ve got casualties up here.” No response. “Tell me we have shipboard communications.”
The Bolian at ops looked at his console, and back and Anthos and gave him a doubtful look and shrugged, “Sorry, I don’t know.”
“I want to know what the hell just happened!” Anthos said, still kneeling next to Captain Derek Young. “And I want to know now!” He tapped his badge again, “Bridge to Engineering, I need a status report!” No reply, but he knew if someone down there heard him they would contact him when they could.
His badge crackled, “Sickbay, Lewin here, Dr. Tully is dead-“
“So will the Captain be if you don’t get someone up here.”
“Dammit, we’re inundated with a ton of causalities as it is-
“Doctor!”
“…we’ll do our best, Sickbay out.”
Anthos looked down at Young, he did not look well at all. He looked up, sighing. Just a quick survery mission, he’d be home in time…. Right. He focused. Pulling his mind away from those thoughts, and onto…the viewscreen. “Can we at least get the viewscreen on?”
“Sir, sensors are down.” The Bolian repeated.
“Well..What about optical?” Anthos said, looking at the Bolian.
“Oh..Oh right.”
The viewscreen, and bulkhead lowered into the deck, revealing the rarely used and often ignored 2 meter thick transparent aluminium behind it, offering a purely optical view of space. Stars, were they familiar? No ships..well none that he could see; without sensors there could be a ship a few thousand kilometers away and he wouldn’t be able to pick it out from any of the other dots of light. And no sign of the planet that were orbiting only minutes ago.
“Commander?” Gabrielle Baldwin called, having gotten to a science console, “If my readings are correct, and I can’t be sure that they are… um…we’ve travelled over thirty nine thousand light years from our previous position. I’ll try to verify that once the computer is back up.”
“Thirty Nine..Thousand? Damn…” Anthos sat on the floor…Looking out at the now very unfamiliar stars.
- Stardate: 55550.4 – Risa – A week earlier
“You do know what a break is right?” Anthos looked to Derek Young, his eyebrow raised, waiting for a response.
Young smiled, “Of course, it’s where a good officer goes to get broken.”
Anthos rolled his eyes, “A ‘good officer’…uhuh.” Still refusing to rise from his chair, he looked away from Young, out at the perpetually calm ocean beyond his deck.
“Come off it Jason,” Young said pulling a chair over next to Anthos’. He sat in it, “It wasn’t your fault, no matter what the brass says.”
“I don’t care what the brass say, I feel at fault.” still not looking at Young, “I” he emphasised, “Me.”
“This is exactly why you need to come back. You’re sitting here, wallowing in your self pity…And filth.” Young added looking back at the state of Anthos’ apartment. “It’s only a survey mission, out to Veridian, a week or two and back again. You’ll have plenty of time to come back home in time for the hearing. At least you’ll be busy, keep your mind off things.”
Anthos didn’t say anything. He lifted his drink to his mouth.
Young made to take it off him, but Anthos held firm and looked at Young, “You might have been my CO before, but you’re not at the moment, I think I can make my own decisions thank you.” He snatched his drink hand away from Young and took a swig from the glass. The quasi-legal Romulan Ale burned the back of his throat, and he coughed as it went down, like he had for every other sip. He eyed the drink, one of the questionable benefits of the Dominion War?
- Stardate 55569.9 – Veridian III – Several Hours Earlier
The shattered hulk of what remained of the USS Enterprise NCC-1701-D lay, scattered, over a stretch of several hundred kilometres. 8 years earlier teams of Starfleet Engineers had carved their way into the Galaxy Class wreck, removing sensitive equipment and technology and maybe the odd piece of recyclable scrap. The ship had certainly been beyond salvage, but Starfleet couldn’t leave the Galaxy Class vessel’s underlying technology for any scavenger, or potential enemy to come along and take as they pleased, especially out here on the edge of Federation territory…So close to the Romulan border.
The salvage team took what they could back to Federation space, but a full removal and clean up was to be scheduled for some years later; in accordance with the Prime Directive, Starfleet had to completely remove the Enterprise wreck, so that no trace of it would remain on this world. There was a primitive civilization on Veridian IV, the next planet out from the Veridian sun, and if someday voyagers from that world landed here, they must find no trace of advanced technology which might affect the natural development of their science and culture. However being as they were currently in a pre-industrial stage, Starfleet felt that such a full scale salvage operation could be delayed for some years yet…
Now that the date for the final salvage was fast approaching, Starfleet sent one of the few Starships in the region to survey the planet and make it was secure for SCE to send their full-scale teams in.
Lieutenant Burke looked down at the screen, it showed the wreck site and a few shuttles flitting to and fro, some headed back up to the ship that Burke was now in, the USS Australis. He was monitoring the salvage operation from his screen, it wasn’t his assigned task, but who wanted to scan a non-descript, and boring planet when you could look at the resting place of a truly legendary Starship?
“Oi!”
Burke sat up, “Commander!”
Lieutenant Commander Gabrielle Baldwin, his superior officer, walked in. “Shouldn’t you be surveying the planet? Not watching tinkerers and their toys?”
“Toys!?” Burke scoffed, “the Enterprise? A mere toy?” Besides…Planetary survey? Of this spit of dirt? My talents are wasted on this ship.”
“Well it is what we science officers do. The talented and the untalented.” Baldwin said, leaning over Burke and switching his console to the survery data. “And you are a science officer right?”
“Well yes…But I was supposed to be a researcher-“
“Yes yes, I know all about what you are ‘supposed’ to be doing.” she said, using finger quotes, “But you’re not, are you? You’re here. In my department, and you’d best do something to make yourself useful to me and my department, before I find something considerably less interesting than surveying for you to do. Understood?”
“Yes.”
“Yes what, Lieutenant.”
“Yes m’am, sir, Commander.” Burke gave her a mocking salute.
Baldwin walked away rolling her eyes, “Jackass.”
“Bitch,” Burke said once she left the room. He promptly changed the console back to the engineers on the Enterprise-D hulk.
Baldwin walked into the Turbolift to see that it was already occupied by Commander Anthos, “Commander,” she said nodding to him.
“Gabrielle.” He said, “How are you?”
Baldwin ignored the use of her first name, “I’m fine…But for how much longer is up to Burke.”
“Being a pretentious entitled prick again is he?”
Baldwin sighed, “When isn’t he?”