Star
Trek
The
doorbell squeaked. The woman sitting inside sighed. "Enter" she said.
The door opened to reveal two men in black leather jackets. She rose suddenly,
shocked. "Hello Ma'am, I am Captain Smith from StarFleet Command, and this
is my associate, Captain Jones. We're here to talk to you about your son....may
we come in?" "Um....of course" she said. "Has he done
something wrong???" she said, suddenly alarmed. The klingon boy she had
adopted could be a bit of a troublemaker
at some times, and she feared he had done something bad, or, even worse, hurt
himself.
"No,
not at all Ma'am. Not…at…all....you see, we are here because we know that your
son is a very gifted child."
"And
you want...?" she said, puzzled.
"We
are constantly looking for promising new people for the challenging job of
being a StarFleet officer" Smith said with his best salesman’s smile. “And
we believe that your son is one of them.”
“But he’s
only seven”
“Yes, but
that will not be a problem, now, if you’ll just look through this material, and
then…”
10 years later. StarBase 74, Docking bay 4C.
Shakahr
walked down to the briefing room. On his black and yellow uniform the
well-polished rank insignia that told the people around him that this man wore
the rank of lieutenant shined in the light coming from the ceiling. People he
met all stared at the chief of security due to his young age, though most
pretended not to. Everything was quiet now….almost too quiet he thought. But
then again, it has also been almost a full Terran year since the end of the
Dominion War. The young klingon turned right to enter the briefing room. The
other cadets all rose as he entered. “Officer on deck!” a crewman yelled. He
was no more than Shakahr’s own age, a human. He yelled again “Captain on deck”.
Shakahr turned to see Mackenzie Calhoun, his captain and first officer Glenn,
both humans. He smiled to both of them, and they all took their seats on the
front row.
“Atteeeeeeention!”
someone yelled. Everyone rose. Commodore K’takh (vulcan) and captain (SG)
Matthews entered the room. Matthews took a seat in the far corner, and K’takh
went to the podium and started his speech.
“Ladies and
gentlemen. You have all been trained as StarFleet personnel, and now the time
has come to take you from the holodecks and out on a real ship. It will all be
the way you’ve been trained for. You, ladies and gentlemen, will be the ones
running the ship.” The commodore made a short break to make his words sink in.
“You are the best, StarFleet’s finest. From now on, your codename will be Raven
Squad. You will be assigned to the SteamRunner class ship USS Independence. We
will be on the ship as well, to see how things are turning out. First, we’ll
take a short shakedown cruise of two standard terran weeks, and then you’ll be
assigned to admiral T’kuhr’s border patrol near the Neutral Zone. That would be
all. You are all to report to the ship no later than 1400 hours tomorrow. Any
questions?”
There were
none. “Very well. One last thing, then: All senior staff is to report to me in
USS Independence’s briefing room at 1800 hours today. It would be advisable to
be settled in by then”.
“Diiiiiiiiismiss’d!”
Matthews shouted.
Lt.
Commander Data entered some more command codes into the ship’s computer core.
His positronic brain raced, and so did his fingers. McKeon couldn’t help but
stare at Data. The lieutenant commander was indeed a remarkable person. Person?
Well….it seemed somewhat natural to think of him as that. McKeon craned his
neck to watch Data’s console. But the view did him little good. Images flashed
so rapidly over the screen, that the young chief engineer had to blink several
times in a futile attempt to grasp at least some of the information passed to
the computer. “What can I do for you, Chief?” said Data, hands still flashing
over the console’s input devices. “Um….I am just studying….this is so amazing, Sir” the young man tried.
“Well…I could use your assistance” Data continued. “Could you please hand me
the kit I left by the warp core console. But please be careful – it is delicate
machinery” “Yes, Sir” said McKeon, a little annoyed of not being able to hover
over Data’s console. But, still, an order is an order. McKeon left the android.
“Take good care of them” Data mumbled. McKeon turned. “Sir?” “I said….could you
bring me a tricorder too” Data said. “Yes, Sir” McKeon said and turned again.
“Take good care of them? What did that mean?” McKeon thought as he went on.
USS
Independence flew at a leisurely warp 5, and captain Calhoun stretched in his chair.
It had been a good shake down cruise, and he felt confident that they would be
ready to join Admiral T’kuhr’s fleet when they arrived. That is, after they had
delivered their “passengers” at Hades IV. Hades IV was a penal colony, and the
so-called passengers, who at the moment resided in Independence’s brig, was a
small group of terrorists. They were all religious fanatics from some Vulcan
cult that thought that terraforming was bad, and used any means necessary to
reach their goal. There was Saso, a shape shifter, very dangerous and utterly
ruthless. Then there was Qworn, a ferengi. His dedication to “the Faith” was
questionable. And finaly a Vulcan named Zurak. Zurak was known to take a
certain pleasure in doing harm in the most….
Mackenzie
brushed the thought aside. “This is supposed to be a pleasure ride”, he thought
with a smile. The smile of a captain who knew
he had a good ship and a good crew.
His
engineer, McKeon, had told him that the ship was purring like a cat on a soft
pillow, only problem being the tractor beam....but that was also fresh out of
the box....or rather, some parts where still in their boxes. Then there were his
first officer’s reports about the crew, that where even better than
he’d hoped.
That brought his thoughts back to the Starbase, when they told him,
that his former first officer had died in a transporter accident. “Fortunately,
whatever arrived, didn’t last long” they’d said. They made it sound so easy.
But Mackenzie had to live with the fact that the man he’d known since boyhood
as a friend where now nothing but a photon torpedo shell full of goo, that were
launched into space.
“Now,
now…let’s be positive” he thought and looked to his side. “At least his
replacement turned out to be somewhat of a pleasant surprise”.
Mackenzie
smiled, and returned his thoughts to his bridge. The censors had only had minor
things to complain about, most of them not concerning him personally. He turned
his head towards Saarg, the klingon captain (SG) and exchange officer that had
censor watch at the moment. He seemed pleased, so that was one more reason for
him to relax. He let his mind and gaze wander. The betazoid conn officer,
Chandra, was good at her job….and also stunningly beautiful as she looked at
the stars on the view screen. His sensor officer, Miranda, fuzzed silently over
her console. The 16-year-old klingon/human hybrid was also a quite pretty girl.
Had she not been in his chain of command….well, she was, so he decided not to
dwell with that thought more right now – that he could do later when….
“Captain,
I’m picking up a distress call”
“On screen”
“…krrr….shhhhfsst…..is the science ship Atlan..shhhh…………suffered heavy dama…..krrr…..request immediate evacuation….shhh…..black hole near a red giant…hsshsh….. lost propulsion….sucked in”
“This is
the best I can give you Sir. It appears to be an automated message”
“Origin?”
The sensor
officer pressed a few keys, and told the captain the position of the
unfortunate ship.
“Very
well….lay in a course. Warp 9.9”
Captain
Saarg called his fellow officers, and captain Mackenzie Calhoun asked for an
ETA and started to send a response.
Upon
arrival, they saw the black hole that the science vessel had been studying. It
was “eating” a nearby star, and now also the science ship. “Well, we don’t have
tractors, so….” the captain began. “Sorry, captain” commodore K’takh said, “but
I’m afraid I’ll need to borrow your bridge – this is a life and death situation,
and there are about 800 people on that science ship. I want you and your staff
to go to astrometrics and watch from there.” He turned to his own staff. “Now,
we’re gonna need to reconfigure our phasors to work as a “pushing beam”, and
then…” Captain Mackenzie Calhoun and his people went to the turbo lift.
They
watched from astrometrics as the senior officers struggled to free the science
vessel Atlantis from the claws of the black hole. “Sir, we have an energy build
up in….” captain Saarg started. But it was already too late.
They
watched the scenario as if in slow motion. What fractions of a second ago had
been a huge starship was now a giant ball of fire as the Atlantis just
demonstrated what enormous amounts of energy was stored in a warp core. The
warp core failure had reduced the once proud starship to pieces that only
measured on the sub atomic level. They watched in horror as the shockwave
expanded towards them. They heard the commodore boom an all hands message:
“Brace for impact!”, and then it was Independence’s turn to feel the wrath of
the explosion as the shockwave hit.
Independence
heaved and buckled under the enormous stress, the inertial compensators cried
out in agony as they made a futile attempt to keep up with forces way beyond those
they were designed to withstand, and in several places the hull was ripped
open. Emergency force fields and automatic doors screamed shut to protect the
rest of the ship as it was tossed through space like the toy of an angry child.
Had the sensors still worked, the crew would have screamed out in horror as
Independence, now blind and deaf due to burned out sensors, spiralled towards
the black hole like a dying bird as she bled atmosphere, water and even people
into space.
It was as
if they were being pulled apart by the gravitonic forces in the black hole. One
by one they passed out. Even the light in the room seemed to be distorted by
the fury of gravity released upon USS Independence and her crew.
Shakahr
woke up, lying on the floor in astrometrics. His tongue felt like a desert. He
didn’t know how long he’d been lying there. He checked on his fellow officers,
and saw that they were about to wake up as well. “Thank God”, he thought. “All
hands, this is lieutenant Shakahr Marcktock. Report in”.
“The
bridge!” Calhoun said. They tried to call the bridge. No answer. They ran
towards the turbo lift. The computer reported, that it was out of order. They
quickly took to the Jeffries tube nearby, and climbed to the bridge deck. The
door to the bridge was jammed shut. “Warning, tachion radiated gas has flooded
the bridge, do not enter” the computer said. “Air will be refreshed in 30
seconds”.
Finally,
the computer released the door, and they could open it by manual control. What
met them beyond the Jeffries tube door was horrible. The censors lay sprawled
around the bridge, as if some mad artist had decided to decorate it’s interior
with dead bodies.
“Sir, we
have a live one over here!” Chandra yelled.
The other
officers ran to see who it was. Before them lay the twisted body of the
Commodore. “Beam him directly to sickbay!” the captain snapped. “No…..belay
that order….” the Commodore whispered. “I’m going to
die…..
And now the
conclusion…….