SEASON 2: EPISODE 09

WAITING FOR THE SUN: Part Two

  Captain Daley was the first to respond once the shuttle settled into the ocean.  She had been thrown from her seat during the crash; she quickly checked herself for any obvious injuries and found she was sore but intact.  She stood up on the sloping deck and looked around.  The cockpit was ominously dark; not even the emergency lighting was on.  The only light came from outside as it shone through the cockpit window.  She spotted the rest of the crew and rushed to Captain Masters and checked his pulse and was relieved he was still alive.  She then went to check the pilot, but the angle of his neck gave her no doubt that he was dead.

  She heard a low moan and turned to see Captain Masters was coming around.

  “Report,” he said groggily as he slowly got to his knees.

  “We crashed,” she said as she stood up.  She offered her hand to the Captain, but he refused her help.

  Masters got to his feet with the assistance of his chair.  “Well, thanks for the update.  Could you be a little more specific?”

  Captain Daley shook her head.  She gestured to the dark interface panels at the front of the cockpit.  “Actually I can’t really since none of the consoles are online.  But I can say with a certain amount of accuracy that everything is shot.  I’m going to break out the emergency supplies.  It should have a couple of tricorders so we can get a better look at the damage.  Are you okay?”

  Captain Masters felt himself over and nodded.  “Everything seems intact.  I have a bit of a sore head but other then that I’m a-okay.  Casualties?”

  “The pilot broke his neck in the crash and is dead.  We both seem to have gotten off lightly.  We need to assess our situation.”

  Captain Daley walked back to the main section of the shuttle at the rear and opened the compartments that held the emergency supplies and took them out.  There were among other items, tricorders, rations, water, EV suits, weapons, and most importantly a distress beacon.  Captain Masters made his way to the back. 

  “We crashed close to shore, which is probably why the shuttle isn’t totally under water.  We should relocate there,” he said.

  Daley agreed with the captain.  “We’ll need to transport this equipment to the shore.”

  “It might be difficult to do that without getting it wet,” commented Masters.

  She looked at the items she had available and had an idea.

  “We can use the EV suits,” she stated.  “You can wear one to keep you dry as we swim to shore and my hazard suit will keep me dry.  I can also take some equipment in my transporter buffer.  The other stuff can be put into the spare EV suits, we’ll inflate them with air and they should be buoyant enough that we can swim with them to shore.  Can you swim, captain?”

  “I was in the Academy swim team back in ‘56,” he stated.  “It’s like riding a bike…well, not actually like riding a bike.  I mean that once you know how you always know how.”

  “That’s one problem out of the way.  Let’s pack whatever we can for our first trip.”

  Captain Masters grabbed one of the EV suits and Daley thought he was going to fill it with supplies, but instead he disappeared back to the cockpit.  When he came back he was carrying the suit and it had the body of the pilot in it.

  “Help me get him into that compartment,” he ordered.

  Rachel helped the Captain move the body into a compartment on the high side of the shuttle.  They laid the body down in the compartment and the Captain fiddled with the suits control.

  “I’m sealing him in a vacuum,” he explained.  “That should preserve the body until we get rescued.  Plus this compartment will secure the body from the water which will come in when we open the rear doors.  We don’t want him to float away.”

  After they dealt with the body the two packed up as many of the supplies as they could in the remaining suits, leaving one for the captain to wear when they entered the water.  Once they were ready the captain donned the EV suit.

  Daley manually opened the shuttle doors.  As they opened water flowed into the shuttle.  The starboard rear corner of the shuttle was under water and soon there as an ankle deep level of water in the shuttle.

  She looked out the door and to the left and saw a white sandy beach not far away.  She looked around at the water.

  “Do you think there are any sharks in there?” she asked the Captain.

  “I wouldn’t rule it out.”  Daley gave him a look that said he was not reassuring her.  “I wouldn’t worry, few sharks actually attack humans.”

  Daley put on the helmet and upper torso section of her suit.  It was similar to that of the EV suit.  It was the hard inflexible part that contained the life support system, it sat on the shoulders and covered the chest and top of the back and sealed it to her suit.  Since the hazard suit was water and air tight this little addition was all that was needed to make the hazard suit into an effective EV suit.  She jumped into the water and was pleased to find she wasn’t that far out of her depth.  As she surfaced the captain passed out the EV suits with supplies before jumping in after her.  The two officers swam the short distance to the shore.  Once there they went about setting up their camp that would be their base as they waited for rescue.

  Lieutenant Terri Letac brushed an unruly strand of her blond hair from her face.  Like the rest of the bridge crew she was astounded by the presence of a civilian cruise liner so close to the front.

  “Captain, the Fairstar is hailing us,” reported Karak, also identifying the cruise liner

  “On screen.”

  A human looking male appeared on the screen.  The male appeared to be around sixty years old with a wide and plump face.  He looked unshaven and as though he was lacking sleep.  He tried to smooth his messy grey hair as he sighted the Commander.

  “My dear,” he said addressing Commander Core.  “You don’t know how glad we are to see another friendly ship.”

  The man had a pleasant voice that suggested a gentleness of spirit.  All in all there was something very easing about the man, despite his rather dishevelled appearance.

  “I’m Commander Susan Core of the USS Swiftfire,” said the commander.  “May I ask what you are doing out here Captain…”

  “Captain Edward Smith,” identified the man.  “What we are doing out here is rather a long story…I would be glad to tell you in person, Commander.  In the mean time my ship has taken damage and I would appreciate if you could help with repairs.”

  Letac used the ships sensors to scan the ship.  The vessel appeared to have suffered battle damage with a number of breaches of the hull dotting the ship.  Other then that she detected damage to the impulse engines, which would account for the blatant trail they left behind as well as damage to one of the warp nacelles and to the warp drive system.

  Captain Smith confirmed what she had detected.  “We took damage from a Cardassian raider.  Our impulse system is damaged and our warp drive is offline, hence our hiding in the gas giant’s atmosphere.”

  Commander Core agreed to help and left to join the repair teams that were beaming to the cruise ship, leaving Lt. Commander Whitechapel in charge.

  The Swiftfire had moved to a flanking position to the cruise ship.  From there the differences between the ships were apparent.  The Majestic class ship was a number of times larger then the Swiftfire at around 1.5 km in length.  Letac likened the Majestic to a large space turtle in design; it had the wide main section with the rounded transparent dome as the shell, the two large warp nacelles at the rear were like flippers and the long and slender bow of the ship like the head peeking from under the shell.  The bow also had the main navigational deflector, which resembled an open mouth, plus the bridge was located near the leading edge and was like the ‘brain’ of the great beast.

  She looked at the dome that covered the main resort complex.  The large transparent dome was the signature feature of the class.  It allowed the passengers a constant sky above them and made it seem much more open.  The idea was that the ship would cruise to beautiful objects in space and have them ‘orbit’ above the resort in the sky giving the experience of been on a planet and sailing through the stars at the same time.  The dome itself was three-quarters of a kilometre in length and around half a kilometre wide and nearly two hundred metres tall.  The resort was split into three main sections, commercial, a lake and a forested area.  The Commercial section was at the front of the dome and was comprised of a number of buildings stretching from one side to the other of the dome.  This section held shops, restaurants, entertaining venues and other useful facilities.  In the centre of the resort was a large blue water lake surrounded by white sandy beaches.  The lake was over 200m long and nearly twice as wide.  At either end of the lake was a set of five buildings that served as the main residential complexes for the guests.  These ten multi-story buildings could house thousands of guests with ease and comfort.  At the rear of the domed area was a large nature park that stretched across the rear of the dome.  At either end were two small mountains that came close to touching the dome and in the centre was a valley.  This wooded area would most likely have had streams and wildlife coursing through it.  The resort was basically all the comforts of a planet but floating in space.

  At the rear of the ship connected to the rear of the dome was the large shuttlebay and reception centre that was nearly the size of the Swiftfire.  It acted as the main reception for guests as they boarded and were assigned to their rooms.  The shuttlebay allowed people to bring their own craft and for the cruise operators to operate tours externally of the ship.  It also housed the main defence force of the ship.  A ship the size of the Majestic was a tempting target, especially if it was filled with well to do Federation citizens.  The ship had five phaser banks to cover the ship but its main defence came from its small craft.  It carried a number of armed shuttlecraft and runabouts to ward off attacks if need be.  It also carried a number of workbees to carry out any external maintenance of the vessel while it was on a cruise.

  “I have never seen a Majestic cruise ship before,” said Ensign Cole.  “How about you guys?”

  “I have,” said Letac.  “Back when I was about 11.  It was the Majestic itself.  The Yamaguchi ran into one and the captains of both vessels allowed for us to take shore leave on the ship.  It was amazing!  All the fancy shops and restaurants, the beach and parks all under the magnificent view of a blue-green nebula, it was an astounding mix of earth and space.”  Letac’s mind drifted back to her youth, to her more carefree days when everything seemed so simple.

  “Not one is the same as the other,” chimed in Whitechapel.  “All the ships have a different layout so to make each ship its own experience.”

  “Do you think the commander would let us spend some time on the ship?” asked Cole.

  “I doubt it, Ensign,” said Karak.  “Given the fact we are still close to the border Commander Core will not likely let the ship be crewed by a deficient number of personnel.”

  “The only way you’ll get on that ship is if you are part of the engineering repair team,” said Whitechapel.  “And even then you’ll only see the inner workings of the ship, not the fun parts.”

  “Aimee and I were thinking about booking a cruise on one of the ships if we got a long enough rotation from the front,” said Letac.  “It would make a pleasant break from the war.”

  “As long as your ship doesn’t make a trip to the front like this one did.  I wonder what its doing out here anyway?” asked Cole.

  Whitechapel shrugged.  “I’m sure we’ll find out once the Commander is back onboard.  I bet the captain would have liked to be here, it would have been his chance to have a brief stopover at a tropical paradise…how often does anyone gets to do that anymore?”