(Author's note: After watching Star Trek numerous times where the "best and the brightest" always end up saving galactic civilization I began wondering about the vast majority of individuals who just can't quite equal the likes of Kirk and Picard. I mean Starfleet has to have at least a few poor average souls to do the less glamorous jobs while the heroes are out making the galaxy safe for democracy. This is the story of one such individual.)
As assignments go being stationed on
Epsilon Cannaria 3 wasn't the worst place to find one's self. While
it wasn't the same as being on a starship moving ever deeper into the
unknown regions of the galaxy it was better than working as support
staff on an asteroid outpost monitoring the Romulan neutral zone.
Given my lackluster academic record at
Starfleet Academy, the asteroid posting was a real possibility. So I
was mildly surprised to have drawn Cannaria 3 as my first assignment
working with the Corps of Engineers on the planetary engineering team.
The posting sounded even better when I learned the team's main
outpost was on an island near the equator that was fast becoming a
lush tropical jewel not unlike Jamaica was before the first humans
ever discovered it.
However, I wasn't on the planet two
months when I learned that despite the fact that my location would
probably one day rival the tropical paradise planet of Risa, the duty
on Cannaria 3 was mindbogglingly boring. Eighteen months later after
doing the the same insanely simple tasks day after day I found myself
actually considering the option of resigning my hard earn commission
and heading back home to Earth. An outrageously foolish and drastic
action, but when your team members generally consider you the group
screw up, over time the option begins to have some appeal. Probably
the main reason I stayed on Cannaria 3 was the fact I didn't want to
return to Earth defeated and have all the people in my west Texas
hometown laughing behind my back at my failure.
Even though the vast majority of people on
Earth had long since become truly rational and forward looking
individuals, there were still isolated communities all across the
globe that wallowed in abject ignorance and suspicion of the greater,
outside universe. Similar such places probably exist on Vulcan,
Andor, and Tellar Prime but the regional and planetary governments do
their best to keep them out of sight.
My little hometown of Holy Cross was a
community that worked hard to separate themselves from the outside
world believing that Earth's grossly technical civilization and
involvement with other intelligent species was degrading our very
humanity. Needless to say, such an introverted view of existence only
promoted the same basic prejudices that humans had so readily applied
to each other during the worst centuries of the nation-state era.
Despite the possible embarrassment, the view of the United States and
United Earth government was that as long as the people of places like
Holy Cross obeyed the laws they were of course free to live any way
they wished. That didn't stop various officials from time to time
strongly urging them to immigrate to some colony world.
Strangely enough, the other reason I
stayed on Cannaria 3 was that I felt some sort of kinship with the
old and damaged world. The planet was about five-hundred million
years older than Earth and once possessed a complex living biosphere
like humanity's birthplace. About two-million years before though,
Cannaria was blasted by radiation from a nearby supernova that except
for single cell plants and animals that still thrive in the ocean,
sterilized the planet.
Another aspect of Cannaria that I found
awe-inspiring was the display of lights that seemed to demand my
attention every morning.
My normal duties always start well
before dawn but by the time the sun cleared the horizon the
explosions of color spreading across the sky always pull me away.
Truthfully, I fully understood the alternating pulsations of red,
gold, green, and gold that detonated across the sky every morning was
due to the odd mixture of gases in the upper atmosphere and the lower
of Cannaria's two planetary magnetic fields interacting together.
The morning light show also made the
ocean beyond the artificial lagoons, containing the terrestrial
aquatic lifeforms that would one day be released into it, sparkled in
a bizarre pattern that the first explorers to set foot on this planet
thought might be a sign of intelligent life.
While the exact workings of the light
show were still a mystery, the astrophysics types figured the
planet's star, a K-class orange dwarf much like Alpha Centauri B, one
of Earth's stellar next door neighbors, also contributed since its
solar particle output was abnormally high. The only real difference
being that Epsilon Cannaria was much older than all three stars of
the Centauri system. As for the patterns in the ocean, that resulted
from Cannaria's dominate native lifeform, a single cell animal whose
outward structure had properties like that of quartz crystal,
instinctively interacting with the morning light show.
Being a raw, inexperienced ensign none
of my duties were that critical so every morning I allowed myself
several minutes enjoy the sight. There was only so many things you
could do standing beside a small booth that contained several video
displays showing the chemical composition of the water and the health
of the lifeforms in the lagoons I monitored. In fact, I became so
caught up in the morning spectacle I didn't notice the person
approaching me until she touched my shoulder.
“Hey Tanner,” Ensign Trinity
Mariano said standing in front of me. Like all the personnel assigned
to Cannaria 3, including myself, she was wearing Starfleet's hot
weather uniform which consisted of a beige jumpsuit with short
sleeves. No one in Starfleet could ever be called out of shape but
some filled out their uniforms far more attractively than others with
Trinity being a prime example.
“Commander Ansari sent me to look for
you, she's tried to reach you by communicator but couldn't get an
answer.”
One of the things different about the
hot weather uniform was that the communicator was not the usual
combadge worn on the left side of a humanoid's chest but a thin,
square device attached to the left sleeve. “Commander Ansari,” I
say after touch activating mine, “this is Ensign Josh Tanner, do
you read me?”
Thankfully, the often troublesome
device squealed in protest instead of working properly showing
Trinity I hadn't mistakenly hit the personal override resulting in it
shutting down. “Well,” I say to her, “I guess we'll be wearing
the combadges again until these damn things can be redesigned.”
This caused Trinity to look at me with hurt feelings since it was her
boyfriend, Lieutenant Savion Murrell, the team's on-site engineering
member, that managed things like communications and other technical
issues.
“Don't blame Savion,” she said with
just the barest hint of irritation flashing in her eyes. “You know
we're the first people to field test these new communicators.”
“Whatever Trinity, just raise
Commander Ansari for me so I won't end up on waste recycling detail,
again.”
“I don't have to, she wants you in
her office as soon as you can break away. Something's up on Danar 4
and she's been talking to the consortium running the terraforming
operation there all morning. Looks like most of our team might be
loading up on the runabouts and heading that way to help them.”
“No problem,” I said, “it will
take me just a few more minutes to run salinity checks on the lagoon
containing the small schooling bait fish and I'll head straight
there.”
Trinity gave me an impersonal smile as
she walked away, clearly telling me she was relieved that her role as temporary messenger was over. I on the other hand had long since finished all my checks
and just told her that so I could watch her walk down the path back
to the lagoons under her management.
Once Trinity was out of sight, I double
timed down the path heading towards the complex of small structures
making up both living quarters and support buildings for our work to
establish a complex biosphere on Cannaria 3. As I ran, I noticed the
ridge line above the complex where we landed the assorted air and
space vehicles for our terraforming project. Sure enough, both of the
runabout starships were being prepped for what looked like an
immediate takeoff. What this sudden departure meant for me, I had no
idea so I picked up he pace to get to Commander Ansari's office.
Luckily for me, Commander Ansari was in
a good mood when I stepped through the door leading into her office.
Ansari was of Arab heritage with dark, smokey eyes that cleverly hid
the fact that her grandmother was Betazoid and while it was known she
didn't have any telepathic nor full empathic abilities she did have a
far better ability to detect bullshit than the average human.
“Hello Ensign Tanner,” she said in
a friendly tone that could either mean good or bad things for me. “We
received a message the Danar 4 station late last night our time that
they are dealing with a mutated native virus that is playing hell
with the Vulcan plant life they are trying to introduce on the
surface and have asked for our help in trying to contain and then
reverse the damage.”
Aye commander,” I said immediately
thinking I would be on the team going with her. “Do you want me to
get my gear ready for departure?”
“Ah no, Josh,” she said using my
given name, never a good sign. “Since we're way ahead of schedule
and our lagoons will be ready for full release in a matter of weeks
I've decided you will be the one team member I leave behind.”
Either she felt or simply saw my
reaction at what amounted to not being invited to the party on Danar
4 and quickly did her best to put a optimistic slant on me being
marooned on a deserted planet. “Look Josh, leaving you here makes
the most sense,” she said leaning on her desk. “The terrestrial
lifeforms in both the lagoons and the experimental forests on the
four continents are thriving due to the incredible work done by you
and the other seven people on this team. But I need someone to stay
behind and watch things while we help the Vulcan consortium and you are it. Just try to think of it as your first command which
is what will be entered into your record when we get back.”
Of course, Commander Ansari made sense
but there was still the eight-hundred megagram elephant in the room I
couldn't seem to shake no matter how hard I tried. “Commander
Ansari, I said ready to at least try and play the situation to my
advantage. “If I do well while you guys are away, is there any
chance I could get you to approve my wavier to return to Starfleet
Academy for a second chance at Command School?
For any inspiring cadet enamored with
the dream of commanding a starship, Starfleet Academy's Command
School was the main and most attractive way of making that happen.
Yes, there are alternate routes that lead to being a starship
captain, but a graduate of Command School was automatically on the
fast track for great things. Academy cadets with the proper grades
and evaluations usually attended in their junior and senior years but
for lackluster graduates like me, their commanding officer could send
them back to attend if they felt they were ready.
This caused Ansari to lean back into
her chair and while I didn't have any Betazed or Vulcan telepathic
abilities encoded in my genome, I could tell she was trying to
prepare her next words carefully. “Listen, Josh, I've reviewed your
records and your grade point average at the start of your junior year
was just too low to qualify for Command School. In fact, I read the
counseling statement written by your adviser recommending you drop
out of the officer study path and move over to enlisted. You're a
great technician and are maturing into a good officer, but right now
you're simply not ready for command school.”
“I understand Commander Ansari,” I
said clearly disappointed. With nothings left to say Commander Ansari
dismissed me and returned to preparing for their fast approaching
departure.
It was early in the afternoon when the
two runabouts engaged anti-gravity replusors and lifted off the
landing pad to head out into space. By that time I had taken up
residence in the building housing both the subspace communications
array and our deep space sensor tracking system. In real time, I
watched the runabouts engage impulse engines pushing them to half
lightspeed until they passed into the outer reaches of the Epsilon
Cannaria star system several hours later where they both then jumped
to warp.
I had always been a bit of a loner but
once the ships disappeared off the tracking screen I was almost
overwhelmed by isolation. At least my training and sense of duty
prevented me from dwelling on the feeling. Being in command of the
terraforming operation meant I had to walk over to Ansari's office
and do the final checks for the night on all the automated systems.
Commander Ansari figured they would be on Danar 4 for about two
months and I promised myself they would return with everything
working just as it should.
****
A little over a month into my
inglorious command everything was going about as good as I hoped.
Just as the schedule called for I opened the lagoon holding the
mature small bait fish into Cannaria's ocean and began monitoring
their activity. Almost immediately they began feeding on both the
native plankton analog and the terrestrial version that had long
since established itself. The next step would be to open the lagoon
containing the larger predator fish when they had matured enough to
survive in the open ocean with the hope of establishing a
self-sustaining predator-prey biosphere. The end result a couple of
decades down the road would be to open the planet to colonization by
the various members of the Federation.
Given my Starfleet career prospects, it
would probably make sense for me to apply for a homestead since there
was little chance I would ever leave Cannaria except to return home
in disgrace to my superstitious community. Despite it all there was a
bright side to my command consisting of me, myself, and I and it was
that as long as things continued to proceed as planned I was fully
capable of doing everything alone. Just as soon as that thought was
born in my brain I had a bad feeling I had just jinxed myself, at
least the problem that soon presented itself was nothing I could have
really anticipated.
I usually spent my nights sitting on
one of the hills looking out at the roaring ocean below and the
majesty of the Milky Way galaxy above. It was there that I continued
my idle fantasies of commanding a starship and pondered the questions
inherent to all intelligent life. The most timely was what in hell
happened to the Borg.
I was still at the Academy when they
began their last invasion of the Alpha Quadrant. But instead of their
usual pursuit of assimilating all intelligent life they attacked
Federation, Klingon, Romulan, and all other inhabited worlds with the
intent on sterilizing all life. The war lasted a little over a year
with over thirty worlds destroyed and tens of billions killed. The
fleets of the various interstellar governments fought back as best
they could reducing the butcher's bill but that still resulted in
over a hundred worlds suffering from that aftereffects Borg weapons
fire.
It all culminated with thousands of
Borg cube ships attempting final assaults on the core worlds of the
Federation like Vulcan, Deneva, Andor, Tellar Prime, and even Earth.
It was the efforts of the crews on the starships Enterprise,
Titan, and Aventine that caused the Borg armada to stop
dead in their tracks and leave Federation space for the Azure Nebula.
It was there that the Borg were themselves defeated, them assimilated
by a peaceful and ancient species that had somehow accidental caused
them to be born in the first place over five thousand years ago.
I was feeling quite content on that
hill feeling almost like I had found my place in the galaxy when my
tricorder started squealing a shrill alarm that never in a million
years I expected to hear. I picked up the small device and stunned to
learn it was the deep space tracking sensors in orbit around
Cannaria. An unknown ship had dropped out of warp and was heading
straight for the Cannaria.
At first, I thought it might be one of
the runabouts carrying Commander Ansari but when the automated
tracking sensors tried to get a transponder signal from the craft it
sent nothing back. What bothered me the most was that the incoming
ship should have responded someway whether it was a Federation
starship, Klingon warship, or any of near a hundred other recognized
vessels. Given the regulations and customs of interstellar travel not
identifying yourself upon entering a star system was an extremely
dangerous practice, even in Federation space.
It took me several minutes to reach the
building where the tracking system was housed and by that time the
unknown vessel was just a few light-minutes away from Cannaria. While
being the screw up on my team, I did know how to work the sensor
network and began active scans of the approaching ship. Thankfully,
it looked nothing like a Borg cube, Romulan warbird, Dominion
warship, or Breen raider or any other possible hostile vessel. In
fact, after having ran the shape through the Ship's Registry, it came
out as a complete unknown for both current and past vessels
stretching back to the twenty-second century when the Vulcans opened
up their database to everyone when the United Federation of Planets
was first established.
“Oh crap,” I say out loud just to
hear my voice, “I'm damn near dead in the middle of Federation
space and I'm about to have a first contact with an unknown species.”
All Starfleet cadets get first contact training, there were just to
many of us spread out on thousands of worlds not to make the
education mandatory. But to be alone on a deserted planet while
having a vessel almost as large as a Galaxy-class starship
about to visit was way out of my league.
Falling back on my Academy training, I
realized given my situation the first thing I had to do was try and
open direct communication. Moving over to the communication console I
attempted to establish both a digital and voice channel telling the
unknown vessel it was approaching a Federation outpost. At the same
time I radioed the first contact protocols on both the subspace and
across a couple of hundred frequencies on the electromagnetic
spectrum.
All my attempts to say hello were
ignored or unheard, that usually meant something bad but sensors
hadn't detected anything suggesting weapons were being charged or
that the incoming ship even possessed them. Since nothing else was
working, the last thing I did was try and call for help.
“This is the Federation terraforming
outpost on Cannaria 3 calling any ship within range.” I said on the
subspace distress channel. “An unknown vessel is approaching the
planet, no hostile intent has been detected but the ship has not
responded to any attempts at communication, assistance with this
situation would be greatly appreciated.”
I got no immediate response but while
Cannaria was deep in secured Federation space, it wasn't close to any
populated or developed system. That being one of the reasons it had
been left alone for so long. It didn't take long for me to realize
that I would be all by myself when the unknown ship reached orbit.
All I could do after that was just sit back and wait for my visitor,
because to use the ancient sports analogy, the ball was now in his,
her, or other's court.
The minutes ticked by with my silent
visitor going into orbit around Cannaria. The sensors I had available
to me were by no means the most sensitive so I couldn't tell if the
ship had a crew or was just a robot vessel. But as I watched it
circle the planet I couldn't help but get the impression whatever was
controlling it was searching for something. Just when I thought the
ship would just stay in orbit it did the unexpected and begin
descending. When I calculated the course the ship was taking it ended
on top of the three fusion reactors that supplied power to the base.
That was my cue to haul ass to that location and see just what the
hell was going to happen.
****
The island the terraforming base was
located is about the size of Puerto Rico on Earth with the three
fusion reactors built on a stable plateau almost dead center on the
small landmass. It only took me a couple of minutes to reach the
reactors by anti-gravity cycle, enough time to watch the ship make
its final decent.
I stared in utter awe as the gigantic
vessel hovered a few hundred meters above the complex. Looking
through light amplified binoculars the main part of the ship looked
like a silver raindrop. The fact that the surface seemed to ripple
like quicksilver only added to that impression. But surrounding the
ship were rigid looking segments that looked like pedals on a flower. The
ship was obviously built by a civilization with technological skills
greater than that of the every species in the Alpha Quadrant. As I
stared up at the craft I wondered just what in the hell three
standard fusion reactors meant to it whose design had really changed
all that much from the late twenty-first century.
I continued to move closer to the point
I was just several meters away from the helium-3 tanks that supplied
fuel for the reactors when I saw movement. Before flying up from the
coast I briefly considered grabbing one of the phasers from the
weapons locker but thought against it. Whoever was giving me an
unannounced social call would no more be scared of a single human
armed with a hand phaser than I was of one of the annoying gnats that
we had been forced to introduce on Cannaria as part of the terraforming
project. But still, as I became surer that something was on the
ground I found myself wishing I had decided differently.
I landed the cycle and proceeded to
circle around the buildings in the direction of the movement. That's
when I caught my first glimpse of the visitor. The being was
mammalian humanoid and looked to be female but what struck the most
was her resemblance to the elves from the late twenty-first century remake
of the Lord of the Rings movies. She seemed almost impossibly tall
and thin although I reminded myself evolution generally writes its
own rules on the worlds where life appears. Even more odd to me was
the look of utter sadness the elvish looking being possessed on her
face.
I tried several times to announce my
presence but it became clear that she was ignoring me. So I slowly
walked closer to her figuring again she would have easily killed me
had she been fearful of my intentions. When I was a meter away I
thought to look in the direction she was staring. All I saw was the
plain of the island we were on leading down to the ocean. It never
occurred to me for a second that it wasn't the raw beauty she was
looking at but a memory of a time long before humans were born.
“Where did it all go?”
She suddenly asked me in perfect English. “Please tell me what
happened to my planet?” She asked again with a raw sadness that
could only come for a journey that had lasted far longer than I could
hope to understand.
(Author's Note: Yes, circumstances have again forced me to stop here for the time being. My daughter has a birthday party to attend and after that I am sure my lovely spouse will have some other chore I absolutely have to accomplish or life as we know it will end disastrously. For any Trekkers who get this far the "Command School" I mentioned in this story while the concept has never been used in the series to my knowledge, it has been vaguely referenced in several novels. As for the Borg being defeated that occurred in the final book of a trilogy by David Mack entitled Star Trek: Destiny: Lost Souls. I highly recommend it, or even better buy Star Trek: Destiny: The Complete Saga. )
4 comments:
Interesting take on the Star Trek franchise. It shows some promise.
Interesting ending to what started out as a very scary situation. Well...scary for me.
Ooh interesting! I wasn't too worried about him because he wasn't wearing a red shirt, but I didn't anticipate the ending!
Interesting premise. I imagine even the Federation would have its share of Beetle Baileys.
Great start!
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