Star Trek: Starfleet Cadets 1x07

Episode 1x07 – Red Alert Part II

Matthew and the others stared at the viewscreen with their mouths open. Judging from the streaking stars, the massive alien ship was towing them at high warp. Matt turned around and saw the shock on his friends’ faces. Now was the time to take charge, to become the commanding officer Starfleet had always insisted he was.

‘Stations everyone!’ he called out.

The bridge was of typical Starfleet design. It had a circular shape with the captain’s chair in the middle, slightly elevated for good tactical overview. The flashing Master Systems Display was at the back side, indicating several major hull breaches and other serious damage. It was a miracle that anything on the bridge even worked, considering the punishment the Nova Class vessel had taken.

Alex and Niklas rushed to the elongated console directly in front of the captain’s chair. It was separated in the middle and two signs that read ‘Flight Control’ and ‘Operations’ flashed on each side. Even before Alex was in her seat, she was already punching commands into the console, bringing up a stream of numbers and diagrams indicating their current flight information.

Steve had moved just as quickly. He was already sitting by the ‘Tactical’ station to the right of the captain’s chair and, like Alex, had brought up a series of diagnostics, most of them flashing red menacingly. Matt felt proud when he saw the resolve his two closest friends and Niklas had shown. The only other person he could be as proud of was T’Vral. In fact, she had dashed to the Engineering station at the back wall of the bridge even before Matt had issued his command. Jaroslav seemed determined not to follow the orders if only because Matthew had uttered them and Ryan and Kajsa were still standing by the access hatch with no apparent motivation to move.

Matt opened his mouth to speak, but Niklas, who had brought up the damage control list and had started working on prioritizing the ship’s resources, turned to his sister and gave a sort of jerk with his head. She immediately took her seat at the ‘Science’ console on the left side of the bridge, opposite to Steven.

‘Ryan,’ Matt turned to the short engineer, ‘head down to engineering. We need to know what shape we’re in.’

Ryan didn’t seem too thrilled to go walking through the ghost ship on his own, but nodded and turned to go.

‘M-Matt?’ Surprisingly, it was Kajsa who was the first to speak after Matt. ‘Judging by the massive transporter signatures all over the ship and seeing as we saw almost no signs of battle on our way here, it looks like everyone was beamed off pretty quickly. The only places where we’ve seen actual phaser blasts were near engineering and the cargo bays. They’re also the only places with no transporter signatures.’

Ryan was almost at the turbolift when he must have heard.

‘It seems like the strengthened dampening field around those areas interfered with their sensors and transporters.’

Matthew took only a slight moment to carefully analyze what such implications meant. Both conclusions made sense, and explained why everybody was beamed off and they were left behind.

‘Could you set up a similar field around the bridge and other key areas?’ Matthew asked. ‘We need to make sure they don’t notice there are still people running around the ship.’

‘No problem Matt,’ Ryan almost smiled, but the general uneasiness that was in the air was still evident. ‘It’s as simple as rerouting the EPS conduits running through the bulkheads, any first year engineer could do it.’

‘Great,’ Matthew gave him a praising look, ‘in that case, try to get some of the first years to come up here. It’ll give them something to do and keep them from breaking down on us. Oh, and tell the others to sit tight in the cargo bay once the air clears.’

Ryan disappeared down the turbolift and Matthew turned around, the image of the alien ship appearing as menacing as ever. They will have to do something… but what? They couldn’t hide forever, and sooner or later, the alien ship would reach its destination.

‘Jaroslav, go back to the Jeffries tubes and explain to the others what’s going on. Grab any of the first years in Command School and bring them back to the bridge. Oh, and I want strict radio silence. Don’t use the ship’s comm. system unless it’s absolutely necessary.’ He made a sort of annoyed gesture with his head, still reluctant about following any of Matthew’s orders, but then climbed back down the hatch.

Several minutes had passed, during which three timid first years arrived at the bridge and started removing bulkheads to protect the bridge from the alien’s sensors. T’Vral finished analyzing the engineering data and went to join Ryan in Main Engineering and the others were still trying to making sense of the information on their consoles. Matthew didn’t even have time to sit down, he just paced around the bridge, looking at what everybody was doing and tried to come up with a plan.

The hatch leading up to the bridge opened and Jaroslav climbed in, alone.

‘Nobody from Command,’ he said simply, not sounding very disappointed. Matt figured that it was probably because that left them two as the only command cadets on the ship. ‘The others have gathered in the cargo bay, life support cleared it up already.’

Matt nodded and returned to pacing the bridge. With his mind searching for any solution, his body subconsciously took him to the station that he was almost as familiar with as the command chair. He looked down at the readouts, did a double take, and then stared at Alex.

‘Strange right?’ she muttered, both to herself and Matt. ‘I can’t make sense of it either.’

Niklas heard this and asked what was going on.

‘According to these readings, we are traveling at warp 9.9986.’

‘In tow?’ Steven also heard. ‘That’s impossible.’

‘The warp shear should tear us into pieces,’ Alex shook her head confusedly.

‘Not necessarily,’ Kajsa had spoken again, having remained silent since her last speech. ‘If their shields were strong enough, they could extend them around both ships. It’s been done at medium to high warp, but never anything beyond warp 8.’

‘These guys have already shown us that they have much more advanced technology, I think we can assume that the consoles are telling the truth,’ Matthew shrugged, but then it hit him. In that split-second, a plan had materialized.

‘Steve,’ Mat began. ‘Could you run down to engineering and bring me Ryan, ASAP.’ Steven looked at him in confusion for a moment, but then ran off without question.

‘Matthew?’ Alex asked, with equal confusion.

‘I’ve got a plan…’

********************************************************************



Starfleet academy, the largest non-commercial complex on Earth and only the second man-made object that can be seen from orbit, is considered by many to be the greatest achievement of mankind. It produces countless talents each year to join the best of the best in the United Federation of Planets: Starfleet.

With the recent threats of the Borg and Dominion, and the weakened state of the Federation, that need for excellence has become ever more dire. It will be up to the next generation to protect Earth, to protect the paradise that humanity has had over five millennia to perfect.

********************************************************************

Ryan stood before the main diagnostics screen of the Discovery’s Warp 9 engine. Although he and T’Vral made some progress in restoring the warp field, it always collapsed about half way through the startup procedure and he had a very strong inclination to bang his head against the warp drive until either his head, or the generator gave way.

Considering that there was hardly any square centimeter of the engine that wasn’t damaged, it was a miracle they even got secondary power online. The repairs in just engineering would take days, or even weeks for a fully trained repair crew. Ryan was confident that with T’Vral’s help, they were capable of fixing most of the major damage the aliens had caused, they’d done similar things in training, but he didn’t even want to guess how long it could take the two of them to fix the entire ship. The first years would have to learn fast.

Ryan had to admire the way she was handling them. T’Vral was very patient, taking the time to explain things that she could do herself in just moments. It slowed them down, but if they were to survive, they couldn’t run engineering in two forever.

T’Vral finished explaining something to the first years and they immediately started working in teams of two, then she walked over to Ryan.

‘Have you made any progress with the startup procedure?’

‘A scan during the last test showed that something is interfering with the establishment of the low-level ionization that precedes step thirteen of the startup process. Only with everything that’s not working down here, it’s hard to say what’s causing it.’

‘Perhaps we should systematically eliminate each component involved,’ T’Vral suggested.

‘That would take days,’ Ryan frowned. ‘Besides, I doubt the ionization will be the last of our troubles.’

‘The readouts don’t indicate any other major problems with the startup procedure,’ T’Vral pointed out.

‘We can’t be sure about that. And if we spend a day searching for a spent injector that isn’t really spent, we’ll be back to square one.’

‘Square one?’

‘The beginning,’ Ryan couldn’t help smiling.

‘There is no evidence to suggest a systematic elimination will not solve the problem.’

‘Systematic elimination is fine if you’re looking for one faulty component, not one particular faulty one amidst a dozen.’

T’Vral almost frowned. Was he actually arguing… with a Vulcan? No, not really. He wasn’t really arguing, he just didn’t understand how Vulcans could get so far relying on logic alone.

‘We aren’t going to solve this following the textbooks,’ Ryan spoke again.

‘What do you suggest?’

‘What do you think is causing the shutdown?’ Ryan asked.

‘I do not know. There is no evidence…’ but Ryan interrupted her.

‘I know there isn’t,’ he looked at the readouts again, ‘but what do you think is causing it? What do your instincts tell you?’

She looked at him again, her features emotionless. ‘Logic…’ she began again.

‘Won’t help us here,’ he said exasperatedly. ‘Just give me your best guess.’

‘Guessing is not in my nature,’ T’Vral promptly replied, as if returning an automated response.

Steven suddenly appeared in the doorway to engineering.

‘Ryan, Matt needs you on the bridge!’

Ryan didn’t hesistate and immediately ran towards Steve.

‘Your best guess, T’Vral,’ Ryan called back to her as he disappeared behind the automated doors.

********************************************************************

Matthew was still thinking about the details of his plan when Ryan appeared on the bridge.

‘You called?’ the engineer asked as soon as Matt turned his attention to him.

‘How does it look down there?’ Matthew asked, still deep in thought.

‘We’re in bad shape,’ Ryan knew that going into the details would be pointless and seeing as he wasn’t very good with words, he couldn’t think of any way to simplify things.

Matt smiled at him encouragingly. He knew they were clearly beyond what would qualify as ‘bad shape’. They were heading at Warp 9.9986 in an unknown direction. Decks 3 and 6 were holding together only by the emergency forcefields which themselves were already under strain way beyond Starfleet regulations. The warp core was offline, shields and weapons were down and they were operating on a skeleton crew of mostly first year cadets who had just entered Starfleet Academy.

‘Any progress with the warp engine?’

‘It’s like playing the lottery,’ Ryan shrugged. ‘It could take days if we work on it systematically, but we might just get lucky.’

Matthew frowned. At this speed, in a few days they could be well outside federation space. And he’d need the warp engine online for his plan to succeed.

‘Say you can get the warp engine back online, what speed are we looking at here?’

‘I can give you warp one… 1.2 maybe… then the ship will start falling apart. The engine itself is battered, but should be capable of medium warp or even high warp in short intervals, but the hull…’ he didn’t need to continue, the flashing MSD on the back wall of the bridge said it all.

‘What about shields and weapons?’

‘We can get them online as soon as the warp core is active, though considering the state of the ship, I wouldn’t recommend using them unless we want the recoil to rip through our hull.’

‘I’ve got a plan to get us out of this mess,’ Matthew finally started to explain, ‘but it’s a long shot.’

‘Anything is good from where I’m sitting,’ Steve couldn’t help smiling even in such a grave situation. Matthew returned the smile and began.

‘We’re in between their shields right now. If we can get a shot at their tractor emitter, we’ll break the connection between the two ships.’

‘And leave the slipstream,’ Alex pointed out.

‘Exactly,’ Matthew continued. ‘At this speed, they’ll be light years away before they can stop energizing and turn around. If we can jump to warp at a random angle, we’ll be out of sensor range by the time they return.’

Matthew waited while his friends stared at him.

‘I guess it could work,’ Steven muttered finally.

‘We’re still forgetting one little problem,’ Ryan felt like he was pointing out the obvious. ‘How do you plan to fire while being tractored? And besides, who knows if this ship could even handle the recoil?’

‘Ah, but that’s where the rest of my plan comes in.’

Confused faces stared back at him.

‘Nova class starships are equipped with a waverider shuttle attached to the underside of the hull. Unlike opening the launch bay doors, detaching a piece of our hull won’t be affected by the tractor beam.’

‘I still can’t see where you’re heading,’ Ryan shook his head. ‘The waverider is a planetary research shuttle meant to operate in an atmosphere. It doesn’t have weapons or warp capability.’

‘The outside pressure won’t be as low as in the vacuum of space while we are within the extended shields of the alien ship, after that, we’ll just have to risk it. We need to reinforce the hull plating and upgrade the waverider’s shields with one of those generators we found in the cargo bay.’

‘And then one of the torpedo launchers?’ Steven added, catching on.

‘Exactly,’ Matthew looked back at Ryan. ‘Think you can do it?’

‘It’ll be tough accessing the waverider from within the ship, especially since the under-side basically forms a part of the bow of the ship, but I think it can be done.’

‘As soon as you’re done with the warp core, get T-Vral and any of the more able first years to help you, but I’d still like someone experienced in engineering or at least close to it at all times. This ship is still falling apart and an upgraded waverider will be of no use to us if the entire ship blows.’

‘So what do you think?’ Matt turned back to the others.

‘It’s a great plan,’ Kajsa and Niklas said in unison, and the others laughed. Then Kajsa continued alone, ‘but…’ Matthew knew where this was heading, and his stomach clenched.

‘Without warp capability, whoever pilots the waverider will have no chance of escaping the aliens.’

‘I know,’ Matthew said with a sad determination. ‘That’s why I’m going to pilot it. It’s my plan, my responsibility.’

‘Matt, you can’t be thinking…’ Alex was on the verge of tears.

‘Like I said, it’s my responsibility,’ he paused. ‘And besides, I’m the most experienced fighter pilot here. And trust me, it’s going to take a hell of a day to navigate between our ships and destroy the tractor emitter with a single shot.’

‘Matt…’ Alex looked at the others for support.

‘They might just beam me off Al,’ his voice might not have shown it, but even he didn’t believe that to be true, ‘and we’re going after them anyways.’

The others stared at him again.

‘If there are any prisoners, we aren’t just going to let them get away with it.’

Nobody seemed too willing to say any more.

‘Then I guess we’ll put it to a vote…’ Matthew smiled weakly, waiting for a show of hands. But none went up.

‘I know it’s a gamble but…’ he began, misreading the gesture, ‘but it’s our only shot.’

‘I don’t think you understand Matt,’ Steven looked at the others. ‘The motion is already passed.’

Now it was Matthew’s turn to look confused.

‘Steven is right,’ Alex still looked shaken up by what Matthew was planning to do.

‘Exactly,’ Niklas and Kajsa said together again, and then added as an afterthought, ‘Captain.’

********************************************************************

Matthew and Cyanne stood opposite each other in the Captain’s ready room. The dark haired girl had appeared on the bridge moments after Jaroslav went down to the cargo bay to gather first years to help Ryan with the waverider upgrades.

‘You don’t have to do this,’ she had sobbed. ‘Tell him that it’s crazy!’ But none of the others had spoken. An arrow seemed to pierce Mat’s heart when he saw her standing at the back of the bridge, glaring at his friends with so much hatred. ‘How can you let him do this?’ she had said finally, as Matt led her to probably the only undamaged part of the Discovery. For some reason, she had looked directly at Alex, and the other girl burst into tears as well.

Now they were standing opposite each other, Cyanne’s face full of tears, and Matt’s forced into a look of composed determination. Neither had spoken since they left the bridge, but words weren’t necessary. It broke Matthew’s heart to see the beautiful girl so upset, but he was a Starfleet Cadet, a future commanding officer, and there was no way he could send one of his crew on a suicide mission.

Then she began to apologize, and the arrow that was now planted in his heart seemed to dig deeper. ‘I’m sorry,’ she cried. ‘I just…’ but the rest if the sentence was drowned in tears.

She cursed herself for not being able to handle her emotions, cursed her inability to muster any sort of encouragement and most of all, cursed her father: the reason why she couldn’t handle her emotions. She was making it worse, making it harder for him. Why couldn’t she tell him she understood? That she knew the feeling of being responsible for someone else’s life and how hard it was to give that responsibility to someone else.

‘I’ll be ok,’ Matt lied. ‘I promise I’ll be ok.’ He vaguely remembered Alex telling him that he was the only person she ever knew that never broke his promise, and the arrow plunged even deeper.

Cyanne looked at him through her red and puffy eyes, her long hair sticking to her face, and limply raised her arms. Matt closed the distance between them in a flash and closed his arms around her waist in a tight embrace. She sobbed into his shoulder and he could feel her kiss his neck gently.

Finally, he couldn’t hold it in anymore. ‘I’m so scared,’ he whispered quietly.

Cyanne leaned back slightly to look him in the eyes, and then kissed him gently, nibbling his lower lip. Matthew closed his eyes and pulled her into another big hug.

When they reemerged on the bridge, Matthew was back to his calm and determined look. Nobody would know just how close Matthew was, for the first time in his life, to letting something break his strong will, and that was how it was supposed to be. He was their captain now, and he had no business being weak. And from then on, whenever his friends (and it would be many times) would wonder just how it is possible that Matthew is always in control, that he never loses his composure, he would think back to this day, the day he became a man.

********************************************************************

‘Your best guess.’ The sentence echoed in her mind as she looked over the diagnostics. The list went on and on and although she had eliminated almost half of the possibilities and assigned probability values to all the others, there were still over twenty that were just as probable to be the cause of the fault in the startup procedure. Whenever she tried to make what Ryan called ‘a guess’, her mind twisted back to some sort of logical evaluation or analysis. She was simply incapable of such an irrational action.

Finally, she came up with a way of making a guess. She assigned each possibility a number from one to twenty and asked one of the first years to choose one. Fourteen. The tertiary phase injector.

‘Alright then’ she thought and began disconnecting the said component before restarting the sequence with it offline to see the effects, but then stopped herself. No. The tertiary phase injector didn’t seem right. But why? Once again, she felt herself almost frown. Actually, she had merely moved her lips a millimeter or so in no particular direction, but the reaction was unwanted and illogical nevertheless.

She walked over to the first year that was recalibrating one of the minor EPS conduits and asked him to choose again. Ten. She punched in ‘reverse flow stabilizers’, somehow that felt right, somehow it made sense, but then she shook her head.

‘This is foolish,’ she thought and started eliminating all of the possibilities starting from number one.

********************************************************************

She was at number two when Ryan appeared in engineering.

‘We’ve got more work,’ he muttered and explained Matthew’s plan.

It seemed that T’Vral was the only person on the entire ship that wasn’t troubled by it. He guessed that it was probably most ‘logical’.

‘How have you been doing?’ he asked, pointing at the warp core.

‘I’ve narrowed it down to twenty possibilities. The first two have not proved to be correct.’

Ryan shook his head. ‘I wonder if she even tried,’ she thought. ‘Then noticed the ‘reverse flow stabilizers’ written on a pad that lay on the floor. And yes, it completely made sense!’

‘What’s that?’ he asked.

She glanced at the pad, ‘Nothing.’

‘No, no, that’s it!’ he said in triumph.

‘It is a silly guess,’ she reached down to pick the datapad up.

‘You felt that it was right too, didn’t you?’ he said with a smirk.

‘I’m a Vulcan. I don’t feel anything.’

‘Well, lets just try it then,’ Ryan didn’t understand where that teasing streak had come from. He hardly ever spoke, let alone teased. Maybe it was because this was the first time in his life that he could speak to someone about engineering. He never knew what to say, but with T’Vral, especially with a beat up ship, there was always something to talk about.

‘If you must.’ She looked down at him. ‘Though I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t do this in alphabetical order.’

‘We don’t have the time. We’re traveling at high warp so we can’t be sure how soon we’ll reach our destination,’ Ryan pointed out. ‘Besides, we’ve got a lot more work to do… on the waverider.’

When Ryan had told her of Matt’s plan, T’Vral had been particularly interested in the parts about the waverider. She had almost looked eager to star working on it, and stopped him to call it an ‘ingenious idea’, so he figured he’d use it to prod her even more.

‘I will take it offline then, you prepare the procedure,’ she finally gave way.

********************************************************************

‘I’ve got some news,’ Alex spoke from the Conn console.

‘Al?’ Matt was now sitting in the Captain’s seat, bringing up the Conn station’s diagnostics on his chair’s universal console.

‘I know where we’re heading.’

Matt looked at the readouts again, though he didn’t see any clear destination. Maybe that was because he was a command officer and not a Flight Control specialist. Sure, he could pilot a fighter like few others, but these were the things that reminded him that he belonged in command and not in probably his favourite station.

‘The general direction is towards the center of the galaxy,’ Matt had noticed that, but even with the much more star-heavy space, he still couldn’t make out a single star they may be heading towards.

‘Well, don’t keep it to yourself,’ Steven laughed from his own console.

‘I’ve checked the Starfleet records on the Discovery. Only one Starfleet probe has ever gone in this direction and it scanned a massive space station in between a trio of stars. If what I’m reading is true, the only trinary system in that general direction is directly in front of us, about five hundred light years away.’

‘Which means at this speed, we could reach there in less than a week.’ Matthew added.

‘Actually, that might be a good thing,’ Kajsa spoke again in one of her rare speeches. ‘If it was any further, it would take us a very long time to get back. Even if we can somehow repair everything and run away, the journey home is a couple of weeks already at warp 7. That system is still reasonably close to the borders of the federation, but far enough to give us time to break free.’

Matthew smiled at her, wondering if she had thought and calculated in her head so quickly, or known about their destination all along.

Suddenly the ship shook violently.

Matthew immediately called for a status report, and everybody could feel the tension as Steven looked over his console.

‘It’s not them,’ he said quickly and everybody relaxed. ‘And they didn’t notice either.’

Matt was about to send someone down to engineering to find out what happened, when the ship shook again, much more gently this time and he could feel a very familiar hum.

********************************************************************

‘A mere coincidence,’ T’Vral said calmly, as the warp field stabilized, then throbbed violently, but Ryan was almost jumping around with joy.

‘Hell it was!’ he shouted and the other first years cheered.

He then quickly turned the engine back off and began removing the damaged component.

‘You will need a micro-calipers to remove the…’ she began, but Ryan didn’t reach for the toolbox. Instead he merely used his hands to remove the minute safety.

‘How?’ she began again. ‘Even a Vulcan’s steady hand…’ This time she couldn’t hide the surprise in her voice.

Ryan turned around and gave her a weak smile. It was more of a pained attempt than anything else.

‘Courtesy of having prosthetic arms… can’t get shocked either,’ but all of the previous cheeriness had left his voice.

‘I am… sorry,’ she paused before the last word.

He didn’t speak for a long time and even T’Vral realized that she had touched a subject he was not comfortable with. ‘There is a replacement in the Cargo bay,’ T’Vral towered behind him. ‘Should I go and get it?’

He appreciated the gesture, but then said: ‘No, that’s ok,’ pulling the component out half way and starting working on the second safeties. ‘If you want to, you can start working on the waverider, though. I’ll go down and grab it myself.’

She nodded and as soon as she left, Ryan stopped working. Why had he done it? He liked T’Vral’s company, even liked how emotions came as hardly to her as a public speech would to him, so why did it bother him as much? Surely she didn’t mean it in a bad way. Probably because she never felt anything at all. Because someone who never felt could never understand how much it hurt not to be able to feel again. Sure, this was a different type of feeling, and the mechanics in his prosthetics had all of the nerves a regular hand or leg would, but it never felt right.

He dismissed his thoughts and continued his work.

********************************************************************

That night, they had all slept in the cargo bay. Jaroslav had prepared it in advance with some of the first years, and Matthew was glad to know how well everybody had worked all day. They were a team, a crew, and had begun acting as such. From then on, they began working in three eight hour shifts, with the bridge officers doubling for sixteen, as was the procedure on all Starfleet vessels.

Two days later, they were finally ready. Decks 3 and 6 were temporarily sealed, the warp engine was online and the waverider upgraded with a photon torpedo launcher, shields and reinforced hull. They were still over a hundred light years away from the station, but time was running short.

Now they all stood in the cargo bay as Matt went over the plan one last time.

‘Once the tractor beam is down, we’ll have less than a second to drop out of warp before the slipstream tears us apart. Once we’re down to a sustainable warp speed, turn to bearing 121 mark 115 and run for it. Ryan has already programmed the main computer to do it, but I’m relying on you if the computer fails.’ He looked at his friends, then back to the crowd. ‘You should all brace yourselves against the containers like before, it will be quite a ride.’

Some of the first years looked terrified, but the majority, mostly those that had worked on the bridge or in engineering, wore similar looks of determination to those of the bridge officers.

‘If all goes well, we’ll rendez-vous at these coordinates,’ the string of numbers appeared on one of the wall consoles in big red writing. ‘If they find you somehow and give chase, head for Federation space as fast as you can. Though remember that surrender might be the only option.’

Now all of the faces looking at him were grave.

‘We can do this guys,’ Matthew clenched his fist. ‘I know we can.’

********************************************************************

Matt descended down the Jeffries tube leading from the fourth deck to the waverider. His arms tingled with anticipation as he firmly placed his hands on the hatch and pulled it clockwise. He heard a muted click as the safety was released and a soft hiss from the hatch told him the other side was safe and pressurized. He then pulled the handle the other way and the hatch opened. He looked down at the outer hull of the waverider. The upgrades were evident even from the narrow view the portholes in the hatch provided. He punched in the code for the door and the access port for the waverider opened.

The inside was slightly bigger than that of the standard Starfleet shuttle. Similar to a Danube Class runabout, it had two command chairs at the front and a transport pad and science station calibrated for planetary research at the back.

Matthew sat in the main command seat and immediately noticed the provisional wirework and controls Ryan had set up. Despite his timid nature, the young engineer was clearly far beyond third year level at the academy in terms of technical knowledge and expertise. Matt figured that even most commissioned officers wouldn’t have been able to modify the waverider as quickly as Ryan did. T-Vral was a great help too, even Jaroslav seemed to have overcome his initial resentment and was handling the first years quite well. In fact, the thing Matt was the most proud of was the resolve and determination of the crew… his crew.

‘Let’s do it,’ he thought to himself and punched in the launch code. The controls lit up and the viewscreen filled with the image of streaming stars.

He pressed his comm badge and spoke clearly through the intercom. ‘I’m ready guys. Release the docking clamps.’

All he heard was silence on the other end, and then a wavering voice answered: ‘Docking clamps released. Good luck Matt.’ Alex could scarcely form the words.

‘Be back before you know it,’ he said cheerily.

‘We’ll hold you to that…’ Steven chimed in. ‘Captain,’ he added as an afterthought.

Matt smiled and started the launch procedure. Any trace of fear or nervousness immediately left him as he felt the impulse engines come online. He was now in his element, and his years of fight experience kicked in. The waverider gave a violent jerk as it detached from the underside of the ship’s hull. The young pilot could feel the immense pressure on the reinforced hull as the shuttle flew in space for the first time. Had the shields not been extended around both ships, the warp slipstream would have torn the waverider into a million pieces in a matter of seconds.

************************************************************************

‘Something is wrong,’ Alex watched as the waverider moved into position, ‘I can feel it.’

Jaroslav gave her a scathing look from the captain’s chair, but as soon as she had said it, he too realized that the tractor emitter was already in the waverider’s firing arc.

‘What’s going on? Why isn’t he firing?’

************************************************************************

Matt’s left hand flew to the weapon controls and, in the fraction of a second when he both made the decision to fire and thought everything was going almost too well, the viewscreen exploded. Even the dampening field on the command chair meant to keep officers firmly in their chairs during flight wasn’t enough and Matt was thrown into the back of the waverider.

Matt’s eyes closed for only a moment and he thought that he saw a face so very similar to his, but older and unfamiliar. Then they opened and, even though his body was screaming out to him, he pulled himself up. What happened? If the aliens had seen him and fired that giant ion cannon, then it would have done a lot more than destroy the viewscreen.

He climbed back into the command chair and looked over the readouts. There was no indication that anything other than his viewscreeen exploding had gone wrong. They haven’t spotted him yet.

For a moment he thought that the whole plan had gone sour. Without the viewscreen, he had no way of targeting the tractor emitter, and then he remembered an old trick his flight instructor had taught him.

With a flick on an arm, he turned on the Comm system and hailed in every direction. It was only a matter of time before they realized he was there and he had no other option. The hails bounced back off the hulls of the Discovery and the alien ship and the hailing system popped up a diagram with thousands of ship icons all around him, forming a rough diagram of the area around him. He stared at the image of the alien vessel, then made out the area from which he remembered the tractor beam came out of… aimed… and fired.

The others at the Discovery had to shield their eyes from the blinding explosion of the tractor emitter. As all of the energy focused at its tip was released, Matthew felt the waverider being thrown back, ricocheting off the Discovery and flying off at a random angle.


************************************************************************

‘It worked,’ Jaroslav screamed as the computer immediately turned them towards the target coordinates and fired the warp engines.

For several minutes they all just sat there, afraid to break the silence. Finally, after almost ten minutes, Jaroslav turned to Kajsa.

‘Are they following us?’ he said in a weak voice.

‘Still heading in their original direction,’ she replied in an even weaker one. ‘They’ve stopped energizing, but the momentum is still taking them further and further…’ then she paused. ‘Out of sensor range.’

‘That doesn’t mean they can’t see us, or Matt,’ the acting Captain said, but he couldn’t completely hide the hope that this wasn’t true in his tone.

************************************************************************

Matt woke up on top of the forward console of the waverider. His head throbbing and something warm tricking down his forehead. He forced himself to sit up and the world around him spun. He could feel the pulsing of blood in his head and his eyes darkened.

When he came to again, he fully expected to be looking at the blue shores of some heavenly plane, or possibly an interrogation chamber in an alien ship. The last thing he expected, was to be leaning back in that same chair, his head still throbbing, but still alive.He checked to see whether the alien ship was in sensor range, and when he didn’t see it, punched in a course for their rendez-vous. He didn’t have the strength to take a closer look at them and find out why, but if he did, he would have seen that the shockwave of the blast that had destroyed the tractor emitter had thrown him far off course, in a very similar fashion to what the Discovery was supposed to do.

As he reached up to feel the hard scab that had formed on his forehead, he prayed. He prayed that his survival didn’t mean the death or capture of his crew, his friends.

************************************************************************

They waited at the arranged coordinated for over an hour, but there was still no sign of Matt. Both Alex and Kajsa were crying over their consoles and Steven looked pale. Even Jaroslav, who had wanted to celebrate the success of the plan, suddenly realized that their escape came at a terrible loss.

He turned on the Comm system and told the news to the people in the cargo bay, then dreaded his decision.

Cyanne had asked the dreaded question. And he had answered…

‘No sign of Matt.’

She replied but her voice was so full of tears that they couldn’t make out a single word. After a while, she gave up trying. She couldn’t even close the comm. connection and they all just sat on the bridge, those that weren’t on the verge of tears themselves, listening to her sobs.

Then suddenly, Kajsa stopped crying.

‘I’m picking up an impulse signature,’ she beamed from the Science console, her voice breaking. ‘It’s the waverider!’

‘Head in his direction, half impulse,’ Jaroslav commanded. ‘Alex, prepare the docking sequence.’

Alex and Cyanne had also stopped crying when they heard this, and the first immediately did as ordered.

************************************************************************

Matthew’s eyes were only half open as he felt the waverider reattach itself to the Discovery He didn’t know whether it was a dream. Everything had worked out. They were all safe. He finally let go and let himself all into unconsciousness.

When he woke up a few hours later, he was looking into the dark pools that were Cyanne’s eyes. She was beaming at him, her eyes red from tears.

‘He’s awake,’ she said to the others, and Matthew realized that all of his friends had gathered around him.

‘Well done guys,’ he managed to whisper and all of the tension that had built up over the past few days was finally released and everyone began cheering.




Please vote for your favourite character:

ID: 1202391   (Rated: E) Favourite Starfleet Cadets Character  If you've read my series, which character is you favourite? by Filip Janik

Next episode:

ID: 1249706   (Rated: 13+) Star Trek: Starfleet Cadets 1x08  The Starfleet Cadets are faced with the ultimate decision: move on or turn back? by Filip Janik