Now What?

Posted on Sun 3rd May, 2020 @ 12:18am by Commander Jasmine Collins-Keller

1,413 words; about a 7 minute read

Mission: Resolution
Location: Unknown Space
Timeline: MD 3, 1250

McCabe slid backwards out of the narrow tube leading to the phaser banks, and clumsily caught his balance on the floor of the command deck of the yacht. In the end, they hadn't had to actually rip out the phasers, but it had been touch and go getting the right connections disconnected. Now, whatever McCord had been able to manage, the weapons couldn't fire. He only hoped they wouldn't wind up in a situation where they needed to fire.

He reached up to guide the commander's foot to the last step down. "Almost there, Ma'am," he said.

Jasmine followed McCabe through the tube. She held her breath when she could and fought the panic of the close proximity to the walls as her old phobia tried to rear its head. McCabe's voice kept her grounded and focused as he exited the tube. She took a deep gasp of air as her feet touched the deck. She quickly shook her arms and took a few deep breaths as she relaxed her body. "Whoo, I think I need some wine after that." She almost teased.

"Okay, I think we have that under control." She smiled. "Now what?"

Henry looked over to one of the panels showing the phaser bank status rapidly dropping. "Yes!" He thought to himself as he tapped his comm badge. "Riko, tell me something good."

"Chocolate ice cream," she said, without looking up from her console.

"Sounds like a plan if we make it out of this situation in one whole piece," Henry said as he continued to make the odd adjustments to the system in front of him. " Everyone give me a status report.

McCord made a couple of final taps on the screen in front of her. "Stars don't align with known patterns, so far," she answered. "That doesn't mean we're completely out of range of Starfleet. A lot of the star maps for Romulan and Klingon space are not in our database. That's the good news. The bad news is if we're in Romulan or Klingon space, we could be in serious trouble." She looked up at Commander Perry. "Maybe we're in trouble even if we aren't. I'm still searching for something to line up."

Hari didn't say what he was thinking ... but he DID think it. From flying time bomb to political time bomb. Good move. "Sir, another piece of good news. We seem to be out here alone. I detect no ships within ... well, at all, anywhere. Whatever threat those A.I. parts were worried about? Gone, if it ever existed at all."

Henry sat in the command chair, trying to come up with the best options to help bring his makeshift crew home. "First things first. I'm sending out a distress beacon. it may be a long shot, but we are gonna need some direction if we can't figure out where we are. Second, we need to figure out why none of the recorded star chrts are registering."

McCabe spoke up before he could think about it. "Sir, do you think it's wise to alert whoever might be out here somewhere to the fact that we're here, when we've just disabled the phaser banks and we don't know where we are?" Immediately, he could have bitten off his tongue. Who was he to question a Commander? He was low man on the rank list here ... unless the civilian Seldon ranked lower.

"I'm sorry, Sir. I don't mean to question your judgment," Anthony amended quickly.

Henry sat there in his chair for a second, considering what the Lieutenant had said. For he, too, had thoughts about sending a distress signal in the middle of God knows where with essentially no weapons and a ship that seemed to be working with a mind of its own. But Henry also knew that he was responsible for the safety of those under his command at the moment.

"McCabe, I had the same thoughts as you, but we are in a bad spot at the moment. And yes, we could be bringing hostiles right to us, but the other side of that coin is that we could be bringing friendlies that come aid us too. Today, I'm going to be a glass half full kind of guy and hope for the best."

Henry tapped on the console and triggered a coded Starfleet distress call along with a standard SOS. "To any available vessel, this is the Federation starship the USS Bushido. We require assistance as our navigational system is not functioning. Any assistance would be appreciated."

Henry tapped a button to activate the yacht's internal comm system. "Alright everyone, let's meet at the bridge and see what we know and what we don't know. Wrap up what you're working on and meet in 10 minutes."

With all the commotion and emergency work to be done, Jasmine hadn't thought about her own situation. Now, for the last few minutes, it was the only thing on her mind. If they were lost, how would she get home to Leilani...to Adam? How would they find their way? She found herself scanning and searching for any familiar constellation. She heard the order to meet in ten minutes and quickly brought her focus back to the yacht.

"O.K. team, let's summarize what we have," Henry stated as he stood before his makeshift crew on the bridge of the captain's yacht. "Essentially, we are lost in space. We have powered down all weapons systems, so we don't have to worry about attacking anyone we come across out of the blue. The flip side to that is we can't defend ourselves if we do come under attack."

Perry walked to the biggest wall panel of the yacht and pulled up mapped star chart around their location. "This is where we are currently. Jasmine, have you had any luck identifying where we are?"

"No, but I'd like to try to pull up my program." Jasmine spoke. "It's something I've been working on." She explained, "actually, Lieutenant McCabe helped with it. It's a holographic replica of our sector and some of the stars nearby. I think it's one of the programs we brought with us. We wanted to get Nãmaka scanned in absolutely correct." She spoke as she studied the star chart on the panel.

Riko looked at the unfamiliar stars. It suddenly hit her that they might never find their way home. Space was a vast distance whose limits had never been explored, even within their own Milky Way galaxy. If the computer didn't recognize any of these stars, what were the chances they were even still in their own galaxy? But what could have powered them so far in their wild ride? No, they had to be somewhere near their own sector. They had to be.

"Does it make any sense to run a scan for planets which exhibit the unusual color spectrum of Nāmaka? Is it unusual enough that our scanners could find it?" McCord asked.

"Or the flickering we saw on the surface. We got readings of that didn't we?" Jasmine asked. "Weren't there some sort of frequency fluctuations we picked up?" she asked her friend and coworker.

"I believe we did," Seldon agreed. "Let me run back through the records we made while you're all discussing our options."

"If we can find those," Anthony suggested, "we should be able to match them. If we're close enough, that is. I hope we are just looking at things from a different angle. We only need a couple of match points to figure out how to turn the map, if that's the case."

Henry stood and listened to his crew as they discussed their options for finding their way home. Intrigued at the thought of Jasmine's program, he felt comforted that he was with a group of such smart people. But something Riko said was bothering Henry. They weren't at warp for that long, so what could have brought them so far that they didn't recognize their location?

"Jasmine and Anthony, you two work finding out where we are and how to get home. Seldon, you are gonna be on double duty helping them, along with helping Riko and me." Henry then looked over to Riko with a bit of concern on his face. "You and I are gonna try to get to the bottom of how we ended up here."

"Everyone has their assignments, any questions?" Henry asked the group.

 

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