When the report came in that the shuttlecraft had been tractored safely into Bay 2, Captain Neval was in the ready room, fielding new orders from Admiral Beebe over the secure subspace link. I was not invited into this conference, so I left an onscreen message for him, and made my way to the shuttlebay.
I've only been serving with him for four months, but for some reason it seems like four years. I wouldn't say that he is cold toward me—maybe that is just the result of our different upbringings. It's probably my Southern blood, you know? It's probably something my momma always told me. Of course Vulcans are like that, aren't they? But it doesn't seem fair to say that, somehow. It can't be that all Vulcans are exactly the same. But, I don't know. As I said, it's only been four months.
Maybe another cause of this is the curious lack of downtime here in the ship. For a cartography ship this place always seems to be busy. Case in point? Captain Neval, as I've said before, already fielding our next orders. The shuttlecraft had barely even touched the deck!
I rounded the final corner to Shuttlebay 2. The half-meter-thick double doors lurched open. Of course I had to study the schematics of the Cosmos-class cartographic explorer, but every time I walk through these doors they make me nervous. What if there was a force field breach at the other end of the shuttlebay and these humongous doors closed? I always comforted myself by saying that they would probably close just as slowly as they opened.
They only opened halfway, of course, for crewmembers. Opening them all the way would take a minute, which is about forty-five seconds longer than I was willing to wait to see the crew back, safe and sound.
But when I saw the shuttlecraft on the deck, my walk hastened to a jog. The thing looked like it had been through the Kuiper belt—dents, scorch marks, and what was that, tracers from handheld phasers? And the crew—
"What the hell happened here?" Here was our ship cartographer, seated on the deck, his head against a smooth stone held in his right hand. His clothes were sandy and in disarray. And leaning his hands against the shuttlecraft's battered hull, Ensign Areckla seemed to be catching his breath. The staff of the shuttlebay was milling about, just like in the emergency drills.
I remembered that we sent four people out... where are the other two? Have they already been taken to Sickbay?
The attendant to my left suddenly said, as if reading my thoughts, "Ensign Farad and Chief Matson were beamed to Sickbay." I was turned to him as he addressed me, so it took me completely by surprise when Ensign Areckla grabbed my shoulder and faced me with eyes filled with terror.
"Don't send us back down there! There's—there's nothing for us there but... destruction! Des—"
Space, the final frontier. In this new but tenuous peace among the stars, a galactic power cautiously rediscovers its original purpose to explore new worlds. Trading away conquest for curiosity, and suspicion for discovery, an intrepid new generation has taken up the call—to boldly go where no one has gone before. These are their stories.