Disclaimer: Enterprise, Star Trek and all related characters are the property of Paramount Pictures, Inc. No copyright infringement is intended. This story is for entertainment purposes only and no money has changed hands. The original characters and events are the sole property of the author and may not be used without permission.
"Derelict"
by Darrin Colbourne
"There's Ulysses." Mayweather said as Enterprise approached the Earth colony Coogan's World. The Earth Starship Ulysses could be seen in standard orbit around the small frontier world. She was obviously not as advanced as Captain Jonathan Archer's ship, but Enterprise was an experimental vessel, while Ulysses was one of a class that was the current state-of-the-art. She had a barbell shape, sporting two spherical pressure hulls connected by an access tunnel. The larger sphere forward was the Command/Habitat Hull, where the crew lived and operated the ship. The smaller sphere aft was the Engineering/Service Hull, from which the Warp nacelles extended. Unlike in Enterprise, there was no crew standing round-the-clock watch in an engine room. The engines were serviced as needed through the access tunnel.
"Standard orbit, Mr. Mayweather." Captain Archer said. "Hail Ulysses."
Ensigns Mayweather and Sato acknowledged with "Aye, Sir," then the helmsman pulled the ship into orbit while the Communications Officer contacted the other Starfleet ship.
"Ulysses answers hail." Sato said.
"On screen." Archer said. A moment later the image of the planet and the other ship was replaced by an image of Ulysses' bridge. There was a Lieutenant sitting in the command chair. His attention was on his own bridgescreen, and he straightened up a little in the seat when he saw who was calling. "This is Captain Archer of the Enterprise."
"Pleasure to meet you, Sir." The Lieutenant said as he stood. "I'm Lieutenant Bridling, First Officer of Ulysses."
"Glad to meet you, Lieutenant. I was expecting to talk to your Captain."
"That's understandable, Sir. Captain Will is down on Coogan's World now. Some more of the rock face has shifted, uncovering more of the artifact. He went to see it for himself, and left instructions to inform you and give you rendezvous coordinates when you arrived." Bridling looked off-screen long enough to say "Transmit those coordinates to Enterprise now." Someone out-of-sight acknowledged, and soon Sato received a data packet with the pertinent information. Bridling turned back to the screen. "Should I inform Captain Will that you've arrived and are on your way down, Sir?"
"Do that," Archer said. "We'll be there shortly. Enterprise out." He nodded to Sato, who cut the channel. The Captain stood for a moment or two, thinking about the situation. More of the "artifact" had been revealed. It was that strange artifact that had brought him to Coogan's World, something apparently so mind-shattering that Will had contacted him directly and asked him to come see it, not wanting to risk asking Starfleet to send a dedicated research vessel or contact the nearest Vulcan ship. Archer had had a shuttlepod prepared along the way, sure that whatever was going on it deserved his immediate attention.
"Hoshi," he said, "give those coordinates to T'Pol, then have Commander Tucker meet us in the Shuttlepod Bay. T'Pol, you're driving. Malcolm, you have the ship." Lt. Reed answered with a nod as Sato called Engineering, then Archer, T'Pol and Sato left the bridge.
T'Pol landed the shuttlepod deftly on the ground near the one from Ulysses. There were three people waiting when the landing party came out. One was the commanding officer of Ulysses, Commander Frank Will. With him was a Starfleet Ensign and a civilian in lab coveralls, most likely a scientist. Will led his people over to Archer's.
"Captain Will," Archer said, using the honorific given all ship commanders regardless of rank, "I'm Jonathan Archer."
"Captain Archer." Will said as they smiled and shook hands. "Good to meet you." The dark-skinned officer had a gruff voice and a rugged bearing. "This is my Chief Engineer, Ensign Elly Mercurio, and this is Ben Presley. He's a geologist."
Archer shook hands with the young officer and the civilian in turn then introduced his own people. "This is Commander Tucker, my Chief Engineer, Ensign Hoshi Sato, communications, and this is T'Pol."
Will's expression changed slightly as he caught sight of the Vulcan. "You brought your...Science Officer down?"
"You did say that I should bring my best technical people with me. T'Pol certainly qualifies."
"So I did." Will said, forcing a smile back on his face and shaking hands with the Enterprise landing party, starting with T'Pol. "I'm sorry to take you away from your mission, Captain Archer. I hope it won't take too long, but what we've found here...well, it may help put your job in some sort of perspective. We have transportation waiting. I can explain what's happening on the way to the site."
Archer looked where Will indicated. There were two wheeled vehicles sitting near the shuttlepods. "Lead the way." He said.
The group divided themselves between the two cars. Captains Archer and Will took one car with T'Pol and Tucker, while Sato took the other with Presley and Mercurio. They set out across the Coogan's World landscape, which reminded T'Pol of Earth's Australian outback. As he drove, Will laid out the situation for Archer.
"A few days ago we received a distress signal from the colony. This area has been rocked with a series of massive planetquakes and the main settlement has been hit pretty bad. We came to render humanitarian assistance. We were on our way to deliver Dr. Presley to that new mining settlement being established on Planetoid NSC4503 when we got the call."
"4503?" "Trip" said. "They expect to find some big dilithium deposits, don't they?"
"That'll be an important place when the NX ships start entering the fleet in numbers." Archer said.
"So I've heard." Will said. "Anyway, when he found out about our detour he offered to join the landing party and see what kind of insight he could give us about the frequency and the duration of the quakes. Turns out that the quakes were caused by the collapse of a fault line in the badlands out here. That fault line is turning into a wide canyon. It's that canyon where we found the artifact embedded."
"If it's an artifact," Archer said, "wouldn't it be more appropriate to get a xenoarcheologist out here?"
"I only call it an 'artifact' because I can't think of a better word." Will said. "It's more like...well, why don't you just see for yourself. We're here."
Archer looked ahead as the vehicle stopped. Mercurio pulled the other car right alongside, and everybody got out. They were about two hundred meters from the edge of the cliff. "We're safer parking back here." Presley said. The group walked the distance to the cliff edge and looked into the crevasse.
Archer, Sato, and Tucker's mouths fell open at the sight of what was embedded in the far cliff face. If T'Pol was equally surprised, she stayed true to her nature and didn't show it, but she did immediately whip out her scanner and take readings. Archer got down on his haunches, trying to get as close a look as possible with his eyes.
"Is that what I think it is?" He said.
"Near as we can tell." Will said. "It's a spaceship."
It was a remarkable spaceship at that. Enterprise and Ulysses were two of the biggest ships in Starfleet, yet this vessel dwarfed both of them, even with half its bulk buried in rock. It had to be at least ten times the size of Archer's ship, yet it still seemed very familiar to him. "You'll think I'm nuts, but do you know what this thing reminds me of?"
"Enterprise!" Tucker said. "It's like a modified Enterprise! A really big modified Enterprise!"
The resemblance was uncanny. The big, white spacecraft had a big saucer that was partially buried in rock, but even with all the dirt in the way the crew could see that it was connected to a cylindrical body by a massive strut. The Warp engines were also connected to this extra body, not to the saucer, but the hemispherical Bussard collector on the one nacelle that wasn't obscured was unmistakable. They could even see the round Main Deflector at the forward end of the cylindrical body.
"That's one of the reasons I contacted you, but it's not where the similarity ends, gentlemen." Will said as he pulled out a handheld computer. He pressed some buttons and some recorded images came up on the screen. He showed the screen to Archer. "When we realized what we had here we did some overhead flights of the vessel with the shuttlepod and took these pictures. Pay attention to the top of the saucer."
Archer watched the image. The view was of the ship from above. With the cylinder part obscured, this strange ship looked even more like his own. He watched as the camera zoomed in, bringing the markings at the top of the saucer into focus. He frowned when he read what he assumed was the vessel's name.
"Is this some kind of joke?!!" He demanded of Will.
"We can take one of the shuttlepods for a flyover so you can see it with your own eyes," Will said, "but I assure you, Captain, that this is no joke."
"What is it, Cap'n?" Tucker said.
"Look at this." Archer said as he handed Tucker the computer. Then it was the Chief Engineer's turn to be astounded. He handed the computer wordlessly to T'Pol. She looked carefully at the image. The starboard side of the saucer was buried in rock, so part of what was written along the forward edge was obscured, but enough was visible to make her eyebrow go up.
"Enterprise." She said. It prompted Sato to look over her shoulder.
"It's in English." She said, stunned. "Like they used the same stencil from our ship." She looked back at the vessel. "But that can't be an Earth ship!"
"You have to admit it is similar to your ship." Mercurio said. "Like those big High Warp engines. They must do Warp 5 and better. And none of our other ships have a saucer like that."
"If Earth could field such a vessel," T'Pol said, "it would only be logical to use it to conduct our current exploratory mission. It would, however, be highly illogical to bury it in a cliffside."
"Maybe it is a joke," Tucker said, "though it would have cost the prankster a whole boatload of time and money."
"Then how'd they get it in the fault line?" Ben Presley asked. "It's pretty big and unwieldy for a mock-up."
"That is no mock-up." T'Pol said. "My readings indicate that it is a functioning though dormant vessel."
"Still, how'd it get in the fault line, buried in solid rock, so that we'd find it?"
"That's what I want to know." Archer said. "T'Pol, any bio-signs?"
"None, Captain."
He turned to Will. "Is there a way inside? Maybe somewhere to dock the shuttlepod?"
Will shook his head. "We checked. There aren't any exterior entrances. No docking or access ports or airlocks. In fact, except for those protrusions on the nacelle and a few molds on the saucer and near the deflector, the exposed parts of the hull are practically featureless."
"I can see that." Tucker said. "There don't seem to be any handholds or anything for EVA missions. Maybe they do all the repairs from inside...but how do they get in and out of the thing?"
"It's not completely inaccessible," Mercurio said. "We've seen evidence that there's an access door aft that might lead to a shuttle bay...but most of the aft is blocked by rock, and even if the aft were completely exposed..."
"We wouldn't necessarily know how to open it." Archer said. "In that case it might as well be inaccessible. Unless we cut into the hull somewhere..."
"Actually," T'Pol said, "there is one other way we might enter the ship, and if it is successful it might also explain how the crew gains ingress and egress."
Archer turned to her with a confused look, which turned into a dejected one a second later when he realized what she meant. Will simply smiled. He'd come to the same conclusion long ago.
"That's the other reason I contacted you." He said.
Soon the Starfleet shuttlepods had returned to their respective ships. Later, Archer, Tucker, T'Pol, Sato, Will and Mercurio gathered in Enterprise's Transporter Room. After scanning the strange ship with Enterprise's main sensors, T'Pol found what looked like a larger transporter room inside. That would be the destination for the transport. She set the coordinates herself, leaving the transporter technician nothing to do but start the process.
As they stood on the transporter pad, Will turned to Archer and said quietly, "Just out of curiosity, how many times have you successfully transported living beings with this thing?"
This would have been a perfect time for Archer to seem confident and secure and let Will know that everything would be fine. He went with the truth instead. "Define 'successfully'."
"'Successfully' as in the living being was still 'living' at the end of the trip." Will said.
"In that case, three." Archer said.
T'Pol, who'd heard the conversation, decided to get it done before any of the Humans could back out. "We should go now, Captain." She said.
"Very well," Archer said with a deep breath. "Energize."
The technician worked the power throttles, and with a soft buzz and several cascades of white sparks, the boarding party vanished.
TBC...
