Ship log, Stardate 65329.6. Helm Officer Garronax recording.
We have positioned the L'Hospital over geostationary orbit with the planet over the landing site. It had been about twenty-seven earth minutes since Away Team One made their last contact with us. This is worth noting in the log, but, unless three more minutes pass, it is not a cause for concern according to the field manual.
I turned to Ensign Friedman, who was at the Science console.
"Ensign Friedman, do you have any idea what is causing that EM horizon?"
"Well, if you look there..." he pointed to the large viewscreen with his finger. I followed his finger to the false-color map of the planet's surface, and saw that he was pointing to an area where the red coloring was the deepest. "You see that area there where we are reading at least 13.9 kilojoules?"
I nodded in his direction and blinked.
"It's most likely to be there, the source. Let's see the EM Rate overlay." He pressed a few buttons on his console, and sent the calculations to the viewscreen. Now what seemed like a dozen pixelated green bugs began to crawl the screen in different curvilinear directions, but never bumping into each other. Soon there was a contour map of green lines over the red shadings on the map.
I said to myself more than to Ensign Friedman, "So that's how you get that map."
"Yeah. See, look at the contour gradient around the 13.9 event. That sharp gradient indicates something that has lots of power. If I had to estimate, maybe about three-fourths that of our warp core."
"I see." I sank back into my seat, in possession now of more information, but inexplicably more uneasy. A few seconds passed where the hum of the ship took permeated the bridge, the vibrations traveling through the reinforcing pylons that are strung throughout the ship. Then Friedman said something else.
"Man, I bet... you know, if there were a comm tower under that thing we would never know. It's so strong! We'll need to tell Cartography to use some other method to map the surface."
"Understood." I turned to the Tactical station. "Make the calculations, Chief M'rel." Once the tactical detail bent down to work, I tapped my commbadge. I noticed that none of the maps of the planet have the name of the planet on it. I was under the assumption that it had already been named hours ago, after the away team briefing.
"Bridge to Cartography, please come in."
"Yes, bridge."
"Is there a way to map the surface of this planet that could cut through that EM horizon?"
"Not yet, but we'll think of something."
"Thank you. And what about the name of the planet?"
"Oh, well, sir, I thought its name was in the Starfleet registry."
Something hit me. This was not Halek I was speaking to. Halek, our ship cartographer, would have known the official name. He had the general orders. And he would not have called me "Sir", either.
"Mr. Foreman?"
"Yes, that's me, Ensign Garronax. I copy."
"Mr. Foreman, where is Mr. Moynihan?"
"I don't know, sorry. His shift just ended, maybe fifteen minutes ago."
I turned towards the viewscreen, and the blank space where the name of the planet should be seemed much bigger now that I kept looking at it. Was it collective forgetting? It must have been some kind of mistake. We had to visit so many sectors in the last two months with nary a liberty period. The mistakes were bound to crop up. But forgetting the name of a registered planet?
Just then there was a cautionary beep from behind my console. M'rel straightened up.
"Ensign Garronax, there has just been an unauthorized beamout."
"From where?"
"Deck 8 aft."
"So not our transporter room? It wasn't our machine?" My mind raced. Unauthorized beamouts are usually mistakes. A person may beam to the surface too early, before his or her name was put into the away team roster. Very few are ever cases of suicide, where the person beams himself or herself into space. But those are only the ones that originate from the transporter room.
"No, not our machine."
"How do you know there was a beamout?"
M'rel looked at the science screen. "There's been a slight decrease of overall mass in the ship. Also, we detected traces of tachygenic waves leading away from the ship from Deck 8 aft."
Tachygenic waves are used to carry annular confinement beams that sheathed objects in transport. I never thought question number seventeen in my final exam last semester would ever come up in my mind again. For a split second I thought of calling up Lieutenant Severin to the bridge, and that feeling stayed with me throughout.
"Who was transported?"
M'rel paused, a sigh escaping him slowly. He slowly said, "It was Mr. Halek Moynihan."
"Miss Luhrmann, my name is Ensign Garronax, and I would like you to sit down. It is with the heaviest of hearts that we send you these condolences. Our brother, Chief Vassily Kandinsky, was killed in the line of duty, on Stardate 57212. He was Tactical consult of Fox Fighter Wing 54 Alpha, and as such he and his service will always be remembered."
Dana kind of just sat there, but she seemed to sink into the couch. I really thought she would be crying already, but you never know what to expect with these things. Perhaps she was just surprised by the officialness of my speech. I rather think that I'd flinch a bit too if someone who had called me Dana since he and my lover became good friends called me "Miss Luhrmann" all of a sudden. But that was what the script said. I even looked down to make sure, when she did not respond right away.
"Miss Luhrmann, if you have any questions..."
"Anong nangyari sa kanya?" she said softly. I did not hear it clearly the first time.
"I'm sorry, could you... repeat that?"
"Anong nangyari kay Vassily? Paano siya namatay?" As she stood up, her eyes were burning up, with the tears nowhere to be seen, and I suddenly realized that my universal translator was manually deactivated. I tapped my commbadge once, but when I rested my eyes on the commbadge I realized how much Dana's eyes burned through mine. It was as if I looked into the warp reactor coils during warp and closed my eyes at once.
"I'm sorry, I'm..." but as the neural output came through into the space between my ears I nodded. "Vassily's fighter vessel was attacked by a rogue faction of Dominion forces. The life support systems on his ship failed, and when he ejected, one of the Dominion fighters fired upon the escape pod." After I read this I began to notice that the text on the PADD screen in front of me became blurry. I was not crying; rather, I felt a dull, painful anger rise up behind my throat. It was threatening to choke me, and as a result my hand slowly opened, and the PADD clattered against the composite plastic floor in Dana's sitting room.
"We tried to save him."
"I know, Gary, I know you did." She stopped looking at me, and it appeared as if she said it more to herself than to anyone else. "Excuse me, Gary, I have to... call..."
And then she just suddenly crumpled onto the ground. I proceeded to collect her from the floor and deposit her onto the nearby couch. When she came to, she was already crying, as if she started sobbing while in her dream. I could imagine my father crying for my mother or one of his other two wives, but somehow I could not imagine this. Dana only had one lover. It was strange to me, that custom. How could you ever feel secure? But the script says we have to help her, give her a card that she could contact us by, tell her that disposing of his remains would be taken care of, no matter the manner his faith or belief prescribes.
So I did.
"I'm picking up a fifth lifesign on the planet surface."
It took me a while to respond. "Where?"
"On the planet surface, Ensign."
"Is it Mr. Moynihan?"
As M'rel tried to verify, I was hanging on every word.
"We can't be certain. I'll keep trying but the EM horizon is..."
"I know, I know." I put my head down, and stood by my console. Someone turn off that damn horizon!
I saw the shipboard clock. The requisite number of minutes have passed.
"Bridge to Captain Neval. This is Ensign Garronax. We have a situation."