"Captain!" Archer opened one eye, realized he was still in the command chair. Hoshi was staring at him and Shran was grinning from ear to ear. "I wasn't sleeping" Archer said.
"Yeah, and I don't have blue skin" Shran replied. Archer shot him a malevolent look. Let the Andorian push too much, and he would remind him he had saved a Vulcan's life. He had noticed that Shran became nervous whenever too much was made of T'Pol's survival.
"Actually, Captain" Ensign Sato smoothed away the budding tension, "I was just going to bring your attention to the fact none of the teams has had any rest and we're coming on forty-eight hours for some of them." She didn't add 'like you' but it was somewhat obvious.
Archer frowned. It was the beginning of alpha shift again, and he couldn't remember when he was not on the bridge last.
Shran scowled. "That's much too long, pinkskin, uh, Captain. You must have walking zombies around on the surface by now. Andorian squads never let their men go on for that long without a mandatory rest period. Not unless we're at war."
They were in a war of sorts, against time, Archer reflected, but Shran was right. He rubbed the stubble on his chin. At least falling asleep on the bridge was only embarrassing. But if someone on one of the teams handling heavy equipment was not sharp, they could end up with casualties.
"Do we have enough bench depth that the work can keep going on?" he asked Hoshi. Not all crew had experience with EV suits. She nodded. "We won't be able to fully staff the teams, but we can rotate them one third at a time."
"If you could replicate an Andorian EV suit, I'm worth two men." Shran interjected. Archer looked at him bleary-eyed, then remembered. "The replicator is free now. Ensign Sato, who do we have that's not busy with the recovery effort and knows how to operate the replicator?" The huge mine excavator, or whatever quasi-excavator the equipment Kuruya and Reed had devised and built, was now on the asteroid surface, had been there for three or four hours already. The next check-in point for all the teams was a couple of hours away.
"Once you've identified the crew member, have them meet with Shran and replicate an Andorian EV suit." He needed to rest. "Send word to the teams that they have to come back to Enterprise to rest in third shifts, starting with the team leaders, right away. Captain's orders. Rest period is a minimum of two hours." Archer got up, started walking away "I'm following my own orders, I'll be back in two hours. Oh, and Hoshi, you're next."
xx
"Roger." Trip flipped his EV suit channel closed, trotted back to where half of team 2 was waiting to grab the tether and start anchoring the disabled shuttle. Since he was not strictly speaking a team leader, he had sent a reluctant Hess back to the ship for the mandatory rest period and declared he would take over for her. She would be back in four hours, including an hour to shuttle to Enterprise and an hour to shuttle back. Travis had been resting in between flights, he also was not taking a rest period. That, the only other pilot that needed practice time was asleep on Enterprise.
Trip spoke into his mike "Rostoff is going to shoot the tether over the shuttle. I need two people to jump on the cable as soon as it hits the ground and prevent it from slamming back into the shuttle. Watch out, that thing is heavy. Everybody else, we have to make way."
The six crew members in EV suits acknowledged their understanding in the mikes. Nodding in an EV suit was somewhat of a waste, unless one learned to nod with one's helmet. Talking was much easier and less energy intensive.
"Make way! Make way!" Trip shouted the team away from the landing point. Two crew members stayed behind, far enough to be out of the immediate line of fire, close enough to jump on the cable when it landed.
As soon as Trip was safely away, he gave the order to Rostoff, waving his arm up and down for emphasis. Rostoff was having all the fun, well, Malcolm and Rostoff had all the fun, repurposing a bazooka into a cable launcher. He saw the brief flare of light that indicated Rostoff had fired, any sound absorbed by the vacuum of space. Then two EV suits were running and jumping on the ground, landing in belly flops that would have been painful but for the suits.
"I got it!" Addir yelled in the mike, making everyone on the team shrink away from the sound. He and Johnson got up, covered in stellar dust, dragging the ton-heavy cable between them. The rest of the team rushed in to lend a hand. It took close to an hour of pulling, splicing, measuring, swearing and sweating, but eventually the end of the cable was wound in the anchor pre-sunk in the rock.
Now they could start winching the cable from both ends. Trip looked over at the team. He was out of breath, exhausted by the physical effort and sheer fatigue. Johnson tapped him on the shoulder. "Commander! Your oxygen tank is low. You need to get back to the ship." That explained why he was feeling like crap. Trip looked around for another officer he could delegate to. Rostoff was on the other side of the shuttle and he already had his hands full tethering the shuttle. Hess was not around. All they had left to do was winch the cable.
"Let's get this done quickly, then" Trip talked into his mike "Everyone, we're going to start winching. Rostoff, are you ready?"
"We're ready on this side, waiting for you guys to stop playing around." Rostoff's voice came through their helmets.
"Hahaha, remind me of that joke come next evaluation time. Ok, on the count of three! One … two… three…" The teams on both sides of the shuttles flipped on a switch and the anchor started turning, winching the tether in between them. When the tension became too great, the motor would automatically stop. Everyone next to him was looking at the slow rotation of the cable.
Suddenly, with a suddenness that almost stopped hearts beating in chests and without the benefit of any warning sound, the anchor ripped from the ground and spun through the air straight at the shuttle, the cable coiling beneath it like some giant king cobra before it released and the anchor banged soundlessly into the shuttle, denting it, while the tether fell back to the ground, right on top of the standing crew. Screams resonated through the mikes, adding a chilling dimension to the scene.
"Mayday! Mayday!" Trip screamed in his suit at Rostoff. "The cable went. We have wounded." He rushed to the three EV suits pinned to the ground by the heavy tether, praying that the suits had held. They had, but two of the forms were unconscious and the other's helmet was full of blood. "Enterprise! We had an accident. Three to transport as soon as you can!" Trip yelled in his communicator. There was complete mayhem, EV suits running from all over to the scene of the accident.
"We've got it, Trip!" Archer replied, to Trip's surprise, he thought Jonathan was sleeping. "We're transporting them. I want you and the entire Team 2 back on Enterprise ASAP, stat."
Phlox cut into the communication "What was that Commander?!" The doctor sounded furious. "Which part didn't you get about no jolts, hmm?! Lucky for us we have an antigrav stretcher or there would no longer be the need for a recovery."
xx
"Come in"
Trip stepped into Captain's Archer ready room, standing more or less at attention. The past four hours of sleep had done wonders and he felt like a new man.
"Commander," He could tell from the set of his mouth that Jonathan was pissed. He cautiously decided to let him speak first. Archer looked at him with a smile but his eyes were furious "What inspired you to disobey a direct order?"
Trip was speechless. What was Jon talking about? "A direct order?"
"All team leaders were to come back to Enterprise for a two-hour mandatory rest period."
"Ah, well, uh, as I'm not really a team leader—"
"-you decided it didn't apply to you? To what end? So that we could have three men in Sickbay while Phlox is not available and have to start the tethering again from scratch?"
"How's that related -" Trip started lamely. He was not able to finish that sentence either.
"Do you really need me to spell it out?"
"Well" Trip fell silent, frowning. Was it related? He simply had decided to do things quickly because his oxygen was running low and he couldn't think of someone to replace him. "What I mean is, it didn't happen because I was tired."
"Didn't it, Commander? I've debriefed your team. Johnson told you your oxygen tank was running low. The right decision would have been to name a replacement and head back to the ship."
"But there was no replacement available. Rostoff was on the other side, Hess was on Enterprise and every one else was needed for the tethering."
"Hess could have come down."
"That would have taken another hour."
"She could have transported down."
There was a long silence as realization dawned on Trip. He finally admitted, "I didn't think of that."
"Exactly, you didn't think. Because you were overtired. If you had not been exhausted, you would have figured out that Hess could be down on the ground quickly and that even if she didn't an hour wait was better than jeopardizing the recovery."
Trip looked down. Archer sighed, holding the bridge of his nose. "The issue is, you're used to getting away with pretty much everything because you can fix it later. But there are things that cannot be fixed. What if someone had died? What if you had blown our only chance of recovering T'Pol? How would you feel then, standing here?"
Archer turned to the window, staring at the stars. "Lucky for us we have time to re-tether the shuttle before the Vulcan ship arrives. Everyone on Team 2 has had four hours of rest and Hess will finish the tethering. I've asked Shran to take over the coordination of the recovery efforts on the planet. You can focus on installing the baffles."
Trip didn't really have an issue with what Archer was doing, he deserved it. "The baffles are already in place" he informed him.
"Then, perhaps you can help Hess on Team 2. Dismissed." Archer didn't turn around until he heard the swoosh of the closing door. He felt bad for having dressed down Trip like that, but Trip was too often trying to put one over whoever was in charge. When he became captain, he would be the one in charge. He had to learn how to work on the side of authority.
xx
Archer flipped the shuttle upside down, flying closely over the disabled shuttle, then brought it to a standstill, a few meters up, and at an angle. Travis and he were taking turns preparing for the time when one of them would have to hold the shuttle in a precise listing position for twenty minutes or longer. This was just a taste of what it would be like. They couldn't get low enough until there was more clearance from the bluff next to the shuttle.
Team 3 was hard at work on the bluff, which was starting to show a shuttle length depression in its middle. Kuruya had calculated exactly how much they needed to dig to provide the recovery shuttle with the room it required, no more. Now that the disabled shuttle was solidly tethered to the ground, Teams 1 and 2 had joined the effort and things were going somewhat faster. Still, it was slow progress. The Vulcan ship with a healer on board could show up at any time now, and then they would have to make choices.
Archer lowered the shuttle another few yards, just to get a sense of things. He saw the EV suits on the ground look up at the shuttle and knew they were worried he was too low. He had to play it safe, they couldn't afford more casualties or more time wasted. He banked sharply to the left and brought the shuttle back up, heading for the ship. Travis could fly the next run. It would take another four to five hours to clear out enough of the bluff for a real practice run. At that time he would go again.
"Ensign Sato to Captain Archer" Archer flicked the intercom, wondering what exactly happened to have Hoshi reach out to him on a practice run. "Archer here. What is it?"
"The Vulcan starship is hailing us, sir."
Archer swore inwardly. Typical. If they had been ready early, the Vulcan ship would have been late. "Tell them I'll be back on board in an hour and arrange for an intercept. And have Lieutenant Reed get back to the bridge. Ask Specialist Kuruya to join us there also." Now was the time to start talking options.
