Chapter 1: Lost in Transmission
Dillan ate breakfast that morning unaware that it would be interrupted.
She hadn't expected the long-unused comms system of her station to suddenly flare up with activity. —And her cereal definitely didn't appreciate being thrown from her lap as she jumped up in shock.
It started, as most things did, on the bridge.
The Enterprise drifted on the outskirts of the Beta quadrant, going through a routine day of repairs.
While Engineering worked towards its breaking point, those stationed on the bridge were left to running virus scans through their computers and picking gum off the undersides of their seats. All things considered, not the worst possible day—even if it was a little mundane.
"Captain, our systems have picked up a long-range distress signal."
Kirk snapped into action, spinning around in the chair to face Uhura. "Really?"
They were in deep space, far away from any known life forms. This could mean any number of things. Namely: new intelligent life, the very reason they were this far from home.
Or it was just a Federation signal that had ricocheted from its source, around space and into their comms systems.
"What is the sender saying?" he asked.
"We'll know that in a moment, Sir," she said.
Kirk made an open-handed gesture to the rest of the bridge. Uhura nodded and pressed a button at her station.
For three agonizing seconds, static filled the air of the bridge's comms. Kirk grew disheartened, the thought of a rescue-and-or-discovery mission slipping through his fingers…
…Until a voice, young and frightened, filtered through the static.
"…thirty-one days since the rest of them left me." The bridge crew tensed up at the sound of the child's voice.
"They left me behind, and now I can't—" They all leaned forward in their seats as the transmission cut out.
Uhura fiddled with her controls to bring the voice back, unable to stop thinking about how fearful every word had sounded so far.
"It's really cold down here…" Uhura fought an ongoing battle with the consistency of the connection. Kirk made eye contact with Sulu as the voice resurfaced.
"…anyone out there? Anyone who can help me? I- I have the location codes somewhere around here-" They heard a sniff, then the frantic tapping of fingers on a screen.
"H- here!" the voice exclaimed. "My coordinates are 991-474-82—"
Uhura cursed as the static took over once more, but Kirk had heard enough.
"Mr. Chekov, are you able to get a read on those coordinates?"
"Aye, Keptin." He was already scanning several sectors at once for the coordinates' unique sequence. Anything that had an eight and a two in its final slot and came from the same direction as the signal flew across his screen.
"Mr. Sulu, prepare for warp, and open a ship-wide broadcast. I'll need everyone on board for this." In spite of what he'd just heard, Kirk smiled to himself. He had a new mission on his hands.
Bones started as the report he was currently working on froze. He leaned back as Jim's voice came through the speaker of his padd—and every other one in med bay.
"Attention crew of the Enterprise," he said. "Just a few moments ago, we received a distress signal from an individual in need."
Bones frowned. This, of course, could just be a trick—someone attempting to lure them out to unsanctioned and uncharted territory. And besides, what kind of person didn't immediately give out their name on an SOS call?
"Based on their account, the sender is alone, and stranded on a far-off planet."
Bones rolled his eyes back into his head. Typical set up.
Jim paused. "And it sounds like they may also be a child."
In engineering, Scotty pocketed his flux coupler and pushed up his goggles. A child? Had he heard that right?
"Maintenance will be put on hold for the day, as our main objective: the recovery and hopeful rescue of this individual. We'll be in warp within the minute; Kirk out."
Scotty grumbled a half-hearted complaint as he packed up his gear. After weeks of Kirk promising him this day for repairs, it seems that it would be put off once more.
The Enterprise eased out of warp, coming to a relative standstill at the edge of the planet's atmosphere. Chekov had traced the signal to here, and now he realized that they were about to be confronted with a different obstacle: the planet's entire surface was an ocean.
"Mr. Chekov," Spock said. "Are you entirely sure that this is the correct location?"
"Yes, sir." Though he said it with complete certainty, Chekov couldn't help the blush from spreading across his cheeks.
"While I trust your navigational skills," Spock said, "I assume that we are all able to see what is down there?"
Sulu looked over his shoulder to stare pointedly at Spock.
"Perhaps… there was a storm?" Chekov suggested.
Kirk shook his head and waved Spock back. "Don't be like that, Spock. We'll take a shuttle—who knows, maybe there's an island that only shows up during high tide."
"Your referencing of a fictional work suggests doubt, Captain," Spock said.
Kirk grinned. "And yet I'd kill for an adventure."
Spock watched over the bridge with a calculating eye while Sulu piloted Uhura and Kirk down in a transport shuttle.
"Ensign Chekov," Spock said, drawing his attention. "Are you capable of establishing a line of communication with the sender of the message?"
"Anything new on the scanners?" Kirk hovered over Sulu's shoulder, eyeing the display ahead of them.
"Nothing in the last five minutes, sir." Sulu half-wanted to just drive the shuttle into the sea. He couldn't see anything below the surface. Nothing but still, glass-like water.
Uhura punched numbers into her handheld communicator. After each sequence, she frowned. In no time at all, she'd run through every combination she could think of.
"Maybe we're just on the wrong side of the planet," she said to herself.
Kirk kept moving from window to window, checking every angle the ship could offer.
Sulu glanced at the timer on the corner of his dashboard and winced. They'd been out here for almost an hour, and there'd been no sign of any life—nothing they could see from above the surface, that is.
As if plucking the thought from his mind, Kirk said, "The air's breathable. Maybe if we get some suits out…" His voice trailed off as they heard the shuttle's communications system go off. He leaped for the console.
"Captain," Spock's voice came through scratchy and distorted. "We made contact with the inhabitant of this planet. She's agreed to a meeting with you."
"A meeting?" Kirk said. He and Uhura exchanged a look while Sulu kept his eyes trained on the horizon. "That's great—but where is she?"
"She said that her coordinates are '77-21-08.' And I quote:" Spock paused, preparing himself, "'you'll see a great bloody disk rising out of the sea.'"
Keeping his laughter to a minimum, Kirk said, "Excellent work, Spock. We'll call you when we have an update." He ended the connection before Spock could send them an annoying-but-probably-still-useful warning.
Kirk buckled into the co-pilot seat. "Head for those numbers, Sulu."
Sulu took one look at the dash, and changed their course by ninety degrees. He flew the shuttle with the speed of a madman, but the precision of a surgeon. He focused entirely on the coordinates on his dash, as there was nothing outside the shuttle for them to run in to.
In no time at all, Uhura tapped him on the shoulder, pointing out the window.
"There," she said.
Sea water flowed off the launch pad in great rivulets. It creaked as they powered down, the engines whirring to a stop. The launch pad groaned so much that they wondered if it had ever been used.
"We're going out armed?" Sulu asked when Kirk pulled out three phasers from the arms locker.
Kirk nodded as he handed them out. None of them really knew what to expect from this.
They were met by a warm summer breeze as the shuttle's back end folded out. Kirk led Sulu and Uhura down the ramp, all of them having tucked away their weapons.
The landing platform creaked with every step they took. The sea rippled out in slow waves around it. The platform itself looked to have six docking pads. Their shuttle seemed to be the only one to occupy a space in a long time.
Sulu inspected the pad adjacent to their shuttle's. If there had been any scuff marks before, they had long since been smoothed over by the sea.
"Sulu!" Uhura called, pointing to his feet.
The metal surface of the launch pad had begun to shift away from the centre. He jumped up and moved to the unused docking pad.
In the centre, a large hole opened up, the excess metal sliding underneath their feet and out of sight.
Now that the floor was gone, they saw the wide spiral staircase inside.
Kirk held out an arm to caution them back.
Before anyone could make a move towards the stairs, the elongated muzzle of a phaser popped out, followed by its carrier.
One hour earlier.
"This is Ensign Pavel Chekov of the USS Enterprise, do you copy?"
She'd listened to the voice repeat that three times before natural thought kicked in—a ship. There was a ship near her planet and it was trying to communicate with her!
She'd spilled cereal all over herself in the process of jumping at the console. She barely registered the mushy oat crumbs staining her jumpsuit as she answered the voice.
"Hello, hi, ahem, er—" She cleared her throat, fingers gripping the edge of the desk with enough stress-induced strength to crack it. "Hi there," she winced. "Um, my name's Dillan, who're you?"
The silence on the other end lasted long enough for her to question everything she'd just heard. She fell back into her chair. Had she imagined it all?
"Uh…" the voice seemed hesitant to speak again. "This Ensign Pavel Chekov of the USS Enterprise: we hear you loud and clear." He paused to listen to someone close by—Dillan was certain they were a he.
"I- I hear you too." Her voice cracked on 'too,' letting out a decade of pent-up rage, frustration, and disappointment. "Very clearly. You're there. You're really there, oh my god."
"Yes, we are." A different voice this time—much more formal than the last. "This is Commander Spock—am I speaking to the person on the transmission?
Dillan leaned back in her chair, bringing her knees up to her chin. She let out a laugh—half bark, half sob.
"Transmission…" Her right hand twitched. "Yes, I recorded one of those." Quite a long time ago… "I guess you—" She laughed again. "You found it, right? Don't see how you could be here otherwise."
Really here. She ran a hand through her ponytail. This wasn't a dream, not this one.
"If you are indeed that person," said the new voice—she was also certain it belonged to a male, "We require the coordinates of—"
"-Where I live?" Dillan laughed. "Yeah, I suppose it's a bit odd, seeing nothing from the surface, but having someone tell you there's a whole station down here."
She fumbled around on the console, finally drawing out a note she'd written down years ago. Three very specific numbers.
"My coordinates are 77-21-08. And um—" She'd never actually done this before. "Well, you'll just have to go there and look for a great bloody disk rising outta the sea."
She'd almost said more in her excitement. But on account of not knowing them in the slightest, she'd tried to keep it vague. She'd be able to see them from a mile away. After all, there was nothing else above the surface.
"Do you need me to repeat that?" She tapped her finders, keeping them well away from the 'end transmission' icon.
"No, that was adequate," the voice who wasn't Pavel Chekov said.
When they ended the connection, she fell into her chair. So caught up in the (she presumed) human contact, she hadn't realized how much her hands were shaking. She tucked them under her thighs to stop the tremors.
In the fifteen minutes it took her security field to detect the shuttle, she debated the many possible problems that had arisen.
Tell them or not tell them? She had a preference for the latter; it posed a less immediate rejection.
Her gait slanted to the right as she went for her rifle. Despite the cordial chat they'd just had, she could hardly trust the ones who came down. The fear had already settled in.
As she tried to slide it on, the jacket sleeve caught on a ridge on her right arm. Dillan swore, tugging at it until the overlapping metal released the sleeve. She wouldn't tell them about her prosthetics just yet; the skin grafts hid them pretty well.
She pulled a hat over her blond hair—now released from its ponytail—and tapped the charge in her rifle.
Then she stepped into the staircase and pressed the button to release the top hatch.
"Back away from me!" Dillan said, phaser raised at chest level. "And away from your ship," she continued, just noticing it in the corner of her left eye.
The three of them—one woman and two men—complied to each command with expressions of surprise on their faces.
Had they expected her to be smaller? How old had she been when she'd recorded that SOS? Ten or eleven, to be certain; she hadn't listened to it in years. She'd just let it play for no one to hear.
"If you're armed, give them up now." She half-hoped they were and half hoped they weren't. She could use some extra artillery—hers barely functioned.
"We are armed," one of the men in gold said. She focused her target on him as he stepped forward. "But we're just the landing party… Here to… help." He held out a hand, and something else caught Dillan's eye.
"My name's Jim," he said. Dillan stared at the shiny object pinned to his chest.
"You- You're with Starfleet," she said. The Federation. The phaser fell to her side. Her stance relaxed, if only enough to show them she wasn't really a threat.
Jim lowered his hands as well. "And you're the girl from the distress call."
"Yeah…" Dillan took off her hat, and they finally saw her face—unobscured for the first time.
Her blue eyes glinted with sadness in the midday sun, her next words barely escaping the scoff that followed:
"You're about ten years late on that one."