Chapter Three
Preparation for Disaster
"Well, you now know everything we do." Captain Archer concluded his briefing to his Command crew about the Situation Board at the rear of the bridge. Gathered with him were, on his right, Tucker, Reed and Sato, on his left T'Pol, Mayweather and, for the first time, Anlor. He had gathered together the 'late' members of the ill-fated landing party, in hopes of avoiding just such a fate as Tucker had witnessed. "Tactical assessments?"
Reed did not quite 'hmrmp', but it was explicit in his tone. "Tactical assessment? We are pinned down, separated into four groups and spread out by almost seventy meters, in a pitched nighttime battle with poor visibility, crouched behind inadequate cover with no means of retreat, facing an enemy with if not superior firepower then with the advantage of numbers, who can flank us from above and pick us off like ducks in a pond. Our commander is dead, the ship is under attack without its Tactical Officer or Pilot aboard, to say nothing of any other experienced command officer. The entire command crew was on the planet in a clearly hostile situation. Our tactical situation is … 'inadequate'."
"I take it you would not have been the one planning this defense?" Archer asked mildly.
"I should say not, sir."
"All right. Important safety point: If you are in a ground battle and you see a meter high wall, don't get behind it."
Tia turned to Tucker. "Shar-les, is another example of 'gallows humor' this?"
"I'm afraid so, Miss Anlor." Archer answered, allowing the minor, unimportant breach of protocol. "Trip, do you know what device you were working on?"
"Sorry, Cap'n, I've never seen it before. But its clear we couldn't leave until it was in working order. But whether or not it was going to get us out of there or do something else, I have no idea."
"Were you given any indication about time-frame?"
"No. Everybody looked as they do now, with one small exception of Tia's hair, but all I can tell from that is that it was sometime after about an hour ago." She looked up at him, embarrassed.
"Surprise you I was going to." Trip held up his hand, waving the thought off.
"Later." He looked at the group. "It was a world with three moons then visible in the night sky, though there may have been more natural satellites. I didn't recognize any star patterns – I didn't look. I'll try to find some correlation in the database on the shapes of the moons, none of them were spherical."
"What about the weapons?"
"Projectile weapons, no coherent energy beams. Small arms fire, some that sounded like rifles, some machine guns, at least one rocket. Considerable yield to that explosion."
"And the ships that attacked Enterprise?"
"I didn't get much on that, didn't see any fire. But there was considerable damage to our hull that didn't look like missile fire. The ship that finally took us out crashed into us."
"What was that, Miss Anlor?" The young woman had muttered something too softly for Archer to hear. She looked up at him, embarrassed at having interrupted.
"Anston, nothing meant by…"
"This is an open forum for ideas. If you have something to contribute, let's hear it."
"Umm, thinking about the moons I was. "'Spherical' nyas, Shar-les did say. Perhaps could 'fragments' they be?"
"Trip?" They could see the strain reflected in his face as he tried to summon up the image compiled in a glimpse and mentally 'put the pieces together'.
"It's possible. I can't be sure, but it might be."
"Check on it." Archer ordered T'Pol. If this clue were accurate, it would go a long way to not only identifying the world but the time, and maybe more. "Anything more on the ships?"
"At least one capital ship; three smaller. The capital ship was at point, the others flanking us. The ship that took us out came from the nadir, and looked to be the same class as the two smaller ones. I couldn't recognize the markings."
"Put what you can into a data search. We might get lucky."
"Captain," Reed spoke up, "I'm concerned about the circumstances that would have so many of the Command Crew on the planet at the same time. I know we did it on Beta Aragon 3 and frankly I was not happy then about it either, even though we were on a diplomatic mission."
"Perhaps we are again, and hostilities don't break out until we are there." Travis conjectured.
"Perhaps. But something doesn't feel right, and I can't quite put my finger on what. But it keeps coming back to 'why.' If there were danger, I would have raised holy hell about so many of us being away from the ship, and I cannot believe you would ignore my objections. If we assume it was not hazardous, what would have the Captain, First Officer, Chief Engineer, Tactical Officer, Communications Officer, Pilot and a Junior Biologist down there at once?" He turned to Tia. "Or were you there as a 'Resistance Fighter'?" She looked at him, mystified.
"I do know not."
"You did seem to be 'guarding his back' as he worked." She looked around the group, clearly lost for an answer.
"We can keep second guessing ourselves all morning." Archer concluded, cutting off the train. "The fact is, we were there, and we have to prevent –."
"Captain?" The relief Com officer called from the main bridge. "We're getting a distress signal. Ship in trouble, trying to make planet fall. Heavy interference on the channel."
At a nod from the Captain, the conference broke up, the officers resuming their duty stations with alacrity. Tia, having no duty station, backed into the rear corner of the 'Situation Room' as Ann Anderson resumed her place with a friendly nod to the Auran, who tried to make herself as invisible as possible. Hoshi resumed her station and tried to bring in the signal more clearly as the others did what they could to prepare the ship for whatever aid it could render.
No one on the bridge seemed surprised at this development. After all they had learned, it seemed quite inevitable.
"Coordinates coming in." Hoshi reported. "Relaying to helm."
"Travis, warp 4.75. Let's go."
---
As the mighty starship flashed through the heavens at its top safe speed, the fragments of information started coming in. The frigate 'SS Heart of Glory' had sustained as yet unidentified damage and the crew was trying to bring it in for a safe, or at least not catastrophic, landing on a Minshara-class planet, the eighth of the Eminiar system, which T'Pol's records identified as an unexplored world designated 'Vendikar'.
At the Enterprise's fastest safe speed, it was 19 hours away.
When Captain Archer heard that final assessment, something in the pit of his stomach clenched. The Enterprise was pushing itself to its limit; but space was so vast that even if he had ordered the ship to push beyond the safety constraints of the engines it would not make that significant a difference, not if the ship arrived unable to render any aid at all due to structural and engine damage. And yet, whatever was happening to the crew of the 'Heart of Glory', they were on their own for the better part of a solar day.
And while the damage to the ship was still unspecified – Archer concluding that the Com Officer was busily engaged in whatever could be done to bring the ship down safely if he were not already dead – he was morally certain that ship and crew were going down into a war zone.
"Captain, I'm receiving an automated signal now." Hoshi reported. A few moments later, she turned in her seat to face her Captain, her voice the grimmest he'd ever heard it. "It's the ship's disaster beacon."
Archer closed his eyes and concentrated on taking steady breaths, thought about not thinking. "Maintain course and speed." He said into the blackness.
"Aye, sir." Travis' voice came back to him.
--
'Disaster beacon.' Those words were perhaps the most ominous in a space farer's lexicon. A ship could be in distress, could be catastrophically damaged, could be putting out an appeal for aid; those were all one gross level of distress. The disaster beacon was a thing unto itself. Composed of the most obdurate metals known to science, screened and protected with its own shields, it was intended to survive anything short of a matter-antimatter explosion. It contained all the logs of the ship, all sensor readings, and could be ordered launched as the last desperate resort of a commander in a hopeless situation, or be left 'behind' when the ship was no more.
It sent out an automatic signal of a particularly poignant variety. It was meant to be found. It contained every record of the starship that surrounded it. The signal had no words; it didn't need them. To every space faring man or woman, its message was clear. 'Here I am, and here is what destroyed my ship.'
--
Archer took a carefully silent, deep breath, and let it out slowly and as quietly, opening his eyes. It would not do for the crew to see their commander rattled, so they would not. He had ordered the continuation of their rescue flight on the admittedly slim hope that there was something to save, but personally he held no such firm hope. He himself did not believe he would ever order the premature jettisoning of the Enterprise's beacon, and he doubted the other commander would. He believed that when his own time came, and that of his ship, he would be too busy fighting for the lives of her crew to even think about that device. Whatever happened, he could hope the ship's final record would survive, to tell the story of the brave men and women who served that ship, but he would never deploy that beacon. He did not believe he was alone. He turned to Hoshi.
"Send the download code. Analyze the signals from that beacon." He ordered his officers in general. "Be ready with your reports in one hour."
He got up out of his seat and crossed the bridge to his ready room. The door shushing shut behind him did not do anything at all for him. He had to think, and to come to a decision.
Lips pressed tightly together, he stopped, seeing the man who stood beside his desk. Well it was that he was so restrained, as it gave him a few moments before he trusted himself to speak. When he did, his tone was quiet and intense.
"Damn you!"