Star Trek Hunter
Episode 27: The Sword of Destiny
Scene 17: 'ul
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27.17
'ul*
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Months of rigerous training under Flight Chief Thyssi zh'Qaoleq, along with the occasional lesson from Star Fleet's most famous pilot, Captain Kenneth Dolphin, had given Jennifer Hopper confidence as well as new skills. Disguised as space debris (which there was no shortage of in orbit of Vulcan) the young flight specialist and her first officer made the transition from space to stratosphere on a glide path along with a patch of flaming debris. Flight suit training was not standard for Star Fleet pilots, but it was required for the U.S.S. Hunter's flight team.
The debris they were flying with might have come from several different spacecraft. The atmosphere specific flight suits had been made to order by Pomm Irons. The mission plan was totally Napoleon Boles. The U.S.S. Hunter's 1st officer wasn't the most pleasant person to spend time with, but there was probably not a more innovative officer in the fleet. And Jennifer, whose grandfather was an officer in the Romulan Star Navy, felt that Napoleon, the gruff half bolian, really understood her. Misfits. Outsiders.
The debris swiftly ablated in the Vulcan sky, along with the outer portions of their flight suits and finally the micro-intertial dampeners built into their suits. In order to avoid detection, they delayed deploying their triangular fixed wings until they were over the Forge. The fixed wings above them and landing skids below deployed simultaneously. While the Hunter's small rescue team were traveling very fast, the heat of Vulcan's hottest desert provided additional lift. The wings had been reinforced specifically for this sort of high speed landing. Additional parachutes had been added as well and Hopper and Boles used these for rapid decelleration. They skidded several hundred yards before coming to a stop on the sands of the Forge - blazing hot even in the early pre-dawn hour.
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A two mile walk across these sands was almost too much for Commander Boles, despite being half-human. Bolians were not well adapted to the heat. Which was one of many reasons they had chosen the pre-dawn hour to land. Historically, there had never been any sort of relief from the blasting heat of the Forge at the T'Karath Sanctuary in Mt. Langon. But with a growing number of humans, andorians and other refugees sheltering from the war in this holiest of sanctuaries on Vulcan, a large cool room had been installed and an even larger such room was under construction.
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"If I allow you to go through with this, I will be violating the agreement I made with Chancellor Greta that keeps this sanctuary from becoming a target." An aging klingon with graying hair and a gray beard stood among the vulcan priests. He was dressed as an acolyte, but appeared to have more authority than even the most senior priests.
"And you cannot keep these people here. The klingons will violate that agreement to get thier hands on them," Boles replied. "Not to mention the romulans."
"I am aware of this," said Worf. "I was the one who alerted Star Fleet to this situation. My point is that we can only do this once. A single use of this technology is an anomoly. More than once and it will be recognized. We will be very fortunate if it is not recognized the first time we use it."
"Have they observed the unaltered phenominom?" Boles asked.
One of the vulcan priests responded. "It has happened 14 times since the klingon assault forces landed. It is a naturally occurring phenominom. They have come here four times to investigate. They did not find the transit chamber. But we have only sent test masses to T'Khut of less than 10 kilograms."
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As her first officer went over the rescue plan with the vulcans who ran this place and the klingon who made it possible for them to continue running it in spite of the war, Jennifer Hopper tuned out and went looking for someone. The person they had come to rescue was being treated in a private room in the infirmary. She visited this room and found that Premiere Messick, the head of the Vulcan High Command in Exile, was barely conscious. By far the youngest vulcan to ever hold that title, Messick had negotiated a number of environmental truces between the House of Shozek and Senate of New Romulus on Vulcan, which had resulted in the klingons taking control of the Regar Sea Restoration Project under Counsellor Shozek.
Messick's teenage son was tending to him. Both father and son had long, dark red hair and thick red beards - colors not native to vulcans - gifts from a distant Italian ancestor. The son asked very quietly, "Are you the pilot? I was told you were young."
"Jennifer Hopper. You are Paul?"
"Paul Appian."
"Did Commander Nikato make it here with you?" Hopper asked.
"The romulans wanted him even more than they wanted us. He took a different route into the Forge to throw them off our trail," the premiere's son replied. "Centurian Javel was with him. But romulans aren't as well adapted to this kind of heat as vulcans are. And if the storms damaged their equipment, they might have gotten lost. This is the stormy season."
"I thought you were negotiating on behalf of the Senate," Hopper said.
"The Senate is divided. There is a large faction that resisted turning the planetary capital over to the klingons. And the klingons are no more capable of getting us safely off planet than anyone else. The meeting was bombed. General Shozek was badly wounded too. We're not very popular with anyone at the moment."
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Jennifer Hopper quickly returned to her first officer and asked permission to search for the missing romulan officers.
"The only aircraft you can conceal from the klingons are our propelled dirigibles." One of the priests was responding to a question from Commander Boles. "The storm front will be here in approximately 14 hours. Flight will become increasingly dangerous. And once the storms are here, you won't have many chances to use the transport chamber."
"Please ready the craft," Boles said, then turned to his pilot. "If you're not back in 14 hours, I will join Premiere Messick and his son in the transport chamber. We will only get one chance at this, so if you aren't back when the transport charge is ready, you will be stranded here. Probably for the remainder of this war. And it will be too dangerous for you to keep Nikato in this sanctuary."
The elderly vulcan priest turned toward Hopper. "Once the storms start you must land. A direct lightning strike to the dirigible could be fatal. Avoid the hilltops and the valleys. Electricity travels through the sands so shelter on the rocks if the storm catches you."
"On, not under?" asked Hopper.
"During the storms, sand turns to a thin mud and everything slides, including rocks. Sheltering under them is not advised."
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Hopper had trained on ultralight aircraft, but she had never before flown a dirigible. The three, independently adjustable, battery powered propellers gave some semblance of control, but the buoyancy of the aircraft and its tiny mass made it very much the plaything of the wind. While it was a bright, sun-drenched day in the Forge, to the west, violent, towering stormclouds were spreading darkness and lightning at the edge of the desert.
As the winds grew stronger and more erratic, the tiny balloon was buffetted, making it increasingly difficult for Hopper to maintain the planned search pattern or to keep her eyes on the sand. The winds were whipping up sand devils, some of which sparked with electricity.
A bolt out of the blue ended her search befire she was two hours out from the sanctuary. She had no idea where the lightning came from - it seemed to come from everywhere. The frame of the dirigible was designed to route lightning away from the balloon and insulate the gondola, but Jennifer's hair was standing on end from static. The lightning melted the batteries, leaving the propellers inoperable. Part of the frame broke and penetrated the bag, causing the heated gasses to escape and the dirigible rapidly lost altitude.
Hopper closed the canopy and hit the releases moments before the airframe and bag nosed into the sands. The gondola hit hard and rolled into the broken airframe and the canopy popped off, whacking Jennifer hard in the head. She fought hard for consciousness, her head bobbing and drooping. The gondola rolled and came to rest on its side, leaving her head hanging down at an uncomfortable angle. She had come to rest several feet away from the airframe, which was attracting multiple lightning strikes. Jennifer passed out to the roar of repeated thunder.
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*'ul (thlingn Hol - electricity)
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27.17
