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Flight of the Phoenix
USS Nautilus, Shuttle One Crew, Sam Hayashi's Log, Supplemental:
Himiko and Matan are dead, but we're not out of danger. The koh was a being of polaric energy, created by a polaric energy disaster that destroyed all life on this world thousands of years ago. With her death, that disaster is about to repeat itself with a vengeance.
We have to get off this planet! My mind is still swimming in the memories the koh assaulted me with...memories of her old world, of Earth, and of the world she build here, on Yamatai. I have an idea. If I can hold on to those memories, and if they're still accurate, we may have a chance! God please help me remember! Please help us escape!
The clouds were clearing and the storm dissipating, allowing the light of the setting sun to shine through what remained of the walls of the ruined Chamber of the Sun. Under any other circumstances, Sam would have found the view beautiful, even inspiring. Right now though, there was a shimmering distortion in the air between her and the sunset. Lightning flickered within it. Carlin had called it a subspace nexus. Sam had no idea what that meant, but she knew what it was: it was the body of the dying koh, its energies now destabilized, ripping itself apart. And when they'd finished doing that, they would be released - and that would be bad: very, very bad. The same energies that had devastated the koh's homeworld and wiped out the rest of its species had been its source of power all these years. When that energy was released, there would be a repeat of the disaster, possibly much worse.
"We have to get off this planet, now!" she said. She tried to sit up but her muscles were stiff and sore, refusing to cooperate with such a large motion.
"Lie still," said Carlin. "You've just had a polaric energy being try to possess you. My guess is you'll need time to recover." She tapped her combadge. "Drel to Howard." There was no answer, only static. Carlin's face became worried. "The polaric radiation must be blocking the signal."
"I have another idea," said Sam, holding out a hand to her friend. "Help me up." Carlin helped her to her feet and with her help Sam limped toward the stone casket just beyond the shimmering death-shroud of the koh.
Carlin pushed her to the side, giving the subspace nexus a wide berth. "What are you doing?"
"Getting something," she said. "Hopefully it's here..." She reached into the coffin and picked up a silk fan, still intact despite the years. She opened it and held it in front of her face.
"I was really hoping for something more substantial than that," said Carlin, shifting under Sam's weight.
"Shh," Sam said gently. She whispered to the fan. She did not know exactly what the words were, if they were words, but she remembered them from the visions of the past the koh had showed her while inside her mind. Suddenly, the inside of the fan lit up with a constellation of tiny lights and symbols.
"What is that?" asked Carlin, her eyes wide.
"A remote control for a transporter," said Sam. "It's something from the koh's memories. It links with Himiko's starship, the one she used to transport people and artifacts here from Earth."
"Will that even work with all this interference?" asked Carlin.
"It should," said Sam, manipulating the colored lights by memory alone - and not her own memory at that. "The koh spent centuries modifying the ship's systems to perform well in high-polaric-radiaiton environments, which was pretty much wherever she went."
"And is the ship that remote links to still intact?"
Sam shrugged. "If it isn't, this is going to be one short trip," she said. Then she looked to Carlin. "The other survivors, they're in the shuttle right? The koh saw where it landed...though I'm not sure saw is the appropriate term for a faceless corpse-thing."
Carlin nodded. "I told them to all get inside. They should be waiting for my signal to take off. They'll never escape the blast when this nexus goes off, though."
"They will once I lock on to them," said Sam. She input the rough coordinates and let the remote refine them itself. Once she was done, she was rewarded with a pattern of lights which she recognized, somehow, as a confirmation of transporter lock on seven humanoid lifeforms. "Alright, hang on. Here we go," she said, and waved the fan. Carlin and Sam vanished from the Chamber in a shimmer of golden light.
They rematerialized a moment later inside the transporter room of a small ship. The technology and the layout was familiar, yet strange. The pad itself looked like a bulky 22nd Century museum piece that had been painted in gold glit and hidden behind a folding wall decorated with panels of embroidered silk. Sam and Carlin were crowded onto the pad alongside Doctor Howard, Alex, Crusoe, Atria, and Ursan. Sam pushed aside the folding wall, allowing everyone to spill out into the transporter room, which was little more than an alcove in a long corridor.
Crusoe was the first to speak. "Sam! Carlin! You're alright!" The bearded man hugged them both, then looked around. "What is this place?"
"More importantly, where is the Star of Yamatai?" asked Atria.
"It's destroyed," said Carlin. "Matan and Himiko are dead and we can leave the planet now."
"More like we must leave the planet now," said Sam. "Himiko was an energy being made up of polaric ions and now that she's dead, her 'body' is about to blow itself, this planet, and everything on it to kingdom-come." Sam pointed down the corridor to the left. "Take me that way," she directed Carlin.
"I assume you have a plan, though," said Atria.
"More or less," Sam replied honestly. "This is Himiko's starship, that she used for her journeys to and from Earth. She kept it hidden in a cave underneath one of the outlying islands. The Oni guarded it constantly and neither the Jem'Hadar nor the Solarii ever found it, so it should be intact and in working order."
"You said the Oni were guarding it?" Ursan repeated, raising his tiny disruptor.
"Were, past tense," said Sam, struggling past an obstacle on the deck with Carlin's help. It was a heap of steel and iron armor. As she passed, Sam kicked the helmet. Ash poured out of it, and more ash could be seen inside the other pieces of armor - enough of it to account for a vaguely human mass. "I don't think we need to worry about the Oni anymore," she explained to the others. "Himiko made and preserved them with her power. Once that was gone...well, let's just say time caught up with them rather quickly. It'll be the same for a lot of the ruins and other objects, but it could take a few days or weeks for them...you know, if they survive the big explosion."
"And how do you know all of this?" Howard asked.
"Himiko was in my head and she tried to impress me by showing me her memories, you know, while she was trying to overwrite my soul," said Sam. "This ship was one of the better takeaways of that." They stepped through a silk curtain and onto the bridge. She winced as a sudden headache came on.
"Are you alright?" asked Alex, who, like Sam, was being helped through the corridor by someone else - Doctor Howard, in his case.
"I've been better," Sam answered truthfully. Some of the memories were starting to blur. She fought to hold on to them.
Carlin ran a scan with her tricorder. "Your synaptic patterns are in flux. We need to get you to a proper medical facility immediately."
"Consider it on my to-do list," said Sam. She forced herself to keep walking and thinking in spite of the headache. There was a chair at the center of the bridge, though to call it that was an understatement. It was more of a throne, decorated with golden statues and engravings and lined with silk cushions. Sam staggered up the dias and slumped into the seat.
"Now that is what I want for my next ship," said Atria.
"Noted," said Ursan.
Sam tried to ignore them, concentrating on half-remembered preflight procedures for the alien vessel. Keys hidden in the armrests answered her touch and consoles along the walls, hidden by silk screens, came to life. "Move the screens," she said. Himiko had never needed a crew and had hidden all of the consoles from them, both to prevent her primitive passengers from doing something stupid and to impress them with her apparent magic. Sam had no such need to impress, and she knew she'd need help from compitant friends and allies before this was over.
"All of the controls are in some kind of alien pictographs," said Alex. "I don't recognize anything."
"I do," said Sam. "Touch the big one in the middle while I get main power back up." She turned to Carlin. "I have a feeling I'm going to need help with this. See if you can upload the universal translator."
"Don't bother," said Atria, already hard at work on a wall console with a slim decorative device she had produced from somewhere. "The Syndicate has developed a decryption and translation program that's a lot more adaptive, and a lot faster. All I've got to do is reset the default from Klingon to something we can all read and..." The device chirped. "There we go! Translation program's up. Preflight looks good."
"Navigational shows a clear flight path," said Alex, checking the now-translated display.
"Sensors are showing a massive buildup of polaric ion concentration 600 kilometers north-northwest of our position, on the main island," Carlin warned.
"Right, so now or never," said Sam. She pressed a half-remembered sequence into the controls in the armrests and the agile craft shot forward, skipping off of the sun-crested waves until it was fully airborne. Sam aimed the craft for the night and climbed, away from the planet, away from the system, and toward the edge of the nebula beyond.
She didn't have enough time to make it, though. They had barely cleared the atmosphere when a chime sounded at Carlin's console. For the peacefulness of the chime, the news it brought was anything but. "Polaric radiation spike! We have a flash at the epicenter, 39 isotons. Blast wave front is expanding across the planet's surface!"
"Well, there goes the neighborhood," said Sam.
Alex nodded. "That blast just took out over two thousand years of history."
"That's not all it's taking out," said Atria, responding to a chime at her own console. "The blast wave-front is expanding upwards as well."
"Confirmed," said Carlin. "Impact in thirty seconds!"
"We have to go to warp," said Sam.
"Inside this nebula?" asked Ursan. He shook his head. "There are subspacial rifts, gravimetric sheers, sirillium and metreon gas deposits..."
"Not to mention that this ship's deflectors aren't top of the line. They won't protect it at this kind of particle density," said Atria.
"Yeah, yeah, it's a terrible plan, but it's that or get vaporized by the approaching shockwave of death," said Sam. She pushed a new sequence into the armrests and the craft spun around on a new vector, aiming for the Nautilus's last known coordinates.
"Impact in twenty seconds!" said Carlin.
"Alright, going to warp! Everybody brace yourself!" said Sam. She punched the final button. The ship shot off at warp speed. It trembled as its deflectors strained to keep up, and this was only at Warp 1. Fortunately, Sam didn't think they'd have to keep it up long. "How are we doing on that shockwave?" she asked Carlin.
"We're losing it...wait..." Carlin swore in Klingonese, or at least Sam though it was Klingonese. Based on the shocked expression on Atria's face, it could very well have been Orion. "The shockwave's started propagating through subspace. It'll overtake us in ten seconds!"
"Accelerating to warp factor two!" said Sam, punching in the controls. The violence of the trembling increased.
"Not enough! The shockwave is accelerating faster than we are. Warp 4...Warp 4.5...4.7...4.8..."
"Engaging maximum warp!" To call what the ship did now shaking was hardly befitting. The deck bucked violently and sparks cascaded from overloaded circuits. The ship's structure itself shrieked and moaned in protest. "Twenty seconds to the nebula periphery!"
"We may not make it that far!" Ursan warned. "Structural integrity is failing!"
"Route all available power to the deflector!" said Sam.
"Already done!" said Atria. "The deflector's circuits were built by a moron who never anticipated this kind of strain. They're blowing out!"
"If we lose the deflector, we lose the ship!" said Crusoe.
Sam gritted her teeth. The shaking was making her headache worse, making it more difficult to concentrate, more difficult to remember. "Tell me something I don't know!"
"Gravimetric sheer, dead ahead! Sixty million kilometers!" Alex warned.
Oh, I just had to open my mouth, didn't I?! Sam chided herself and worked the controls frantically, slamming the craft to starboard. Unfortunately the species that built it had considered warp 5 a flat-out maximum speed for straight-line travel, not something suitable for slaloming through a nebula. Sparks flew with renewed vigor and one of the unoccupied consoles exploded.
"The nacelle pylons are buckling!" Crusoe warned.
The ship jerked backward beneath them, nearly throwing Sam from her seat. "What the hell was that?!"
"We...uh, just hit a pocket of sirillium gas," said Alex. "Both nacelles are badly damaged. We're losing velocity!"
"The shockwave is moving at warp 4.96!" said Carlin. "If we lose any more velocity, it'll catch us before we can leave the nebula!"
"Maximize power to the warp drive!" Sam ordered. "Divert it from all systems, even life support! Blow every system on the ship if you have to. We only need a few more seconds!"
"And then what?!" Atria demanded. "This ship is going to fall apart under us, and we don't have anywhere else to go!"
"The Nautilus-" Sam started.
"The Nautilus isn't here," said Alex, his face even paler than usual. "They've gone!"
USS Nautilus, Captain's Log, Stardate 81634.08:
With the destruction of the USS Endurance and the loss of the task force at Ganalda IV, our plans for a rescue mission have been rescinded by Starfleet Command. By order of Fleet Admiral Yanishev, we are to report to Starbase 234 as soon as possible to participate in patrols aimed at reducing the effectiveness of any possible penetrating counteroffensive by the Klingon Empire and its allies. This order necessitates the abandonment of seven members of my crew and one passenger on an uncharted M-class planet in the Dragon's Head Nebula. I undertake this action under protest, and carry it out only because the needs of the many outweigh the needs of my crew.
Following the...unconventional suggestion of my remaining senior staff officer, I have delayed departure for three hours while our probe observes apparent movement on the surface of the planet, hoping for some sign that our crewmembers might be able to defeat the entity inside the nebula and free themselves. As the allotted time has passed without result or further sign of activity from the surface, I must order the ship to depart.
It is my sad duty to report Commander Antori Drel, Lieutenant Commander Rejes Joslin, Doctor James Howard, Lieutenant Samantha Hayashi, Lieutenant Carlin Agran, Ensign Alex McKensey, Crewman Maiava, and xenoarchaeologist Doctor Mor missing in action on the surface of an uncharted world in the Dragon's Head Nebula. Perhaps at a later date another starship may come to renew the rescue effort, retrieving them or their remains. Otherwise, they shall be noted as missing, presumed dead.
The bridge was silent, waiting. Everyone knew what was coming, the order Sokar would have to give. None of them wanted to face it though. It was...illogical, but the sentiment was powerfully pervasive. Even Sokar felt it. It was only with great effort that he took his seat, straightened his uniform, and said, "Helm, lay in a course for Starbase 234."
The nervous human ensign at the helm, Claire Shuster, turned to him. "But, sir..."
"Three hours and fifteen minutes have elapsed: an unacceptable delay in following an urgent order from Starfleet Command during wartime," said Sokar. "Furthermore, the observed movement on the planet ceased approximately one hour ago. There is no justification for tarrying further. We must depart."
Ensign Shuster looked about to object again, but then she lowered her head. "I... Aye, aye, sir." She pressed the sequence slowly into the helm console at the front of the bridge. "Course laid in," she muttered.
"Engage," said Sokar.
The Nautilus turned, and the image of the blue-green nebula on the viewscreen swung away behind the ship. A moment later there was a slight tremble and the ship was leaving the nebula behind at warp speed.
Sokar stared at the star-streaks on the viewscreen for a moment, then realized his behavior was almost sentimental. He turned to the ops station. "Lieutenant T'Paie, as the second-highest ranking member of this crew aboard, you are hearby officially appointed acting first officer with a provisional rank of Lieutenant-Commander, effective immediately and until such a time as I or Starfleet Command should either relieve you of these duties, or appoint them to you on a permanent basis."
T'Paie was, of course, not surprised by this. Still she ran her finger along her cheekbone, where there was a small scar - a habit that in any other species might have been considered nervous. "It will not be easy to serve this ship as both chief engineer and first officer," she said.
"None of this will be easy," said Ensign Mordom, from tactical. "We've just left all our most experienced people down on that planet."
There was silence again as this sunk in. They had lost good people to the nebula, people that they needed now more than ever, as they would be serving closer to the front lines than before.
Suddenly, the science console chirped. "Sir, I'm picking something up on long-range sensors," Ensign Mark Delaney said. "It's a polaric ion explosion, originating from the planet! The shockwave is traveling through subspace at warp speed sir and..." He looked up, his expression uncertain, but hopeful. "Sir, there's a vessel of unknown configuration attempting to outrun the shockwave. It's headed for our previous position."
Sokar's eyebrows raised. He turned to T'Paie. "Hail them," he ordered.
The Vulcan woman entered a command to her console, but it beeped negatively. "No response, sir," she said. "The vessel appears to have sustained heavy damage however. It is possible their communication systems are offline."
"Sir, they're warp drive is failing," said Delaney. "They're losing velocity!"
"Helm, drop us out of warp. Hard about and take us on a reciprocal course, maximum warp," Sokar ordered. Shuster's hands scrambled over the controls, but Sokar had already turned his attention back to the science station. "Scan the ship for lifeforms," he ordered.
"Seven lifeforms," he reported. "Four human, two Orion, and one Trill."
Sokar cocked an eyebrow. That was certainly not the mix of species that had left the Nautilus. That hardly mattered, though. A second later T'Paie reported. "Captain, the ship is dropping out of warp. They're transmitting an automated distress call."
"The shockwave will intercept them in fifteen seconds!" said Delaney.
"We'll be there in twelve," said Shuster.
"That leaves insufficient time to drop out of warp, turn around, and escape," said Sokar. "T'Paie, can you perform an emergency transport while at warp?"
"The procedure is not recommended, but it is possible," said T'Paie.
"Then prepare to do so," said Sokar. "Helm, as soon as transport is complete, you will maneuver at warp 5, hard to port. Understood?"
"Aye, sir!" said Shuster. She was obviously nervous, but Sokar had confidence in her abilities.
"Transporter range in three...two...one!" said Delaney.
"Energize!" ordered Sokar.
T'Paie's fingers flew over the controls. "Transport initiated...complete! All seven survivors are aboard in Transporter Room 1."
"Hard to port, Ensign!"
"Aye, aye!" Shuster's fingers worked over her console. The ship groaned, its hull strained by the enormous forces, but it completed the turn successfully, leaving the nebula and the expanding shockwave safely behind them, while the strange crippled starship was destroyed.
A minute later, Sokar's combadge chirped. "Transporter room to Captain," said a familiar voice. "This is Doctor Howard. I understand we have you to thank for the well-timed rescue."
"My crew's skill and acting First Officer T'Paie's unconventional approach were invaluable assets in the effort," Sokar reported. "What is the status of the other survivors?"
"We could all use some medical attention so I'm bringing everyone to sickbay. Antori, Rejes, Maiava, and Mor were lost, but the rest of us survived, and we even made a few new friends," said Howard.
"I shall be certain to arrange for a security escort," said Sokar, thinking of the Orions. "I shall also arrange for a full debriefing once you are all sufficiently recovered. Sokar out."
There was silence on the bridge again after that, a contemplative silence reflecting, among the non-Vulcan's at least, a mix of sorrow and satisfaction. Not everyone had survived, but those who had were now rescued. The losses they'd suffered would still not be easy to deal with, but the survivors were a comfort and even loss was easier to bear than the burden of having to abandon them and never learning their fate.
Author's Note: Remember the possible alien ship seen in the mural way back in chapter 25? Here it is! Since the koh were said to be an early-warp civilization, I tried to base the capabilities and design of their ship on that of the NX-class (also designed by an early-warp civilization), and then imagine the ship had been pimped out by Japanese royalty for hundreds of years.
39 isotons is over one and a half times the explosive power of a photon torpedo—which is said to be sufficient to level a city (VOY: "Living Witness").
Despite the snatch of dialogue to the contrary in VOY "Fury," ships in the Star Trek universe are seen to turn at warp velocities all the time (TNG: "The Wounded" for a good visual example). "Fury" implies that it's not really good for the ship, but it certainly can be done. I've abided by that here, stressing the not really good for the ship aspect since both the Nautilus and the koh ship are flying museum pieces.
While transporting an object at warp was not deemed safe by Starfleet standards (TNG: "The Schizoid Man") it was nonetheless possible (as dramatically demonstrated in VOY: "Human Error").
The title of this chapter is not a deliberate shout out to the film Flight of the Phoenix, since I've sadly never seen it, but it did seem appropriate considering the whole "rising from the ashes" theme, combined with the fire (they are running from a gigantic explosion). Furthermore, if it were a shout out, it would be an appropriate one, seen as one is a survival story in a desert and one is a survival story IN SPACE! :D