…three days earlier:
"Don't look now, but Riker-like flirting detected." Molly giggled.
Involuntarily, Katlin glanced over. Riker-like flirting, indeed. He was letting the new scientist, Dr. Thesius, 'guide' his hands over the deep ice borer. She struggled to keep her eyes from rolling and adjusted her fur hood so she wouldn't have to see. "Flavor of the month," she grunted, and hefted her weight behind her own ice collection unit.
"Doesn't it bother you?"
"Why should it?" With a grunt, Katlin engaged the drive core. She watched in satisfaction as the collection unit extracted a flawless ice crystal and stored it in a single cryo case. She removed the case and dropped it in her saddlebag before moving on to the next extraction site.
"Everyone knows you're not over him."
"That's 'cause I was never under him."
Molly gave a bark of genuine laughter.
"Besides," Katlin continued, collecting the next crystal. "I'm dating Lieutenant Emory."
"He's cute," Molly agreed, "But Katlin – " Molly paused. "Do you hear that?"
Katlin quieted warily. There was a slight shimmer in the air, a sound like a beleaguered kazoo.
Katlin shielded her eyes with one hand, scanning the extraction site. It all looked calm – a stretch of grassy, icy tundra. The one danger was the sharp crevasse, a single wound across the landscape. It was the combination of sharp ice crevasse and its sub-zero temperatures that made these ice crystals so valuable to the beautiful Dr. Thesius.
Katlin frowned. No one else at the extraction site seemed bothered, but the kazoo-like sound persisted. If anything, it was growing louder. She turned her gaze upward.
There. A meteor? It was burning a bright orange, though, the wrong color for this particular atmosphere. At it was coming in hot.
Too hot? Katlin scrabbled at her side for a pair of binoculars. She flipped on the digital enhancement and trained her sight on the meteor.
It wasn't a meteor. It was galaxy class Starship.
"Commander Riker!" Katlin yelped. Without dropping the Starship from her sights, she pointed. "Ship!" The campsite was suddenly silent. Katlin adjusted the focus until she could read the call sign "NCC 1734-R!"
The relief was palatable, but temporary.
"Heading?" Riker barked from a distance.
"14 point naught 4 se-…" Katlin gulped as she read the last digit. "Seven." It was heading right for them.
"Riker to Enterprise! Fourteen to beam up, immediately!"
Lieutent O'Brien's voice cackled over the comlink. "Higher ground! The crevasse is interfering!"
Katlin dropped her binoculars and ran with the rest of the away team, slipping in the slightly icy grass. Molly tripped and fell infront of her, and Katlin reached down and dragged her to her feet. The kazoo-sound had transformed into a roar.
They almost didn't make it. The impact threw Katlin from her feet – it felt like gravity had momentarily reversed. The next sensation was the wall of snow – exploded ice – that hit her like a wave. She tumbled, unable to stop her rolling momentum, panicked and gasping for air.
It ended in a jolt, and Katlin realized she was still alive. Without a pained grunt, she began to dig herself out and up. She popped from the snow, gasping, in enough time to see the rest of the away team, in various stages of distress, emerge. "Molly?"
"Here." Molly wiped at her bloody mouth and stuggled to sit up.
Katlin drew a calming breath. "Pierce to Enterprise." She fought her way out of the last of the shredded ice. "Life signs?"
"Fourteen on the plateau." This time it was Data's calm voice that came over the comlink. "Two in the crevasse."
…two? TWO? On a galaxy class starship… Oh god.
Katlin stood and tried to run on the sandy ice shards, and slipped to all fours. She dog-walked her way towards the crash site, nearly tumbling over the edge of the crevasse. It was deep – impossibly deep – and the smoldering wreckage of a starship lay at the bottom. Two life signs.
"Pierce! We're beaming up!" Riker had hefted the sobbing Dr. Theseus into his arms.
"Two life signs!" Katlin protested.
"We'll beam down a rescue team!"
Katlin nodded with relief. Members of the away team began dissolving into transporter beams, and Katlin pushed herself back high enough, until she felt the familiar tug of the Enterprise. She shivered once in the snow, and then the transporter beam swirled around her, and she was gone.