Inevitable Change - PT2

Posted on Tue Mar 8th, 2022 @ 6:17pm by
Edited on on Thu Mar 10th, 2022 @ 4:56am

546 words; about a 3 minute read

Mission: Episode 112 - A Trip to Remember
Location: SS Teneran - On Route to Trill
Timeline: Current

Vox was asleep in his bed. Teneran had control of the ship on autopilot. All was going well in Vox's journey to his home world. But, unknown to him, things were about to take a turn for the worse that would drastically change everything.

Vox got out of bed, it was 03:17. He was somewhat restless so decided to get a glass of water. He approached the replicator but before he could request anything, the ship shook violently and the red alert stripes in his quarters started pulsing with the klaxon in the background. Vox left his quarters as the ship shook again, the lights went out, The corridor was now only lit by the pulsing red glow from the alert status strips.

"Teneran" Vox called out. No reply. He approached a door in the direction of the bridge. The door remained shut. Pulling a panel from the wall next to the door, he engaged the emergency manual release lever and slowly cranked the doors open. As the doors opened he could feel heat coming from the compartment behind the doors followed by smoke. He could see through the partially open doors and what see saw filled him with dread. The corridor ahead was a total wreck. metal structures all over the place, bent and twisted and in the midst of the mess, fire.

He tried to shut the doors but they were stuck in their partially opened position. The smoke was billowing out of the other corridor along with thick smoke. It was clear to Vox that something catastrophic had happened and he appeared to be trapped. He got onto all fours to try and avoid the smoke slowly filling the dark corridor. He moved carefully along it as he hoped he could access an emergency coms panel at the far end.

He was now coughing and struggling to breath. He reached the comms panel which still had power from the emergency reserves. Tapping it he activated the automated distress signal. He slumped into the corner of the corridor and as he began to loose consciousness, he couldn't help feel alone and helpless.

The damage to his ship was far worse than he could imagine as luck for him had run out for his ship had managed to struck a quantum filament. Power had failed, the ship had a hull breach and to make matters worse, the quantum resonance of the filament had caused a polarity shift in the ship's antimatter containment fields. which were now progressively deteriorating. If nothing was done, the ship would soon, in about 60 minutes, suffer a warp core breach.


---- Not many light years away ----

The USS Rotorua was on her way to Starbase 400 to drop off a handful of new officers, one of them, Ensign Deezell Timurs, a young and very shy Trill female was in her quarter's going over things as her biggest fear was not making the right first impression on, what would be, her first deep space posting.

Meanwhile on the bridge,

"Captain, we are picking up an automated distress call. If we change our heading we can intercept in approximately 35 minutes. " An officer advised.

"Make it so. " The captain ordered.

The USS Rotorua changed her course and was now on route to the Teneran.

TBC....

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