Perilous Planet

Posted on Wed Mar 25th, 2026 @ 10:20am by Captain Shran dh'Klar & Lieutenant JG Kate Kono & Lieutenant JG James Phoenix & Ensign Janelle Barett

2,018 words; about a 10 minute read

Mission: The Shuttle Incident
Location: Runabout Bahamut

"The ship went haywire and the console blew up. I am treating Kate and Phoenix. They should be fine in a few minutes" Viviana responded to Shran's request for information.

The Andorian approached the controls, Janelle attempting to pilot the vessel as it appeared they were falling into the atmosphere of a planet. "That planet appears to be Class M. I'll scan the area, look for a landing site. Can you maneuver at all?"

Janelle didn’t look away from the controls, her hands steady despite the constant shudder running through the frame.

“I’ve got partial control,” she said. “Thrusters are responding, helm’s lagging about half a second.” The runabout dipped hard and she corrected, dragging it back on vector.

“I can bring us down, but it’s not going to be clean,” she added.

Another warning flashed across the panel. She cut it off with a quick input. “Recommend full brace. We’re coming in fast.”

"Class P planet. Close the plasma injectors or we'll ignite the antimatter and deuterium in the atmosphere. I'm detecting a chain of tropical islands, several are volcanic, but we don't have much choice. Can you land the ship?" Shran reported.

“Adjusting for those islands now — trying to keep us away from the volcanic signatures.” Janelle reported.

Viviana completed her treatment of Kate and Phoenix, "You are both fit enough to assist. Just take it easy."

"F*ck" Phoenix groaned quietly. He grabbed onto the tactical station in an attempt to pull himself up only for the runabout to shake, throwing him off. He quickly pulled himself up again and into the seat, resuming his station. "Our port-side nacelle is toast. We're venting plasma. Attempting to isolate it from our payload inside our photons."

The high-pitched whine of the dermal regenerator filled Kate's ears as Viviana swept the device over her face. The blue healing beam knitted torn flesh and neutralized the intercranial pressure that would have otherwise left her concussed. Kate blinked away the spots dancing in her vision, the acrid smell of burnt isolinear circuitry still filling her nostrils. Her crimson-stained Starfleet uniform—inteligence-grey now darkened to burgundy—clung uncomfortably to her chest as she gripped the edge of the ops station.

The runabout lurched violently, its inertial dampeners struggling to compensate even in the moments when they were back online. Kate's fingers found the control for the emergency restraint field, the shimmer of blue energy enveloping her torso as the craft entered the planet's upper atmosphere. Through the forward viewport, she could see the shield bubble flaring orange against the friction of reentry.

Training took over as her mind cleared. She released the restraints and stumbled to the emergency station, calling up the Starfleet standard survival protocol Alpha-Seven on the replicator panel. The device hummed to life, materializing equipment in rapid sequence: tricorders, emergency ration packs with their distinctive Starfleet packaging, portable shield emitters, phaser power cells, and medkits filled with hyposprays.

The ship's computer automatically calculated their needs based on crew complement and planetary conditions. Kate secured herself again as the runabout shuddered violently, watching as the survival gear materialized and was caught in the cargo retention field beside the replicator.

Now done with her medical duties for the time being, Viviana sat in the science station and tried to get readings of the planet as they spiraled down. "Reading a breathable atmosphere, though we won't want to be there for more than a few days. Detecting a wide variety of wildlife, no sentient species."

"Keep us on course ensign" Shran noted. "We are breaking into the troposphere, firing emergency breaking thrusters. Launching emergency buoy, landing thrusters are ready."

Janelle’s hands moved quickly over the controls as another warning lit the console.

“Losing lateral control,” she said. “Compensating...”

The runabout dropped hard, the nose pitching down as the atmosphere buffeted the hull.

“Altitude dropping fast. Bringing us in over the water.”

She forced the nose up just enough to level them out.

“Brace! Brace! Brace!”

"Easy ensign. That beach looks like a perfect vacation spot" Shran quipped as the runabout skimmed the water before the slammed to the ground, skidding into the aforementioned beach. Shran took a moment to collect himself, slowly stood, checked himself and then looked around at the area. "Everyone alright?"

"No worse for wear jefe" Viviana noted as she reached for her tricorder. "I'll start a quick medical check." The young doctor began scanning everyone, making sure the crash hadn't exasperated injures, or created new ones.

"I doubt we are getting this runabout out of here without the Washington. The buoy should be in orbit though, so they will be able to locate us, eventually' Shran mused aloud. "Survival protocol. Phoenix, take a look outside, secure the immediate vicinity. Kate, gather supplies in the rear compartment with the doctor. Ensign Janelle, you and I will do an assessment of the ship, starting with a full scan of the outside. I want you to check on the communication systems, and if they are active send out an SOS, and if not, send one on the emergency comm array. We'll get through this. Just like survival training back at the Academy, a tough camping trip."

Kate offered Viviana a reassuring smile despite her own trembling breath. The side door hissed open, releasing a wave of scorching air that hit their faces like an invisible wall. Kate's fingers danced across the environmental controls—dead screens stared back, systems offline since impact. With nimble precision that came from injected training from Q before he brought her over to this century, she wedged her slender arms behind the damaged replicator panel, extracting an emergency supply cache. The reinforced polymer container gleamed dully in the emergency lighting, packed with survival essentials the ship had automatically prepared before their catastrophic descent.

Sweat beaded along Kate's temples as she methodically transferred medkits with their distinctive red crosses and sleek, standard-issue phasers into her field pack. The relentless heat soon penetrated the crashed vessel's hull, turning the cabin into an oven. With practiced efficiency, she unzipped her once-pristine uniform—now marred with crimson streaks—and transferred her silver Starfleet combadge to her moisture-wicking navy sports bra. The discarded uniform sleeves dangled at her waist as she hefted water purification units and vacuum-sealed MRE packets.

"Should have kept my pixie cut," Kate muttered, gathering her glossy black hair away from her neck. She improvised with a supply crate fastener, twisting it into her thick strands with a grimace.

"You must not have grown up near the Gulf. Feels like a typical balmy day along the Gulf in Texas. Honestly, almost homesick with this environment. It's like vacationing on South Padre Island or Galveston" Viviana noted as she gathered the medical supplies and carried them to the rear compartment, setting an area aside to use as a makeshift sickbay.

Shran stepped outside as the heat and light of the local star beat down upon him. He looked up and saw the remnants of the flaming trail they had made in the sky, having ignited some of the deuterium and antimatter that naturally forms in the upper atmosphere of the planet. "Engineer's paradise, with a massive cache of naturally occurring deuterium and antimatter. We should have a mining consortium lay claim" he quipped, shaking his head. "Not exactly my favorite environment. Tropics are not friendly confines for Andorians."

He opened his tricorder and began scanning the outside of the runabout, paying close attention to the damaged nacelle. The damage was extensive, but what seemed alarming to him was that whatever had caused the damage had begun internally. They hadn't run into an anomaly but were instead looking at what he suspected was sabotage. But who would sabotage a runabout? He needed to gather more information. "Ensign, what is the condition of the transceiver?"

Janelle glanced down at the exposed panel, pulling it open further to access the damaged systems.
“Primary transceiver is offline,” she said. “Looks like the relay took the hit when the nacelle went.” She worked quickly, rerouting what she could, her fingers moving over the scorched interface.

“Emergency comm array is still intact. Limited range, but it’ll reach the buoy.”

She paused briefly as she triggered a diagnostic. “I can push out a distress signal now. Recommend repeating at intervals in case the first transmission doesn’t hold.”

Phoenix dusted himself before he gathered the gear to secure the exterior of the runabout. He moved over to the weapons locker and grabbed a phaser and a viewfinder to see if he could see anything else without going too far. After that, he stepped outside and began scanning the area visually and with his tricorder, while keeping his phaser unholstered just in case.

James moved slowly around the perimeter of the crash site while keeping his head on a swivel. So far there wasn't any trouble besides the crash, but there was a non zero chance that there would be some sort of creatures that would migrate towards the commotion as a result of their hunger. He stepped towards the edge of the beach on the water side. He scanned with his tricorder that there were hundreds of different schools of fish. He could see a large amount of them with his own eyes. He had found a food source if they ran out of rations.

The Lieutenant turned and climbed on top of the runabout after he secured the perimeter. One side had nothing but ocean for miles with the view of one or two small islands in the far distance. Another side consisted of the back end of the beach which turned into the forest on the island. The last two sides of the crash site were just part of the beach, which went on for some time. He activated the viewfinder and zoomed in on all of the areas to see if he could spot anything of importance that the team could use. So far there was nothing. He deactivated the viewfinder and hopped down to report his findings to Shran.

Kate's fingers trembled slightly as she clipped the Type 2 phaser to her folded uniform waistband. The weapon's weight pulled at the fabric, threatening to slip free. She threaded the clip through her underwear elastic just underneath where her one-piece uniform was folded down with the sleeves tied around her bony hips as a poor girl’s belt, the metal cold against her skin for only a moment. Medkit components clinked together as she transferred them to her pocket, antiseptic patches and dermal regenerator pads catching on the fabric of her interior pocket liner.

Phoenix's shadow fell across her as he hefted the gear pile she'd assembled. Sweat glistened on his forehead while he worked, never meeting her eyes. Kate's throat burned as she tore open a water packet and drained it in three desperate gulps. She passed another to Viviana, leaning close.

"Three weeks ago. That system diagnostic." Kate's voice dropped to a rasp. "Na'Riss calculated point-zero-zero-three-four percent probability of random failure." Her fingers dug into Viviana's wrist. "That's one in twenty-nine thousand, four hundred and twelve."

Kate's jaw clenched like a vise as she hauled herself back aboard into the ship's interior, where the air hung thick as soup at 38°C. Her flashlight beam jerked erratically across the scarred titanium-alloy bulkhead, casting monstrous shadows. She jammed her fingers beneath the access panel's edge and wrenched it free with a metallic shriek, the duranium corner warping under her fury. "It wasn't random," she muttered through gritted teeth, plunging her hands into the exposed nest of fiber-optic cables and isolinear chips she'd personally certified safe just last Wednesday. "How could I — or even that green-blooded Vulcan have been so catastrophically stupid..." Her words escaped in a venomous hiss as she traced each circuit path with trembling fingers. Rivulets of sweat cascaded from her hairline, stinging her eyes and leaving salt trails down her flushed cheeks as her lungs fought for oxygen in the stifling, smoke-tinged atmosphere.

“What the hell did we miss?” Kate muttered out loud.


TBC

 

RSS Feed