Shran vs The Volcano

Posted on Fri May 8th, 2026 @ 11:38pm by Captain Shran dh'Klar & Lieutenant JG Kate Kono & Lieutenant JG James Phoenix

1,840 words; about a 9 minute read

Mission: The Shuttle Incident
Location: Planet

Shran worked on building something in the rear compartment in haste. He would've preferred having Deanna or Inara dealing with this, but he was best qualified currently present, so it fell to him. "Status of the volcano?"

"The current status of the volcano is —" Kate's eyes went wide, the porthole's glow painting twin streaks of orange across her face as another column of magma punched into the sky. She turned from the monitor to the porthole and back again, as if one of them might have the decency to be wrong. "— is that we are, and I cannot stress this enough, sir, completely and absolutely on fire." She pulled up a second readout, then immediately wished she hadn't. "Correction. Several fires throughout the island…”

Phoenix was hyper focused on prepping for the excursion, but he heard Kate. He grabbed the same items as the last excursion, plus a couple of extra items they could use in the current situation. "Excursion kits ready" he said, readying his own gear.

Outside, the volcano was putting on a show. Columns of magma detonated upward in brilliant, furious blooms of orange and red, raining fire across the landscape in great molten arcs that set everything they kissed immediately and thoroughly ablaze. Framed in the runabout's canopy window, lit by the strobing glow of the eruption, was the face of Lieutenant Junior Grade Kate Kono; expression flat, eyes tracking a particularly ambitious chunk of lava as it sailed overhead. She blinked once. Then again. Her colleagues behind her built stuff and things. She watched a tree explode.

"Grab the thermal gear lieutenant. Going to have to go into some rather toasty areas" Shran ordered. He left the device on the table and made his way to the sensors. The main flow was now flowing into the ocean 150 ft. from their location. Two additional smaller flows had begun from secondary eruption sites, but they didn't pose any danger to them at this point.

Kate walked to the table and found what looked like a jumpsuit made out of a conspiracy theorist's fever dream: reflective insulation layered over aramid fabric, heat-resistant gloves, boots, hood, and mylar faceplates over transparent aluminum and Kevlar. She held it at arm's length, tilting her head. "When in hell," she murmured, and stepped in. The zipper went up. The faceplate dropped. For a moment she just stood there, a shiny silver column, completely still. Then, from somewhere inside the suit, a decision was made. Her knees began to bounce in small, precise increments. Her right arm lifted, elbow locked and began to rotate at the shoulder like a radar dish acquiring a target—slow at first, then committed. Her left hand found her hip. She bobbed, rotated, bobbed again, the full thermal ensemble catching the orange strobing light of the eruption outside and throwing it back in all directions. She looked like a emergency blanket that had achieved sentience and was very pleased about it. She stopped as abruptly as she had started, reached into the recharging locker, and came out with her phaser. "Ready," she announced, to no one in particular.

"Out of that suit lieutenant. Only person that is going to need it is me" Shran said firmly. It was obvious the Andorian had made a decision, and nobody present was going to talk him out of it.

"Captain, you can't do anything rash" Viviana said in a careful tone.

"Appreciate the concern but call this captain's privilege. It also makes the most sense. I am the only one with the training and the science background" Shran replied. He looked back to Kate, "I'll be needing that suit. And I am not playing games this time."

A massive explosion could be heard. Shran looked out the porthole, "Ancestors protect us" he said in a fearful low tone. "Phoenix, shields! SHIELDS!" He ran towards the control center, "We have a minute at most to get the shields up. All power to shields, tie in auxiliary to boost the power. Shift the battery power to structural integrity. Everyone brace yourself. We have a massive pyroclastic cloud incoming."

Phoenix hastily put the shields at maximum; It would be close. "Rerouting auxiliary to boost the power to the shields. Battery power is going to the structural integrity. Shields are coming up to maximum, but it's going to be close" he called out. He braced himself for dear life.

Kate barely had time to wrench the helmet from her head before the runabout heaved. She threw herself over Janelle, locking her legs around her torso and seizing the edge of the supply table bolted to the floor. The pyroclastic flow swallowed the shields whole; a sound like the sky tearing open and the floor bucked and shuddered beneath her as she bore down, willing Janelle still.

The portholes facing the volcano went black in seconds, heat warping the outer hull with a deep metallic groan. A PaDD on the sill blistered and curled like paper in a fire. Then the full mass of the flow struck the shields at sixty miles per hour and the bow of the craft screamed upward, hung for a nauseating moment, and crashed back down into sand that was no longer just sand.

The ocean around the craft erupted into a violent churn, seawater vaporizing on contact and blasting outward in a scalding white wall of steam. Waves collapsed inward and were annihilated, fish and debris flung to the periphery of the roiling cloud that billowed and thickened around the invisible shielding like a second hull of pure destruction.

Shran looked around the runabout as the tremendous shock dissipated. It was obvious they had survived, but now they needed to deal with the aftermath. He looked to Phoenix, "Well done lieutenant. Assess damage. I'll start scans for the outside damage and conditions; make sure it is safe. Once I get that scan started I 'll check on the others."

Viviana groaned. "Que alguien haga que el giro se detenga. Quiero bajarme de este viaje." She placed a hand to her head and felt the dampness. Removing her hand, she saw it had blood on it, a clear sign of her having a head injury. She took her tricorder and scanned herself, "Not as bad as it feels at least." She looked over and saw Lt Kono atop of Janelle, "Assuming you are alright lieutenant, I require your assistance. I have a seeping head wound, a concussion, and my left leg has been fractured in two places. If you can get a hypo with vertazine, that will handle the concussion. Dermal regeneration will handle the wound, and the osteogenic stimulator knit the bones nicely."

Shran looked over the sensor data. The jungle had been obliterated, as had parts of the ocean. Then he say what he feared, the follow up was going to be another event, and they were in the path of the edge. "We have a tsunami incoming. It'll be here in 20 minutes. Estimate the wave will be 300 meters in height when it makes landfall."

Janelle was breathing, at least—shallow and irregular, but breathing. Viviana’s leg was the immediate problem. The fracture was bad, the tibia visibly displaced beneath the skin, which had gone tight and waxy and pale around the break, with a deep laceration running along the outside of the calf that had soaked through to the floor. Kate cinched a tourniquet two inches above the wound and checked for a distal pulse. Faint. She loaded the vertazine into the hypospray and pressed it to Viviana’s neck, then braced both hands around the fracture site, feeling the wrongness of it; the give where there should be none—and reset the bone with a single controlled push that she did not let herself hesitate before. Then she brought out the osteogenic stimulator and ran it slowly along the fracture line, watching the readings stabilize, before releasing the tourniquet and drawing the dermal regenerator in long careful passes over the wound until the skin closed behind it like a seam.

Kate thrust the blood-soaked tourniquet and regenerators back into Viviana's hands, her lips pulled wide across her teeth in a smug grin.

"Shields fell to 45 percent. Our hull is still no worse than when we got here. Power is fluctuating across all systems. I don't know if we'll get the shields any higher after that fiery kerfuffle" Phoenix reported to Shran. "I'm trying to compensate for the fluctuations."

"I think you let out your inner Sulu back there sir" James quipped without taking his eyes off of his console, trying to lighten the mood.

"Sulu..."Shran said nostalgically, "I always thought I was more like Kirk. Kirk and his whole senior staff of misfits from most people's perspectives these days, but they are all honored everywhere by StarFleet and the Federation. I wouldn't be surprised if they all have ships named after them one day." He looked at the sensors once again, "Focus on getting power to the shields, and shift the reserves to the transporter. You may have to beam me back." The Andorian turned and headed to the back compartment.

"You do good work" Viviana noted, tricorder in hand. "We might want to sign you up to be a field medic. I'll check on Janelle in a few minutes. I shouldn't put too much weight on this leg for a while, give the bone and surrounding tissue time to recover."

"Everyone alright back here?" Shran questioned.

"We will be. I would like to lodge a complaint. I didn't order an unplanned festival ride" Viviana quipped.

"My apologies doctor. I will be sure to tell the volcano of your disdain for this inconvenient weather we have been experiencing. I should probably not tell you that we have an incoming tsunami" Shran replied with a smirk. "Kate, I need you to help Phoenix with the shields and power systems. You are on the clock, 18 minutes at this point."

"Aye" James said in response to the Captain's statement about being on the clock. "To be fair sir, you seem more of a mixture between Kirk and Picard. I mention Sulu because I once had a history lesson at the academy all about tactical timing and the Excelsior and the Praxis incident came up numerous times, minus the top-secret bits" he added; probably unnecessarily.

Shran grabbed the thermal suit, grabbed the device he had been working on, checked it quickly, holstered a phaser, and exited the runabout. On his way out he looked to Phoenix and Kate working on the ship system's, "14 minutes. You put the shields up as best you can. Monitor the comm, I'll try to send a message for transport before then, but if not, your duty is to protect the other's, not me. All that Vulcan needs of the many logic stuff. And if that isn't enough, it is a direct order, no jokes this time." He turned and began running towards the volcano, the airlock closing a few moments after he left.


TBC

 

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