Stuck In Paradise

Posted on Tue May 14th, 2024 @ 6:04am by Ensign Ilan Ocara & Private 1st Class Cedrik Feng & Captain Ivan Petrov & Lieutenant Dr. Daniel Brasken & Lieutenant Commander Yana Petrova & Lieutenant JG Corvin Hartjin & Ensign Mika Petrova & Sergeant Bryana "Bri" Locke

Mission: S1 Episode 8: Resolutions
Location: Gamma Eridine II
Timeline: Date 2371-10-13 at 0900
3946 words - 7.9 OF Standard Post Measure

Captain’s Log. Stardate 48781.8
It’s been two weeks since we departed Sikaris. We’ve all had time to cope with the loss of our opportunity to get home in a hurry, but somehow, traveling under conventional warp power still stings. Moral is low, and I wish I could say it’ll be getting better soon, but somehow, I doubt it. To many dreams of seeing loved ones were resurfaced.

No matter how heavy our hearts have become, the journey must continue. Before we hunker down for some serious travel time, we’re making a quick pit stop at a world in the system the locals call Gamma Eridine. It’s a beautiful M-Class world, but appears to be uninhabited by intelligent life or large apex predators. I’ve decided to allow our scientists to tinker for a few hours just to see what makes the planet tick, and have permitted some junior staff to go down and stretch their legs as well.

Gamma Eridine II

Sixteen transporter beams shimmered into existence in a lovely green clearing between the trees. It was a beautiful day, and the son was shining its bright morning rays on the short grass. Soon, the faces of the Away Team became visible through the haze and, after a short pause for adjustment, heads started turning and observing the sight.

“Well, this seems to be a hidden gem.” Commander Petrona said, her silver eyes scanning the groupings of alien flowers on the margin of the clearing. “I find myself even more skeptical than before, strangely enough.”

“I think it’s a gift from the gods.” Mika said with a smile, pulling out her medical tricirder and beginning to scan for biological life. The four women in science blues grouped together naturally with Ensign Ocara and Petty Officer Pavlovna standing together with Ensign Petrona and Crewman Scott.

“We’ll see, won’t we? We always see.” Yana said, looking up at the sky. “Ilan. What do your scans tell you?”

"A lot of thick forest growth. Various types of trees though most appear to be deciduous in nature. I’m not reading any large animals in the immediate area, but there are plenty of insects and birds as well as various smaller mammals and reptiles.” Ilan read off what she was reading, but once she had she brought her gaze back up to just look around and admire the beauty of the place. Sikaris had been wonderful, but there was something about untamed nature that nothing else could ever compare.

“Then where are the people?” Luna Pavlovna said. As the senior science technician aboard Vengeance, she had insisted on coming down too. They didn’t do much exploration in the Empire anymore, and the young Russian wanted to see the first of everything. “Idyllic conditions, safety, and no people.”

"Or maybe they've just gotten really good at hiding." Corvin commented as his steely gaze took in their surroundings, rifle held at the ready in front of him. He didn't trust a world that looked this perfect especially since every time they seemed to find something idyllic and wonderful, that was merely the surface and once scratched the real shit started bubbling up. "Keep it tight people, we don't know what all might be down here, if its not the animals, it could be the plants."

He tapped the Vidiian medical scanner that had been adapted for use on Terran phaser rifles as he looked around, using it to take in what could be picked up in the jungle beyond.

“I wouldn’t worry too much about there not being people. For all we know this could be some sort of preserve owned by another species.” Ilan offered up with a smile.

"Perhaps you're right, Ilan. But we will be careful just in case. I don't want anyone wandering off without a security officer. If they're hiding, I don't want them to find us defenseless." Yana said, crossing her arms under her chest and gazing at the serene blue of the sky. Just a split second after she finished speaking, however, she felt the pinch of a sting on the back of her neck. She reached back with lightning-fast reflexes and made contact with whatever insect was responsible for the bite. When she pulled back her hand, it was bloody, and had remains of black and green body on it. "Space travel had almost made me forget how much I hate bugs."

In the midst of their conversation, a faint rustling could be heard in a nearby bush. As the world had been nearly silent up until then, it drew the attention of the entire Away Team. Immediately, tricorders went up and scans commenced in the direction of the disturbance.

"I'm reading a creature. Small." Mika said, taking a step forward without thinking. "Primate. Permission to investigate?"

Yana pursed her lips, but otherwise her expression was unreadable. After a few seconds, however, she nodded.

"Ilan, Mika. Take a look. Corvin, go with them and make sure it's safe."

"Copy ma'am, murder the monkey if it decides to get uppity." He smirked and moved ahead of them carefully as he visually scanned their surrounding for a threat of any kind as they made their way toward the visiting monkey.

“Step lightly, Corvin. We don’t want to scare it off.” Ilan spoke up from behind the man. She didn’t really find his presence necessary to go find the creature, but she supposed Yana wanted Mika to be kept extra safe.

The three of them left the clearing with careful feet, following Mika and her tricorder into the trees. After several paces, they came to the primate sitting on the grass, looking at them in a way that could easily be interpreted as "curious". Mika smiled and immediately lowered herself down to his level, putting the tricorder away and extending a hand to him.

"On takoy milyy. Look at the little man." she said in a gentle, motherly voice which was so natural to her. "Hey there, little guy. Do you want to be friends?"

Corvin stayed standing making sure that he had a clear shot on the primate as Mika tried to coax it over, he felt that if her last name wasn't Petrov, she'd have been chewed up hard by the galaxy, but he kept that thought entirely private as he carefully hefted his weapon, ready to shoot.

Ilan hung back between Mika and Corvin. Her own tricorder was still out and she was focused on the research task rather than how cute the creature was. She liked to have fun, but work was work for her - at least when she had the Captain's wife proverbially looming over her shoulder. The woman didn't strike her as someone who liked to take enjoyment from the little things.

Mika's smile faded quickly as a rather large insect landed on her extended arm and a sting caused her to flinch and scowl.

"Ouch!" she said, but she didn't smack it as her mother had. Instead, she just gave her arm a shake, and it flew away. As soon as she shook, however, the animal they were courting jumped back, turned, and booked it into the trees. "Darnit..."

"Fuck," Corvin turned his attention to the fleeing insect, but lost it in the jungle as he looked back to Mika and then looked to Ilan. "Is she going to be okay? Any issues from the sting?"

"Corvin, it happened .2 seconds ago, how am I supposed to know?" Ilan snorted and reached out to lift Mika's arm and inspected the area where she was stung that seemed to be swelling, but not with concerning rapidity. She looked at Mika.

"Feel anything?"

Getting stung was never fun, but it was hardly a bit deal. Mika rubbed her arm gently in the place where the insect had been, minding the bump with care.

"It hurts a bit, but it's already getting better." Mika said, before turning her gaze back to the woods and sighing. "I guess our friend has scurried off. Should we get back?"

Corvin stood watch as Ilan checked on Mika, though soon he was distracted by the buzzing of an insect, swatting at it to try and get it to go away as he growled in annoyance. He ducked away, but not before the creature landed on his neck; before it could do anything else, he caught it in his hand. It was then that he felt the sharp pain as it stung his palm, reflexively causing him to crush it, the only indication being a slight grimace before he opened his hands to examine the gooey remains of the alien bug.

"Its a little dead, but maybe you could still use it as a sample." He offered while holding out his hand towards Ilan.

"Uhh..." Ilan blinked at the remains of the insect. "Just uh... hold on to that for me Corv- ow!"

She reached back to the back of her bare thigh and slapped it, though she missed the insect that had bitten her. "Okay, yes, let's get the hell out of this spot. I'm not about to get eaten alive. It reminds me of Florida during mosquito season."

1200 Hours
It had been three hours of searching the planet and sojourning through the lightly-treed woods. The scans had produced very little of scientific interest and had basically indicated that the world was as bland an M-Class world as they come. There was still nothing to explain the lack of sentient life, but this was a curiosity they had very little time to pursue. The science team had been ordered to gather as much information as they could for their own enquiries back in the Fleet, but Yana had enough of watching them scanning leaves. At the very least, it had been a nice rest with nature and sunshine.

As they gathered back in the clearing between the trees, Yana tapped her commbadge.

"Away Team to Vengeance," she said, her breathing slightly heavy from all of the walking, "we've got everything we're going to get and we're ready to come back home. Beam us up."

"Yes, ma'am." sounded the accented voice of the Transporter Chief as she locked on to their signals. "Energizing."

The 16 Starfleet crew gathered in the clearing were showered in the shimmering blue light of the transporter and dematerialized from the world. The view of Transporter Room 1 aboard the Vengeance came slowly into focus, but that process stopped, suddenly, and began to reverse. Several moments after being transported away, the Away Team reappeared in the clearing, expressions of confusion appearing on their face.

"Petrova to Vengeance, what's going on?" Yana called out, tapping her commbadge aggressively.

Bridge
The Bridge of the Vengeance was as lively as ever with the senior staff working normally from their duty stations and Andrei monitoring the Away Team comms from the XO's chair. When he realized something was wrong, he turned his mind from the PADD in his hand to the audio feed.

"The transporter process was automatically aborted," Petty Officer Cruz said over the comm line.

"Transporter Room, this is Commander Petrov." he said, lowering the PADD to the surface next to him, "What was the cause of the transporter failure?"

"My station tells me the transporter system detected an anomalous genetic reading from the entire Away Team."

Andrei turned to look over his shoulder at the Ops station.

"Sovas, take a closer look."

The Half-Vulcan paused monitoring the surface scans of the planet below as he pulled up the transporter logs to see if there was something legitimately wrong with the system or it was a matter of motivation to make the necessary repairs. "The biological contamination protocols detected an unidentified pathogen in every member of the Away Team, it appears to be registered as bloodborne, but it was enough to terminate the transport, their signatures are currently marked as being denied access to the ship."

Andrei's eyes shifted from Sovas to Lyra for a second, and the expression there was anything but the typical business-like indifference he usually displayed on the job. It wasn't lost on him that his mother and sister were among the important crew down on the planet and that they were sick with an unknown pathogen.

Lyra had returned the quick look with a meaningful eye. It wasn't lost on her that just the evening before they were celebrating the life of her deceased father and now Yana and Mika were seemingly in danger. She didn't seem worried, but offered him a calm, supportive steadiness.

Orion paused as he turned to look towards the center seats, no matter his feelings towards Andrei, that his mother and sister were likely in a life-threatening situation wasn't something he'd wish upon the man. There was a difference between wanting to destroy a rival and all they held dear and letting a random happenstance of the universe inflict that. Some part of him felt slighted by the fates that they'd try to play such a hand.

"Is it dangerous?" Andrei asked Sovas next, his visible eye blinking and his handsome face turning down into a serious frown.

"Inconclusive, due to the virus being foreign with no known predictive data on it." The half-Vulcan answer was crisp and efficient as he turned his attention towards the other man, wondering what was going through his head at the moment. That he was worried was obvious since this was the most serious he'd seen Andrei since the ambush of the fleet. His own curiosity about wanting more insight into Andrei's feeling was a curious thing to him since for all intents and purposes, the other man gave no fucks about him. It wasn't that he was wanting to know his deepest, darkest secrets but he was wondering what this situation was making the Commander think of, was he thinking about the worst case scenario?

The half-Vulcan's thoughts drifted toward his thoughts of life and death, the quiet consideration of mortality that had been festering within his mind for months before a frown creased his brow as Ilan came to mind, realizing that she was down on the surface, feeling a strange pang in his chest of concern and maybe something more as he focused on his console while trying to ferret out and understand these new feelings.

"Let's get it down to Sickbay, then. Forward the information now." Andrei said with a slow exhale as he turned toward the ready room. "I'll let the Captain know. Commander Cassiel, you have the conn."

The tall man walked to the starboard side of the Bridge and into the Ready Room without another word.

Lyra moved from her station when Andrei gave the command, stepping down and passing by Andrei just as he moved to the ready room. Her hand made brief, subtle contact with his hip as they brushed by each other and she took a seat in the captain's chair. Turning her attention to the readings, she spoke up as the ready room door hissed closed.

"Sovas, let's start scanning to see if we can identify the source of the pathogen."

"Right away, Commander." He acknowledge the order as he brought up the sensor scans and began to cross-reference the transporter log data with what they had already. "The planet has an extensive biosphere, it will take time to find a match."

"I could start looking through the biological pathogen's archives from the Vidiian ship to see if they may have encountered something similar," Orion offered from his station, his attention turning to Lyra as he for the moment sought to be helpful and bring their fellow Terrans home safely.

Lyra looked over at Orion and nodded. “Very well; do so. Both of you forward any findings to Sickbay so Doctor Brasken can review them.”

Sickbay - 1400 Hours

Doctor Brasken was at one of the lab stations, running simulations while he awaited the actual practical tests to complete. Some might say is was a waste of time to assume something and run with it, but Daniel found that so long as he did not tell anyone his conjecture is fact that it didn't hurt to get ahead of a problem. The trick was making sure that you are willing to accept the data that comes in and not try and continue with something that wont work just because you thought you knew where it was going.

He slapped his open palm on the console panel and cursed under his breath as the bold red letters scrolled across the screen for the thirty eighth time in the last couple hours. His ears constricted just slightly at the high pitch of the alert from the plasma analysis machine across the room. Truly he hated all the little sounds that accompanied working in any lab, but medical always seemed to be the worst. He stalked across the room to check out the results, waving away the nurse that was heading over to the machine as well. Daniel did not feel like discussing the results, regardless how how well intentioned the crew member might be.

Another curse was in his throat at the initial result on the screen, but one such outburst was enough for the time being as he reigned in his temper and worked the interface to get more of the information. Not only was the data bad, but the details cancelled out the simulations that he had been considering running and any avenue of a quick solution.

Daniel looked over at the chronometer and sighed...two hours in and he had to admit this was not going to be fixed quickly and the patients were just getting worse. He reached over to his badge and activated it.

"Sickbay to Captain Petrov."

"Go ahead, doctor." Ivan's voice sounded from Brasken's badge.

"Sir, I am forced to conclude that we are not going to have this resolved before our away team's status goes critical. Recommend immediate stasis to extend time to work on this problem further."

Daniel loved a good puzzle, he was not fond of the fact that he was going to be without his favored sounding board as he was sending Ilan into a pod along with the others.

Ivan's hesitation gave meaning to the silence and, when he spoke, it was clear he was extending faith to a very concerning situation. His wife and daughter were down there, after all.

"I'll arrange a beam down with operations, Doctor. You keep working to find a cure for this damn virus. We're not losing our people. Petrov out."

"Understood," Daniel spoke mostly to himself as he knew the channel had cut off before his first syllable was complete. He knew the stakes for certain members of the crew, even if they didn't know the stakes for himself.

Gamma Eridine II

It had been two hours since the failed beam-out resulted in the Away Team being bound to the clearing in the trees. They’d occupied themselves mostly by talking in small groups and keeping to themselves. It wasn’t until they were contacted by Captain Petrov that their attention was drawn to one single point of focus. The worry in his voice had been notable, but controlled, and the news they would have to be put into stasis until the virus in their body could be better understood hit differently for each of them.

Streams of blue brought the stasis pods down from the ship in four neat rows of four. Yana stood and frowned, especially at her daughter.

“I have every confidence Dr. Brasken and the rest of the medical and science teams will get this all sorted out soon. For now, we’ll do what we’re told and buy them time.” She said, her silver eyes moving to the stasis pod in front of her.

“Ilan, this is stupid.” Luna Pavlovna said under her breath, giving a slashing gesture with her hand. “We are Scientists. We should be helping to find a cure from here.”

"Yeah, Lu, I know..." Ilan sighed and rubbed her forehead. "But Brasken is playing it safe rather than sorry. I don't like it one bit either though. These things look like coffins."

"Fuck me, I hate stasis pods," Corvin growled as he glared daggers at the contraptions; while he could agree that they looked like coffins, what knew of his crewmates here on the planet knew was that he suffered from a condition known as stasis sickness that would leave him as weak as a kitten for a week after coming out of the pods and he fucking hated that feeling as he stood as far away from the pods as possible. "Maybe it's this planet's version of the common cold, and we can just wait it out, you know...sniffles, stuffy head...nothing serious."

He did not want to go into the pod, even if Brasken had ordered that it had to happen.

"I don't think anyone particularly likes them." Cedrik pointed out as he stood with his arms crossed. Like the rest, he had of course been bitten by one of the insects of the planet while he was making a sweep with Bryana and some of the other personnel. "We should do what Doctor Brasken thinks best though. I'd rather go in there than risk dying out here on an alien planet."

Mika eyed Cedrik uncertainly as well. She certainly didn’t like the situation, but she actually agreed with Brasken’s assessment of the problem. It was better to be safe than sorry when it came to their lives. She placed a hand on one of the metal cylinders and sighed.

“It’ll all be over soon, so we should probably just get in and do what the Doctor wants.” She said, her tone gentle but strong enough to indicate her own intention. She made herself the example, perhaps bravely, and climbed into the stasis pod she had touched, sitting upright and looking at the others. “It will probably just be a few days. Corvin, I know about your condition, but we’ll take care of you; don’t worry.”

"By the Gods, Corvin, suck it up and deal with it," Bryana looked over at the security officer, unimpressed by his reluctance to go into the pod. She didn't necessarily have any issue using them but the implications weren't sitting well with her. Not so soon after she lost most of the other Marines during the ambush that had gutted the Vengeance and shattered the fleet. "Won't even know any time has passed, taking as an opportunity for a chance to catch up on your beauty sleep."

Corvin glared daggers at the Marine, squeezing his hand as he resisted the urge to pounce and attack her, it wouldn't do anyone any good and he knew that Lyra would be deeply disappointed in him. He ignored her and stepped over to the pod to start checking it and run it through its set up cycle.

Yana frowned at the interaction, but didn’t involve herself. This process wasn’t easy, but there were worse things than having to endure stasis when it came to catching an alien desease. They could have to suffer terrible agony or disfigurement. She booted up her own pod as she watched the members of the away team climb into their pods one by one and drift off to artificial dream-land. Eventually, she climbed in as well and, with a sigh, drifted away.

END