[mission: totally possible - Lambda 7 was the easy part]
The mission itself had gone very well.
Lieutenant Nyota Uhura was pleased to be able to say so in her log as she and the other three women in the away team headed back towards the Enterprise in their shuttle, Columbus. The team had been assembled hurriedly in response to an urgent request for aid from Federation-allied Eresian colonists on a nearby planetoid, designated Lambda Seven. An unexpected seismic shift on the surface of the planetoid had damaged several of the buildings in the fledgling colony, destroying equipment and supplies stored within and leaving the colonists without a working water purification unit and low on food staples and medical supplies.
It would be several weeks before an Eresian ship would be able to arrive with new supplies. The Enterprise, however, was close enough that a shuttle would be able to make the journey in half a day, and was a large enough ship that it could easily spare the equipment that the colony required.
The only difficulty in providing aid was in choosing personnel for the away team. The Eresians, a parthenogenetic species, were all biologically female. The presence of biologically male humanoids was intensely disturbing to them at the best of times, and the orders from Starfleet had been clear: the away team was to be composed entirely of female personnel. This ruled out the majority of the crewmen who were included on such teams as a matter of routine.
After a little bit of scrambling, however, a group with all of the appropriate skills was assembled. Lt. Uhura would serve as cultural liaison and translator, while Lt. Christine Chapel and Lt. (j.g.) Tina Chapel provided medical aid and training and galley worker Leah Lawton coordinated supplies. And from there, the mission went off without a hitch.
The women arrived on Lambda Seven after an uneventful ten hours in transit, met with the colony leaders, and had the new water purification system running before dinnertime. The next day was a little more strenuous, as the away team worked in the colony's damaged hospital, helping the Eresians restore their own equipment and supplies - liberally supplemented from the Enterprise's stores - to regular function. Tina and Christine spent much of the day instructing the colonists in the use of their newer, more unfamiliar equipment, while Leah was kept busy supervising the transfer of materials from the shuttle and Nyota ran interference for the three of them as they stumbled over linguistic barriers.
But by the end of the day, everything was done, and done well. The away team enjoyed a pleasant, low-key celebration with the Eresian colonists - which included some music that Nyota was pleased to be able to record for later study - spent the night, and began their trip back to the Enterprise the next morning, almost a full day ahead of schedule. Nyota had just finished dictating the events of the mission for her log when the first sign of trouble appeared.
"That's odd," Christine said. She had been gazing idly at one of the displays on the shuttle's console, which was flickering through sensor readings taken from just outside the little ship.
Leah glanced at her briefly from the pilot's seat. "What is?"
"This reading," Christine said. "It's showing some ionization traces that look almost as though -"
Whatever she had been about to say was cut off by Tina's startled exclamation - "Holy shit!" - as an Orion raiding vessel de-cloaked directly in their flight path, clearly visible through the Columbus's forward viewport.
"Evasive action!" Nyota snapped out, her order rendered unnecessary by Leah's quick response to the threat.
"Raising shields," Leah said. They were already darting away from the enemy ship. For all the good it would do them, alone, outmatched and entirely without offensive capabilities.
Nyota slid into the copilot's seat, everything she could remember from her brief course of tactical training at the Academy scrolling rapidly through her mind. She took in the information from the instruments and began plotting a series of rapid course changes that would take them toward some nearby debris while - hopefully - keeping them moving erratically enough to avoid being hit. Leah's hands flashed over the controls as she responded to each of Nyota's commands, while Tina and Christine frantically accessed all of the information the little shuttle's sensors could feed them, looking for anything that could be at all useful.
It wasn't quite enough. The Columbus lurched, power stuttering, as a phaser beam glanced across one side, diminished, but not stopped entirely by the shuttle's shields. They drifted for a moment while Leah wrestled with the controls and the other ship swung into a more favorable position.
"Come on, come on, come on..." Leah's muttered chant was drowned out by a loud alarm that suddenly began lighting up one of the console screens.
"Yes, enemy ship, we know!" Nyota snapped.
"It's not that," Tina said. "It's a proximity warning for navigational hazard. Looks like a magnetic storm."
The shuttle's controls hummed back to life under Leah's hands. "We're going to smack right into it," she called. "Give me a new course, quick!"
"No, wait!" Christine said. "Steer into it. It might give us more speed!"
Tina shook her head. "Or it might tear us apart, or send us who knows where."
It was Nyota's call, as the away team's leader. "Do it."
Leah took hold of the controls as though she could protect the shuttle with the strength of her grip, and nudged them into the edge of the storm, narrowly avoiding another phaser burst from the Orion ship.
The storm caught them, dragged them in. The power in the shuttle flickered again, rapidly off and then on and then off as alarms wailed and the sensors spit out conflicting, impossible readings. The women held on, and did the only thing they could: hoped for the best.
Some time later, the storm released them. Well within the gravitational pull of a nearby planet.
There wasn't time to even attempt to pilot the shuttle back out into space - they were hurtling into the atmosphere before they could even process what was happening. The best Leah could do was to attempt to level out, trying her damnedest to bring them down somewhere that wasn't, at least, the side of a mountain.
A few minutes later, they came to a crashing, sideways stop somewhere in the midst of a heavily wooded area, moments after the power flickered out for what they all suspected might be the last time. The dark interior of the shuttle was quiet but for the panting breaths of the four women sprawled throughout the cabin, too surprised to be alive to do anything but gasp for air for a moment.
"Jeeesus," Tina said, at last, breaking the silence. "Is everyone okay?"
Lieutenant Nyota Uhura was pleased to be able to say so in her log as she and the other three women in the away team headed back towards the Enterprise in their shuttle, Columbus. The team had been assembled hurriedly in response to an urgent request for aid from Federation-allied Eresian colonists on a nearby planetoid, designated Lambda Seven. An unexpected seismic shift on the surface of the planetoid had damaged several of the buildings in the fledgling colony, destroying equipment and supplies stored within and leaving the colonists without a working water purification unit and low on food staples and medical supplies.
It would be several weeks before an Eresian ship would be able to arrive with new supplies. The Enterprise, however, was close enough that a shuttle would be able to make the journey in half a day, and was a large enough ship that it could easily spare the equipment that the colony required.
The only difficulty in providing aid was in choosing personnel for the away team. The Eresians, a parthenogenetic species, were all biologically female. The presence of biologically male humanoids was intensely disturbing to them at the best of times, and the orders from Starfleet had been clear: the away team was to be composed entirely of female personnel. This ruled out the majority of the crewmen who were included on such teams as a matter of routine.
After a little bit of scrambling, however, a group with all of the appropriate skills was assembled. Lt. Uhura would serve as cultural liaison and translator, while Lt. Christine Chapel and Lt. (j.g.) Tina Chapel provided medical aid and training and galley worker Leah Lawton coordinated supplies. And from there, the mission went off without a hitch.
The women arrived on Lambda Seven after an uneventful ten hours in transit, met with the colony leaders, and had the new water purification system running before dinnertime. The next day was a little more strenuous, as the away team worked in the colony's damaged hospital, helping the Eresians restore their own equipment and supplies - liberally supplemented from the Enterprise's stores - to regular function. Tina and Christine spent much of the day instructing the colonists in the use of their newer, more unfamiliar equipment, while Leah was kept busy supervising the transfer of materials from the shuttle and Nyota ran interference for the three of them as they stumbled over linguistic barriers.
But by the end of the day, everything was done, and done well. The away team enjoyed a pleasant, low-key celebration with the Eresian colonists - which included some music that Nyota was pleased to be able to record for later study - spent the night, and began their trip back to the Enterprise the next morning, almost a full day ahead of schedule. Nyota had just finished dictating the events of the mission for her log when the first sign of trouble appeared.
"That's odd," Christine said. She had been gazing idly at one of the displays on the shuttle's console, which was flickering through sensor readings taken from just outside the little ship.
Leah glanced at her briefly from the pilot's seat. "What is?"
"This reading," Christine said. "It's showing some ionization traces that look almost as though -"
Whatever she had been about to say was cut off by Tina's startled exclamation - "Holy shit!" - as an Orion raiding vessel de-cloaked directly in their flight path, clearly visible through the Columbus's forward viewport.
"Evasive action!" Nyota snapped out, her order rendered unnecessary by Leah's quick response to the threat.
"Raising shields," Leah said. They were already darting away from the enemy ship. For all the good it would do them, alone, outmatched and entirely without offensive capabilities.
Nyota slid into the copilot's seat, everything she could remember from her brief course of tactical training at the Academy scrolling rapidly through her mind. She took in the information from the instruments and began plotting a series of rapid course changes that would take them toward some nearby debris while - hopefully - keeping them moving erratically enough to avoid being hit. Leah's hands flashed over the controls as she responded to each of Nyota's commands, while Tina and Christine frantically accessed all of the information the little shuttle's sensors could feed them, looking for anything that could be at all useful.
It wasn't quite enough. The Columbus lurched, power stuttering, as a phaser beam glanced across one side, diminished, but not stopped entirely by the shuttle's shields. They drifted for a moment while Leah wrestled with the controls and the other ship swung into a more favorable position.
"Come on, come on, come on..." Leah's muttered chant was drowned out by a loud alarm that suddenly began lighting up one of the console screens.
"Yes, enemy ship, we know!" Nyota snapped.
"It's not that," Tina said. "It's a proximity warning for navigational hazard. Looks like a magnetic storm."
The shuttle's controls hummed back to life under Leah's hands. "We're going to smack right into it," she called. "Give me a new course, quick!"
"No, wait!" Christine said. "Steer into it. It might give us more speed!"
Tina shook her head. "Or it might tear us apart, or send us who knows where."
It was Nyota's call, as the away team's leader. "Do it."
Leah took hold of the controls as though she could protect the shuttle with the strength of her grip, and nudged them into the edge of the storm, narrowly avoiding another phaser burst from the Orion ship.
The storm caught them, dragged them in. The power in the shuttle flickered again, rapidly off and then on and then off as alarms wailed and the sensors spit out conflicting, impossible readings. The women held on, and did the only thing they could: hoped for the best.
Some time later, the storm released them. Well within the gravitational pull of a nearby planet.
There wasn't time to even attempt to pilot the shuttle back out into space - they were hurtling into the atmosphere before they could even process what was happening. The best Leah could do was to attempt to level out, trying her damnedest to bring them down somewhere that wasn't, at least, the side of a mountain.
A few minutes later, they came to a crashing, sideways stop somewhere in the midst of a heavily wooded area, moments after the power flickered out for what they all suspected might be the last time. The dark interior of the shuttle was quiet but for the panting breaths of the four women sprawled throughout the cabin, too surprised to be alive to do anything but gasp for air for a moment.
"Jeeesus," Tina said, at last, breaking the silence. "Is everyone okay?"