Posted May 25, 2020, 10:01 p.m. by Commander Idari Solit (Chief Science Officer) (Nicholas Villarreal)
“We’re in the middle of nowhere, our equipment is broken, and the ship won’t be able to reach us for another fifteen hours,” Lieutenant Idari said to the Chief Science Officer of the USS Montagne. “Given the observed predators on this planet, and the fact that we’re separated from a security crew, I don’t see how you are so optimistic.”
The CSO just grinned, that broad smile that full humans seemed to give whenever they were about to be overly confident, suicidally brave, or incredibly stupid. Of course, Lieutenant Commander Joshua Shepherd was none of those things, so Solit was unsure what was about to happen. There was always a gleam in Shepherd’s eye, as if he was just happy that he was out exploring strange new worlds. Ever since relations with the Dominion had normalized and the USS Voyager had returned from the Delta Quadrant, the opportunity to perform such exploration had expanded quite a bit. Admittedly, the exploration in question in the Gamma Quadrant was due to strenuous negotiations.
This planet was technically boring - the flora and fauna technically had analogues on any number of M-Class worlds. The only unique part of the ecosphere was a water cycle where it rained all the time but where there were practically no large bodies of water. This miserable situation had led to the shuttle which Idari and Shepherd had used to come planetside failing in its takeoff protocols. Transportation was problematic at best, and nobody aboard wanted to risk a Thomas Riker conundrum if they could avoid it. The Engineering crew aboard the Montagne was aware of the issue, and was sending down another shuttle and a full repair team to retrieve both Science officers and the shuttle. In the meantime, Solit and Joshua needed to survive in an environment where the predators had learned to hunt with obscured vision, hearing blocked with continual torrents, and a sense of smell limited due to constantly moving moisture.
“You know, Solit, for somebody with such a varied background, your sense of adventure seems a little under-developed,” Lieutenant Commander Shepherd finally said.
Idari shook his head. “Look, Josh, I understand your excitement, I really do, but some times, there is no bright side to a situation, and right now, the bright side is that we can probably hole up in the shuttle for the next nine-hundred minutes while the security team comes to find us and the Engineering team gets us out of here.”
“Oh, come on. Nobody’s died, and we’ve got an opportunity to observe the local habitat in nighttime conditions.”
Solit shook his head. Someday, he would likely be in a worse situation, and would look back fondly in the time where he was only stranded on a new planet during the nighttime of the diurnal cycle. He hoped that such a scenario would not arise until far in the future. For now, all he knew was that his superior officer actually was acting suicidally brave. Hopefully, they would actually last the night.
(Commander Idari, CSO)
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