After their diversion on the rec deck, the two offices resumed their tour of the ship, with Chan, as always, committing the passageways and corridors to memory so that she could get around the ship on her own. At the end of the shift, Chan returned to her quarters, and decided to turn in and get some sleep. It had been at least twenty-six hours since she had last slept, and as was usual, she felt deprived of sleep after being awake for such a prolonged period. Even when playing the Phaser Duel simulation, she had felt a bit sluggish and tired, and so was not at her best.
Chan closed and locked the door to her quarters, and turned the light down low. First, she removed the forcefield belt, powering it down and unhitching the buckle in the middle. She slipped the shoulder straps off, and let the unit gently fall to the table, while the wires connecting it to her body were still attached. She had to remove the top part of the uniform to get to those thin wires attached to a point on her abdomen where a bundle of nerves from both the secondary and primary nervous systems met. A small metal plate, which was one centimetre long, a third wide and two millimetres thick, was attached with an organic-based glue. This glue could be easily removed by using a heat source. Just under the skin were two hard nodules, one an orsotic tip and the other a nerve bundle. The skin above them was slightly red and irritated from the use of the belt, but that was normal.
Chan undressed fully, and then put on her sleeping clothes, a thin blue one-piece sleeveless outfit. She stood in front of the mirror, completely unconcerned by the hair on her arms and around the lower part of her neck, since for Odonans, this hair was normal and natural. She also removed the ornate braid in her hair. After combing the waist-length strands until they were straight again, Chan finally strolled over to the bed, and climbed in. From a bed console, she tripped the switch that plunged the room into darkness.
Chan thought she was tired enough to fall asleep quickly, but she found herself lying in the bed, tossing and turning. Part of it was the new bed, with its unfamiliar mattress and blankets and sheets, and the conditions in the room. The darkness did not seem right, and neither did the temperature. She was going to have to experiment with that. However, the main reason for her inability to sleep was that her mind was filled with thoughts. Ideally, she would like to be relaxed and her mind clear as she prepared for sleep, but that did not happen this time. Too much was on her mind. She had too much information to process and understand. A lot had happened to her in a short time. A lot had changed. She laid in the darkness, and had, for the first time, serious doubts about what she was doing. She was an alien on a ship designed and set for humans. She was not even a member of the political organization that operated this ship. She began to wonder how much responsibility and trust the captain would actually give her, and how the crew would accept her. The ones she had seen in the recreation deck were friendly enough, but how would some of them react when Chan became the security chief, and have authority over them? Would they continue to accept her? Chan wondered what she could do to earn their acceptance. She was already committed to doing her job to the best of her abilities, since by coming on board the Alexandria, she could ask for nothing less from herself. Being security chief and a senior officer was something she could handle, since she knew that her post on Alfe Kree had been much more demanding than this ever could be. Her only fear was that she was heading a department that was primarily known as a death trap. Security officers tended to be lost in the line of duty more than other officers, although in many cases, that was due to incompetence among the senior officers. Now, she would have to learn how to deal with deaths, and how to take responsibility for making the decisions that led to those deaths. That, she felt, was the hardest part of what she was facing here.
In a crisis, Chan knew, she could rely on the forcefield belt. The Federation did not have such technology to the extent that the Odonans had. The Odonan device could be powered by the Odonans' own bioelectrical capabilities, along with external power packs, and controlled through an interaction wit the nervous system. The Federation had vaguely similar devices, but they were large and bulky and difficult to control. Despite the best efforts of Federation scientists, they had not been able to duplicate the Odonan forcefield belt. In fact, the hardest part to duplicate were the microchips that controlled the function and the dilithium drawn out into fibres and strings and wires that were not fragile, due to a classified manufacturing process, that allowed that power to generate the field and to control it. When she was informed that she was coming to the Alexandria, she had wondered about how the crew would react when in a crisis, she had the advantage of the forcefield belt and the other officers with her did not. She wondered if they would resent her for that. She also had to make sure that she did not approach a problem or deal with a situation with the knowledge that the forcefield belts were a first line of protection should something go wrong. That first line of protection did not exist here.
Chan knew that all she could do was to slowly grow into her position and her responsibilities, and earn the trust and the respect of the crewmembers under the same way it had been done on ships of the Odonan Space Service and all other similar organizations. Trust, respect and responsibility were not going to be handed to her; she was going to have to earn them. She had to avoid doing things that were stupid or rash, and she had to watch herself when addressing the captain and other senior officers. She had been in command, and used to being in authority, so she knew that she would have to get used to being down a level again. This assignment, Chan knew, was a challenge, and her chance to get back into space and to prove that she had learned from all of those previous mistakes.
Sleep finally did come, and shortly thereafter, it seemed, wakefulness. After being so long on a planet, Chan was used to the pattern of night and day, and waking up with the sun. On a starship like the Alexandria, they could simulate night by lowering corridor lighting and temperatures and changing the lighting spectrum, but nothing could duplicate the feeling of waking up with the sun just starting to shine into the room. Chan missed that. On the Alexandria, the room would be in total darkness, no matter what time she got up. It might be possible, she thought, to program the lights to come up slowly, like a dawn, but it would never be quite the same.
After spending a few groggy moments getting the sleep out of her system, Chan walked over to the other half of the room and sat down behind the desk. She tapped in the intercom code to the security duty station, and saw the face of a young woman, whom she had not yet met, appear on the small screen. "Duty desk," she said, doing a double-take on Chan, probably because of her hair, the disheveled hair on her head and the body hair all over her bare arms. "Ensign Petra."
"This is Lieutenant Commander Chan. What is the current situation?"
"The Alexandria is making an emergency run to the Transcestus system. The passenger liner Colonial Explorer, which we were in the process of dealing with, apparently has run into a further, more serious problem."
"Why was I not notified of this earlier?"
"The bridge duty officer decided that since we're more than three hours away at our top speed, and we can do nothing until we arrive, that notifying the senior officers was not a priority. They'd know soon enough."
"I see. Is that how things are done on the Alexandria?"
"Yes, ma'am," Petra replied with some authority. "We got the second emergency distress signal, and we're responding. We can do nothing more right now but sit and wait."
"Thank you," Chan remarked, as she again gave herself a mental pat on the back for remembering the social nicety. She shut off the link and leaned back in the chair, wondering again about not being notified about the emergency. She could not argue with Petra's logic, since in truth, she could do nothing in the next three hours, and had she noticed earlier, she would have been awake while being unable to do anything.
She reflected on the situation. In three hours, the Alexandria was going to arrive at a passenger liner with a problem. Apparently, somebody had to know what the new problem was. Maybe it was something to do with the engines, in which case it was the engineers' problem. If it was a pirate attack of some kind, she thought she would already know about it. Whatever the problem was, it did not look like she could contribute much to it right now. The three hour wait until the problem would come to the forefront was certainly different than the way she performed her job on Alfe Kree. There, the problems would come at all hours of the day, and when she learned about a problem, she had to deal with it immediately. She did not have the luxury that she had now, where she could get something to eat, and even have a shower and get ready to go on duty. Life on a starship was relaxing, at least compared to life in the Odonan enclave on Alfe Kree.
After having a typical Odonan breakfast of a pancake-like food, with jellied fruits and a tall cup of tea, Chan took a sonic shower. The Alexandria was equipped with water showers, and most individuals, human and Odonan, preferred them, but over the years, Chan had gotten used to the sonic showers. She had spent so much of her time in substandard conditions, on the field and often on the move, that she was used to the simplicity of the sonic shower, on how it seemingly vibrated the dirt and grime off of her skin, and did just what was necessary to rejuvenate her skin and refresh her. As a bonus, it did not leave her skin feeling dry, like a conventional water shower with soap often did. Unfortunately, one thing a sonic shower could not do was clean hair, especially long hair like she had. Thus, she had to wash her hair separately, and then dry and braid it. Even when all of that was done, Chan still had an hour to go. She stepped in front of her mirror, and looked at herself in the mirror. The uniform was not the best, she admitted, with its asymmetrical flaps and lapels and the pins that held it all together. The maroon fabric, combined with the ribbed turtleneck garment underneath, was bulky and uncomfortable. It was just her luck that Chan had become a member of Starfleet when they had their ugliest and most impractical uniforms. Nevertheless, she felt she was ready to do her duty.
On the bridge, communications officer Soikken Manaburi took in an urgent message. Turning to face the centre of the bridge, the man said, "Captain, we're getting a message from one of the escape pods. It may be an elaboration on their problem."
"How are we receiving it?" asked Parouge, turning his command chair to face the communications station.
"Audio only, a repeater message."
"Put it on."
Manaburi turned up the boost to maximum and filtered it through a digital processor to clean up the sound. The message played through the bridge speakers, "This is Richard Leiter, a crewmember on the Colonial Explorer. The escape pod I'm on is not in danger right now, but several hours ago, another reported that their life support systems had failed and they headed to a planet in the Transcestus system. If you can, you should go to them first. We can hold out for twenty more hours easily."
"Is that it?" Parouge asked.
"Yes. They're repeating it on a loop, in case anybody could hear it."
The science officer, al-Calihad, spoke up, "We've received word that two freighters and another passenger ship in the vicinity are picking up the escape pods that are in space, but we can't assume they have the means to rescue the planet-bound survivors. We should head to the Transcestus system. We are best equipped to handle this."
"I realize that," the captain replied, turning to face the viewscreen again. "Helm, lay in a course for the Transcestus system. Al-Calihad, are there class-M planets in that system?"
The dark-skinned woman, with the short and way black hair, already had the information displayed on the main screen on her console. "Yes," she replied quickly. "The third planet is class-M. It's listed as a desirable planet, with a high degree and diversity of flora, but the fauna seems unusually limited."
"Course laid in and executed," reported the helmsman, as she continued to make adjustments to the controls. "At the most suitable speed, we'll arrive in just under an hour and a half."
"It will have to do," the captain said, as he leaned back in his chair. "Manaburi, get Lieutenant Commander Chan to the bridge."
"Right away, sir."
Chan, realizing that they were still some time before arriving at their destination, was at her quarters, making sure she had the proper allotment of Odonan nutrients, vitamins and proteins. She also had undone her hair, as she had the luxury of not liking the way she had done it the first time and was trying again. As she had the supplements, the communications console beeped, followed by Manaburi's voice. "Lieutenant Commander Chan, your presence on the bridge is required immediately."
"What?" was the instinctive reaction from the woman, despite the fact that the communications link to the bridge was open and in both directions.
"The captain wants you on the bridge right now," repeated the communications officer.
"I understand," Chan finally said, and then she mumbled something to herself about ship life and its surprises. She also had to remember that this was not an Odonan ship, and asking questions and having the reasoning behind the orders explained to her was not acceptable behaviour on a Federation ship. That was going to take some getting used to. Finally, out loud, she said, "I'm on my way with all possible speed."
"The captain says to move faster."
Moments later, Chan stepped onto the bridge, in uniform and with the forcefield belt back on. However, she still had her hair loose, and let it hang down her body, adhering loosely to her shoulders, front and back. Most of the men on the bridge had to agree that having her hair loose made her look more attractive. Chan knew that she felt more comfortable with her hair like that, instead of having it braided up like it normally was when she was on duty. If the captain complained, she thought, she could just bring up the "move faster" comment.
"What's going on?" she asked, as she stepped down from the higher level to the lower level of the bridge.
"A slight change of plans," Captain Parouge replied, as he turned to face the Odonan woman. "One of the escape pods has been forced to land on one of the planets in the Transcestus system, and we're hoping that it is the class-M planet there."
So that was the development, Chan thought. She wondered why Ensign Petra could not have told her that. "That would be a good thing to hope for," she said, a little numbly.
"I want you to lead the landing party that will be assigned to meet the survivors, assess their condition and begin to evacuate them to the ship. You'll need medical officers, security officers, what you think you need down there."
"I understand," Chan said, as she walked to the unmanned security station located between the two turbolift doors. "We're going to beam them up, and return them to a transfer point?"
"Essentially," replied al-Calihad, as she stood nearby. "The escape pods reported life support failure."
Chan turned back to the console, and her work there. She called up the various crew lists and consulted them to see who should be on this away team. She was still too unfamiliar with this ship and its crew to know the capabilities of each one and their landing-party rotations just in her mind. She had to consult the records. As she put the away team together, she was thinking of the one piece of information that she did not know, how many people were in the escape pod, and how many survived the likely harrowing trip down. Since the information had not been given to her, she had to assume that the bridge crew did not know.
Parouge had to be impressed in a sense with Lieutenant Commander Chan. She seemed to have a grasp on what she was doing, and her organizational skills were impressive for someone who had little practical training or experience in the ways of Starfleet. Somehow, the captain found it surprising that Chan was awake when she was contacted. It at least showed she was aware that she might be needed when the Alexandria arrived at the accident site. She seemed to be fitting in as part of the crew, and his concerns on how she might be treated when she assumed a more responsible role on the ship were being eased. It seemed likely that the officers under her would respect her and follow her orders, even if she was something of an outsider. They were, afterall, Starfleet officers and professional about their duties, even if their experience with exchange officers was limited. Afterall, Parouge's own experience with exchange officers was somewhat limited, as the Alexandria and the previous ships he had commanded had very few.
"Captain," Chan finally asked, turning to face the man. "Do we know the number of people in that escape pod?"
"No, unfortunately," he answered. "Capacity of those pods is ten, so assume that."
"I will."
Chan thought it was prudent to know the number of people she and her team would have to deal with, since those people would need to be transported to the ship. Civilians rarely if ever went through the transporter, and the first time could be uncomfortable, especially if they were not fully prepared for what would happen to them. Those in the space services were used to the transporter process, but most civilians were not. The landing party that Chan was assembling was needed to condition and prepare civilians for the transporter process, and to provide any immediate medical aid. Those on the Alexandria did not even know if a skilled pilot was at the controls of the escape pod or if it had been put on automatic, or worse, handled by somebody who really did not know what they were doing.
"The landing party is being assembled," Chan said, completing her work. "Those who are in it have been notified. How long?"
"Fifty-seven minutes," replied helmsman Natasha Sakapsatimolos. From where she stood, Chan could see the status display on the helm console, in part due to her sharp Odonan eyes, and could see that the Alexandria was continuing to hold at warp twelve.
"I'll be in my quarters, getting ready, unless I'm needed here further."
"No, that's okay," Parouge replied. Chan approached the turbolift doors, and could sense something behind her, as if the captain was trying to say something or attract her attention. She turned, pushing some of her long hair out of her face, when he said, "Lieutenant Commander, your hair is hardly regulation like that."
"I know," Chan said by way of explanation. "But I was not anticipating the change of plans-"
Parouge interrupted, "On the Alexandria, senior officers are never off-duty, and should be ready to return to duty at any time."
"I'm aware of that, sir, but the way I have my hair on duty, I can't sleep that way. Other than that, I'm here, and I'm ready."
"I see, but remember that there is no room for excuses or lax behaviour. See that you are properly prepared for the landing party duties."
"Aye, sir," she said, trying her best not to sound smart, as she stepped towards the turbolift doors. They snapped open for her, as she disappeared into it.
"One thing that could be an adjustment for her," Allende said, as he stood beside the captain, "is details such as hair. On Odonan ships, they're somewhat more lax about it."
"I can understand that, since on their ships, they all have hair like that. It's hard to understand why."
Allende grinned as he remarked, "Something about nerve cell endings in the hair and how it hurts like hell to get it cut."
"Just like it must hurt like hell when it is caught on something or yanked..."
Fifty-five minutes later, Chan was back on the bridge, this time with her hair braided in a somewhat different and more comfortable style, but still well within the regulations for long-haired people. She was at the security console, watching the operations on this bridge while thinking of what she would be doing on the surface. "Approaching Transcestus IV," reported Sakapsatimolos. "We'll be entering standard orbit."
Parouge, sitting comfortably in the centre chair, which on an Enterprise-class ship put him right in the middle of the bridge with nothing to shield him, asked, "Still no transponder signal?"
"No," replied al-Calihad, as she ran her elegant, long fingers over the sensor console controls. Chan noticed her long fingernails, considered a sign of elegance among some human women. If Odonan women let their fingernails grow like that, they would have claws that were sharp to a point. Some Odonans, although Chan was not among them, tended to let the claw on the outside fingers grow long like that, but most people filed them down with assorted grinding tools, of which Chan had a collection, if only to avoid clawing themselves when using the hands in ways evolution never intended.
Parouge thought that the lack of a transponder signal was disquieting. Once the ship got in range for it and did not pick it up, the captain had to consider the possibility that the escape pod and been destroyed. "Once we get into orbit," the captain ordered, "start complete sensor sweeps."
Al-Calihad was already preparing to do just that. She called up the schematics and composition of the escape pods used on the Colonial Explorer, and fed the information into the sensor interpretation algorithms so that they would immediately identify and inform her of any data that matched that data. She set the matching tolerance to fifty percent, considering that if the pod had crashed, its wreckage could be strewn over a wider area and perhaps broken down somewhat.
"In orbit now," reported the helmsman. On the screen, the bluish-green world of Transcestus IV, with greens that were especially lush, filled on quarter of the screen.
"Sensor sweeps beginning now," al-Calihad reported.
"One powered orbit, lieutenant," Parouge ordered. "Lets do this rapidly."
"Aye, sir."
With the Alexandria traveling quickly around the planet on its impulse engines, the science officer probed the planet along bands of longitude with a variety of sensor instruments. Each strip of the planet appeared on the monitor above the science station, the display was encoded with the colour representing zero percent correlation with what the sensors were programmed to locate. Chan stood by the security station-which the designers of this particular class of starship did not provide a seat for-and watched all of this with some degree of fascination. The Federation was doing quite efficient work with its more primitive equipment, Chan thought. She was not seeing anything in this approach that would not be at home on an Odonan starship.
With the Alexandria two-thirds of the way around the planet, the sensors finally picked up the escape pod. The science console let out a beep, with the image of the map on the monitor above replaced with another diagram, showing a sensor readout display of the area of the escape pod, along with co-ordinates. "I've found it," al-Calihad finally said in her high-pitched, accented voice. "It's intact, having landed in a controlled manner." Without even waiting for the captain to issue new orders to gather more information, al-Calihad activated the lifeform function of the sensors and set them to detect any known humanoid lifeforms.
At the same time, Parouge ordered, "Helm, geostationary at these co-ordinates."
"Already done," replied Sakapsatimolos, without looking up from the console.
"Al-Calihad?" Parouge asked, turning and walking over to her station. Chan was standing nearby. Her sensitive eyes could read the data on the science station, even from where she stood.
"No lifeform readings," she finally said, after going through the sensor sweeps twice, and then a third time over a wider area. She looked up at the monitor, as did the captain, and they saw concentric circles in shades of green centered on the escape pod, and in the green areas were none of the dots that suggested even the possibility of lifeforms inside those regions. "No known humanoid lifeform readings within the target zone."
"Expand outwards."
"I already expanded out to two hundred kilometres. It seems unlikely that they all would have travelled that far in such a short period of time without transportation."
"Go to general sensors."
Now, al-Calihad instructed the instruments to scan all lifeforms, and display the results on the main science console monitor. "All lifeforms in the two hundred kilometre zone are consistent biologically, as far as the sensors can tell," the woman finally reported. "As far as the sensors are concerned, all the lifeforms are of one xenotype, likely native. What's curious, though, is that it is all flora. No fauna at all within the two hundred kilometre zone. That's curious, to say the least, no animals at all in that area."
"Yes, curious," agreed Parouge. "No animals to attack them, just plants. Something obviously happened down there. No bodies, or scattered wreckage, or whatever?"
Al-Calihad hit another button on the panel in front of her, turning on one of the smaller screens. The computer drew the escape pod as the sensors found it, and below, a series of green circles and explanations appeared below the diagram. Since al-Calihad was occupied by continuing to work the sensors, Chan, from where she stood, read off the information for the benefit of the captain and the others. "The escape pod is undamaged, and its orientation on the ground is consistent with a soft landing. Internal power systems are shut off, but a significant quantity of fuel remains in the pod's tanks."
Parouge looked up at the Odonan woman, and asked, "Can you read that screen from where you are?"
"Yes," she answered.
Al-Calihad had more to say. "Sir, sensors find no bodies, no discarded supplies, and no debris or wreckage of any kind."
"Curious," the captain repeated.
Chan volunteered her comments, "Captain, we'll have to go down there and take a closer look."
"If only we knew how many were on board."
"Captain," Chan continued, "judging by this schematic, the escape pods on the Colonial Explorer were built by an Odonan company, Chaki Spacecraft Industries. They are provided with a data recorder that is supposed to record internal and external data, including names if provided, so we might be able to learn who was on that pod and what happened to them. But we'll have to go down there to retrieve the data on it, and look around too."
"Of course," Parouge finally replied. "Get your landing party ready, and include in it one of the medical department officers, a med-tech, a couple of security officers and yourself. Can you access the controls of the escape pod?"
"Yes, I believe so. Controls on escape pods are generally simple to learn and figure out how to operate."
"Okay, you may proceed, standard equipment, standard armaments. Lets see if we can find out what happened down there..."
(End of Part 3)
