Shuttle Pod Broke

Posted on Fri May 5th, 2023 @ 9:32am by Captain Bethsabée Leroux & Ensign Victoria Jemison & Ensign Luis Martinez & Chief Petty Officer Nish Karalo & Petty Officer, 1st Class Christian Tremblay

Mission: Sojurn
Location: Shuttlepod, on Planetary Surface
Timeline: Day 334
1258 words - 2.5 OF Standard Post Measure

It was meant to be the day of the first-day shift for the person that she had finally chosen to take over the flight department and things were very much not going well. The shuttle that Beth had been meant to have taken from the ship to the palace to meet the Releaian Royal family had a failure on the way down was not parked anywhere near where Beth and the rest of the crew were meant to be

“Well, that didn’t go well,” Beth said stinging a little from the emergency landing.

The comment stung Nish, she was quickly trying to catch up on all of the little nuances and intricacies of flying both an NX class starship and its accompanying pods. She was good at flying, but it had just been warp one freighters mostly, and a worker bee here and there. She'd gotten her flying credentials in bootcamp and had kept up her minimum requirement. But minimum was bare minimum. And there had been tiny little differences between the two universes that were tripping her up more than they should. She rolled her arm to try and get rid of the pain that had settled in there when the safety harness had dug into it, and didn't respond to the Captain's observation.

Beth said nothing just glanced to the Armoury Officer and raised an eyebrow. “I am going to check outside.” She announced and pressed opened the door and waited for it to cycle through to get a proper idea of what was going on. “You guys check inside.”

"We shall," Victoria replied as she opened her engineering toolkit to get access to her scanner.

"Already on it, ma'am." Nish unstrapped herself from the seat and had already started a diagnostic of the internal systems as she got up from her seat and looked around the shuttlepod and saw Victoria already going around with the sweeps and bleeps of the scanning device. "Start on the left manoeuvring thrusters, something is definitely wrong there."

Christian had never experienced an emergency landing before, but he had managed to stay calm throughout. He had been surprised when Lieutenant Darru had assigned him to this away mission, but the Vulcan had explained that it would give the young man some experience dealing with a new species. This was his first time coming down to the planet since their arrival, and from what he could tell outside the viewport, the talk was not doing the planet justice. He stood and looked towards the other officers. "If you'll permit me sirs, I'd like to take a step outside and take some readings with my scanner. Perhaps there's some magnetic anomaly that interfered with our navigational sensors," he asked. To be honest, the situation made him alittle uncomfortable. Being a career enlisted man, he knew that it was better to be seen and not heard in situations like this.

"Go ahead--knowing these pods like I do, the Chief and I will be up to our elbows in conduits soon enough." Victoria tried to keep her tone light and friendly.

Beth turned as the recycling lock opened again and Christian joined her. The Captain offered a smile to the man who came out with her and glanced back to the awkwardness that she had left behind for that reason. “Leave it open Petty Officer. Get some fresh air through and they can let us know when it’s all fixed.” Beth instructed pulling the hood of her coat up more over her hair.

Nish had done a pre-flight check, she was calling up the readouts from said check, and nothing seemed to be wrong. "Might there be something in this atmosphere we didn't account for?" She wondered how smart it had been to just open the door and walk around here without any protection from the elements, some of which they might not know to look out for. "Or perhaps some sort of advanced defence system?"

"Could be," Victoria stated. "Let's check some of the common failure points, no reason to chase zebras when we're looking for a donkey," she added, hoping that the failure was limited in scope. As she took her scanner out of her belt holster, she replied, "If they were going to do something to us, why did they drag our ship here while they were making repairs? I just think it's a nice change from all the shootouts." Getting a bit morbid as a way to cope with all that had happened recently, the Ensign added, "Besides, dying out here is preferable to starvation and suffocating in the cold blackness of space."

"Silver linings." Nish immediately agreed with the bleak outlook of their situation. She didn't plan on dying on this alien planet, nor from starvation and, slash, or suffocation in space. She planned on getting back to the ship, back behind the helm, and flying them straight to Earth. Perhaps with a break or two on their way, she needed to sleep after all.

Christian did as the captain said as he pulled his scanner out and activated it as he went through the readings. “Yes ma’am he said before he pulled his own hood up around his head. He looked up from his readings and surveyed the landscape. “Reminds me of Nunavut,” he said in ways of making small talk.

“Canada right Pretty Officer?” Beth could not claimed that geography was something she had ever been good at but something around it sounded just Canadian. Beth was all for small talk with people making an effort.

“Yes ma’am. Nunavut is one of the Canadian territories that contains most of the Canadian arctic. I’m originally from Quebec City myself, but I spent some time up in Nunavut and the arctic ,” he said in response to the captain.

“Anyone else been thinking this is like Nanavut?” Beth asked back inside the open door of the shuttlepod to keep them included even though Beth was slightly bemused by them and the fact the shuttlepod had broken on the first attempt at diplomatic relations with the royal family of Relea.

The diagnostic completed itself on the main console in the front of the shuttlepod. "There's something wrong in the intake manifold on the left engine. So I'm guessing we're stepping out into Canada as well." The readout didn't give a more accurate reason than the fact that it hadn't responded to the request for diagnostics. It had affected more of the left-hand side, and the improvised landing probably hadn't helped matters.

"Never been to Canada," Victoria replied as she scooted herself from the access hatch. "But it looks like survival training in Antarctica," she remembered from her days at the Academy. Looking to where the comment about the left engine, Victoria stood. Piecing together the ship in her mind she mapped out her strategy. "Intake for the atmosphere is at the front, just under the cockpit. It splits into the port and starboard just about here," she pointed down before continuing, "then out the exhaust." Removing her scanner from her utility belt, the engineer said, "Looks like I'll be crawling into the belly of the beast."

"Are you able to fit in there Ensign?" The Captain wondered sizing it up then looking to the woman sizing her up. It did not seem to tally up with what she was seeing. Beth genuinely looked unsure now that her head was no longer spinning from the crash landing it had been that type of day after all.

TRUNCATED