Any landing you can walk away from…

Posted on Tue Aug 4th, 2020 @ 7:57am by Ensign Lucas Miles

Mission: Distress Call
Location: Holodeck
Timeline: Current

When Lucas woke up this morning, he had not been expecting to be starring down at the giant image of Risa on his HUD as his shuttle careened towards the class M planet uncontrollably on a crash course.

"Warning," the computer's monotone voice said. "hull temperature approaching critical levels."

"Yeah, yeah I know," Lucas muttered back as he tapped incessantly at the controls. He knew he was in trouble. The shuttle was rapidly descending uncontrollably towards the planet. The friction of his uncontrolled atmospheric entry was burning up the shuttle's hull and threatening to tear apart the shuttle.

Lucas would normally have activated shields, but he had no control of several systems, including the shuttle’s shields. He had no reliable control of the shuttle’s power systems. There had been another malfunction in the EPS conduit and one by one the shuttle’s systems were failing. It started with the impulse drive, then the warp engine, life support systems…

“Warning, inertial dampers operating below safe parameters. Recommend boosting power to the inertial dampers.”

“I would if I had it!” Lucas yelled in frustration at the computer and instantly regretted it because of how futile his outburst was. He quickly strapped himself in. It was already a bumpy ride but with the inertial dampening field losing power, it was about to get even bumpier. In fact, everything on the shuttle was suffering from power fluctuations because of the EPS malfunction. Consequently, one system after another was unreliable and some had shut down.

It was almost hard to believe that a moment ago, he had been making a routine pass in high orbit around Risa when the computer had registered a massive power fluctuation and he had lost his engines shortly thereafter. Without impulse or warp engines he was caught in Risa’s powerful gravitational pull and was rapidly descending towards the planet.

He still had his thrusters, but for whatever reason, they were sluggish…no doubt because of the sporadic power going to them. Regardless, he would not be able to break free of the planet’s gravity with the thruster power he had.

He was going down.

If he was going to crash on the planet, Lucas thought that he might as well take charge of how he would crash. A plan quickly formed in his mind and his hands flew across his control panel to implement it.

The pilot in him knew given his current circumstances, his best chance of survival was to control his re-entry into the planet’s atmosphere. He put his shuttlecraft in a nosedive on its descent into Risa’s upper atmosphere. This action instantly minimized the friction from the uncontrolled descent. However, it also rapidly increased the speed of his descent. Without an engine to slow his free fall, he was bound to crash rather nastily on the planet's surface in a few minutes.

With the shuttle now accelerating towards the surface, Lucas slowly began to tilt the shuttle’s nose upwards, creating more resistance and effectively slowing down the speed at which he was falling. It was not much of a reduction, but it was something. At this rate he surmised instead of being splattered on the surface, he suspected he might fatally crash on the planet.

He checked his speed...he had just under two minutes before he impacted the surface. He had selected an impact site that had the lowest surface elevation and had a large clearing. That way he had more time to play with and should his plan fail, and he really did have to crash, at least he had an open clearing to attempt to glide the shuttle’s crash.

The two minutes meant he had ample time to try and reroute power to the shuttle’s transporters and pray that there was not another power disruption…although a part of him wondered if death by transporter accident was not better than death by shuttle crash.

The former would be more painless than the latter…

Turning his attention back to the precise sequence of steps he needed to take, Lucas began by cutting power to the life support, sensors, and weapons systems, effectively shutting these systems down. He rerouted the power that would have gone to them to the transporter. He next sent all the auxiliary power the shuttle had to the transporter. He checked the transporter system's power levels. He just barely had enough power for one transport. He began shutting down systems that he did not need or was needed by the transporter. He knew the more systems he shut down, the better chance of there being a power disruption that would prevent him from completing a successful transport off the shuttle.

Or at least, so he hoped.

“This will have to do,” he muttered to himself as he took stock of the status and power level of the transporter. He was now less than sixty seconds from crashing. He reached into an alcove in the bulkhead and removed a prepacked emergency kit. Swinging it across his torso, he headed for the transporter pad that was at the rear of the shuttle. Reaching it, he tapped at its console activating it. He quickly selected a destination by manually inputting coordinates. He next stepped unto the transporter pad.

“Computer end simulation,” came the unexpected but unmistakable voice of Lieutenant Rebecca Maida, the ship’s Chief Flight Control Officer.

Instantly, the interior of the shuttle vanished, and Lucas found himself standing in the middle of the holodeck. The doors of the holodeck slid open and both Lieutenant Maida and Chief Petty Officer ch’Thranne walked in and began approaching him. Lucas noted that the Andorian Chief Petty Officer was clutching a padd in his hands, his Andorian silver eyebrows furrowed as he glanced intently at its data.

He was no doubt bewildered by yet another failed simulation in their seemingly endless search for what the cause of the power fluctuations in the shuttle could be.

“Nice flying Miles,” the Lieutenant commented.

“That was more crashing than flying el tee,” Lucas replied. He passed a hand across his hair as he smiled at the pair.

“Well you know what they say…any crash landing you can walk away from is some good flying.”

Lucas blinked. “Do they really say that?”

“No,” the Lieutenant replied then paused. “Well…actually, I’m not sure. So many expressions out there and all.” She looked at ch’Thranne as if the Andorian might know.

“Don’t look at me,” the Andorian Chief Petty Officer responded. “You humans have hundreds of cliché statements and many of them are beyond me.”

The Lieutenant laughed at that before turning to Miles. “Need you to report to the Bridge asap Ensign. We just got word of a distress signal from a freighter, declaring a shipboard emergency – multiple system failures.”

She glanced at ch’Thranne. “Sound familiar?”

Ch’Thranne pouted as he folded his arms across his chest, his antennae curving downwards. “I promise you Lieutenant, we will get to the bottom of the power problems with the shuttle. We just need more time to continue to isolate the precise point in the EPS network that’s causing the problem.”

“That’s what you said several days ago,” the Lieutenant replied more amused than angry. “Thankfully, one of you at least had the good sense to move the flight tests to the holodeck. Otherwise, I think we might just have killed Miles there.”

“Well actually Lieutenant,” ch’Thranne chimed in, a finger pointed upward and outward as if to make a point, “the Ensign would have survived. He would have beamed off the shuttle before it crashed as we both say in the simulation before you abruptly ended it.”

The Lieutenant rolled her eyes. “Wipe that smug look of your face ch’Thranne. You still would have lost the shuttle…not much good news either way Chief. Regardless, I am going to need you to sideline your shuttle project for the foreseeable future Chief. I am not sure when next Miles will be free to assist but his immediate priority is now this rescue operation.

“In the meantime, I need you and your crew to prep the shuttle bay for a possible rescue operation. Prep every operational spacecraft we have. I’m not clear on the status of the freighter or what region of space she’s in, but let’s be prepared to support evacuation with our shuttles if transporters are not sufficient or able to operate.”

“Yes Lieutenant,” ch’Thranne replied.

“Good with that Miles?” Lieutenant asked.

“Yes ma’am,” he responded. He was barely listening after he heard that a freighter was in distress. His father was a freighter Captain and Lucas was almost fearful to ask the call sign of the freighter in distress. Swallowing he mustered the courage to finally ask. “El tee, one thing, any chance you know the name of the freighter?”

“Olympia, I believe. Why?”

Lucas breathed a visible sigh of relief. “No reason el tee,” he replied with a smile. “I’ll report to the Bridge now ma’am.”

“Off you go then,” the Lieutenant responded.

Miles headed out of the holodeck and quickly made his way to the Bridge...



Ensign Lucas Miles
Flight Control Officer
USS Independence