Julian took a deep swig from his mug of too-strong coffee, and sighed across the table. The Sevastopol‘s briefing room had become the sort of de-facto mission control room while the ship had been landed on moon Epsilon Phi Tau IIb (the crew had called the moon “Wherever” and that name had stuck.) It afforded, at least, a pleasant view of the top of a sprawling forest canopy and a modicum of sunlight versus the bright white streak of stars they’d seen for the last several weeks.

“I can give you the starboard nacelle, long range sensors, or phasers, Jules. Take your pick,” the older man said from the other side of the table. “We don’t have enough parts to cannibalize, and I’m not going to risk running the replicators for anything but basic rations, given what happened last time.”

Last time, a conduit had blown in engineering, and but for the quick actions of a few junior engineers, it would have been a mass-injury event that they weren’t equipped to handle. Commander Jon Batchelder, the Sevastopol’s chief engineer, had strongly urged Julian to take most of the replicator system offline except in the crew lounge, and thus far that had had promising results.

“How long can we keep running with just one nacelle?”

“At impulse? As long as you want to really. But we need both of them to make an efficient warp bubble, so I’d suggest we prioritize the repair to the nacelle over weapons or sensors. At our best we’re nimble enough to get out of the way of anything that comes up on short range sensors, and fast enough to get away from anything we’d need to use the phasers on,” Batchelder responded.

“And now that we’re not at our best?” Julian questioned.

“Away team to Sevastopol.” 

Batchedler gestured at him to answer the hail, before leaning back in his chair to take a sip of his own coffee, and staring out of the large window. Pressing a command on the conference table, Julian responded, “This is Durand. Go ahead.”

“Ensign Tabitha Gutierrez reporting as ordered for hourly update.” The woman’s tone was exhausted, but slightly playful.

“What is it, Tabby?”

“Good news this time, Jules. We found a whole crop of tubers and leafy veg out here. The tricorders say they’re not toxic or poisonous, though I can’t promise anything about the taste. Also, they scan as pretty nutrient dense. Also, I think there might be some herbivorous fauna on this planet. I’ve been seeing cloven hooved tracks for about the last twenty minutes or so. Whatever it is, I’m pretty sure we can track it.” 

“Sun’s getting low over those mountains,” Batchelder said under his breath. “Gutierrez and Onaa are good, but we don’t know what’s out there Jules.”

Looking out the window, Julian responded, “Do you think you can track it in the next hour and a half, and make it back to the ship? Jon says it looks like the sun’s setting, and if that’s the case I’d rather you two weren’t out there after dark.”

“Is it? Mierda, I can’t even see the sun through the canopy. Alright, we’re on our way back then. ETA an hour and a half.” 

“Sounds good. Sevastopol out.” Looking back across the table, he took a beat to recall where they were in the conversation.

“Jules, this ship is never going to be ‘at her best’ again until we can get to a spacedock for some major repairs. But we’ve still got speed and maneuverability on our side, if I fix the nacelle first.”

“Okay. We’ll prioritize the repairs to the starboard nacelle then. How long do you need to get it back to at least functioning state?”

“Functioning? Couple of hours. Fully operational? Probably a few days. I’m aiming for somewhere between those two states so we don’t have to put down on the next planet we find and repeat this process, so half a day should get me there. Once we’re at that point, I can do a full inventory on the other repairs that need to be done. But the nacelle, sensors, and phasers are top of list. The torpedo launchers will need a complete rebuild, so we’re out of torpedoes and probes for awhile.”

“Bottom of the list.”

“Bottom of the list,” Batchelder replied with a nod. “And…look, I hate to be a broken record, but do we have any idea where we are?”

“Tabby was working on that before I sent her out to find food. She hadn’t made much progress, it sounds like the astronavigation computers were pretty fried, and astrometrics is just fully inop. We don’t have access to any star charts, and to be honest, I don’t really want to go back out into space and just fly in one direction hoping it’s the right one. So, add that to the list, I guess.”

Jon nodded and punched a few things onto his PADD. They both understood each other’s speech patterns well enough to know this had effectively concluded the debrief and enjoyed a few comfortable minutes in each other’s silent company. Jon had served with Julian on a previous assignment, and had always known him to be good in an emergency. He’d always been clear-headed, sharp, and quick to action.

This wasn’t an emergency though. This was the damned apocalypse.

~*~

T’Vel had been a surgeon, back on Vulcan. She had served in this capacity with distinction, and had received as high a praise as was possible from her superiors. Her decision to enlist in Starfleet after Frontier Day had come as a shock to them, but had ultimately been deemed a logical choice.

Two weeks into her enlistment, she found herself in a sickbay full of the wounded and dying, triaging and saving who she could. A few days after that, she found herself on a ship that seemed to be falling apart around her, marooned on a small but inhabitable moon, while the remainder of the crew worked diligently to affect what repairs they could. To say that her stress level was high would be an understatement.

“The Leis symbiont is uninjured, Commander,” she said in the detached clinical tone that Vulcans excelled at. “Please explain to me what happened again, to ensure I haven’t missed anything.”

“I was climbing down the Jeffries Tube from the Bridge to Deck Two. There was a malfunctioning sensor, and I figured I was the closest, so I could just go down and patch it up real quick. I was about halfway down and the ladder gave way. I fell onto a piece of debris from the hull breach down there. I just…T’Vel it hit me right where…”

“I understand your concern, Commander,” she interrupted, placing a firm hand on the First Officer’s abdomen. “I have read your personnel file, and you sacrificed months of your own career to join with the Leis symbiont despite having no desire to have ever joined. You stated that you did this as you would not willingly let a sentient being die from your own inaction, when you were the only option.”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“Then permit me to give you a piece of advice. Do not let your haste to appear to be ‘doing something’ cause the same outcome. I am ordering you to modified duty for the next forty-eight hours. No strenuous activity, no assisting the repairs. If you must do something with your hands, you may assist me in sickbay tending to the rest of the wounded.”

With a deep heaving sigh, Commander Leis sat up on the bed and replied, “Yes doctor.”

Considering the discussion and the appointment over, T’Vel nodded politely and turned to her other patients.

This isn’t the first time we’ve been stranded. There was the Typhon Expanse, during Frontier Day, there was that time during the Dominion War, and there was that time on the Excelsior. We’ve got this. We can get through this, just like we have before. 

“Please give yourself an internal pep talk on the other side of the Sickbay doors,” one of the other patients in the Sickbay complained with a heaving groan. “No disrespect sir, but I’m Betazoid, and you’re a joined Trill and I’ve already got a headache.”

“Got it, sorry,” Leis said, and quickly exited.

Forty-eight hours of sitting on his hands. He could do that. Right?

~*~

Docked to the underside of the primary hull of every Rhode Island class ship was a small Waverider class craft. While some of these were warp capable atmospheric crafts, the Sevastopol’s was not, only capable of sub-light speeds, and nominally to be used for scouting out planets. “Wherever” moon was not a planet, but it was a Class-M planetoid, which counted at least in some respects. At least that was the justification that Lieutenant Danver Plaze, the ship’s helmsman, had given to his commanding officer when asking to take the little craft for a quick trip around the moon to scout it out. While the ship was landed, there was precious little for a helmsman to do, so Julian really hadn’t seen a reason to deny him.

Danver was Betazoid, which meant that he could hear every agonizing wail, every morbid thought, and every trepidatious fear emanating off of his fellow crew. He’d learned, like most Betazoids, to block it out when necessary, but the situation they found themselves in, the emotions were like a broken dam, threatening to drown him in the waters if he didn’t find a way to get away from them.

So, the Waverider (the crew hadn’t really chosen a name for her yet) was in this case very much his literal lifeboat. A little ship where he could be away from the cacophony, and have his own mind be still and quiet like the waters of the Opal Sea back home. He could dance his fingers across the controls, put the little craft through her paces, and enjoy a beautiful forested moon in relative peace and quiet.

“Sevastopol to Plaze.” 

Or not.

“Plaze here, go ahead.”

“You’ve been out there for three hours. Anything to report?”

“I’ve made a few passes, and no evidence of advanced life anywhere on Wherever. I saw a herd of…something pretty big about five kilometers south-west of the ship, moving westward. It’s mostly just a lot of forest, Jules, with a decent sized body of water sixty kilometers to the north of us.”

“Understood. Return to Sevastopol, I don’t want anyone out there after sundown.” 

Biting his lip hesitantly, he responded, “Permissiooooon…permission to stay out another hour, sir?”

A pregnant pause, followed by “Why?”

“Because you’re all very loud and my brain hurts, and I need to just park this little boat somewhere to re-center myself, put my guards back up, and make sure I can push out all the thoughts of misery and suffering and oh god we’re going to be stuck out here in the ass end of nowhere forever, and shit what happened to Arkellia and…”

“I get it, Danver.” The response interrupted. “Two hours, then I need you back here. Sevastopol out.” 

~*~

The bags of tubers were heavy. The leafy greens, not so much. Jules, or Jon, or whoever had mentioned the sunset was right though. Lieutenant Tabitha Gutierrez had taken a few moments to see it slip down below the mountains in pinks, oranges, and swirling violets. Something similar to the Aurora Borealis had started to play across the sky as she found herself standing at the ramp up into the Sevastopol.

“Wherever in the universe we ended up,” the other young officer next to her said, “I couldn’t imagine it being more majestic, or having finer company.”

Tabby slung the bags down off her shoulders into the arms of the waiting crewmen. She knew they’d take them and run their own tests before declaring them fit for consumption. It never hurt to be doubly safe.

She looked up at the sky again with a beaming smile, and replied “Yeah. It’s like our own miniature Garden of Eden.”