Final Approach (Part 1 of 2)

Posted on 16 Oct 2012 @ 1:56am by Rear Admiral Lirha Saalm & Captain Jonathan Holliday & Lieutenant Commander Dea Mialin & Lieutenant Commander Pola Ni Dhuinn M.D. & Lieutenant JG Delainey Carlisle & Lieutenant Commander Evelyn Coleman & Lieutenant Theron Rhodes & Lieutenant Kiri Cho & Commander Andreus Kohl & Commander Scarlet Blake & Command Master Chief Markum Quinn & Amril

2,826 words; about a 14 minute read

Mission: Episode 02 - Resupply
Location: USS Galileo - Main Bridge, Various
Timeline: MD 01 - 0400 hrs

[ON]

Almost five hours had passed since Galileo had received assistance from the large Antares Class freighter. The towing process had been slow and delicate, with both ships' captains taking every precaution to ensure no excessive stress was put on either vessel's hull. They had kept rather close proximity to each other during the ride, and Lirha hoped the dampening field that Ensign Rhodes had set up around the Sienna device had worked. She had no reason to think that it hadn't, but was wary nonetheless.

With a bright flash in space, the two ships dropped out of warp on the perimeter of the Vega system. The freighter proceeded to pull the Nova Class along at impulse until they reached the ninth planet in the system, home to the only habitable region known as Vega Colony. As they approached the planet, the blue tractor beams were shut down, leaving Galileo under her own power to do as she pleased. There was a lot of starship traffic surrounding the planet, including various types of merchant vessels and trade ships either in orbit or coming to and from the colony.

On the ship's bridge, Lirha began preparations for the landing process. "Mister Amril, send our thanks to Nautica... and see if you can find a case of liquor to send their way once we arrive at the colony." she said, keeping true to Captain Moore's request It was the least Lirha could do to compensate their crew, and she was very grateful for the assistance.

"An inspired idea, captain," declared the vorta. He studied the ops display for a moment and began preparing the message.

Lirha tapped her armrest's console and opened the ship's comm channel. "All hands, set condition blue and prepare for planetary landing. Emergency teams stand by." she said, then watched as the alert strobes changed from their previous orange color to a pulsing blue pattern.

"Lieutenant Mialin, ready when you are." she continued, giving the flight control chief permission to begin the landing sequence.

"Beginning landing sequence," Dea replied. Carefully piloting Galileo through the planet's atmosphere. This was probably one of the hardest tasks for any pilot but it could also be described as one of the most exciting as well.

Over the last few hours Kiri had time to get back towards normal, reviewing the data and started to make ground on what was brand new science. Some of the data was catalogued, she was barely scratching the surface. Since they started their approach Kiri had been running through her own landing checks. The first time she had spoken since regaining some of their own power she was raspy, "Weather systems are conducive to landing on approach." There were clouds but no rain, no storms for thousands of miles, light winds, good for landing. Kiri was still on edge though, she never liked flying in the atmosphere, let alone in a damaged ship. It was a few seconds later that an identity order was made in return for their request for landing permission. Replying to that in turn Kiri added, "We are clear for landing by Vega Orbital Control."

Ens. Rhodes taken the opportunity to get a nap in his quarters during the toe process. He had already checked on the dampening device set over the Sienna device before going to his quarters. Now, with the approach of Vega, he had double checked the dampening device, confirmed that it was still functioning, and arrived on the bridge just prior to planet fall. Tactical really would not be needed for the landing process, but he felt responsible to be on hand.

Galileo weaved her way through the planet's orbital traffic pattern, avoiding any nearby ships in low orbit until she finally reached an optimum trajectory and began the descent through the thermosphere. As friction began to build up on the hull, the tiny ship slowly became enveloped in a fiery orange bubble, streaking through the atmosphere as she descended into the stratosphere.

Inside the starship, the ride was shaky, to say the least. The vessel trembled underneath the stress of the increasingly thick air pressure.


Sickbay

Ensign Andreus Kohl strode out from the Chief Medical Officer's office, took a slight detour around Ensign Blake, grabbed hold of the central biobed when the ship rocked suddenly, and then continued to the middle of the row of biobeds along the bulkhead. Kohl was holding a widescreen PADD in one hand. On the display were the results from his patient's brain scan. "I managed to talk to Doctor Ni Dhuinn," Kohl said to his patient, a crewman in an Operations gold uniform. "We reviewed your sensor readings and she agreed I can discharge you. If you promise to be truly, truly careful about returning to your duty station," --Kohl pointed at the flashing condition blue lights-- "You can get back in time to help out with the landing."

The Operations crewman offered his promises, while jumping off the biobed and hurrying out of Sickbay. When the structure of Sickbay, and Galileo herself, noticeably rocked from side to side again, Kohl tossed a concerned glance over to Pola.

Having to use her patient's biobed for stability, Pola internally cursed her still mending ankle. As the shudders continued, she caught Kohl's concerned glance. "I'm sure that everything is fine, just make sure everything is secured and the patients are comfortable. I'm sure that this is nothing." She wished she could believe her own words.

"We do have landing struts, yeah?" Kohl asked, but it was mostly rhetorical and in good-humour. He was already moving towards an Andorian crewmember who stumbled in from the corridor. Over his shoulder, he asked, "Nova class ships are supposed to land?"

"Yes... they are designed to!" Evelyn, replied, grabbing onto the door frame as she ship shuddered. She looked at Pola, "The injuries on Deck 2 have been treated, all minor." Evelyn reported, as she walked into sickbay, having assisting the medical staff.

Smiling her appreciation at Evelyn, Pola indicated towards the patients they currently had. "To be on the safe side, help get everyone secured, aswell as any of the heavy equipment. After loosing gravity earlier I don't want to take any chances."

Evelyn groaned at the memory, "I was stuck on the damn turbolift when we lost the artificial gravity." She said as she made her way to a biobed and began securing the patient with physical restraints. She ship shuddered once more and Eve pressed her hand against the wall to keep her balance. "Now I know why ships don't normally land... turbulence is annoying."


Bridge

Rhodes looked at the tactical display and spoke, hopefully not out of turn, "Forward and lower shields are standing firm at 85%."

Looking upon the MSD on the Bridge, Quinn began to shake his head in disapproval. "Captain, we have a small problem here. I am getting an intense power flux coming form the rear-starboard landing strut, and small fluctuations from the other three. According to the Level-Four diagnostic I just ran, the three could be just artifact or loose plating from our previous escapade....but the big one, well...let's just say that the reentry may be the smoothest of the rides today that we have."

The captain twiddled her thumbs nervously as the report about the engines came in. For now, the ship was managing to maintain a proper descent rate, but she worried about any potential failures which could occur and jeopardize the landing. "Divert any necessary power to keep the landing thrusters online and keep me updated on the situation." she replied.

"Aye, Skipper." answered Quinn as he began to probe deeper to find a possible cause.

Galileo broke into the lower atmosphere with a sonic boom and a puff of white clouds. Her aerodynamic nacelle fins wiggled as they adjusted to keep the vessel stable, and several spoilers along the outer hull deployed to slow the ship down. The landing pad came into sight roughly ten miles in the distance, and the Nova Class made a slow turn to put her on final approach. Although she would eventually land vertically, there was still a bit of altitude and distance to be made up over the final thirty seconds of the landing.

"Helm, keep her steady." Lirha called out.

"Roger that," Mialin replied never taking her eyes off the helm console or the viewscreen in front of her. Piloting the ship effectively required both good visual cues as well as trusting any critical data fed to the Helm.

Delainey's knuckles were white as she gripped her console as hard as she could. The last thing she wanted to do was fall and add further injury to insult. She alternated between monitoring injury reports and stealing glances at the viewscreen. Though she would never voice such thoughts aloud, she almost wished she was in sickbay instead of on the bridge. At least there, she would have more to keep her occupied without exactly knowing what was coming. Now was not exactly the time for the counselor to offer platitudes. However, sometimes a counselor's biggest responsibility, whether in a session or on the bridge, was simply to bear witness.

Sweat poured into her eyes, her body reacting to the fear she was trying so hard not to show. Starships weren't supposed to fall out of space, no matter how controlled, and she couldn't help but note this was the worst manifestation of the "I'm falling" nightmare ever experienced.

The Nova Class slowed and began the final vertical descent on to the landing zone. Her landing thrusters engaged at full power, however something suddenly went wrong. The captain watched with wide eyes as warning tones began to sound from various bridge consoles and the emergency lights flickered. A sudden drop in ship's altitude sent a wave of butterflies through her stomach.

"Oh, shit!" exclaimed Quinn as he found his stomach up in his throat somewhere while trying to read the warning screaming across his engineering console. "We have a main power failure to engines!" yelled Quinn over the various alarms. "Rerouting....." Quinn's fingers raced, trying to find a backup that was working. "No good, Skipper. Secondary power relays are offline. Tertiary are sluggish...at best, but it won't be enough! Good time to grow feathers and a set of wings."

Theron was not sure why, but he sarcastically thought, 'That is quite obvious.' He then remembered of a similar obvious statements he had made recently. But what could he do to help. Pulling all other power available from weapons, sensors, and non-essential systems, he was able to increased shields to 105%. This also provided a wider shield to possibly slow the decent. They were still falling like a rock. Yet, saying something now, probably would not help.

Dea's stomach did more than a few summersaults, however now was not the time to concentrate on that. It took all her ability to keep the ship on course, "We've lost several landing thursters. All but two are offline."

"Helm, drop our nose and adjust our descent!" the captain yelled, trying her best to get the Nova Class some momentum in order to avoid a pure vertical freefall. If they could establish just a couple hundred knots of airspeed, they could attempt to glide the ship into a nearby area, preferably unpopulated to avoid any collateral damage. "Put us down away from the landing pad and any civilian areas."

"Bringing the nose down. Doing what I wan to adjust our descent. This ship has essentially become a flying rock without adequate maneuverability" While Dea didn't want to say the order was impossible she also wanted to be honest with the Captain. Searching for the nearest landing zone that fit the requirements. "Ops and Tac do what you can to keep the area around us clear. I'm going for that open field just ahead. Its big enough and not in a civilized area." Pausing for a moment then adding, "This is going to be a hard landing."

Amril tightened his grip on the ops console with one hand. With the other he did his best to reroute power. "Taking powers from life support to these..." he read the names displayed on the unfamiliar Federation technology, "structural integrity fields and inertial dampers."

Fortunately for Galileo, two of the landing thrusters were still online and her helmsman expertly adjusted them to increase the ship's angle of attack in relation to the ground. Wobbling several hundred feet in the air like an avian that just discovered flight, the ship slowly picked up speed and began to head for a relatively flat and unpopulated nearby area of land. Despite their best efforts however, the rate of descent rate was still way too high, almost a thousand feet per minute.

Lirha once again opened a comm channel throughout the ship. "All hands, we have a power failure in the landing thrusters; we're touching down momentarily but it's going to be rough. Brace for impact, emergency teams stand by." she said in a tense voice, trying her best to hide her fearful emotions.

Even with the best of her abilities Dea knew this was going to be a rough landing. She did what she could to brace she's take the brunt of the impact no matter what since her job was to fly the ship.

Kiri clutched to the underside of her console, trying to keep herself in place, since her chair could pivot it wasn't simple, trying to keep her attention on the sensors that she hadn't taken offline. The sensitive ones could be damaged by the heat, she didn't want to crash. It wasn't fair, she wanted to be in space.

Bearing down into his chair, the XO looked over at the command readout between himself and Lirha, the situation looked pretty bad, exctly as it had been for the past several days.The Galileo had taken a battering but hopefully their little ship would keep them alive one more time.

Delainey had begun to recite a silent Hail Mary. If she survived this, she would never again comment on the potential tedium of a science vessel.


Sickbay

When the Captain's announcement relayed over the communications grid in Sickbay, Andreus Kohl immediately checked the biobed restraints on his patient. Finding the restraints secure, Kohl turned to the biobed on the other side of him. Kohl pushed Kilborne flat against the biobed, and secured the manual restraints around the patient's limbs. "I'm so sorry," was the first thing Kohl said to Kilborne, as he climbed onto the biobed with him. "I don't even know your name yet..." Kohl reached for the biofunction monitor and slapped the forcefield controls. A shimmer of blue washed over top the biobed, further securing Kohl and the patient to the biobed.

Varek walked quickly but unhurriedly to the nearest biobed and braced himself against it, giving Kohl a look that would have been disapproving... if he hadn't been a vulcan, of course.

Eve looked at Kohl, "You sure you want to rely on a force-field there buddy? If this is going to be as rough as I fear it may be, it won't last." She said concerning as she leaned against the wall besides a biobed.

"Here we go," Scarlet frowned as she readied herself for turbulence. She sat down on the floor, bracing herself against a bolted down table, her arms wrapped around it. She could only trust that Thorne was doing the same for Lily.

Checking her people, Pola caught Evelyn's words as she settled herself onto the floor, also bracing herself against a bolted table. "It's best to try what we can Evelyn. At least he's protecting the patient as well as himself. The forcefield won't fail unless the power does as they are medical, they are reinforced due to the additional containment we need."

"I know but... if we're bracing for impact, this won't be a smooth landing at all." Eve replied, "Hold on tight, Kohl."

From his awkward position on the biobed, Kohl affirmed, "Holding tight!"

To Be Continued...

[OFF]

--

CMDR Lirha Saalm
Commanding Officer
USS Galileo

Lt Cmdr Jonathan Holliday
Executive Officer
USS Galileo

Lieutenant JG Delainey, M.D., Ph.D.
Chief Counselor
USS Galileo

Lieutenant JG Dea Mialin
Chief Flight Control Officer
USS Galileo

Ens. Theron Rhodes
Security/Tactical
USS Galileo

Ensign Scarlet Blake
Counsellor
USS Galileo

Ensign Andreus Kohl
Nurse
USS Galileo

Amril
Vorta Defector
USS Galileo

Chief Warrant Officer Markum Quinn
Chief Engineer
USS Galileo

Ensign Kiri Cho
Assistant Chief Science Officer
USS Galileo

Lieutenant JG Pola Ni Dhuinn
Chief Medical Officer
USS Galileo

LTJG Evelyn Coleman
Chief Intelligence Officer
USS Galileo

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