Star Trek: Fortitude
Episode Six: “Our Own Problems”
By Jack D. Elmlinger
PROLOGUE
It was old, decaying, and forgotten.
Placed to float in the depths of the Beta Quadrant, long ago by its owner, the probe had never ceased to function. The durasteel covering protected its inner circuits had seen better days. They were eroded in some places and sported a few burn marks from unfriendly ion storms and micro-fractures from a couple of belligerent asteroids. Underneath the battered armor, it was still alive. Lights blinked, sensors scanned, and self-replicating energy still shot through its artificial veins.
The makers of the probe might have forgotten it, but it had not forgotten them. It had also not forgotten the mission that it was undertaking. The defense of their space was paramount and all other concerns were secondary. Any unidentified starships detected in the region were to be reported back to the nearest carrier vessel at all costs.
Today was an important day for the probe.
The starship entered scanning range at Warp Two. Immediately, the probe ran a detailed sensor sweep and calculated a risk assessment before it attempted to transmit. The old communication relays tucked away inside the belly of the device was no in a state of compliance. Burned out after years of neglect, they failed to transmit.
The probe had no other choice.
Impulse and warp were still functional. There was just enough antimatter within its tiny fuel tank to facilitate a jump home.
It would deliver its data.
It could complete the mission.
ACT ONE
Captain’s Log, Stardate 49045.2;
While conducting a mapping survey of a system that we’ve designated as S-47, our scans have detected what appeared to be a small robotic drone of some kind. Usually we would catalog and otherwise ignore such a device but this particular one had behaved in a rather worrying fashion. After running a detailed scan of Fortitude, it had jumped to warp and is heading in a direction that gives me cause for concern.
Ewan Llewellyn nearly ran up the steps from his Ready Room to the Bridge. “Report!”
“Captain, the robotic drone is a probe. According to my readings, it is highly sophisticated and very old,” Jason Armstrong called out from Ops. “It’s currently making a rough speed of Warp Three, but the drive is unstable. It changes, sir, and the only thing that’s constant is the course that it’s plotted.”
Taking a seat in his command chair and tapping on the central display, Ewan was joined by Valerie Archer, who was doing her own calculations on a PADD. The viewscreen ahead of them showed the stars streaking past them faster than the speed of light. In the center of the image was a small cylindrical probe. It had taken a beating over the years but the glow from the rear assembly was strong enough. It was yellow, almost brown in color, but holding steady for now.
Ewan looked up from the central display when he saw the course. Valerie caught up with him a second later, and they saw it in both of their eyes.
“It’s heading right for the End,” gasped the First Officer.
Arden Vuro almost fell from his position at the helm. He had been dreading the day that they would hear that strange translation, identifying one of the most dangerous threats facing this corner of the Federation. Armstrong shot a worried glance to his right, directly across the Bridge towards the man standing at Tactical. His partner, Jim Morgan returned the expression. He had yet to face them but he had been preparing himself to do so ever since coming aboard Fortitude.
“If this is an End probe,” Ewan conjectured,” why is it so far from their known territory? It looks ancient too. Ensign Armstrong, run a full spectral analysis and compare the probe to all of the recent data that we have, regarding the End.”
“Aye, Captain.”
“Mister Vuro, what’s our speed and trajectory?”
“We’re on a pursuit course parallel to the probe, sir,” the Bolian reported, skillfully manipulating the controls in front of him like a pianist performing a concerto. “Our speed is Warp Four and we’re gaining. ETA: one hour.”
“Bring us up to Warp Five and close that gap down fast, Lieutenant,” Valerie ordered, rising to her feet.
“Ensign Morgan,” Ewan rose himself, turning to face the tactical station over his right shoulder,” raise shields and standby on phasers. As soon as we’re in range, get a target lock on that thing’s reactor.”
“Understood, sir,” Morgan nodded, making the preparations.
“Warp speed increased,” Vuro let everyone know. “New ETA: thirty minutes.”
“Jason, when you’re finished with that spectral analysis, send the data to my Ready Room,” the captain concluded. “I would prefer to find some method for disabling and capturing that probe but I want a failsafe in place to destroy it before the End realizes that we’re back on their doorstep again. Get Sollik up here and work with him to brainstorm ideas. Valerie, you have the Bridge.”
* * * *
The full thirty minutes had almost passed before Valerie Archer ventured across the Bridge and pressed the door chimes to the Captain’s Ready Room. stepping inside, she instantly saw Llewellyn behind a pile of PADDs and fought back a smile. He had told her of his recent trip to Rear Admiral Blackmore’s office aboard Starbase 499 where he had been buried, in a similar fashion, in his work.
How the pupil has surpassed the master…
Without making one of her usual dry remarks, she handed over another PADD to add to the mess. This one was worthy of attention.
“Lieutenant Commander Sollik thinks that a polaron burst from the main deflector will overload the probe’s systems without damaging them and allow us to retrieve it,” she reported as he read the PADD. “Unfortunately, our deflector dish is a little busy while traveling at warp. We would need to drop out of warp to impulse to fire it.”
“So we’re back to square one,” the captain growled. “How do we stop this damned thing from running back home?”
“There’s a second page, Ewan,” Archer indicated. She watched his face as he read it and decided to narrate again, just for clarification. “Ensign Armstrong found something disturbing that he didn’t mention with the spectral analysis data. He felt that you would rather be told in person. Captain, that probe is deadly.”
“Are we talking about deadly to a photonic flea here or what?”
“Deadly to us,” came her grave reply. “It has a rotating shield matrix and a fully functional plasma discharge array. It could fight off an entire fleet of starships for a good few hours or alternatively…”
“... do enough damage to an Intrepid-class starship to stop it from chasing it.”
“You’ve got it. Still, we have one advantage.”
“The age?,” Ewan ventured, picking up one of his own PADDs that he had been working on. “I saw that too. This thing is ancient. The End have been around longer than we’ve anticipated. No wonder they have such an impressive fleet.”
“I was thinking… wishing, probably. I don’t think that they’ve always been a conquering race of genetically-grown soldiers.”
“Think again, Valerie. While we didn’t have any hard data before, this probe gives us a ballpark figure to, at least, start extrapolating their legacy.”
It was time for regeneration. Emerging from behind his desk, Ewan ran a hand through his dark hair and headed for the replicator. Ordering two cups of coffee, he handed one to his first officer and turned, tempted to sit down on the comfortable curved sofa that looked so inviting underneath the giant windows in his Ready Room. deciding against it for fear that he would never get back up again, he almost gulped his coffee down. It was more of a stress relief than a combat against fatigue.
“Did you think that it would be like this, Valere?,” he finally asked her.
“Captain?”
“Rushing out here to fight an alien attack. Retrofitting the Steamrunner for the sole purpose of combat. The Klingons are going back to being the main adversary of the Federation. Chasing enemy probes across the stars…”
“That’s been your main concern since Day One, hasn’t it?”
“Am I that obvious?,” Llewellyn laughed, almost forcing himself to smile.
“We’ve always been at the mercy of alien races,” Valerie began, her own coffee smelling far too good to her to be gulped away. “My theory is one of jealousy. For example, we arrived in the Santray system to the sight of 499 under attack. Some people would instantly ask how we could defeat the End, but I prefer to ask why. Why did they attack us in the first place? Their culture has to have roots in something and I think it’s jealousy. Either thay, or they all just had lousy childhoods.”
“They see, they want, they take,” Ewan mused. “That’s one theory that I would certainly subscribe to, Valerie.”
“I charge a reasonable rate of duty shifts for membership,” she smiled back in return.
Suddenly, in the distance, speeding along at warp speed ahead of Fortitude, something caught the eye of Captain Ewan Llewellyn. His head snapped instantly to stare out of the window and his mind took a second to catch up.
Lieutenant Vuro’s voice came across the intercom, loud and clear. “Red Alert! Captain to the Bridge!”
ACT TWO
“Distance?”
“We’re closing to a gap of several hundred meters,” Vuro reported.
On the main viewer was the image, albeit magnified, of what Llewellyn had seen from his Ready Room window. The probe, a dirty yellow color and covered in dents and scorch marks, was right before them and running for its life. The armor plating reminded him of the End pilot that they had brought into Sickbay once before: yellow and cracked skin that showed signs of obvious neglect. They were a race with less cosmetic concerns, and it apparently translated to their probes and sensor networks.
“Captain, the probe’s shield appears to be in some kind of flux,” Armstrong read from his console. “It looks like one of the shield generators has taken a beating over the years. It can’t create a stable defense.”
“Ensign Morgan,” asked the Captain, remaining on his feet,” do you think you could lower the shields with a few well-placed shots?”
“I thought you’d never ask,” grinned the tactical officer.
“Bridge to Engineering. Sollik, standby on transporters. We’re going to try and take out the probe’s shields. Once they’re down, beam that thing to a science lab and erect a Level-Ten force field.”
“Understood, sir. Standing by.”
“Okay, Jim. Nice and gentle… fire!”
Using Fortitude’s ventral array, Morgan targeted the weakest portion of the probe’s shields and fired a single phaser beam at a quarter of its power output. Everybody on the Bridge watched as the orange lance struck the energy shields, successfully disrupting them long enough for a transporter lock to be established. Unfortunately, the initial elation turned to dismay as the probe failed to dematerialize in the transporter beam.
“Sollik, status?”
“The transporter is encountering severe disturbance!,” cried out the Chief Engineer over the intercom system. “I can’t initiate beaming!”
Suddenly, the probe began to move. It was slow, at first, and it took an alarm sounding off on Armstrong’s operations console to draw his attention. Before he could even report his findings, a second alarm sounded from the opposite side of the Bridge. This alarm came from the tactical station.
“It’s charging weapons and targeting us!,” Jim shouted.
“All power to shields!,” demanded Archer.
Three steady pulses of blue energy were thrown from a small emitter situated between the probe’s glowing engines. They smashed violently into Fortitude’s shields. The first two pulses were absorbed without any problems but the third pulse caused significant damage. As the deck shook beneath their feet, Llewellyn shot a worried look towards Tactical.
“Shields are down to sixty-five percent!,” came the reply to his silent question.
“The probe’s altered course, Captain!,” Jason finally got to report.
“Stay with it, Mister Vuro!,” Ewan ordered, collapsing back into his chair. “What’s this new heading?”
It took a moment for all of the data to be collected by Armstrong’s sensors, and when it was finally available, nothing of interest showed up. Until the young officer reminded himself to think like the probe. It was trying to shake them, trying to escape destruction, and where would you go if your only thought was escape? Rechecking his readings, he saw the imminent danger straight ahead and relaying his findings to the helm as he told the entire Bridge crew what to expect.
“A dense asteroid field, bearing zero-zero-give, mark three-two-three. The probe has increased speed to Warp Four-point-Five!”
“It’ll have more of a chance of surviving those asteroids than we will, Captain,” Valerie observed with disdain. “It’s clearly smart enough to try anything possible to avoid capture or detection.”
“Vuro, try to get ahead of the damned thing.”
As soon as the gap started to close again, Fortitude came under more weapons fire from the probe. Two more energy bursts scored direct hits to the forward shields, nearly managing to punch a hold clean through to the otherwise-unprotected hull.
“Shields are down to ten percent!,” Jim yelled over the noise of the impacts.
“Divert power from the aft shields to compensate,” Archer suggested, tapping away at the central console. “I doubt we’ll need them anything soon.”
“Good thinking, Commander,” nodded her captain.
Glued to his seat at the helm and breaking out into a sweat, Vuro was the next person to deliver bad news. At the push of a button, the viewscreen focused tightly on the collection of sharp, spinning rocks in the distance. It was so thick and so deep that nobody could see the stars behind it. Just rocks, deadly rocks, as far as the eye could see or the sensors could scan.
“We’re coming up on that asteroid field, sir!”
“Bloody hell,” Llewellyn cursed underneath his breath.
“The probe is dropping to impulse and heading right for it!”
“Bridge to Sollik. The probe is dropping down to impulse. How long will you need to charge the main deflector and fire your polaron burst?”
“I’m sorry, Captain,” replied the Suliban’s frustrated voice. “That last attack blew out a junction relay. I’ve got my people working on it, but we can’t divert the polaric energy to the deflector dish for another hour, at least.”
“Bang goes that idea,” Jim muttered, rolling his dark eyes.
“If you’ve got a suggestion, Ensign,” Commander Archer snapped at him,” then now’s the time!”
“See what you can do, Sollik,” Llewellyn continued, ignoring the minor altercation between his first officer and his tactical officer. “In the meantime, boost power to the shields as much as you can.”
“Captain? I hope you’re not --”
“Just do it! Bridge out!”
On the viewscreen, the tiny yellow probe darted through the last remaining visible stars and slowed right down to a crawl, just as Fortitude burst from warp speed and locked her warp nacelles into their impulse position. Everyone watched the probe bob and weave skillfully as it avoided the edge of the dense asteroid field and soon enough, it merged to become part of the all-encompassing danger that lay ahead of them.
“Arden, I want you to avoid the largest of the rocks and plot a pursuit course at maximum impulse,” Ewan ordered, drawing a few gasps from his Bridge officers. “Armstrong, keep your sensors updated with every second.”
“Uh, yeah…,” came the shocked disbelief from Ops. “I mean, yes, sir.”
“Our shields and hull will protect us from the majority of that field,” the captain began to conclude. His mind was made up without conference or collaboration. Sometimes, someone had to just take charge and be a captain. This was one of those times. “Jim, if you see anything that we can’t avoid, arm phasers and indulge yourself.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Collectively, everybody took a deep breath and for a few seconds, time seemed to stand still. The sensation was broken when Llewellyn gave the order.
“Take us in!”
ACT THREE
The impacts were getting louder like hail on a tin roof. The asteroid field was dense enough to increase the rate of the thumping as rocks ranging from fist-size to shuttlecraft-size careened into the shields of the USS Fortitude. Intermittently, a large asteroid loomed into view and phasers would fire forward, vaporizing it into harmless dust.
Aboard the Starfleet vessel, standing center-stage on the Bridge, Ewan Llewellyn compared the dull distant impacts to the steady beats of a war drum. His heart was almost in perfect sync with them too. He could feel himself getting carried away by this chase.
What was he thinking, taking his ship into an asteroid field like this? Everybody’s lives were now at risk, and for what? An automated sensor probe? He had to constantly remind himself what the probe represented.
If it managed to warn the End that Starfleet was exploring their backyard…
Ewan loathed violence, loathed danger, and yet, this was a required risk. The alternative was a war and that was one alternative that he had no desire to see.
“I’ve got it,” Jason Armstrong finally reported, breaking into the nightmare of the drums beating louder in his captain’s head. “One kilometer ahead, bearing at zero-one-zero, mark… Crikey, sir, I think it’s hiding.”
“Elaborate.” Ewan turned to face him.
“The probe has stopped directly above one of the larger asteroids and its rotational axis matches the spinning rate. Hold on, scanning… Smart! Captain, it appears to be keeping level with a large deposit of kelvanite within the rock face.”
“Kelvanite?”
“Don’t you remember Mineralogy 101 at the Academy, sir?” Valerie Archer stepped forward with a smile, satisfied that they had the probe cornered. “Kelvanite used to be known as the ‘bane of the science officer’. Sensors were useless around it. It’s only been in the last ten years that we’ve learned how to break through the interference.”
“I had a feeling that the probe’s age would work to our advantage,” Ewan nodded, finally sharing a smile with his first officer. “Bridge to Engineering. Sollik, we’ve located the probe. How are the repairs to the deflector dish coming?”
“Slow, sir,” came an apologetic response. “It’ll be another fifteen minutes, at least, before I can start charging the polaron burst. Then I need another five minutes before I can give you anything worth shooting at the probe.”
“Can we lock on transporters instead?”
“Negative. My scans show that the probe has restored shields. Unless you want to do battle with it inside this asteroid field, we won’t be able to disable them without the polaric energy and our own defenses might give out before then.”
“Ensign Morgan,” Archer inquired,” what’s our current shield strength?”
“The asteroids have been busy, Commander,” Morgan responded. “After restoring forward shields to sixty percent, they have now dropped down to twenty-five percent. Two shots from the probe would give us a hull breach.”
“Then, a fight is out of the question,” Llewellyn sighed, staring at the viewscreen. He lost his mind in the swirling rocks and let his eyes slip into tunnel vision. Soon, the only thing that he noticed was the probe, floating peacefully there as it licked its own wounds and desperately attempted to deliver its message.
There was only one thing for it, only one option left.
“I guess we wait.”
An alarm punctuated his final order.
“Captain,” Armstrong blurted out,” I think we’ve been spotted!”
He was right. The viewscreen showed the probe’s engines restart and it quickly began running again, threading a route through the chaos of the asteroid field and heading away from Fortitude. Ewan felt like sweating but he managed to control himself long enough for Valerie to remind him of one alternative that he hadn’t considered. It was all that they could do for now. A chance had been lost.
“We have to destroy it. We can’t capture it now.”
Llewellyn felt his heartbeat slow down and the drumming in his head faded away. She was right, and now there was a finality to the situation. Quickly, he raced up to stand alongside Jim Morgan at the tactical console and started tapping instructions into the LCARS system in front of him.
“Give me tractor-beam control!,” he demanded.
“You’ve got it, sir,” Jim replied, transferring the tractor-beam over to his command.
All eyes were on the captain now. When he looked up to the viewscreen, so did everyone else. What they saw confirmed their original thoughts about him. He was tenacious, utterly unconventional, and he had no traditional extensive tactical training. However, nonetheless, his plans always seemed to work out.
Front beneath Fortitude’s drive section, a tractor-beam seized a hold of a nearby large chunk of rock and in an instant, swung it like a Scotsman throwing the caber. Ewan disengaged the beam at the critical point of the swing, sending the rock spinning through the field at exactly the right moment…
… and in the direction of the escaping probe!
A few seconds of tension resulted in a small explosion recording in the distance and a small round of applause on the Bridge for the Captain.
“You’ve got the show me how to do that, sir!,” Jim grinned.
Ewan winked at him. “Didn’t you ever play baseball at the Academy, Ensign?”
* * * *
Captain’s Log, supplemental;
Thanks to some fine piloting by Lieutenant Arden Vuro, we have cleared the asteroid field and resumed our previous course. While my initial obsession with capturing the End probe intact has subsided, I find myself, once again, downhearted that the answer to our predicament could only be found in violence. Ensign Armstrong assures me that the probe failed to transmit our location to the nearby End forces. As before, I feel as if this ship and this crew are neatly sidestepped danger… for now…
Ewan was just wrapping things up and heading for his quarters when Commander Archer caught up with him in the corridor. They smiled at each other, both recognizing the strain that the probe had caused earlier in the day.
“Calling it a day, Ewan?,” the commander asked her commanding officer, keeping things informal for so late an hour.
“You bet. Coffee, my bed, and something to read,” he replied, waving a PADD in front of him. “It’s Jason’s latest holo-program. Something about a terrorist incursion on an office block, circa 1989. He said it helped him to relax and I promised to give it the once-over.”
“That doesn’t sound like your kind of things at all,” she observed. “Terrorists, violence, fighting your way out…?”
“I didn’t say that I was going to run the damned program.”
“If you don’t mind me asking, how are you feeling about today?”
Llewellyn stopped walking, and instead, decided to lean against the bulkhead in contemplation of her question. He frowned, still trying to settle on what exactly he had concluded about the chase. Should he tell her that the asteroid impacts became like drumming? Or should he simply sum it up and say that he got ‘carried away’ with trying to capture the probe? He had never been someone for self-diagnosis after all. With a deep sigh, he cocked his head to one side and lifted the frown.
Honesty was always the best policy.
“I heard drums,” he told her. “The asteroid impacts on the shields became like drums to me, and I felt myself becoming almost attached to that probe. I wanted it so badly. I wanted to dissect it, and learn more about it. I don’t know why, but somewhere in my subconscious, I suppose I thought that there might be some hidden secret inside. Something that could allow us to kick the End right between the legs and deal a crippling blow --”
“Ewan,” Valerie interrupted him,” stop right there.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“The corridor is no place for a discussion like this. Come on. We’ll go to your quarters, replicate some coffee, and you can tell me everything.”
“Weren’t you heading to bed yourself?,” he asked her. He half-knew that she hadn’t even addressed that issue.
“It doesn’t matter. I’m the First Officer, and the captain’s wellbeing is my responsibility.”
“Thanks, but I think I’ll -- “
“You know, I could get Doctor T’Verra to prescribe counseling instead,” Valerie teased him, allowing herself to come across as slightly threatening. “Or you can rely on my friendship and trust me.”
Captain Ewan Llewellyn chose the latter.
EPILOGUE
It was old, decaying, and forgotten.
The probe had never ceased to function, not after almost two hundred years of faithful and uneventful service. Recently, it had faced a few hardships, but it was nothing that it couldn’t overcome. The circuits had been designed by a master in the trade and the armor reinforced it substantially. The scorch marks on the surface were from asteroid impacts, after all.
The latest impact had been gigantic. There were no engines now. No warp reactor to speak of. No shield generators and no weapons. In fact, all that had remained was probably the most important part. Lying crashed on the side of a large asteroid was the sensor matrix. The self-replicating energy that it fed on was still self-replicating, and the lights were still blinking. It was still even running proximity scans.
There was a single cable linking it to another discarded piece of wreckage. This piece was the transmitter.
The self-replicating energy shot along the cable, lighting that up too.
It would deliver its data.
It would complete the mission.
The End...