Ad Astra :: Star Trek Fanfiction Archive ^{Beam me up, Scotty.}

Chapter Text

The Star Beagle Adventures                                                
Episode 5: All Good People
Scene 2: Minor Serrat Station

5.2
Minor Serrat Station

The Beagle task force was in full swing, exploring the 6 planets of the Serrat system. Serrat Prime was the planet that was in the Goldilocks zone - and it appeared to be a super planet - with an exceptionally stable orbit and a history of life going back billions of years. The 2nd and 5th planets in the system were rocky worlds with frozen atmospheres. Planets 3, 4 and 6 were gas giants with Serrat 6 by far the largest - nearly half again the size of Jupiter, with at least 98 moons. 

All of the task force’s assets were deployed. While all the biologists, most of the marines and the oceanographers were stationed in three locations on Serrat Prime - each supported by small, vulcan-built science shuttles from the U.S.S. Beagle, more than a dozen probes from the Beagle, U.S.S. Mako and U.S.S. Escort were coursing through the system, surveying all of the planets and moons. Escort was staged on one side of the Serrat system, studying the small, frozen, rocky, but mineral-rich Serrat 5. 

The Beagle was stationed in high orbit of Serrat Prime, ready to support the landing parties, but also coordinating information gathering from all of the assets scattered throughout the system. Mako was in orbit of the massive Serrat 6, cataloguing the moons as well as the atmosphere.

Major Janet Carter was piloting the Bluebird with Sgt. Tommy Richards as well as the stellar systems team from the Vulcan Science Academy, traveling near the Serrat star for detailed analysis.

But it was the U.S.S. Puppy, the Beagle’s large task shuttle, under the command of Sakura Nakamura Holland, way out on the far edge of the system studying the red dwarf that orbited the system at a great distance, that made the discovery that verified readings from probes that had passed near this system over the past few centuries that had put the Serrat system on the task force’s priority list: 

There had once been an intelligent species living in the Serrat system that made cultural use of radio and may have had faster than light travel. 

A large space station had been erected in orbit of the red dwarf - close enough to draw power from the star, far enough out to avoid damage from plasma blasts and electro-magnetic pulses occasionally emitted by the unstable star. At least before that star had entered an even more active phase...

The two small planets orbiting Minor Serrat were both burnt out rocks. At some point, each had been washed clean of atmosphere and water by solar flares from the unstable red dwarf. 

The same fate had apparently fallen the space station, not once or twice, but dozens of times.

“The station is not stable enough for us to board.” Sakura was on the comm unit with her husband, Commander Dutch Holland, currently in command of the U.S.S. Beagle, nearly 6 light hours away in orbit of Serrat Prime. “We’re sending in the dogfish, but as ancient and heavily damaged as that station is, it’s unlikely it will contain sufficient parts to build more robots. And I’d rather not do any scavenging as that would just be bad archeology.”

The masked luchador looked simply amazing on the throne-like command chair of the vulcan-built Beagle - almost like some ancient Aztec god. “My probe lab is empty. All of our probes are out surveying the system. But I suppose we could put together a care package for you. It will essentially be a probe tube with about a dozen dogfish crammed inside it. There won’t be room for much else other than an engine. Probably 2 hours to get it ready and another 10 hours to get it to you at warp 0.8. I don’t like the idea of getting much closer than that to light speed within the system.”

“A dozen?” Sakura asked with some incredulity.

“I’m not down there to work out all the geometry, or I’d say 15,” Dutch replied.

“I’m doing the geometry in my head and I can’t see a way to get more than seven of them in there,” Sakura replied.

“Only one of them needs to be fully assembled. It can assemble the others once it gets there. Much easier to cram a bunch of them in if they’re disassembled. Faster on our end, too,” Dutch Holland responded.

“And why didn’t I think of that?” Sakura asked with a smile.

“Because you’re looking at some amazing ancient alien space station while I’m babysitting three away teams down on a planet that looks like a paradise, but I don’t get to walk on it.”

“Don’t be too upset, mi magnífico león,” Sakura rejoined. “I’ve done the ‘running-with-the-tellarites’ thing before. Believe me, you wouldn’t like it.”

5.2