Chapter Text
The Star Beagle Adventures
Episode 15: Close to the Edge Part IV - Seasons of Man
Scene 1: The Time Between
The time between the notes relates the color to the scenes…
15.1
The Time Between
“U.S.S. Mako, this is the U.S.S. Escort, Rhonda Carter commanding. Please do not approach. Please maintain a peaceful stance toward the lifeforms that have been transported off our port and starboard stern.”
Captain Rhonda Carter was seated on the command throne of the U.S.S. Escort, wearing an EVA suit with her helmet on a tether. Two other persons could also be seen on the bridge, also wearing EVA suits with helmets attached by tether. The fact that the helmets were floating indicated that the artificial gravity was, at the moment, off.
Commodore Yui Song was clearly stunned at the evident deterioration of the toughest ship in the task force. “Rhonda, you are aware that you currently have at least 5 crew members drifting outside of your ship?”
“They have a job to do, so they won’t be drifting for long,” Carter rejoined. “As you can see, Escort is coming apart at the seams. Which is why the entire crew is wearing EVA suits. Even those in sections of the ship that weren’t torn up by our passenger. Are there any of those holy landers in the area?”
“One of them came out of the rift just before you,” Commodore Yui advised. “But they took off for the in door and long range telemetry indicates they are still headed that way at about warp 7, which seems to be their top speed.”
“That is good news for us,” Carter opined. “I assume Skip is watching, because he’s going to like this part, as a biologist…”
The commodore signaled to someone behind her and Captain Skip Howard was brought into the conversation via split-screens.
“Okay, that motley collection of creatures riding on those landthorns are, actually, the children of one of our now-deceased crew members, Ensign John Sevork. In addition to being part human and part vulcan, they are, apparently, part mushroom and part some other creature from some galaxy billions of light years away that we can no longer see the light from.”
“And they’re anchored in mushrooms that are encased in shells of rock,” Captain Howard observed.
“Those are the remnants of a much larger creature…” Carter started. “But that’s a long story for another time. For right now, those rockthorn mushroom things don’t get along well with the holy landers. And they’re capable of hurting them. They’re also capable of hurting us. We want to keep that from happening, we need to get these kids to somewhere they can hide. Some place with an asteroid field.”
“There’s a trinary system about 18 light years from here, but we would be going toward a swarm of holy landers,” Commodore Yui offered.
The image of the U.S.S. Beagle’s bridge was replaced with star charts on the split-screens of the Escort and the Mako. “According to the star charts we got from the silicone life forms back about 8 months ago,” came Howard’s voice. Most of the star chart lit up with additional highlighting. “That appears to be the Jar Galaxy. We were wondering why the star charts the serrati gave us showed so many more stars than we could see. Two groups of them. One of them was the QLock we narrowly escaped a few months ago. The other one appears to be the Jar Galaxy…”
Carter pressed a few controls on the arm of her chair and a single system was highlighted. “How about this one? 31 light years, no holy landers in the area…”
“How are we going to get those strange mushroom children there?” Yui asked.
“They come warp capable,” Skip Howard suggested. “Biologically generated warp fields?”
“The fastest we've observed creatures of their size is about warp 4,” Carter confirmed. "The big one topped warp 6."
“Rhonda, we’re going to have to tow you… can your ship even stand up to being towed?” Yui Song asked.
“Two backup structural integrity field generators say it can,” Carter replied. “And we're in process of re-rigging the artificial gravity generator to temporarily serve as an additional structural integrity generator. Apparently they work on very similar principles. I could use some fresh engineers to help hold Escort together and my people need a safe place to sleep for a few dozen hours.”
15.1