Star Trek Triangle Missions The Motion Picture: Core Values Part 2
Contents
Captain's Log, Stardate 42627.5
A Plan of Attack
In doing what scans I could gather from the tactical pod, we learned that the USS Blackheart's shields were down to 20% and was flying erratically. Lieutenant Joran Maniersi commed in and reported that there were 60 humanoid life signs and a hundred or so anomalous readings.
The Blackheart took a shot at the USS Niven so I gave the order to separate the pod from the rest of the ship. A shot was fired at the Blackheart in hopes that it would bring down their shields so that we could beam aboard the humanoids. After a couple volleys, their shields were rendered to 0% and Chief Warrant Officer Harald Lysander locked on to the humanoid lifesigns on the bridge and beamed them over to us.
A short, tense pause was interrupted by Lysander's scream, "It's not the Blackheart's crew!" Alarmed, I ran back toward the transporter pad to find a humanoid creature with black and green skin and bulging eyes. I had it secured with force fields and had to focus my attention onto transporting my crew.
After the Niven was successfully evacuated, I gathered an away team to board the Blackheart in hopes of gaining information. We were able to access their computer logs and began downloading all of the information on to isolinear chips as a backup. Lieutenant Commander Hazor Dyan called me down to engineering saying I had to come see something.
The Discoveries
When I arrived, I saw that the warp core was absent, but in its place was a quantum singularity drive. Hazor suggested that we split up the crew; half would work on restoring the Niven and Blackheart, while the rest would take the information gleaned from the ship's logs and continue hunting for the crew of the Blackheart. I left Commander Devin West and Lieutenant Commander Akoval th'Idrani lorTheel'zhiin in command of the Blackheart and Niven respectively, while I took our commandeered Gorn ship, temporarily named the USS Koyanagi, along the Blackheart's presumed flight path.
When we arrived at the destination system, one planet was classified as a class M. Scans found the planet teeming with life. There were plenty of humanoid life forms, many gathered in large groups in multiple areas across the surface. Three "camps" were larger than the rest, so we decided to begin our investigation there. Hailing frequencies were opened, but we did not receive a response. When we were closer to the surface, we saw that a majority of the humanoid life signs belonged to the same type of creature we beamed aboard the tactical pod from the Blackheart. There were swarms of the insectoid creatures who boarded the ship around as well as the large, parasitic creatures who resembled the Horta.
Maniersi did a sensor sweep and reported that the planet was like a ship graveyard with duranium littered across the surface. Plenty of dilithium was found as well, and most were where the Hortas were gathered.
Food for Thought
We found a compound where we saw the first sign of the Blackheart's crew. I was able to speak to a Lieutenant Jones and a Corporal Mathis. They reported that they were engaged in classified mission when the Blackheart was attacked by swarm of enemy ships. They witnessed the ships moving in strange, erratic ways and during the fight, a giant creature attached itself to the ship and began draining away the power. They too were boarded by the insectoids creatures much like the Niven. The crew fought as well as they could, but were totally overwhelmed. The ship was capture, the crew was separated into small groups, and thrown onto this planet. All they had managed to gather was that the humanoid creatures are claiming that "the gods are dying".
Just as we broke out the crew from their holding cells, Maniersi and Hazor started screaming. Apparently the Horta had made obtrusive psionic contact with them, demanding to know why we were taking their subjects away. Knowing we were in danger, I offered to negotiate an agreement.
We met with the smaller black-green humanoids. The revered the Hortas as their gods and that they were the reason why the planet was as lush and green as it is. They were dying of hunger and without their food source, dilithium hexachromate, they would die, as would the planet. In their desperate need to provide them with dilithium, they launched an attack on nearby ships. However, the dilithium off of the ships were bichromate. We negotiated a deal to teach them how to develop the dilithium to be edible to the Hortas in exchange for the release of the Blackheart's crew and to release the ship as well.
With their new knowledge, they should be able to sustain the Hortas for a long time given the amount of dilithium was on the surface from scuttled ships. I'm thankful that this mission was a success, especially being able to rescue the Blackheart's crew, but I sorely wish that it did not come at such a high price. The number of letters I need to write home to families weighs heavily upon my heart.
