You'll Be Back Before You Know It

[Atragon9 0]

Ben Nelby, Alice Shostack, Megan Cummings, Wilbur Jenkins and I, these names will forever be burned into my brain. We were five, painfully earnest, new graduates. We had all gone through the standard Academy coursework and had even been selected for Command School. That coursework chewed up another year of our lives and we graduated as LtJG's. We didn't know each other in school, but once we got assigned to the USS Koenig as the "Freshman Class," we got to know each other very well. We competed against each other for the plum assignments, or as plum as were tossed down to the bottom of the Command pile. We started off as bitter rivals, but we soon figured out that we had more in common with each other than with the rest of the crew. We bonded as a group, but I suppose that is how it goes all the time. Looking back at that time now and seeing how Manticore brings in its officers, I can understand that now. We thought we were a cohesive group onboard, but we had no idea what lay ahead for us.

 

Ben Nelby, Alice Shostack, Megan Cummings, Wilbur Jenkins and I. The Koenig was a middle-aged Oberth that was showing its years, but it was a good ship, a fine ship, it would last forever... The work was hard, but the rewards were so much more tangible than they had ever been in school. Even in Command School, we were learning lessons, we were learning best practices and the proper way to accomplish tasks. On the Koenig, it was Real. We dealt with people out in deep space, all crammed together in the same tin can. The command decisions were affecting the people you lived with, worked with, loved and hated. They were affecting your own day-to-day life and the ability of the ship to carry out its mission. It was a great year on the Koenig, one where I learned more than I ever had before ...

 

Ben Nelby, Alice Shostack, Megan Cummings, Wilbur Jenkins and I. Captain Everett had the ship mapping the farther reaches of the Beta quadrant, close to the Romulan and Klingon empires. We were passing by a small moon that had an M-style atmosphere, but just barely, and low gravity, and he decided to send the five of us down for 5 weeks of survival training. He told us that we were getting too comfortable onboard and it was time to see what it was like when you're away from the comforts of "home."

 

Ben Nelby, Alice Shostack, Megan Cummings, Wilbur Jenkins and I, took Shuttle 3 down to this unnamed moon and were told to set up camp and survive for 5 weeks, the Koenig would return for us. We had enough rations for 3 weeks, so we had to get set up and get busy. The first week was difficult, but passed quickly, as we scouted an area that included some underground caverns, in case we needed shelter, and a small supply of water. It wasn't the freshest, but we knew we could get any microbes flushed from our bodies when we returned to the ship.

 

Ben Nelby, Alice Shostack, Megan Cummings, Wilbur Jenkins and I, spent the second week finding indigenous food and getting everything out of Shuttle 3 that wasn't bolted down. We stored it all in the biggest cavern. It was turning into a game for us. Just 3 weeks to go, this wasn't so tough!

 

Ben Nelby, Alice Shostack, Megan Cummings, Wilbur Jenkins and I. Week 3 and our rations started to run low. We had been trying the local flora for food, but it just wasn't sitting too well with us, so we stuck with our ship rations as long as we could. They were gone now and we were on full local cuisine.

 

Ben Nelby, Alice Shostack, Megan Cummings, Wilbur Jenkins and I. Week 4 and Ben and Megan started to look a bit ill, but we joked that they were just too soft and used to their replicated meals.

 

Ben Nelby, Alice Shostack, Megan Cummings, Wilbur Jenkins and I. Week 5 and Ben and Megan were doing quite poorly, but the rest of us weren't exactly in the top of health. We were all looking forward to being picked up by the Koenig at the end of the week and hoped that Ben and Megan would just hold on long enough.

 

Alice Shostack, Megan Cummings, Wilbur Jenkins and I. Week 6 and no contact from the Koenig, Ben Nelby has succumbed to some sort of microbe in the food or water that our tricorders cannot detect and he has died. Megan is holding on, but she doesn't look a lot better than Ben did. The rest of us are feeling better, but no one feels the top of their game.. We spent all of our waking hours, cursing the Koenig being late for the pickup. We did not think this joke was particularly funny of Everett.

 

Alice Shostack, Megan Cummings, Wilbur Jenkins and I. Week 7 and we realize that this isn't a joke, something must be very wrong with the Koenig. Megan is getting a bit better, but now I am feeling worse, delirious and desperately thirsty. We decide to launch the shuttle to see if there is anything being carried by the subspace buoys that could clue us in to what's going on.

 

Alice Shostack, Megan Cummings, Wilbur Jenkins and I. Week 8 and we finally decide who is to take the shuttle up. Megan is now doing the best of all of us, so she will pilot and Wilbur will accompany her. Alice and I stayed in our cavern, trying to get better, hoping that our illness will take the course that Megan's did and improve soon.

 

Megan Cummings, Wilbur Jenkins and I. Week 9 and Megan and Wilbur returned from orbit with no news of the Koenig. We didn't know it until much later, but the Koenig had a baffle plate give out three weeks into our stay and their engines imploded. All hands were lost and no one knew that the five of us... the three of us, were still alive. Alice slipped into a coma one night and never woke up. Wilbur and I were finally getting past our symptoms and it looked like this moon would only claim the two lives.

 

Megan Cummings, Wilbur Jenkins and I. Week 10 and we had no idea where the ship had gone to, but had to face the facts that we were on our own. It was decided to launch a local buoy for any ship that came within range of our little home. Megan and Wilbur were getting on each others' nerves lately and Wilbur took the shuttle into orbit to launch the buoy, he begged me to let him go, since he wanted to get some time alone. I didn't realize that he planned to leave us behind, but that was the last we ever saw of Wilbur.

 

Megan Cummings and I, week 11, week 12, weeks 13 - 26. A year passed and we never saw the Koenig or Shuttle 3 again. It turned out that Wilbur had made a run for it, but since we had cannibalized the ship for parts, that once his Oxy processor started to fail, he could not repair it. The shuttle was found three years later, floating dead in space. Meanwhile, Megan and I set up a "home" on this moon, as best we could. We had to deal with some strange wind storms at times and even a period where our fresh water supply dried up for days at a time. We survived, but I wouldn't call it living. These months were terribly desolate for us. Having trained and reached for the stars, we found ourselves grounded in the middle of nowhere, literally, for what looked to be the rest of our lives. I can tell you that I had thoughts of killing myself during this time, but something was holding me back... someone.

 

Megan Cummings and I, year 2. Try as we could to lay in stock for bad times, it was never more than a few days worth of food and water that we could hoard at any one time. We were constantly foraging for sustenance and the days, months stretched on. We had given up hope of ever being rescued, but we couldn't give up hope on living. It turned out that we did have one thing, in abundance, each other. Our respect for each other and our strengths grew, as the time went on and before we knew what we were doing, we had fallen into the rhythm of an old, married couple, at the ripe old age of 24. We provided each other with a sustenance that went beyond food and water and that was all that kept us from deciding to give up altogether.

 

Megan Cummings and I, beginning of year 3, it finally happened. I had fallen down a pathway that I had walked for years and banged up my left leg pretty good. It was not healing well and I noticed the horrible smell of gangrene from the wound. Megan did not want to cut off my leg, as we had minimal medical supplies, if I were to bleed out, but we had no choice. The last thing I remember is passing out from the pain as she used the last phaser we had as a cauterizing cutter. I don't know the details beyond that, but another ship had finally been sent to map the same area of the quadrant as we had and look at the surprise they found. Megan had not gotten to the bone or major artery in my leg yet, so it was able to be saved, but I always joked with her later about her special straight-line tattoo that she gave me in our underground love nest.

 

My youth was lost on that moon, my eagerness for exploration, my zeal for doing the "Right thing" all the time. A too-cynical person would wonder if Special Ops planned it all along. The perfect training ground for the cold, methodical commander, who followed orders because they were orders. Megan and I both excelled at Special Ops until the events at the Lincoln outpost, when I lost her. Some of her is still here, in Margaux, but it's just not the same... never going to be the same desperate, desirous, delicate, dangerous love that we had down there. That moon stole SO much from me, and here I sit, aboard the Manticore, two million lightyears from home and I can't help but be frightened. I cannot go through this again, no matter how many people are with me. I can't sanction Garnoopy's destruction of a sector, but there HAS to be a way!