"Will it never be morning?"

[Cmdr JFarrington 0]

Personal Log Stardate 510809.21

Cmdr J Farrington, MD

USS Manticore NCC 5852-A

Andromeda Galaxy

 

“Will it never be morning?”

~W. Shakespeare,

Henry V

, Act 3, Scene VII

 

His name was Jason. Young kid from the backstreets of Philly, plagued with a last name that hung around his neck like a sign that said Kick Me. Ever since he could remember they called him Red. He was always last. Always left behind. Always the first to die in games of “Cardie War.” On his Starfleet application he wrote in Jason “Red” Shirt. The recruiter had a good laugh.

 

Local kid made good, joined Starfleet, graduated top of his class, signed on for covert ops, assigned to the flagship. What more could he want? Join Starfleet, See the Galaxy. Right. And now he was gone, taken away by some ungodly predator that reminded Jami of a pterodactyl on steroids.

 

Ritah Lowen, Physician. Surgeon. Daughter of two who made their life’s work tending to the most needy of patients in the Federation Long-term Care Facility on Delvos Prime. Always working. Always curious. Looking for new cures, new treatments. Wanting to get to the core of the problem. Always ready with a quip, a scan, or a cup of coffee – whatever was needed at the time. Vanished.

 

Jami Farrington, Second Officer, USS Manticore. Commanding Chimera away team. Sleepless. Frustrated. Lying in a cot aboard the shuttle, staring at the bottom of the bunk above, waiting for dawn.

 

She and Captain Sovak had decided to wait until morning to regroup and collaborate on a strategy to recover Ritah and Jason. A moonless night and predators too numerous to count on a planet two million light years from home didn’t make for good search and rescue.

 

How? thought Jami, resisting the urge to slam her fist against the bulkhead. How in the name of everything…. ?

Several tricorders recorded the attack and Jason’s capture. The images on Hilee’s playback were something Jami really didn’t want to remember. It made her wonder if Jason was alive, half hoping he wasn’t. When she allowed her mind to dwell on it, thoughts of him being and torn apart while fully conscious and helpless to defend himself made her irate and nauseated.

 

Escher said the predator’s paralyzing might be similar to that of the Fangorian barking spiders and that a sound dampening system might keep them at bay. Might. Faldek had set up an automated sentry system, weapons rigged at the perimeter that would take out anything that came close. On reflection, Jami figured that was the safe thing to do, but not the right thing. She’d ordered them to stand down.

 

Doug saw Ritah fall. Something attacked without warning. She went down, clutching her neck. When security ran to her rescue, only a few meters away, she was gone.

 

So was Ritah alive? At least there had been no primal scream, no flapping of wings, no paralysis of the crew before she vanished. Neither had there been rustling in the underbrush. Strange.

 

Whether Ritah and Jason were alive remained to be seen, but the away team would search. Jami had vowed to leave no one behind, and had lied to her husband and superior officer to that end. She had no regrets.

 

Rising up on one elbow, Jami turned to gaze out the viewport, not that there was anything to see until sunrise. Chemical sentry lights strung around the perimeter did little to disburse the darkness. Campfires added a smoky haze. To conserve energy, Chimera’s life support was set to planetary mode, filtering everything but the smell of campfire and humid rainforest from the outside air. Inside, the sounds of minimal electronics and personnel pretending to sleep mixed with that of sweaty camp-worn bodies. The whole scene, the entire situation, had a surrealistic feel.

 

She lay back and checked her chronometer. One hour. Sixty minutes. Three thousand six hundred seconds. Two hundred sixteen thousand….

 

Will it never be morning?