Avan's Colony

Posted on Sat Aug 30th, 2025 @ 9:18pm by Commander Rhupert Tyree & Commander Daynah Ral & Lieutenant Commander Richard Dalziel & Lieutenant Commander Zuub & Lieutenant Katya Davi & Lieutenant Aria Kanzaki & Lieutenant Amy Gordon

1,638 words; about a 8 minute read

Mission: On the Trail
Location: SS. Adelaide, orbiting Quatal Prime
Timeline: two days after Mayday at the Mine.

Rhu stood looking at the real-time view of Quatal Prime on Adelaide’s main viewer, arms crossed as he thought. The system had scanned empty when they entered and he’d purposely taken the ship in slow to make sure this wasn’t some sort of an ambush. He’d put the freighter into a geosynchronous orbit above the colony’s coordinates and he’d notified Proctor Dreth that they had arrived and were making final preparations. Looking around the bridge, Rhu locked the controls and made his way aft toward the ship’s lounge, calling out. “All hands, let’s meet in the crew lounge and figure out how to do this.”

It was really the only place the whole crew could get together at the same time (comfortably) and they needed to finalize what they were going to do.

As his crew assembled he gestured toward the three-dimensional render of the Quatal system and it zoomed in, to show a Light Blue planet with four moons and a representation of the Adelaide all projected over the main dining table.

Once the crew was seated, Daynah stood and gestured to the planet on the projection. "Ladies and Gentlemen I give you Quatal Prime. This is a Class A planet about 9,260 meters in diameter. The atmosphere is mostly hydrogen gas, with an atmospheric temperature of about 8000 kelvin. Quatal is located in the exosphere of its star so the hospitality on the surface could range. The planet's surface is primarily molten save for the poles which are a bit cooler. She was created about 1.2 billion years ago and has four satellites. Just a run of the mill space rock that is ripe for the ore within."

Twitching the zoom in further, the image changed to exterior view of a landing grid and gathering towers built like a plug into a dormant volcano crater. Touching the controls near his seat, Rhu said, “SS. Adelaide to Avan’s colony.”

The one eyed Bajoran woman’s visage replaced the planets image and the harried looking woman smiled slightly. “Good to hear and see you Adelaide. Captain Crevins was it? We’re relieved you’ve arrived and will take all the help we can get.”

“Just so we can get a better handle on things, what can you tell us about the operation and what’s happening. I’ll be honest with you Proctor, I won’t endanger my crew and passengers if something is out of control down there.”

Nodding, Dreth said, “I might curse you for it, but I can’t blame you, “Avan’s colony, previously and originally known as Processing Station twenty six when the Cardassians inhabited it is what they called a model one eighty five processing plant, built to do extract Deuterium from the planet’s atmosphere for further processing. This station was found still intact and some of banded together and have brought it back online by right of salvage this past year. We’re now at eighty six souls in a lot of trouble, Captain and can use whatever aide you can give us.”

“Things started going wrong about five days ago when an accident at extraction point Alpha caused us to be cut off from a six person mining team. We have no idea if they’re even alive and have been unable to reestablish communications with them. Next we sent out a rescue team in a powered car, but that four man team is now cut off. Derailed through sheer stupidity of pushing the car too fast. They’re alive for now but running out of air and pushing the cars limited life support past red lines. Those cars weren’t built for anything but transporting personnel and some cargo.”

Sighing and wearily running fingers through her hair, Dreth convulsed into a coughing fit and said, “Capping it all off, most of us are now sick from some unknown source. Our Chief Nurse can’t pin down the source and it’s getting worse though our environmental monitors are working within normal ranges. Or appear to. To be honest, our life support system is the worse for wear. We were expecting a full load of filters after we sold off our stock of Deuterium and extracts, but they never arrived. Neither did the other supplies and we haven’t heard from the merchant.”

She paused again as coughs tore at her and she stopped take a drink before continuing, “The mayday was our last resort. The Cardassians know we’re here, but aren’t very helpful in that they insist on taking half off the top of whatever we can produce with little or no assistance. Then our signal cut out and Bryan, my head of maintenance tells me somethings burned out in the comm system but he can’t get a handle on that. The poor man is run ragged and exhausted trying to keep everything together. We’re all in bad shape.”

Out of view of the Proctor, Kat signaled to Rhu that she wanted to help. Either with the trapped crew or the life support system. The Adelaide didn't have many spare parts, but she might be able to scavenge something together. If those who were trapped were inside a tunnel, she'd been in enough caves to be comfortable there. She could also try to fix the most immediate problems. It depended on what the most immediate needs were.

Zuub listened. She heard that they were sick from an unknown source but that could not be correct for numerous reasons. "Who had the first symptoms?" she wondered aloud. "And what were they? Is there anyone with different symptoms?" There had to be something traceable. Even with the primitive tools, she should be able to at least figure that much out.

"The disease could be due to something in life support system, without new filters, some microbes or other toxins could be trapped in the system." Richard suggested. "I could produce some activated carbon filters, this some coal, oxygen and some common chemicals and a makeshift forge."

Kat nodded. All she could do was help with the mechanics of the system itself. With Richard and Zuub working on the life support system, she could try to help the people who were trapped. Unfortunately, the Adelaide was poorly equipped for this, but right now, any help was better than nothing.

"But then the nurse would have been able to have identified it," Zuub responded shaking her head. Something did not sit right.

Aria listened intently at the conversation. She began to formulate plans in her head as she assimilated the information. "How exactly are your teams cut off?" She asked, taking the reins of the conversation. "Do you know what could or did cause the accident?". She knew full well that old Cardassian facilities were often booby trapped when abandoned and she was wondering if they had triggered one.

Thrumming his fingers on the console, Rhu muted and froze their screen. "Trouble is we don't know and won't really till we can get on the ground and see for ourselves." Reactivating the comm, he said, "Proctor, we'll be on the ground in roughly ten hours. Prep your landing grid and we'll be in contact. Hold on, we're on the way."

Proctor Dreth nodded and a relieved look appeared in her eyes, "Thank you Adelaide. We'll see you soon."

Rhu cut the link then and said, "We'll take whatever precautions we did and the first thing I want to do is run diagnostics on their sensors. They might have old systems with libraries that aren't up to date. Or something. We'll query the Proctor and try to diagram as best we can the whole situation, but it looks like we'll have at least a little more time to get situated. Anyone have more to add? If not, we'll brief again in seven hours when we're closer and have better signal with them."

"I have difficulty believing it is the filtration systems. If things were that bad, this would be a radiation problem," Zuub answered. "That's not the evidence I'm hearing or seeing at this time."

"It could be a lot of things," Kat said. "We need to get closer so we can run some scans of our own and get a better idea of what's going on."

"I'm new to this covert game." Richard said. "Perhaps we should go over each other’s aliases before we arrive."

"Yeah. It would be a good idea to at least know what to call each other," Kat said. "I'll be using Katarina Diaz and I specialize in communications and repairs. But you can still call me Kat. Just remember, no ranks."

"Alec Trevelyan, engineer, a pleasure to meet you Ms Diaz." Richard said.

"And I am Agatha Smith." Amy giving her alias. " Support. " was all she offered. She may not have said much but Amy was cataloging the information, in her mind.

"Derick Crevins," Rhu stated. Master of the Adelaide. "I'm heading to the bridge. Let’s get ready." Picking up his dishes, Rhu moved them to the fresher and then started for the bridge.

"Yes, sir." Kat flashed Rhu a grin. "I'll take care of the dishes so the rest of you can get ready."

Aria looked up. "I guess I'll go by something else other than Aria then..." she said. "I'll go by Holmes. We'll just say it's my surname."
A post by

Lieutenant Katya Davi
Chief Operations Officer
USS Valiant and Adelaide

Lieutenant Commander Richard Dalziel
Chief Engineer
USS Valiant

Lieutenant Amy Gordon
Chief Intelligence
USS Valiant.

Commander Rhupert Tyree
Master and Commander
Aboard the SS. Adelaide.

Commander Daynah Ral
Executive Offivcer
USS Valiant

Lieutenant Commander Zuub
Chief Medical Officer
USS Valiant

Lieutenant Aria Kanzaki
Chief Security / Tactical Officer
USS Valiant

 

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