Mi'shune sh'Sonora - The Way We Regress

[d.reinhart]

((Runabout USS Zambezi, Currently Wedging Itself Into the Hull of, Starbase 118))

sh’Sonora: COMPUTER! STOP THE SHUTTLE!!!!!

And instantly, the runabout held its position, the groaning stopped, save for the clatter of rattling parts and the pop of duranium microwelds.

And the heavy, labored, scared out of her wits breathing of one Andorian pilot.

sh’Sonora: This isn’t my trainer shuttle. Where the frell am I?!

A beeping on the unfamiliar vessel’s console caught the panicking Ensign’s attention. It appeared to be the shuttle’s communications console, but it was in a configuration that made little sense to her, aside from the flashing and beeping from an open hail button begging for attention. 

The Ensign’s trembling fingers pressed on the button. 

Munshi: =/\= Ensign sh’Sonora, this is Ensign Munshi in the Work Bee. You are at StarBase 118, Bay 5 coordinates. Your shuttle is stationary, but the port nacelle is currently acting as a lever against the primary hull. =/\=

She took a look out her port side viewscreen. From what she could see there was a huge rend in the hull of a space station whose curvature wasn’t in the least bit familiar to her by sight.

Which was puzzling because last she remembered she took off, in the atmosphere, from the Anders Starport on Andoria. 

Maybe she blanked out from the euphoria. Maybe everything that happened since lifting off was a blur from the excitement of it all. And in that blur… She managed to hit a space station.

sh’Sonora’s: oO Starfleet to the rescue! But what are they doing on a civilian space station? Oh gods, did I mess up so bad they had to send a Starfleet rescue team?! Oo ::groaning loudly:: oO Oh gods, not only did I fail, my parents are gonna kill me… Oo

Her Starfleet rescuer refused to be ignored.

Munshi: =/\= Mi'shune, I need you to listen to the timbre of my voice. The variables are shifting, but they are still under our control. Do not attempt to engage thrusters. I am going to apply a counter-thrust and clamp the Zambezi to the station's magnetic grid. =/\=

McLaren: =/\= That's right Ensign. Keep calm, we'll have you out of there soon. =/\=

Mi’shune attempted to steady her hyperventilating breathing, just as Seifu Chen taught her. Breathe in, breathe out. Steady the heart rate, bring in the calm. She wasn’t sure if the breathing exercises were actually working, but it did take her mind, momentarily, off the fact that she collided into a space station.

Sure, her parents would probably smooth things over with a few energy credits for the repairs, but she could kiss her dreams goodbye, possibly for good.

The idea of losing one of two things in her life she wanted to do that her parents actually allowed brought hiccuping tears to her eyes. She didn’t know what to do, it was all too much for her overwhelmed senses to handle. Tears flowed freely, and her throat swelled from holding her wails back.

sh’Sonora: I’m sorry. I’m sooo  sooo sorry. I didn’t mean to hit your space station. I don’t know how I got here, honest! Did I crash near the local garrison? Oh gods… did I crash into a Starfleet Starbase? Oh gods! Are you with Blue Fleet? Who are you?!

Munshi: =/\= What do you mean who am I? We just met a couple of minutes ago…

sh’Sonora: What are you talking about? I don’t know you, honest!

Munshi: =/\= Ensign, keep your hands away from the helm. I’ve got you. Commander McLaren, the Bee is in position. I am attempting to stabilize the Zambezi before the hull integrity drops below the safety threshold. I suspect we’re going to need a second Bee and an EVA team for the extraction. =/\=

Not a problem! Whatever she was flying was certainly not the craft she remembered crawling into. Shreya found one of his company’s old two-seater transatmo flyers to go zipping around the atmosphere. It was nothing like this big, hulking monstrosity of a shuttlecraft. Her flyer had real flight controls, with a flight stick, rudders, pitch and yaw. Not LED console buttons like a…

sh’Sonora: …Danube class runabout?!

Now she recognized the ship from the brochures she pilfered behind her parents’ backs. This wasn’t some dinky, obsolete sublight spacepod. This was a real, warp-capable vessel, and she was in the pilot seat. No wonder she couldn’t find the right controls, and no wonder its thrusters were so sensitive! 

The thought of permanently losing the privilege of flight took a backseat as her circumstances mutated strangely.

McLaren: =/\= Already ahead of you, Ensign. Look up. =/\=

Ensign? Wasn’t she being called Ensign a moment ago?

sh’Sonora: Ummmm yeah… no problem. Hands off the controls. Gotcha, ummm… Mister and Missus Starfleet?

Munshi: ?

McLaren: =/\= They’re already prepping another workbee now... but it'll probably take a few minutes. =/\=

sh'Sonora: Good, because this is…. ::She holds back a sniff.:: I’m scared.

Munshi: Response?

Mi’shune recognized another picture from her Starfleet recruitment brochure. An EVA suit! This one serenely floated to the front of her viewscreen, giving the frightened Andorian a clear, non-threatening view.

McLaren: =/\= How are you doing Ensign sh'Sonora? =/\=

sh’Sonora: oO There they go, calling me Ensign again. What the frell is going on? Oo

sh’Sonora’s Inner Dialogue: oO Look down, stupid. OO

She did look down, to see her dressed in a Starfleet uniform. The commbadge in particular stood out. She felt her neck collar and she felt a singular rank designation pip in with her finger.

Did she forget impersonating a Starfleet officer, stealing a runabout, and making it one with the local Starbase? How could a person forget that? Maybe it explained the sick feeling in her stomach and her increasing headache, or was that the sheer existential terror of finding out she messed up so badly even her family’s connections couldn’t keep her from being shipped out to a juvenile penal colony in the deep periphery to go break rocks?

This was supposed to be the best day of her life. How did it end up like this?

sh'Sonora: Missus Starfleet Officer ma’am, how much trouble am I in?

Her Starfleet savior’s pause was too long to be reassuring.

McLaren: =/\= What is the last thing you do remember? =/\=

Mi’shune wanted to tell the truth, but what was it? She suspected the Starfleet officer wasn’t going to believe a delinquent with a stolen shuttlecraft, but what else was she going to say? Starfleet had lie detectors and psychics who could pry the truth out of her like the meat from a stubborn oyster. Then there would be the reckoning from home. Forget flight training, wing chun, dating, shopping, hologames, or any other meaningful activity. She was gonna be grounded until she was as old as her grandshen. Her life was over.

The truth might get her a life sentence instead of execution. The truth it was.

sh'Sonora: Missus Starfleet Officer ma’am, I just left my afternoon classes at the Courtesan’s Academy to take my first solo flight and I sort of… ended up here. I swear I wasn’t flying anywhere near a Starfleet facility! Look, I’m really sorry, I don’t know how I got here! 

Mi’shune tucked her legs up and wrapped herself in a ball on the pilot’s chair, reality sinking her into a pitch-black unending abyss. 

McLaren: =/\= Ok, ok, Mi'shune. Once the other work bee gets here we'll get the runabout extracted and get you safely back aboard the station... then try and figure out what happened. =/\=

She looked up from the tears soaking her knees to see the EVA suited Starfleet officer, Missus Starfleet, float well within the cockpit’s view. Having better than twenty-twenty vision, Mi’shune could see a face in the EVA suit’s helmet. That must have been Missus Starfleet! She didn’t appear to be angry. More confused, but caring and sympathetic. 

Maybe she wasn’t in trouble.

Yet.

sh'Sonora: Yes please. Missus Starfleet Officer ma’am… you’re going to tell my parents, aren’t you?

Munshi: Response?

Something else took notice as she looked past the waving Starfleet officer in the EVA suit. Where was Andoria? Shouldn’t she be seeing the home moon by now? Or for that matter, the gas giant which the home moon orbited around? There was nothing but the curvature of the spacestation, and an endless expanse of stars.

sh’Sonora: Ummm… Starfleet? This isn’t Andoria. Where am I?

Any: ? 

Mi’shune wasn’t the best at astronomy, but she had some familiarity with starcharts and sector locations as a prerequisite towards her flight license. If she heard the Starfleet officers correctly, she wasn’t deep in the Federation interior, safely orbiting around one of the founding species’ home systems. 

sh’Sonora: I’M IN THE WHAT SECTOR?!

She was out in the periphery, in the literal Triangle between superpowers, multiple thousands of lightyears away from where she took off.

How did it happen? Did she accidentally hit a micro-wormhole? Intersect with a transwarp tunnel? Get snapped away by a Q? 

If she managed to get out of this scrape without charges she was going to have one strange story to tell when she gets home.

sh’Sonora: ::hiccuped:: At least I’ll have an excuse for why I’ll be late for class.

Any: ? 

sh’Sonora: You’re not mad at me, are you? I mean, I broke your space station and your runabout, but I honest to the gods don't remember how I got here! I know you don't have reason to believe me but it's the honest truth! Is anybody hurt? I didn’t mean to hurt anyone, really! Oh gods, this is heavy.

Any: ?

TBC…

Ensign Mi’shune sh’Sonora

Helm Officer

Starbase 118 - Ops Department

O240208MS1