—- USS Luna, Bridge —-

The USS Luna came through the anomaly and stopped. With their main sensors down the chance that they could run headlong into something was greater than zero, and so they launched the runabout Apollo to guide them. It helped them take up a position to the side of the head of the Romulan warbird that was now floating in space a drift and cut off from the rest of its ship.

Aboard the runabout was Lieutenant Junior Grade Thomas Winfield and Lieutenant Pierre Lambert.

With the Luna’s sensors down they took to surveying the ship.

“No life signs,” Lambert reported to the Luna, which had managed to fix short range communications.

“Check the escape pods. Until I see a body we’re assuming Captain Cruz is alive,” came Commander Olivia Carrillo’s voice through the comm system of the runabout.

Winfield stood, “I’ll suit up for a space walk.”

Aboard the Romulan vessel he found about a hundred dead Romulans but no human captain. He also found the escape pods were all used.

“I’m going to say Cruz is alive,” he radioed Lambert. Adding, “Escape pods have been deployed. I’ll get back and we’ll figure out where they went.”

On the bridge Carrillo was going through a lengthy explanation of time physics, particularly how it seemed that despite entering the Underspace only moments before them the Romulan ship was likely here for hours or even longer.

“So how long has gone by?” Carrillo asked.

“We don’t know. Not so much that the team on the Apollo reported long term signs of aging with either the ships or the bodies on it, but long enough that the escape pods were fired,” said Assistant Chief Science Officer Lieutenant Commander Keyana Mason who had taken over lead of this mission as Gabriella Miller was more suited to biology and botany.

“Okay, we’ll get the Apollo to lead us into orbit around the nearest world,” Carrillo said, “Can we hail them?”

“Negative,” the answer came from Chief Engineer Young, he shook his head, “We have short range communication, but we’ll need to deploy ships to search. Shuttles and runabout. We’ll need to use the Apollo as a way point, essentially they hail the Apollo and then the Apollo hails the Luna.”

“What are the chances they’ve survived?” Carrillo said of the warbird and its passangers.

Gabriella Miller took this question, “It’s likely they were alive, at least least at some point. Winfield did not find the Romulan Commander or Captain Cruz.”

“What do we know about the planet?” Carrillo asked.

“Initial scans from the Apollo show it’s habited, but likely not by intelligent life,” Miller said, “There are no artificial structures or pollution of any significant amount. We’re far enough from the system’s sun that the planet is largely covered in ice, with the atmosphere being oxygenated by a narrow bank of tropical weather around the equator. Essentially think of Earth with two poles and about five hundred miles north and south of the Amazon.”

“Pr’Nor coordinate our flights to search,” Carrillo said, adding, “I want a pilot, science officer and security team member on each flight. Jara you have the Apollo and you’ll need to use that for defense at the moment, at least until we get weapon systems back online. Young fix the damn ship. Okay any questions?”

There were no questions from the senior staff and so the meeting broke and Carrillo sighed, heading back to her quarters. She had slept fitfully up until that point, too worried about everything. She knew that she had to step up and captain the ship, but in her heart she wanted Cruz back.

Passing Lambert in the hallway she stopped her fiancé, “You back from the Apollo?”

“I am, I’m off for a few hours then back to fly a shuttle down,” Lambert said.

Carrillo dragged him towards her room, tugging on his arm, “I need tucking in for a few hours.”

Lambert nodded, “As you wish.”

In her room Carrillo kissed him, the First Officer needing something to distract her mind from the weight of the Luna which was currently on it. Then she pulled him towards the shower, fitted with an old water shower and not the more modern sonic showers. There they both washed up and then collapsed with exhaustion on her mattress, falling asleep within minutes.

—- Planet’s Surface —-

Lieutenant Junior Grade William Hume stepped out of the shuttle, and ran a scan. The Vulcan Lieutenant Setiv followed him out and she promptly also began scanning, as if uncertain if he’d pick up a signal if there was one.

“Anything?” Winfield shouted from the pilot’s seat of the shuttle.

Hume’s feet crunched of ice as he took some steps away and then he shook his head, “One life sign, too big to be either human or Romulan.”

“He is correct,” Setiv said.

“Alright back on board, let’s trying again,” Winfield said.

In another hemisphere Captain Adriana Cruz yelled at the giant beast trying to distract it. A mammal of some kind, it was the size of three shuttle craft welded together, and had razor sharp teeth and claws. It had burst through the snow and into the centre of their ranks biting into a Romulan and swallowing the poor soul in one gulp.

Cruz was unarmed but had thrown a flare hoping to scare it off. The lit flare had managed to bounce off the beast’s hide to no effect. It now laid sputtering and burning on the ground, as the creature snapped at fleeing Romulans to try to fill its belly.

Commander Sibolv grabbed her arm and yanked her off her feet, away from the creature, “There’s caves this way.”

“Could be its lair,” Doctor T’Rala observed.

“Size does not match, the creature is bigger than the openings,” Sibolv said, releasing Cruz he lit his own flair and began to gesture towards the caves trying to direct the remaining Romulans there.

“What do we have to lose,” T’Rala said, taking off running.

Cruz followed suit and soon the Romulans were too, heading towards the caves, as the monster snapped at them, catching another in its jaws.

There were a series of caves and Cruz and T’Rala scrambled into one, ducking low to try to disappear into the darkness. They could hear the Romulans entering caves around them, but nobody else came to their cave until right at the end when Commander Sibolv dove in, the creature snapping at him digging to try to get into the cave.

“Stuck with us humans,” T’Rala joked.

“You are not a human,” Sibolv said.

“I like hot dogs,” T’Rala replied, a sign Cruz thought that all humanity boiled down to liking one kind of meat in a bun.

“I do not know that that is,” Sibolv said.

“And you call yourself a spy,” Cruz laughed and fell back against the wall, exhausted.

“I do not call myself a spy,” Sibolv said, “I am one.”

“We’ve got some time to kill, tell us your story,” Cruz said.

Sibolv was quiet then nodded, perhaps figuring that the chances of surviving this were so low that there was little harm in being candid with the two Starfleet officers. Finally he nodded, “My father was a good man, a kind one. But he was part of Spock’s reunification movement, a fact that I reported as a child to a teacher. My father was arrested, and interned.”

“Prison,” T’Rala said.

Sibolv nodded, “The Tal Shiar has become my family. I was rewarded for my loyalty, and my father’s loss was my gain. I do still regret what happened to him.”

“I’m sorry,” Cruz said, “I never knew my father. He left me a half-brother and a winery.”

T’Rala shrugged, “My father is still around, he plays soccer in his spare time. And sun baths.”

Sibolv shook his head, “I understood your parents were killed.”

“My human father. I never knew my Romulan parents,” she said. Doctor T’Rala looked at Cruz and grinned, “Hey remember when Kirk and Doctor McCoy were sentenced to Rura Penthe? This is just like that, does that make me your Doctor McCoy?”

Cruz shrugged, “I guess so.”

“What is your obsession with Kirk? He was a failed Admiral?” Sibolv asked.

“He beat the Romulans a lot, and the Klingons,” T’Rala said.

Cruz tried a more diplomatic explanation, “He saved the Federation on a few occasions, and was one of the first to go out and explore space. Sure the Vulcans had done a lot, but Kirk pushed the boundaries and he always had a good time doing it. The fact is I’m still confident that we’re going to get out of this, if only because of Kirk. He got out of things like this, and so will we.”

Sibolv shook his head, “Kirk is no longer living. He will not save us.”

“Humans are too stupid to give up,” T’Rala said, “That’s the appeal of Kirk. He was too stupid to know something was impossible, and so he did it anyway.”

“And so will Commander Carrillo,” Cruz said.