Duty Log - CO - aCapt Rhodes

Posted on 241411.20 @ 12:56am by Acting Captain Mark Rhodes

Mission: Holy Cow

=*=Shuttlecraft Darwin=*=

Acting Captain Mark Rhodes sat in the shuttlecraft his eyes closed. A number of hours ago he had received encrypted orders to report to sector 742b, so he could hitch a ride back to earth, he had been recalled. He checked and double checked the orders before he left and everything checked out, he knew they were authentic, signed by Admiral Hark himself.

Mark boarded a shuttlecraft and headed for the rendezvous point silently, he didn't have time to explain to Dhej, but he knew the ship was safe in his hands until his return.

Mark sat at the control and reclined slightly in the chair... He had been gone about 8 hrs at this point, and had 12 more until the arranged meeting. He was trying to catch some shut eye while the Terran Planetary Orchestra played The Pines of Rome.

Suddenly the shuttle dropped out of warp and a warning klaxon sounded "Warp core containment failure, 2 minutes." He bolted up and focused on the controls. His fingers danced as he tried to figure out what was going on.

"That is not good," said Mark as he came to the conclusion of what happened. The warp core had been hard wired to overload after 8 hrs of use. The core was going to explode and there was nothing Mark could do about it...

"Computer, open a channel to the USS Enterprise immediately," called Mark.

"The USS Enterprise is out of range to open a channel. However a message can be sent on subspace communications to be received in three-quarters of an hour," replied the computer.

Mark paused a second and took a deep breath knowing the situation is dire. He knew he didn't have much time, so he started digging into repair logs.

"Thirty seconds until failure of core containment," called the computer out.

"Computer, send a message to Lieutenant Commander Tierney Rinehart of the USS Enterprise..." He started to access the shuttles repair logs as he started to talk... "Tierney... I want to let you know that I love you. I ended up between a rock and a hard place and I am not coming home to you. The orders I received were authentic, I want you to know that. I was suppose to meet up with the USS Michigan to get back to earth but I am not going to make it to them..."

He access the repair logs and paused staring at the screen. "I want you to know someone sabotaged the Shuttlecraft Darwin. My core is going to overload... in the repair log is says that the last person to service this shuttle Lieutenant C-"

Mark would never finish that word, before he could the containment failed and in a burst of sparks and flaming plasma the Shuttlecraft Darwin was destroyed.

--

Acting Captain Mark Rhoads
Outgoing Commanding Officer
USS Enterprise, NCC-1701-F