The Wayward Son Returns - Part I

Posted on Wed Mar 11, 2020 @ 4:02am by Lieutenant Jason Haines

577 words; about a 3 minute read

Mission: Et In Arcadia Ego
Location: Deep Space 5
Timeline: MD 2, 0800

Speeding Locomotive, Somewhere Between Here and There, Then and Now

Jason looked around as a loud shrill whistle broke the silence. The harsh smell of cigar smoke and coal fire assaulted his nose. He could see he was in the locomotive of a train, Earth circa 1800. He looked down and could see he wore the garb of the train’s engineer. Looking to the left, he could see the source of the cigar smoke and coal fire, George.


When he had ‘died’ originally, he met a ‘man’ named George. There George was, shovelling coal into the engine of the train as he chewed on the end of his lit cigar.


“George?”, Jason said, confused.


“Ah, you remember me kid”, George replied, closing the door to the engine.


“I know your name”, Jason answered. “Have we met?”


“Well, you are getting closer”, George said, shaking his head slightly. “Which is good as it is almost time.”


“Time for what?”, Jason asked.


“Well, we talked about this already”, George replied. “So, I’m not going to tell you again, but you will remember, as long as you don’t miss your stop.”


“What do you mean?” Jason asked, getting more confused with the conversation.


“Well, if you don’t put the breaks on, you are going to smash into the train up ahead at the station and kill yourself, which won’t be good for anyone, especially you”, George replied. “I suggest pull that lever on the right.”


Jason looked to the right and saw the train’s break. He pulled down on it hard. There was a screeching sound as the breaks did their work and the train’s whistle let out a loud shriek.



Starfleet Runabout, Here and Now

Unconsciously, Jason’s hand reached out and disengaged the warp drive of the runabout he had stolen from Daniel’s ship in his escape. In his haste to open a subspace conduit to escape Daniels, Jason’s calculations had an error or two in them. The mistakes made his conduit not only interact with distance, but with time as well. That made it so disengaging had to be done manually versus automatically like Jason had intended.


Jason coughed as smoke filled the cockpit of the runabout, which was caused by both the damage from the attack by Daniels and the miscalculations. The runabout’s various alerts were working overtime and then the computer issued a number of warnings.

“Life support failing, collision alert!”

Jason felt very disoriented as the shuttle’s inertial dampeners and artificial gravity systems had failed. He was lucky to be strapped in as the runabout was spinning out of control. Trying to look out the runabout’s cracking viewport, smoke blinding him to an extent, and the disorientation making it hard to focus, Jason saw what looked to be either a ship or perhaps a base approaching rather rapidly.


He thought about sending a distress call, but then everything about Daniels came to the forefront of his mind. If he sent a general distress call, it would get registered in Starfleet databases. If it were registered, anyone could find it, including Daniels, which would be bad for him, especially where he had the Captain’s stolen runabout. And the last time he checked, most Captains’ reports were believed over most Ensigns’. All he could hope for now was that someone was paying attention.


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Ensign Jason Haines
Deep Space 5

 

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