Chapter Text
Ship's Log, Stardate 6592.1. Lieutenant Commander Sulu reporting. With the Captain and Mr. Spock both speaking at the Tactical Conference on Starbase 14, I’ve been tasked with a short duration mission in the centre seat. The Enterprise, substituting for the USS Condor, which is still undergoing repairs from a run in with a Nausicaan pirate squadron, is making a run from Starbase 14 to New Aberdeen and back. We’re dropping off an eclectic group of doctors at the annual Xeno-Medical Symposium there, a symposium Dr. McCoy declined his invitation to, I’m told. Our schedule will allow for up to two days of shore leave for those interested, and some members of the crew are certainly looking forward to the stop off.
Lieutenant Commander Sulu looked up from the arm of the command seat and raised an eyebrow at his navigator. “Better, Pavel?”
Grinning, the younger man shrugged. “A little wooden, perhaps, but still your best attempt at a log entry so far.”
“Thanks.” He’d actually thought so, too, but the way Chekov presented the comment, he wasn’t sure that was saying much, even considering his first attempts.
“I don’t understand why it is so difficult for you.” Half turned around in his seat, Chekov twisted his back into a bit of a stretch. “I know you keep a personal log.”
Sulu shook his head. “It’s not the same. This is an official record.” His personal log was almost daily, and it was, well, personal. It wasn’t ship’s business and if it often related to whatever mission they happened to be on, there was nothing in it to make it classifiable as Secret, just his thoughts on the day’s events and how things were going.
Shrugging as he turned back to his board, Chekov took a moment to stretch each leg out on the way. “So? Who do you record the personal log for?”
It wasn’t a bad point. So long as he put the Stardate and his name in and kept things quick, it really wasn’t much different than the official log. “I don’t know. Never thought about it, I guess.”
“Then don’t think about the official one, either. No one will ever listen to them anyway, unless there’s a real report for a major issue to be filed along with it. The day to day, not so much a major issue.”
Maybe it was someone’s job, somewhere deep in the lower decks of Starfleet Headquarters, to listen to all the official logs recorded on every starship. He felt sorry for that person if they existed, but Chekov made some sense. “I suppose you’re right.” He had to admit that Pavel was right. Ship’s logs mostly fell under the heading of, ‘just in case’. He didn’t want to think about some of the more dire possible cases at the moment, though.
“Just don’t be too casual.”
“Right.”
“Or too formal. You’ll put people to sleep.”
The people who weren’t listening to the log recordings? No, Chekov probably meant the people on the bridge at the time who were listening to him record. Sulu straightened in his seat and did his best imitation of a first-year cadet, trying not to grin. “Aye, aye, admiral.”
Chekov glanced back again, his face a little scrunched up as if caught half-way between a frown and a laugh. “Just an opinion. Sir.”
“I get it.” Sulu grinned. “Maybe I should get you to do the log entries for the next week or so until we get back to Starbase 14.”
“Now that’s not what I—”
Lieutenant Uhura spun around in her seat, hand pressed to her earpiece, and a deep frown pressing down on her features. “Commander. I’m receiving a distress call.”
All traces of teasing camaraderie dropped, he pivoted to face her. “Details?”
She shook her head. “Trying to clean up the transmission, sir.” She frowned. “It’s… it’s a planetary distress call from New Aberdeen. Not a lot of details and the transmission is very garbled. I can make out the words ‘attack’ and ‘cloud’ and the emergency code.”
“That’s it?” He felt his own brow furrow harder and his heart rate increase. Since New Aberdeen was already their destination, they could be there quickly, but it would be nice to know what he was taking the Enterprise into.
“Yes, sir.” Uhura made eye contact as she nodded. “It seems to repeat on a loop, but that’s all I’m able to pull out of it so far.”
“Keep trying. See what you can tease anything else out.”
“Aye, sir.”
Uhura turned back to her board, but Sulu was already pressing switches on the comm panel of his chair. “Bridge to Engineering.”
The response was almost immediate. “Engineering. Scott here.”
“Commander Scott, we’ve intercepted a distress call from New Aberdeen. Can you give us Warp eight?” Full emergency speed would shave some extra time off their transit. They’d been cruising at a leisurely Warp Four.
“New Aberdeen?” The extra twinge in Scott’s voice made Sulu wonder if there was someone he knew on the planet. “Aye, sir. Warp eight on demand, and I’ll see what I can do for a wee bit more.”
“Thank you, commander.” He pressed the switch to cut the connection and looked back towards the front of the bridge. “Helm, let’s hold Mr. Scott to that. Warp 8, Lieutenant Rahda.”
Rahda didn’t even look back. With a decade in the Rangers before making the jump to Starfleet, he didn’t think he’d ever seen her even blink in a tense situation. “Warp 8, aye.”
Of course, he wasn’t yet sure if this was a tense situation, but a planetary distress call was usually reserved for major events and that was certainly enough to dial up today’s intensity. What the major event would turn out to be remained to be seen, and he found himself leaning forward as the engine hum began to build.