Young Writers Society

2372- about the year after the Federation vessel Voyager disappeared, another vessel was lost. The starship Odyssey crash-landed on an uncharted planet during a plasma storm. While the planet’s atmosphere and plant life were sufficient to sustain life, the crew of the Odyssey soon found that not all the flora and fauna there supported their lives. As they meet the previous inhabitants, they soon discover that the many crash landings on this planet are no coincidence, and if they don’t find a way off this planet they’re all as good as dead.

The planet itself is sentient. It requires both companionship and nourishment- both can be procured by first removing another being's consciousness and then gorging itself on whatever’s left over. In order to bring consciousnesses to the planet, it has set up artificial plasma storms to render ships stranded. Every ship that has crashed here has had it’s crew picked off one by one by natural phenomenon that are becoming less and less natural. Many ships have crashed throughout the years, and only a few survivors remain.

Your task- escape and get home, wherever that may be.

CHARACTER MUST HAVES


Character template:


Rules:
Be respectful to your fellow SBers. Character rudeness is understandable, but rudeness in discussion will not be tolerated.
PG-13 please. I’m fairly certain we all know what that entails.
No killing/severely injuring someone’s character without their prior consent.
Have fun!

Shih of the House of Lokaj, First Officer

Stardate 49263.5

Today started like any other 'day' (which really can't be called that because a day is based off the rotation of the Earth, which has no meaning in space) aboard the U.S.S. Odyssey. I started the 'day' off grabbing a quick meal before taking my place on the bridge next to the Captain.

The Odyssey is a very efficient ship, the same class (Intrepid) as her lost predecessor, the U.S.S. Voyager who disappeared a year ago today. She runs smoothly and has the highest warp (warp 9) of any ship up-to-date. She has state-of-the art phasers and torpedoes and shields. She handles well and is responsive. Overall, a very versatile ship.

Our mission is to explore a class M planet on the far edge of the Beta Quadrant. With it being Class M, it shouldn't be too dangerous. That's what we thought, at least.

We were entering orbit around the planet when a plasma storm hit and caused us to crash the the planet. It seems habitable enough, but most of the crew say that it is 'ominous' or feels 'malicious.' As far as I'm concerned, the chances of there being hostile entities is high, judging from the statistics of past explorers on Class M planets.

Our casualties were high, including the Captain. Now that he's dead, it leaves me in command. The U.S.S. Odyssey needs repairs but we don't have all the parts we need. Our chance of survival is nearly nonexistent unless another ship can assist us. The crew's morale is very low.

I'll do what I can.

Xino

I watched from a distance as the crew of the newest crash slowly came out from the wreckage. I observed their instruments, trying to deduce which ones were weapons. Unlike most of the species that came here- they hadn't yet attacked any of the inhabitants of this planet. Maybe they had a chance of survival.

Probably not.

Just the same- I was fascinated by these creatures. They all wore similar clothing, with some color variants between them. I flew high above them, observing the scene. A group of Cardassians that I knew to be extremely violent were creeping up on the group- probably intent on attacking them for food or parts. I sighed- I couldn't let these newfound marvels disappear so quickly. I began descending just as they came within firing range of the crew. The crew didn't draw any weapons, simply moved their mouths and made waves of sounds.

The Cardassians didn't respond well, they fired on the new ship crew, which ducked out of the way as fast as they could. I immediately attacked the Cardassians, making a split-second decision not to poison them. I simply fought them with my fists, elbows, knees, and wings, and before long they were fleeing. I turned towards the new crew, tilting my head whilst observing them. One of them wore a red uniform, and she was the first one to speak.

"I am Shih of the House of Lonkaj, acting captain of the Odyssey. And you are?" I didn't understand a word of it- in fact I didn't even know what it was supposed to be. Why was she producing sound waves. I touched my ears, trying to puzzle out what she was doing. Was it language? I repeated it back at her as best I could, puzzling it out syllable by syllable. "Do you understand me?" She asked.

I produced a series of random noises- naturally she would have to ask a question in order to try to divine their nonexistent meaning. "What does that mean?"

"What does do you understand me mean?" I asked back at her, trying to impart my lack of knowledge but eagerness to learn on her.

***

I followed her back to her ship/encampment. There were many people there in need of food, water, and shelter. I knew I could guide them to each. This would prove to be an interesting experience.

Dr. Claudius Lachlan

The medical ward had trees in it. The medical ward was not supposed to have trees in it.

It was also upside down, and ripped and shattered and skewered in the guts, with counters and beds lying haphazardly on the ceiling and wall monitors cracked into black spiderweb glass.

Alien vines were already making their home inside and around each broken item. As I stood there, numbly, hopelessly seeking out signs of surviving patients that had not been stripped from their beds and whisked off into space or choked from lack of air, I saw one of the vines, thick as my torso, inch up and around a dislodged metal counter and crush it like a boa constrictor.

I stepped backwards and my foot nudged a smaller vine on the floor that immediately recoiled like a snake fleeing to its hole. Then, suddenly, I heard hissing and spitting to my left, and I whirled around, grabbing the phaser at my hip.

I was met by the face of an ugly yellow-green flower, its petals peeled back and fanned at its side and its teeth-lined black abyss of a mouth gaping open, wheezing and spitting yellow liquid. It looked like puss.

Before I could react it lunged at me and I jumped backwards, but some of the puss-colored liquid still sprayed onto my chest. Immediately the liquid began to eat through my blue Federation uniform and burn the skin beneath. Disgusted, I shot the flower in the mouth and it fell forward, dead.

More vines began shifting and in the anticipation of more flowers I fled what was left of the medical ward, stripping my shirt off as I went, and reached the sad excuse for a new ward outside, where dozens of injured Odyssey crew members were clustered and awaiting assistance. I only had one surviving nurse to tend to them. Things weren't looking up.

I tended to myself first, grumbling as I scanned my wound with a tricorder. I cleaned the yellow acid from my skin and wrapped a medicinal gauze around my chest. I gave myself a quick hypospray to protect against infection; I didn't know whether it would do any good but I didn't have time to analyze the acid from the flower or worry about my own good. I didn't even have time to look for a new shirt. My patients were waiting.

I greeted my first patient, whose head was wrapped from the bridge of his nose up. I didn't recognize him. He was wearing a red shirt.

"Hiya, Cloudy," he said. "Glad to know you're alive."

I started. Not everyone calls me Cloudy. "Who's this?"

"Blind." He laughed. "That's my name. I'm Blind."

I grinned and squeezed his shoulder. "If it isn't the invincible Richard Kiselev. You're not looking too sharp, Rich."

"Hell, I'm not looking at all." He was smiling. "What's my chance of survival, Doc?"

I scanned him. He was bruised and blind, but he'd do just fine. "Not a chance," I said. "You've got about ten seconds."

Rich cried out in sudden pain. "The light! I see the light!" He fumbled for my arm and grabbed it. "My family, Cloudy. Tell them I love them. Tell them I - " Then he went limp.

"Shoulda been an actor, Rich," I said, rising to leave.

Dr. Barclay Brown

Dr. Barclay Brown awoke to someone shaking his upper torso violently. He drowsily looked around, immediately remembering the situation he was in.

"Dr., here's the coffee you requested," said the red shirt who brought it. Gratefully, he took the mug and sipped it.

Clay spat it out. "God, what is that?!"

"Sorry, Dr. We only had dirt, no coffee beans, so..."

"You fed me a cup of dirt?!"

The redshirt looked around uneasily. "Was it not warm enough?"

Clay sighed. "That's not really what I meant..." He dismissed the redshirt, Then turned to 'admire' the carnage of the engine room around him. From where he sat at his desk, it looked like some horror movie abomination.

"This should be fun," he spoke softly, to no one in particular. Spinning his chair to face the desk, he stared at the mathematics he had typed up.

Plans to fix the warp drive engine. No, wait, it was for photon torpedoes. Hold on, why was he trying to fix those? That couldn't be it...

Where was he going with this series of algebraic formulas? Dejected, he put his head down on the desk and pondered many things. What would happen to the crew? Would they survive? Would he ever figure out what the math meant?

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the mug. His vision focused on it. He stared for a long time.

That cup of dirt seemed pretty damn good right now.

Lt. Anya Taz

Everything was red.

The corridor sloped downward, dark and smoky and full of debris. Light filtered in from a tear in the hull. That couldn't be good. This corridor wasn't anywhere near the outer hull.

After the tumult of the crash, with fire and screaming and plowing through the forest canopy, everything had fallen eerily still. Animal chirps echoed somewhere far away. Dull, distant voices of survivors. Survivors--that was good.

Anya tried to push herself up, and the red tinge to the world sharpened into an intense, fiery blaze, focused around her right leg.

She sagged back down. A support beam had fallen across her. She might have been able to lift it, but not with a broken leg, and who knew what else. There didn't seem to be any blood--at least, not on this side of the beam.

"H--he--" She wheezed and coughed. Damn, she was in trouble. This was a bad time to be the one in trouble. She needed to be out there, protecting the crew, assessing this new planet. The captain's safety was her responsibility, and here she was, pinned under a splinter of their own damned ship, while someone like Lachlan was probably the one fighting off alien vines or something.

The voices outside broke into shouts. Phaser fire--no, Cardassian disruptors.

Shit.

No time to lie around.

She heaved against the beam. It budged, and she bit down on a shriek as it pressed against her leg. Her head swam. Lightheaded from pain and exertion, hopefully not blood loss. Another heave, another inch, another stifled cry. Breathe. Last shove. Oh her foot. Then it clunked to the floor and she was free.

Panting, she crawled up the slope of the floor, grasped a handhold in the wall, and hauled herself onto her single good leg. I'm coming, captain.

Shih of the House of Lokaj, First Officer

Stardate 49263.5

We encountered a group of Cardassians who attacked us. I'm not sure how well we could have survived the ambush if a Vulcan-like alien hadn't come and aided us. She was female, appearing in her mid-twenties by human standards. Pale skin, blue eyes, and long brown hair in a ponytail. Rows of blue spikes (presumably a defense mechanism, possibly venomous) extended from her forehead, down her back, and along her arms and legs. Additionally, she had blue wings.

The creature seems to want to communicate, but doesn't seem to understand my words. However, she is picking up fast, so perhaps there is hope. If she is native and didn't crash-land like we did, perhaps she can aid us in escaping. She may even wish to join us, or another one of her kind may. I suppose we will see.

The Prime Directive tells us not to interfere with alien life or planets, but due to our crash land, it seems the best way to follow the rule we have already broken is to accept help and get off this world as soon as possible. Otherwise, our technology could get into their hands, which would be directly breaking the Prime Directive.

Our situation is not any better. I've sent out various teams to search the wreckage of the ship and make sure everyone is out. Others are working on recording individuals that we have confirmed alive or dead as opposed to MIA like most of them. We have 160 crew members with approximately 234 individuals in all, including crew and passengers. So far we've accounted for only 100. Judging by the severity of the crash, I would estimate we've lost around seventy to one hundred people. Therefore, once we account for all members, we should have around 164-134 people.

I will try to establish communication with this alien. Until then, we need to be ready for another ambush and recover as many crew members as is possible.

Xino

These people were fascinating.

Maybe they were naive for wasting resources on trying to heal the sick or injured- especially if they were non-essential to their goals, and maybe it was naive of me for admiring them for it. I didn't think so. I took it upon myself to find them anything they'd need to survive- basic fast-breeding food animals, which they referred to as 'tribbles'. I showed them the safest water source I knew of, a hidden spring, but at one point in the little stream the water got poisoned so I tried my best to communicate that you don't drink from those places. Needless to say- it was difficult. I learned 'yes' and 'no' really quickly. One of the people I was showing the stream stooped to take a drink at the wrong place.

"No!" I scolded, batting their face away from the water. I drew an imaginary line over the water, pointing to one side of it I said "No" and then to the other side saying "Yes". They looked really confused. It's simple enough! Just listen to me because I said so morons! They babbled something about tricorder readings. I blew a stray strand of hair out of my face, going to see if there was any other way I could make myself useful.

On my way back, I saw someone in the woods. I darted over, realizing that she was an officer from the ship, with one of her legs all bloody. She noticed me and aimed the object she was holding (I had identified it as a weapon) at me. I held up my hands in a gesture of peace. I pointed in the direction of the camp, creasing my brow as I struggled for words. "That way good, Xino help?" I said, offering her one of my arms for her to lean on. She slowly put her phaser away before letting me help her back to camp. The ground then began to quake, sending tremors up through our feet. I knew what happened next, and as such I threw the officer over my shoulder and took off, flapping my wings hard to keep her and me above the treetops as the ground where we had been standing fell away.

She didn't seem too happy about my actions until she saw why. I dropped her off with the rest of the injured with the healing-man. I saw someone who seemed to be working on the ship, and decided to see what I could do. I watched one of the workers for a while, before landing and asking if I could help.

Dr. Claudius Lachlan

Ah, what a lovely day! The ship was mutilated. Over a hundred people were dead. His chest was burning from the flower poison. He had one nurse to help him heal dozens of patients. And now there was a potentially antagonistic blue winged humanoid with spikes flying around camp and asking, in broken English, how she could be of help.

They sent her back over to Claudius, because heck, between Arttu the nurse and Cloudy, they needed all the help they could get. Not that Cloudy particularly wanted it. She had already stopped by earlier to drop off the injured lieutenant, but Cloudy had been busy with a patient and hadn't been face-to-face with her yet.

This time she came up to him and immediately pointed to his chest. "Bad," she said. "Water."

"Water?"

"Water." She hovered her hand back and forth over her own chest.

"Do I need to wash it out with water?" Claudius asked, annoyed. It was like he was talking with a child. And he wasn't about to listen to whatever some random blue alien had to say.

"I show you," she said. She gestured to the forest.

"I'm good, thanks. Why don't you help feed this fellow over here?" He handed her a package of preserved protein and Gladst.

She took it and looked very confused.

"Food," he said, pantomiming eating.

She nodded, and put some of the food in her own mouth.

"No, stupid. For him." He pointed at the patient, who grinned sheepishly.

"Him!" she exclaimed, finally turning to the poor chap who had broken each of his wrists and needed such help.

Claudius sighed, and turned to more important duties. But the blue alien wasn't done yet. She had given the patient only one bite before she rose and went to Cloudy again, insisting, "You. Water."

He turned to her, his anger heating up. "I'm the one in charge here," he said. "Me." He pointed to himself. "Not you. Go feed him. Now."

The sores under his bandage were indeed beginning to sting, worse and worse now, but he pushed on. One more patient... he told himself, over and over, and then I'll take a closer look at it.

"Dr. Cloudy?" Arttu the nurse asked, approaching him, "do you need a break?"

"Soon," he said, waving him away. Claudius was only setting a broken leg, but his forehead was beaded with sweat. He wished he had more human-esque eyebrows that would catch the dripping sweat better; his rather Romulan eyebrows were thin and almost useless, and the salty sweat stung in his eyes.

He finished setting the leg, then rose to move into the shade. Suddenly he felt very dizzy, white spots flashing in his line of sight, and he stumbled drunkenly around camp, almost tripping on patients. His chest burned.

"You need help," the blue alien girl said, catching his arm.

He unwillingly leaned into her. "Maybe," he admitted. "Water?"

"Water," she agreed.

He groaned from the pain in his chest, and then suddenly he felt himself be lifted into the air. His stomach turned, and he slipped into unconsciousness.

Dr. Barclay Brown

“So I think I've finally isolated what went wrong in the engine,” Barclay said to Shih, who stood beside him, watching him open up a file with schematics of the engine. “There was a leak the tank for the cooling fluid, so it couldn't have the desired effect. Essentially, the engine overheated, causing it blow up. The ship went into automatic controls to prevent as much loss of life as possible.” He looked to Xino, expecting a reaction.

“Fascinating. But, how does it come in handy?”

Barclay stared disbelievingly. “Don't you see? The problem wasn't us, but a flaw in the system. There's a mistake in this model of starship. We can tell the Federation not to continue producing them.”

Shih tilted her head curiously. “Then I take it you've proposed a way for us to contact said Federation?”

“Well, no,” Barclay said. “I have come up with a way to use Photon Torpedo technology as signals, but... It needs a star location, some point of origin...”

“... And we don't know where we are.”

“Even if we did know the name of the planet, and the star, we don't have an exact set of coordinates.”

Xino sighed. She crossed to Barclay's desk, looking over his notes and data. A page flip here, a opening of a file there, and she was done gathering information. “Have you come any closer to fixing her up, and getting us back above the atmosphere?”

Barclay sighed too. “No, I haven't. We lost all of our cooling fluid, so we'll need some substitute. That's not even counting the required repairs. And we're low on supplies. If possible, I'd like to take a team down into the lower decks of the ships, the storage facilities, to see if we find anything useful there.”

“Take who you need and get on it,” Shih said. With that, she nodded and walked out of the engine room.

Once again, Barclay sighed.



Holding up an illuminator, Barclay surveyed the unlabeled crates of various metallic parts, gears and cylinders and chambers and wrenches and sockets. He was carefully inspecting a chamber, deciding if it could be used as a new cooling fluid chamber, when one of the engineers he brought with him called out. “Dr. Brown, I found a spare container of cooling fluid!”

Barclay was filled with hope and anticipation, but when he neared the engineer, he saw her holding up a cylinder of liquid crystal, used for powering the transporters. He facepalmed.

“That isn't even remotely similar to what we're looking for,” he said, turning aroudn and walking back to his crate of supplies. Once again, his name was called, but this time by a different engineer.

“Dr. Brown! There's a broken electrical circuit! It might give us some lights in here, so I'll try and fix it!”

“Very well. Better get on it. My illuminator is running low on energy,” he responded.

“Yes, sir!”

Barclay went back to inspecting the supplies. One of the wrenches was just the size he needed, and he held it up to his illuminator. He went over each edge of the wrench, to ensure it was in working condition. As he neared the second edge, his illuminator flickered and went out.

“Stevens, get on that lighting problem!”

No response.

“Stevens?”

He groaned and turned the corner, expecting to find that Stevens was incapable of fixing the light and had run off. Instead, he was met with a shocking surprise.

Stevens lay on the ground, his red shirt burnt, and his eyes bloodshot, as though had been severely shocked. There was no doubt in Barclay's mind. Stevens was dead.

Xino

This doctor needed to get some perspective. A person could last three weeks without food- that poison? He wouldn't last three hours. He would die a painful death if he didn't deal with it- which meant that his current and future patients would have a significantly diminished survival rate, meaning by dying he would be killing his patients, and by putting off his own care he wasn't helping anyone. Really- If I said 'bad' lightly I would have been saying it at every patient. Get perspective.

That aside, I did have a bit of respect wiggling it's way into my mind. He was willing to ignore his own injuries to try to help everyone else. There were people in critical condition, and he was doing his best to make sure that no one died. I decided that his actions were short-sighted, but admirable.

I cleaned his wound by the stream- trying to ignore general awkwardness I felt about the whole situation. I then made a poultice that I had used before to cure the poison, and bandaged it back up with the poultice. I debated whether or not I should wake him up. If I did wake him up, he probably wouldn't get any rest until we got off this planet, if we got off this planet. If I didn't wake him up, his patients wouldn't have him. I didn't have enough words to ask the nurse what the best thing to do was. I also failed to factor in his personal wrath. Knowing that he'd risk his life to save his patients, he would not be happy with me for trying to help him in this way. I thought that through, and decided that what would be best for everyone in the long run was for him to rest, and be in better shape when he rose.

He could forgive me later.

I took him back to camp, finding a somewhat secluded corner where he could rest in peace, but if he needed help it wouldn't be far away, then I went back to helping the rest of the camp. I payed close attention to the nurse's station, helping out wherever I could. Yes, I did end up feeding the man with broken wrists. I did all the tasks that required little to no medical knowledge- or just a knowledge of the local flora and fauna. No one was currently in critical condition, and for that I was thankful. I went back to check on the doctor a few hours later, and it looked like he had just woken up. I had been trying to work on my language skills while I assisted, listening to everything. So, I thought that I had a decent greeting.

"Good Morning Sleeping Beauty."

Claudius Lachlan

First, Dr. Cloudy wondered how the blue alien girl had picked up that obscure piece of Ancient Earth nomenclature. Then he wondered why she had used it on him.

He sat up abruptly and a wave of dizziness crashed over him. Cursing, he eased back and massaged his forehead.

"That is not a very nice word, Doctor," she said.

"How're the patients?" Claudius asked.

"They are good."

He took a deep breath of relief, but after a moment's thought, cocked an untrustworthy eyebrow at his acquaintance. "I'd like to see them for myself," he said, and started to get up.

"I thought so," she said, and helped him up. "But, know this. You were close to death. You are still not good. You need to heal."

For the first time, Claudius looked down and noticed the tight bandage around his chest. He peeled an edge away from the skin and dabbed at his ugly skin, which was peppered with blisters and scabs. It hurt, and he felt a little dizzy, but he definitely felt better than before.

"Did you do this?" he asked, a hand on his chest.

She nodded.

"What is it, exactly, that hurt me? The others could get hurt too."

"Bad flowers," she said.

Well, yeah. Claudius remembered the flowers, but he wanted to know about the poison. What it was, what it did. And if there were more of these flowers on the planet, he needed to know how to cure their victims. "Are there many of them?" he asked.

"There are..." She faltered to find the correct word. "There are groups of them. Your ship went down in a bad place."

"It went down in a nest of them," Claudius said, nodding. "And how do you cure it?"

She explained how she had taken Claudius down to the river and made the poultice. He remembered being lifted in the air before he had fainted - what must that have looked like? He cursed again.

The girl stopped talking, startled. She had been trying to explain what was in the poultice.

Claudius glared at her, feeling humiliated. He was the doctor here, who was supposed to be taking care of the wounded crew, and he had to go off and get injured, faint, and be cured by a blue alien girl. He was struck with a sudden urge to rebuild his pride, and wanted to show himself to the crew as soon as possible to prove that he was alright. He turned and started walking toward the field hospital, but something tugged him back and he stopped.

He looked down at the carefully wrapped bandage around his chest and sighed. The girl might have humiliated him, but she hadn't known any better. She had only been trying to save his life. "Sorry," he said. Then he asked, over his shoulder, "What's your name?"

"Xino."

"Xino. Thanks."

She walked abreast of him and looked him in the eye. "You are welcome, Dr. Claudius Lachlan." Then she took to the air, and Claudius, blinking, watched her drift toward the eviscerated ship.



Their first night on the planet was approaching. They had lost Stevens in a freak electrical accident, and several others, accounted for after the crash landing, were now missing. Xino had been unsuccessful in finding them.

Claudius was busy with a woman whose stomach wound had taken a turn for the worse. Under normal circumstances, her recovery would be absolute, but without proper equipment, the doctor had to turn to archaic methods. He worked tirelessly and patiently at her side, doing his best to maintain a sterile environment out in the wilderness and checking her vitals every minute. The sky dimmed, and a number of able-bodied crew members led by Xino helped to set up a lighting system by the patients that needed the most attention, so that Claudius could continue his work.

He was in the middle of refreshing the woman's bandages when a shrill, far-off cry echoed in the distance, a sound that he couldn't tell was human or animal. He looked up and his eyes were met with only darkness and the erratic line of lamp-lit patients sprawled out in front of him. Suddenly he felt very vulnerable and small. He wanted to gather all his patients together and protect them from the dark unknown, but he couldn't. All he could do was watch as a dozen men and woman slipped away into the darkness, phasers glinting on their hips.

He sighed wearily, and returned to the bandage.