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File #13

The shuttle was cramped as both Yusa and Muraco flew over the landscape, the lush green rolling hills coming into view out of the shuttle's windows. The sun was rapidly setting on this planet, creating a red aura in the sky that reminded Yusa very much of the days on his homeworld.

The Shuttlecraft Pythagoras was a Type-11 Shuttlecraft, specifically designed for the Sovereign Class starship, integrating the latest of Starfleet's technological advances into one package. The shuttle was designed from the lessons learned in the older Type 6 and Class 2 Shuttlecraft, being sleeker and more ergonomically designed for both as the mission profile for the shuttles expanded.

The Shuttlecraft soared through the air, nimbly shifting from left to right while Muraco piloted it. He had taken so many lessons on flying these small ships that he had become highly accustomed to the controls of this surprisingly nimble, although bulky craft.

While Muraco flew the ship in silence, trying to process the jarring events of the last few days, Yusa was busy taking the opportunity to scan the surface of the planet below, looking for any inconsistencies that could indicate what was actually happening on this world.

Both had been forced to steal the shuttle from the makeshift hanger behind the Administration Building. Muraco found it fortunate that the shuttle's security system still recognised his command code which he had consistently used aboard the Warrior. As Chief Engineer, it had been his responsibility to keep the Shuttlecraft in a serviceable condition.

Muraco wondered how long it would take for Warrior's Rest security to locate them or come after them with another shuttle? So far, they have escaped pretty much without a hitch but something about this just made him feel uneasy. Almost like it was too easy?

The low hum of the Shuttlecraft's engines were surprisingly calming as the vessel slowly cut through the skies of this unknown planet, flying over the distinctive ruins of the Warrior, laying shattered and broken on the hillside, surrounded by grassy plains.

Yusa had simply been unprepared for this sight and it had hit him as hard as it had Muraco. The site of his former ship, laying broken and lifeless, in several pieces along the hillside felt so real that it had him questioning his assumption about this being some kind of alternate reality. It was soul crushing and yet extremely beautiful at the same time.

A fitting end to a nobel ship...

Yusa's ruminations were cut short by a beeping of sensors in the cabin which instantly grabbed his attention.

"We've got company..." he said, almost immediately from looking at the sensors that showed two other unknown craft entering the detection range of the Pythagoras.

"How many?" asked Muraco, expecting this.

"Two..." replied Yusa. "They look like one Class 2 and an old NX Shuttlepod. The computer is reading the Class 2 as the Epicurus."

Muraco let out a sigh. "Yeah... that's one of ours alright..." he said. "Damn. That's one of my favorite shuttles."

"Shuttlecraft Pythagoras" called a voice over the communications system. Both Yusa and Muraco recognised it immediately. It seemed that Strato himself was coming after them. "Power down your engines and return to Warrior's Rest immediately..."

"How long until they are in weapons range?" asked Muraco, looking over to Strato.

"Eh... give it five minutes..." replied Yusa, not being sure what to do in the situation. He would obviously would like to avoid the situation where Muraco and him were shot out of the sky. "Can we outrun them?"

"We are almost at the ruins..." replied Muraco, his large purple arms skillfully waving over the control panel of the Shuttlecraft. "Considering that we have to land, probably not..."

The Pythagoras increased its engine output as it shot through the sky, the ruins of the Warrior falling further and further behind, the engines blaring with a deep red hue. As the shuttle shot forward with the immense burst of speed, Muraco's huge frame sunk further and further back into the chair.

"We are coming up on the landing zone" replied Yusa, his sharp eyes, contrasting over his dark skin, looking over the controls in front of him. "Are we going to attempt a landing!?" he asked, looking over at Muraco to check that he had not gone insane in the few seconds of intense speed.

"No... arm the phasers" replied Muraco, skillfully using the shuttlecraft to dodge the small barrage of phaser discharges that were being fired at the Pythagoras.

Yusa gave him a sharp look and smirked. "I charged them before we even got off the ground..." His quick thinking and attention to detail had always been something that had impressed Muraco as he nodded, turning the shuttle with a high energy turn which could have easily resulted in the destruction of the shuttle.

"Fire!" chanted Muraco as Yusa pressed the command, taking a moment to lock phasers of the pursuing shuttlecraft. His faith in Yusa had rewarded him once again as the narrow beams of orange nadions fired from the Pythagoras and hit both of the incoming shuttles right on the nose, taking both by complete surprise and not even giving them time to raise their shields in defense.

However both Muraco and Yusa knew that they would return if they failed to take care of the situation now so both looked on in regret as they fired again, hitting the engines of both shuttles and causing them to spiral downward, out of the dusk and towards the ground.

"You don't think..?" replied Yusa as there was a few seconds of silence in the cockpit of the shuttlecraft. It was complete possible the both crews of the shuttles could be killed if they failed to escape before their powerless shuttles hit the ground. Yusa recoiled in active horror of what he had done, her had shot down his own people, his friends and colleagues. Even in this strange world, this was a daunting prospect.

Muraco said nothing as he gracefully manipulated the control panel with his huge claws, trying to avoid thinking about the fate of Strato and the other shuttle pilot that they had just shot down. He had already committed himself to this path when he first resigned himself to stealing the shuttlecraft from Warrior's Rest.

He knew what that entailed. He knew they would come after him and Yusa.

A few seconds passed as they approached the ruins which both of them had apparently been at just days before. A large, almost silver spire, projecting several feet above the treeline, as if a knife, protruding from the surface of the planet, it glimmered in the dying orange glow of the sun and seemed to pulse with some unknown form of energy.

The shuttle set down quietly in a small clearing in the forest, the tall trees themselves seemed to block out the waning sun as it cast a deep shadow on the landscape around them. Both Yusa and Muraco were unsure what they could possibly find here. Would it be the answers that both of them were so desperately seeking?

Somehow, Muraco never felt that it could be that easy.

As they left the shuttlecraft, taking provisions from the back of the shuttle that included a flashlight, both of them did not know what to expect. There was an obvious trepidation from both of them as they clambered through the dense forest, small shafts of the orange sunlight cutting through the trees.

They felt as if the journey here had lasted for hours as the ruins finally came into view. A small clearing the darker forest came into view as the sounds of various unknown and undocumented animal life surrounded them.

The strange alien environment was also oddly serene, there were a few small stone structures, crumbling and ancient around the gigantic spire that easily reached above the natural treeline. Yusa felt oddly calm as he approached this place, pulling his tricorder out from his Starfleet issue pack and flipping it open as both lieutenants stopped to idolise the monolithic structure now only a few feet away from them.

"It's definitely ancient..." remarked Yusa, tapping his tricorder with his long black claws. Starfleet tricorders had been designed for human hands and he found them difficult to operate but over his years in Starfleet he somehow managed. "My tricorder confirms that these ruins are thousands of years old..."

The Tricorder was a Starfleet technical marvel, a diagnostic tool that could perform thousands of complex scans and calculations at once. As Starfleet and the Federation evolved, so did the Tricorder and other tools which were regularly used, ending with the tricorder that Yusa carried, a trusty TR-890 Tricorder XV, the latest design with a larger, integrated screen capable of giving multiple different scans at once.

"Looks like it..." remarked Muraco, his purple muscles twitching slightly. Something that he could not explain made him feel incredibly uncomfortable but he just...

Flash...

Suddenly within his mind, Muraco received so many images that came to him like flashes in the warm evening air, as he looked up at the giant alien spire. He grabbed his head with his paws, feeling like somebody had let off a flashbang right next to him. His senses overloaded.

Then there were the feelings...

Memories of pain that shot through him, the image of him looking at himself, strapped down to a table, screaming in agony as many unfamiliar instruments injected beneath his purple fur and into his skin.

Were these memories..?

He could not understand but the experience had overwhelmed him, the intensity of the pain inside his head, although a distant memory circled around inside him, threatening to overwhelm his senses. He looked over at Yusa, who was experience what he could only imagine, the same thing from the expression on his face.

After a few seconds, the pain subsided and both looked at each other with confusion. "W-What was that!?" asked Muraco in a confused daze. It felt like a memory, one he had never forgotten but he could have also sworn that he had never experienced whatever this memory was showing him.

Yusa could only give him a dazed look, wondering the same thing and he lifted his tricorder back up and took another scan of the spire. "I'm reading an active neurogenic field..."

"What the hell does that mean?" asked Muraco, losing his composure slightly from the intensity of the experience that he had just had. He could feel his frustration building, Yusa always spoke in complicated scientific gobbledygook. He was not a scientist, how could he possibly understand what he was saying.

Yusa looked puzzled and turned to a frightened Muraco, Muraco was surprised to see such calmness in his eyes. Was he hiding the unspeakable dread that Muraco was feeling or was he genuinely not concerned about what had just happened to them and how they remembered a chamber of horrors for some reason?

"It means..." begun Yusa pausing a second to think about how he was going to explain it. "There is some kind of field here which caused our hallucination?"

"That felt pretty real to me!" exclaimed Muraco, suddenly feeling very insecure and somewhat exposed in the middle of a forest clearing like this. He had never given any thought before to what kind of creatures could reside on this planet and now felt considerably more alert then before.

"Hallucinations often are..." replied Yusa, not looking up from his tricorder screen. "...that is why they are so frightening. The database doesn't seem to recognise any of the iconography or seem to be able to identify the materials used in the construction. Perhaps an active scan would..."

No sooner than Yusa had activated the Deep Scan mode, the spire started to emit a loud piercing sound, causing both to cover their ears. A huge screeching sound echoed into the air, louder than anything either of them had heard in a while, after a few seconds it dissipated returning to a quiet chiming that it had done before.

"Well... that solves that..." replied Yusa, picking up his tricorder which he had dropped while covering his ears.

"Solves what?" asked Muraco, looking over to his friend after recovering himself from the ear-splitting screech.

Yusa gave a slight smile, one of the only few he had made since he had been on this strange world. Finally he had a mystery that he could actually solve. "It's a transmitter... made of benamite"

"Benamite!?" replied Muraco almost instantly. This was something that he understand well. Benamite was the illusive crystalline fuel that was used by the Federation to power the Quantum Slipstream Drive of newer starships. Quantum Slipstream Drive was a new and powerful form of propulsion which utilised a subspace corridor and could allow a starship to travel many times faster than conventional warp travel. It had first been discovered by the U.S.S. Voyager in 2374, who had later attempted to use it to travel back to the Alpha Quadrant while they were stranded in the Delta Quadrant.

Voyager had been unsuccessful and was nearly destroyed however the technology was brought back to Starfleet Engineering when Voyager returned home in 2377. The technology was later perfected on the Vesta Classstarship by using a Quantum Field Focus Controller which negated the phase variance at Slipstream speeds which almost destroyed Voyager.

"Benamite is extremely rare..." replied Muraco, putting down his pack and wanting to walk up to the spire in order to get a sample. Yusa put out his hand and stopped him while he walked forward.

"Yes... but do you know what this means?" deduced Yusa, looking over at him with a look of genuine excitement. Muraco shook his head, unable to see what Yusa was getting at. "If this spire is a transceiver made of benamite, then we could possibly use it to contact Starfleet for rescue."

Muraco was suddenly filled with the possibilities of the future. Maybe he would make it off this strange world after all?