A Stranger's Face - Part I

Posted on Tue Feb 14th, 2023 @ 7:36am by Lera Mel'nyk

1,438 words; about a 7 minute read

Mission: EPISODE 1: SHAKEDOWN
Location: Laredo XII - Federation Colony
Timeline: Two months before launch

[Laredo XII – Federation Colony World]

Blurrily reaching a hand out and knocking the chronometer to the floor, Lera Mel’nyk unleashed a series of choice Ukrainian curses on the world. Swinging her rangy frame into a sitting position, she bent over and picked up the chrono, reading the alert message that had woken her so rudely.
Zero-Five-Thirty-Six hours, she noted dully. Sun will be up by now. Not that the sun would make much difference. Sighing, she tucked a lock of her graying hair behind her ears, and stretched, getting to her feet.

Stumbling over to her homestead’s closet-like bathroom, Mel’nyk began moving with a greater sense of urgency. The alert indicated her quarry was near - best get my dancing shoes on. Looking at herself in the mirror, she couldn’t recognise herself for a moment. When did I get so many lines?. How long have I looked … old? She turned away, concentrating on hauling on her clothes.

As befitted a frontier world, her clothes were practical and utilitarian. Tall boots, hard-wearing trousers suitable for the taiga, and a rough-spun shirt. She regarded her coat for a moment. Starfleet-issue maroon sat silently accusatory before she spun it round her shoulders and pulled on its warmth. Starfleet was a long time ago, best not to dwell on it, she told herself once more.

She hitched an aging Starfleet-issue phaser pistol to her belt, then reached into the locked metal cupboard of her kitchen, and pulled out her phaser rifle. Checking along its length a moment, she grunted her satisfaction, slung it over her shoulder and went out her front door, locking it with a grinding of metal on metal.

Her breath fogged the air.

Crunching across the snow in her heavy-duty boots, Mel’nyk was glad of the roughspun gloves and hat she had pulled on.

Rounding her hoverbike she gave the aging, corroding vehicle a quick once-over. Ex-police equipment from Earth, she hazarded it was probably approaching sixty years old by now. It shows too. The paint in some places had worn away to bare metal. The mating mechanism with the sidecar showed some wear, but as Mel’nyk strapped her helmet on, she reflected it would do just fine for this trip.

Adjusting the controlboard in fron of her, she tapped into the transponder feed that had so rudely awakened her.

A few hundred miles north. The hoverbike will make short work of that. She set coordinates just short of the signal, and gunned the engine. Coughing, the engine raised to a high whine and the woman began piloting the bike down the streets of Laredo.

Set out in the standard grid pattern of Federation Colony manuals, the buildings in Laredo attested to harsh winters and scorching summers. Here at the turning of the year, the temperature had almost gotten up to freezing, and the sky was clear. For now. The balmy sunlight did nothing to enhance the drab pre-fab buildings, battered and weathered with twenty years’ weather.

The arse-end of nowhere she recalled being told when she volunteered for the assignment.
Rounding the last building at the outskirts of the settlement, Mel’nyk settled on to the Forest Road the colonists had hacked out of the dense forest around them decades ago. Pulling down the visor on her helmet tinted the view, but the onscreen data filters allowed her to pick out individual trees if she so wished, and fed constant telemetry data on the route ahead.

She throttled the engine, wishing as she often did that it was an oil-based machine with a hearty roar to it. Instead the whine just pitched louder and the antigrav kicked a plume of snow into the air around her as she accelerated.

The trees around her rushed to a blur as she put her foot down recklessly. Mel’nyk knew from long experience the Forest Road was straight for kilometres, and she knew just how far she could push herself on her bike.

Today the rattling of the hook-up to the sidecar forced her to slow down. She needed it intact, more’s the pity.

As the sun rose, the trees fell away, Mel’nyk recognising she was fast approaching the treeline. Within moments, the landscape opened up, the tress becoming sparser as she banked the bike into a lazy turn out towards the open tundra.

The tundra was a tedious, formless mass of land that stretched from horizon to horizon. The biker had little to tell her that she was travelling in the correct direction apart from the transponder signal superimposed on her helmet visor. The air was crisp, clear. On the far horizon her helmet picked up a snowy owl-analogue hunting.

Good luck to it.

Speeding across the landscape of frozen lakes and lichens, Mel’nyk passed the dilithium mines that had brought the original colonists here decades ago. Mines that had brought high hopes that this remote corner of the Federation would become a bustling byway on the route from Iotia Piscium to Earth.

Instead they discovered that only a thin layer of pure dilithium existed, and once that was exhausted, the lower-grade dilithium was all that remained. Starfleet, and the space navies of the leading Federation members had little interest in such low-grade material. Shipments of dilithium off-world had dwindled to as little as once a month as those companies that supplied tramp freighters and cargo haulers had the occasional drop off.

Laredo had never really recovered, remaining a little-noticed backwater world far from the centre of galactic attention.

The mine belched steam into the air. Mel’nyk could see that the heat produced by the machinery deep in the planet’s crust had warmed the surface around it just enough that a small ecosystem was thriving in the barrenness.

Laredo’s sun had barely moved across the sky as the mine faded into the distance. Ahead she could see the escarpment that rose into sheer cliff-face. She licked her lips in anticipation. Her quarry was near. The bike was slowed and brought to a stop. Glancing at the cliffs, the interface showed Mel’nyk that there were a series of sharp canyons cut into the cliff face.

… a deep cleft between escarpment or cliffs resulting from weathering and the erosive activity of a river over geologic time scales. Rivers have … . Unbidden training class memories manifested themselves before being angrily dismissed. Have to be at the top of my game.

Mel’nyk shook her head, taking off her helmet, and placing it on the bike. Pulling the phaser rifle out of its holster, she checked it once more before hefting the tri-barrelled weapon in one hand as she swung off the bike and set her feet on the permafrosted ground.

Her breath steamed in the air once more. Aside from the constant whistle of the wind the only sound was the grinding of her boots against the ground. Adjusting her grip on the rifle, she scanned the surroundings with piercing blue eyes. Mel’nyk saw nothing save the gnarled rockface in front of her, and a copse of stunted trees that grew in the shadow of the cliffs.

Satisfied that she was unobserved, she turned and hauled a tricorder out of the bike’s sidecar, slinging the battered slinky black box over her shoulder and adjusting a dial. An older model from the 2260s, it functioned well enough and should take her to her destination.

She adjusted her snood to bring it up across the lower half of her face, covering her mouth and nose, as much as for warmth as for stealth. No tell tale plumes of dragon’s breath. Leaning in to her reluctantly-recalled training, she advanced in a crouch, sweeping her phaser rifle back and forth, the practical antique cycled to the third, most destructive setting.

The ground was covered quickly, efficiently and Mel’nyk found herself crouched against the cliff wall, the entrance to her required canyon a mere handspan from her. She looked down. Adjusted her tricorder. Nodded in satisfaction.

Here comes the cavalry.

Crouching and crab-walking, she advanced up the wall of the canyon, hugging it as close as possible without touching. Mel’nyk managed to be as quiet as possible, despite the protestation of her screaming knees. Her breath came short, ragged.

You need control.

Mel’nyk forced her breathing to calm. Deep breaths.

There, up ahead.

[To Be Continued ...]

 

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