It was another normal day scanning the Paulson Nebula for Sky Athenos and the unfortunate Ensign assigned to his shuttlecraft.

“Time to start scan 29465-whatever of the Paulson Nebula, grid 14, section 8.” Sky liked messing with the Ensigns from the science department, it was one of the few entertaining things about these hours-long flights where nothing of note ever happens.

“Lieutenant! I’m not sure you should be whatever-ing the reports on the scans!”

This Ensign, however, had been particularly fun to mess with, Sky hadn’t even put the whatever in the actual report, something he had done on occasion, and the kid was freaking out.

“Easy Ensign, this is a routine scan of a spot that’s been scanned for years, the only real difference is the residue from the storm.” That and the turbulence that made flying the nebula challenging, but Sky wasn’t going to tell him that.  There’d been too many an Ensign that panicked their way through the entire 4 hours despite not feeling even the slightest bump outside of the landing.  There’d even been one Ensign that tried to take over piloting to get through the nebula safely, now that had been a bumpy ride.“Ensign, it’s not like we’re going to run into anything out here.  Now relax, this is the easiest, most boring duty you could have possibly pulled on Starbase Bravo.”

“But Lieutenant, there is something out there”

Sky sat up, this hadn’t happened in a while.  “What are we looking at, pirates?”

“Unless these pirates are running around in a federation shuttle, I don’t think so.”

“A Federation shuttle? We’re the only ones scheduled to be out here today, the next flight isn’t until the Fissure flies Grid 14 Section 10 at 1000 tomorrow. Best to contact the base, see if anyone else is out here.”

Sky moved across the shuttle bridge to the comms panel. “Starbase Bravo, this is Tremor, come in”

“Tremor this is Starbase Bravo”

“Starbase Bravo, we have a shuttle out here with a Federation signature, it’s reading as the Richter”

“Tremor, we don’t have a shuttle Richter currently in service in the area.”

“ok Bravo, we’re going to investigate”

“understood Tremor, good luck”

Moving away from the comm panel, Sky headed to the back of the shuttle, the Ensign following behind as they both started preparing for beamout to the other shuttle, phasers and combadges ready.

Upon arrival, Sky was relieved to see the dark interior of a standard Federation shuttle.  Things could have been a lot worse on this end, but it appeared the shuttle was abandoned.  Moving to the Richter’s ops panel, he booted up the system and ran a diagnostic.  

“Shields are half-gone, Engines blown, Life support fully operational, weapons gone, comms offline, survival packs gone, Power down to fifteen percent.” Sky went through the checklist, noting that the shuttle was equipped for a crew of three.

“Let’s check the logs” the Ensign said, making his presence known.

“Gonna be honest kidddo, forgot you were there.” Sky didn’t feel bad about that, most Ensigns were rather forgettable, in fact.  The only reason Sky wasn’t forgettable as an Ensign was his insanely bad luck when shuttling important people around. It was an easy mistake to head to port B-12 on Jupiter Station, when Admiral Shelby was supposed to go to Port B-12 on the USS Melbourne in Spacedock.  It’s not like she said anything when they headed in the wrong direction!

“Well sir, the logs here state that the shuttle was on a routine scanning mission in Grid 2 Section 5 a year ago.”

“So right when the storm hit, then?” Sky was impressed, he hadn’t been here for the storm, but he’d heard of the ferocity that swept through the system. “To think this little shuttle survived all that.”

“Well, with the way the Richter is now, we’d better get it back to the Starbase.  Shuttle command is going to love us”

“Why sir?” The Ensign looked confused.  Sky sighed, very few people seem to get when he’s sarcastic.

“Because now they get more of that paperwork they keep getting on my case about!”

Getting the Richter under the tractor beam, and synchronizing the shields so the shuttles don’t bounce each other into oblivion took the better part of an hour, during which time, Sky noted a particularly nasty scorch mark on the nose of the Richter that went right over the communications array.

After another 2 hours of slow going, they finally got both shuttles back to Starbase Bravo’s shuttle maintenance bay, where the Shuttle Command crew had some good news for the two officers.

“Starbase Bravo, this is Tremor and Richter, coming in for a landing”

“you’re clear to land at Shuttlepad 13 and 14, Tremor. Also, we found the original crew of the Richter, Commander Faraday, Lieutenant Garand, and Lieutenant D’Tan were rescued mid storm by the USS Brisbane from a particularly well protected Asteroid in the nebula, but their shuttle was presumed destroyed.”

“Well, glad to hear they’re ok. Proceeding with the landing”

A month later, the Richter was returned to service after extensive repairs, though Shuttle Maintenance couldn’t seem to fully remove the scarring over the comms array, leading to the shuttle being renamed the Aftershock.

Sky personally thought nobody said Engineers have to be good a naming things.