— Gamma Quadrant—

Lieutenant Thomas Winfield had never landed a starship before. Though he’d done simulations and training bringing the USS Adelaide down in a planet’s surface was something he had not actually done. Certainly it was not a thing that he had been planning on doing less than a month after being assigned to the ship.

“You’re doing great,” Krisham said, trying to be supportive.

Winfield glanced behind him, wanting to shoo away the senior officer, “I’m trying to concentrate.”

“Yeah I’m just being supportive,” Krisham said, “You got this.”

Behind the leutenant commander Sok cleared his throat, a way of reeling in his second officer.

Taking the hint Krisham stepped back, allowing Winfield to focus on bringing the Intrepid-class starship down. It broke through the atmosphere, shaking the ship. The shields held, as the craft slowed, and Winfield ran scans on the landing zone. Away from anything, trees or large rock outcroppings that would interfere with the landing. He slowed the decent, pulling up as the landing pads lowered. He told himself this was just like piloting a large shuttle or runabout. A very large runabout.

The Adelaide set down with a bump, and then he sat back, taking his hands off the controls of the conn station. At the operations station Lieutenant Leylani Aka began powering down non essential systems, to make their energy signature less and thus make them less observable from orbit. If all went well the Dominion ships would pass by and never think to look on the planet for the Federation vessel.

“Keep passive scanners on, if we have activity in orbit I want us to be ready to depart quickly. Lieutenant Commander Hume, setup scouting parties. We’ll be here for a couple of days, we might as well do some science while on the planet,” Commander Sok said, nodding at his first officer. Sok had been the ship’s head of science and knew that field work would be a nice change for scientists that rarely got to venture out from labs aboard a starship.

— Unnamed Planet Surface —

Lieutenant Commander Victoria Hume did another sweep of her tricorder as her younger brother adjusted his boot. The pair was finishing up a perimeter sweep prior to giving the green-light to away teams disembarking the ship. The Adelaide’s chief of security and its first officer had not intended to serve together on a ship, it was just that this had been thrown together so quickly with such a personnel crunch that the Hume’s had ended up swept up in events.

“You should call mom,” William said, holding a hand phaser. The scans were coming back as nothing sizeable, and certainly nothing that was threatening to human sized species. Whatever carnivores might live on the planet did not seem capable of doing anything to the crew of the starship.

“I called her last week,” Victoria said.

“We’re in the Gamma Quadrant, by the time you send a message that’s routed through Opaka Station and into the Beta and then Alpha Quadrant it’ll be time to send her another message,” William pointed out. They’d gone past the point where instantaneous contact with anyone back home was impossible. That was the case even if they hadn’t had to turn off their outgoing comms to better hide from the Dominion.

“Come to my office, we’ll do a joint call,” Victoria said, even though the messages weren’t live, she found it easier to talk when she had her brother around who could help her avoid the inevitable discussion of why she was still single. Even if her mother’s questions on the topic wouldn’t arrive for days now due to the delay.

The younger Hume nodded, and added, “This planet’s nice.”

“That’s the sort of thing someone says right before they get eaten by a giant plant,” Victoria Hume said. She was already working teams out in her head, and said, “Each away team is going to need a security officer with them just in case.”

“A ship full of scientists are going to love that,” William Hume said, knowing exactly the opposite was the case.  Scientists were at best tolerant of security personnel and at worst openly contemptuous of his department.

“The thing is I don’t care,” the ship’s first officer smiled, “My job is to keep this ship from getting  eaten by the giant alien plants and I plan on accomplishing that task.”

William Hume smiled at his sister, “Oh you’re going to make lots of friends not caring about the crew.”

“I don’t not care about the crew. I just care about keeping the ship safe and that includes the crew. If not every scientist aboard gets to explore their intellectual curiosity so be it,” Victoria said.

— USS Adelaide —

Murf took another step on the ship’s hull and turned back to the hatch, smiling at her assistant chief engineer. Lieutenant Kv’skrkks refused to step out of the hatch, claiming that his claws would potentially damage the ship’s hull. He liked the Intrepid-class’s carpets but had managed to deal with the sleek and smooth flooring of their other ships.

“I’m standing on the ship, this is so cool. This is what space travel is meant to be, no transporters. Just zooming around the galaxy landing on planets and exploring,” Murf grin widened.

“I like transporting down to planets,” Kv’skrkks said.

“No you don’t,” Murf said to her Pahkwa-thanh assistant.

“No, because anytime I do beam down people assume I’ll eat them,” the large toothed dinosaur-like Lieutenant said.

Murf had to admit he was right. While he was a nice guy, between his sizable teeth and large claws on his feet it did look like he could eat someone. While Starfleet was a chance to allow people to fulfill their dreams, making a Pahkwa-thanh appear friendly was not an easily accomplished goal.

“We can fix the ship from up here,” Murf said.

“We just left port three weeks ago, we shouldn’t need to,” Kv’skrkks pointed out.

“This is old school like the Apollo astronauts who first walked on the moon.”

“Which moon?” Kv’skrkks asked.

“Earth’s moon,” Murf said, “It was exciting, seeing humans take their first steps into space.”

“I’m not familiar with Earth’s space program,” Kv’skrkks pointed out, “Not all of us were alive then.”

“I’m just saying we can fix the ship from here,” Murf said. She took a final look at the ship around her and headed back towards the hatch that went to the top deck.