Bok looked around at the planet, and shuddered. T’was cold, extremely cold. The young Ensign could feel the cold seeping into his jacket, but it was still keeping him warm.

Sh’ill had immediately spotted the blood dilithium, and looked to his landing party.“Right, you lot. We’re heading to that thing there, we’re going to take samples, and then we’re going to get the hell out of here. Understood?”

Bok simply nodded, and followed Sh’ill. While walking, he saw that the planet was not much more than a blizzardy snowball with almost no terrain except a few low hills far and wide apart. As he walked, he felt the cold slowly leave him, and now the only place where he felt it was his face.

The crazed winds rushed past him, pushing snow and bits of hale into the Bolian’s face, almost as if the winds were making fun of him, and trynig to stop his advance forward.“I’m going to push through,” Bok thought to himself, all while squinting and looking into the distance, “The cold isn’t that bad, I mean…. it really isn’t. I will… get there!” Bok yelled the last part out into his mind, right as he felt sensation leave his cheeks.

Meanwhile, Lieutenant Erti Jatia was keeping herself sane by thinking about her warm quarters, and the warm cups of raktajino that were awaiting her on the Liris. No cold would keep her from the sweet embrace of the raktajino. Jatia looked at her people, hoping that at least one of them would keep her company all through this walk, but it did not seem so. 

Xasin seemed too focused on trying to hold onto his body heat, and Sh’ill was thoughtfully staring at the mass of red in the distance.

And now we finish off the thoughts of our brave landing party by peering into Sh’ill’s mind. He too was cold, but less so than his companions, his fur was keeping him warm. His mind was focused on keeping a brave exterior, so as to keep good morale within his crew, even though within he was scared of fucking up this first major mission of his, and was trying to do his best.

By now, their heroic triad had reached the foot of the blood dilithium mountain, and were looking up its slopes.The mountain was at least 100 metres high, 300 metres in diameter, and seemed to glow in a brighter red than a forest fire. It was truly massive.

Sh’ill looked to his companions, and especially to Ensign Bok Xasin.“Ensign… how shall we take off samples?” He said, with his voice half muted by the howling wind.

The Bolian hesitated for a moment, partly because his lips had frozen over a bit, and because he wasn’t totally sure if the phaser that he had brought with him would do it.“I was planning to use my phaser, though we may have to beam down a phase cutter if that doesn’t work sir.”

Lieutenant Jatia, as an expert in molecular topology, immediately piped in.“You should beam down a phase cutter, that phaser won’t do much to what is basically a mirror maze for particles.”

Ensign Bok considered his options for a moment, and slowly touched his combadge, to contact the ship.“This is… Ensign Bok Xasin to the USS Liris. Beam down a phase cutter to us.”

A few seconds after, the computer responded, “Confirmed.” and a phase cutter slowly appeared on the ground in front of the Ensign, who painfully bent down and picked it up.“How much do we need, sir?” He said to Sh’ill, and turned the phase cutter on, which seemed to give off some amount of heat.

Sh’ill got down on the ground by one of the small dilithium rocks by the slopes, and looked up at the Ensign.“Take the top off of that, and we should be good. 15 centimetres should do. Just… be careful, I don’t want to have to reattach any arms or pick up pieces off you off this rock.”

The Ensign nodded, and carefully started shaving off the top of the rock, taking care to not go anywhere near his limbs, and to do it with extreme care. He slowly got down by the rock, and moved the phase cutter no more than a few millimetres at a time, and finished within 5 minutes.“Here, sir. Should be good now.”

Sh’ill quickly picked up the hunk of rock, and moved it over a few metres, away from the dilithium mountain.“I’m surprised that no one’s come here yet. Maybe they just haven’t noticed. Oh well… Computer,” Sh’ill tapped his combadge. “Beam the rock of dilithium in front of me to the middle of the security field in sickbay. If needed, take off the sides if it won’t fit.”

The computer was quick to respond, and took the samples off the ground in a woosh of blue light, leaving the away team alone on the planet.

Sh’ill quickly looked around, and tapped his combadge to get them off this frozen-over hellhole too.“Computer, three to beam up, quickly. Beam Lieutenant Erti and Ensign Xasin to the transporter room, get me to the bridge.”

On the bridge, Delvok had spent the last 30 minutes carefully doing his duties, trying to keep his mind off the blood dilithium which might or might not cause hallucinations, and which might or might not cause him to go insane. But, in the end, he logiced his way to the conclusion that either way there’s not much he could do.

Suddenly, the young (at least by Vulcan standards) Ensign heard the familiar noise of something being beamed somewhere, and he turned in his chair to look at it. However, he did not have much time to look at what had been beamed on, as it was already running towards him, and was rapidly taking off its jacket.

Sh’ill rushed to Delvok, and immediately stood him up.“Lieutenant, are you okay? Any hallucinations, you hear voices? Answer the question.” Sh’ill yelled at him, and mildly slapped him around to make sure that he was aware of what was going on.The Lieutenant kept calm, and slowly explained. He did not even attempt to resist the mild slaps from his Captain, which felt more like laying down on a soft pillow than a slap.“No, sir, no hallucinations, and no voices. And yes, I am okay.”

Sh’ill put him back down by the helm console, and took a step back.“I hope that you will forgive me for the slapping around. I was making sure that my crew was okay. Anything interesting happen up here while we were down there?”

The Lieutenant quickly looked over his console, and turned back to face the Captain.“We did pick up some strange readings from the 5th planet, near asteroids that contain minerals that are disrupting sensors.”

Sh’ill walked across the bridge, and sat down in his chair, right on the winter jacket that had been thrown there by him.“Call the Lieutenant and Ensign to the bridge, and seal off the sickbay lab, no one with a lower security clearance than mine is to go in there.”

Just as Sh’ill had been beamed onto the bridge, so had Jatia and Bok been beamed to the transporter room. The two of them walked over to the console, and slowly took off their winter uniforms, revealing their standard uniforms which were underneath.

Jatia quickly got off all her stuff, and placed it into the lockers in the transporter room, and shivered a bit as the air of the ship hit her.“This is why I like Bajor, it’s much warmer, and you never need a winter coat. Here, you beam down and turn into an icicle.”

Meanwhile, Bok was a little more gentle with his winter armour, as he was with all Starfleet property, and neatly folded it all.”Down there, ma’am, it seemed cold, but now that I think about it… it was about the same as on Bolarus. Snow all the time, and ice as far as you can see.”

Jatia quickly closed her locker, and turned to face Bok with a raised eyebrow.“You enjoyed that frozen over hell? You must be completely insane. I’ll put in a request for the Captain to do a psych eval.” She said, as she did a small giggle, and walked to the door, waiting on Bok.

The Ensign saw Jatia walk over to the door, and he quickly ran over to the locker to place his stuff into it.“I didn’t say I enjoyed it, I just said that it felt like home. One of the reasons why I joined Starfleet, actually: to not have to deal with the cold.” With that, he closed his locker, and walked to the door.

The two of them stepped out into the hallway on Deck One, and walked to the bridge, to find their Captain with his winter pants still on and jacket placed on the backrest of his chair.

Sh’ill turned to face the two of them as they entered, and quickly spoke up.“Right, listen up you two. We just got a message from Starfleet that had specs for something that can get rid of this blood dilithium. I want you, Ensign, to build it, and get it ready within the next 24 hours.”“As for you, Lieutenant, I want you to analyze that thing that we shaved off that rock, and find out what it makes it do its thing. You are to work inside a containment field and to keep it in one at all times, because I’m not risking Delvok going insane right now. To work, people.”

Bok and Jatia looked at each other, and rushed to their respective stations, to quickly get to work.Jatia opened up the Starfleet file on blood dilithium, and started to take notes on it, to try and figure out how to even work with it as safely as possible.Bok rushed to open up the specs sent to him by Starfleet, and examined them closely. They seemed to be nothing like anything that he’d ever built, but he’d do his best. After all, it’s only a fancy bomb… or something like that, he wasn’t fully sure.

Sh’ill, in the meantime, looked to Delvok, and spoke up.“Lieutenant, chart a course to take us around the planets of this system. Chart it so that it takes us around every planet, but especially the fifth. I want to see what’s out there without it looking like we know what’s there. Also set up a torpedoe which will emit a large amount of tachyon particles once launched. I want to see what that is cloaked in there.”

The Vulcan Lieutenant nodded, and quickly pulled up a map of the system, and started charting a course. While doing this, he also slowly filled a torpedoe with the requested particles, and prepped it for launch.“Torpedoe is ready for launch, sir, the course will be ready momentarily.”

Sh’ill simply nodded, and fell back in his chair, trying to calm himself down a bit.

Bok was sat there at the ops console, looking at the anti-dilithium weapon in awe: he understood somewhat how it worked, but not completely. Eventually, he opened up the spec-sheet and list of parts that it would need, and copied it onto his PADD. T’was a long list, and all of it would weigh a Lot, with a capital L. And, of course, all of this would have to be fit onto a Class-5 probe, with every part in its specific place, or it all would blow up in his face.

With that minor revelation now in the back of his mind, he stood up, and ran into the turbolift, where he punched in the command for the cargo bays, and shot down.

Bok stepped off the lift, and entered into the lonely hallway of Deck 4, and walked into the cargo bay, and looked over its contents, and slowly gathered all that he would need onto an anti-grav platform, carefully lifting the lighter parts, and more or less throwing around the heavier components so that he wouldn’t have to deal with them for so long.

Bok placed the final component, 5 metres of wire, onto the anti-grav platform, and stepped back to look at it all.“Computer… beam the anti-grav platform to Engineering, preferably to somewhere on the side.”

In the span of a few seconds, it all had dematerialised into a swoosh of blue light, leaving the centre of the cargo bay empty.With the emptiness, Bok left the cargo bay, and stepped into the turbolift to head up to Engineering.

The young Ensign walked to the anti-grav platform, and slowly sat down on it all. He had a faint idea how he would assemble all of this, and worst of all: he had 24 hours to put all of this together.“Computer…” Bok hesitated to speak, but somehow pushed his words out, “beam a Class-5 probe to the middle of Engineering.”Almost instantly, just as before, a hunk of metal started appearing in the middle of the room, and finally landed in the middle of the room.Xasin walked over to it, and slowly walked around it, all while checking on the blueprints of the version that could get rid of the blood dilithium, and slowly started to work out how he would do it, but making that deadline of 24 hours would not be easy, it would take no less than 3 straight shifts to finish, and that would be if he made no mistakes.

And so, the Ensign took the first component, a heat sink, and walked over with it to the probe.

But now we must return to our friends on the bridge, and see how they are faring.

Delvok looked up from his console, with the course now charted, and spoke to the Captain in his completely emotionless, yet strangely soft voice which seemed to assure everyone around him of their safety.“Captain, the course is ready and laid in.”

Sh’ill shot up in his chair, and straightened out his back.“Good work, Lieutenant. Fly at half impulse, not to arouse suspicion, but also not too slow. I want to be sure of what’s out there.”

The Vulcan nodded, and turned back to his console, and quickly tapped the commands for half impulse, and the Liris quickly broke orbit, and set off for the next planet in the system.