I’m glad this day is over, and I’m glad we’re back in Federation space.
If you’ve been reading the recent posts from our Public Affairs page, you’ll know just how disturbing the last 24-36 hours have been. We witnessed the complete destruction of the USS Yamato; the Enterprise became infected with an unknown computer software virus; we found the legendary planet Iconia; and then we lost an entire away team in an explosion on the planet’s surface – including Lieutenant Archer (who was part of that away team). Then, strangely, moments after the explosion, Lieutenant Archer was found wandering among the Iconian ruins, sick, malnourished, and looking like he had been living in the wilderness for a few months.
Well, the truth is... apparently, he was – living in the wilderness.
I’ll get to that in a moment.
To start, though, I am happy to be the bearer of good news. The away team may not be dead after all. They might have survived – we just don’t know where they are.
Lieutenant Archer was brought back aboard the Enterprise for medical treatment and debriefing. Once he was able to talk, he informed Captain Picard that the away team had activated a “portal” within the now-destroyed Iconian launch site control room. That portal was, he says, one of the mythical “Iconian Gateways” – an instant one-way transportation doorway to distant planets. When the ancient equipment started to experience a power overload, security measures were activated (sealing the away team inside the control center), and the only way out, before the explosion, was to step through the gateway.
Lieutenant Commander Idella Haas ordered everyone to step through the portal to safety, however, the portal was “cycling through various locations”, as Lieutenant Archer described, and everyone likely stepped through to different planets. He is fairly certain that the first three Starfleet officers to step through went to the same planet, while the next two officers went somewhere else. Then Lieutenant Archer stepped through, and ended up on third planet. He has no idea what happened to Lieutenant Commander Haas, and the two Marines who were in line to step through the portal behind him, although, he is fairly certain they went to at least a fourth planet, since they didn’t arrive where he ended up.
Lieutenant Archer says he stepped through onto a desolate plateau that appeared to be the location of an ancient, mostly-buried city. He says the plateau overlooked an ocean. There was no one else on this plateau – he was alone. He says he was on this planet for three weeks before discovering a “talking portal” that called itself “the Guardian of Forever”. He found that it was an “ancient time portal”, and it allowed him to step through into the past – three weeks earlier on Iconia (this morning for all of us), just after the explosion that destroyed the control center.
The Sam Archer that we rescued survived for three weeks, alone, on an ancient planet somewhere in the universe. There are no records of anyone else having found or interacted with this “Guardian of Forever”, so we have no idea where this planet is located.
Somewhere, out there, may be the rest of our missing away team, too. We just don’t know where they went, or how to find them. The “Iconian Gateway” was destroyed, so we don’t have any way to rescue them. Lieutenant Archer was, apparently, lucky – if you can call it that.
As far as our survival aboard the Enterprise, well, we have our chief engineer, Lieutenant Geordi La Forge to thank for that. He decided to do something that has never been done in deep space before…. he shut down the entire computer on the stardrive section, and rebooted every system in that part of the ship. Normally, this is only done while a ship is in drydock, because an external command center is necessary to help reboot, reactivate, and reset every system. Starships have hundreds of systems to bring back online. It’s a process that takes 2-4 hours to complete. Lieutenant La Forge managed to complete the process without external monitoring. We may have to start referring to him as a “miracle worker”.
When everything came back online, and the Iconian computer virus was no longer active in the stardrive section, Lieutenant La Forge came over to the saucer section, repeated the process, and rebooted the saucer computer cores as well. With both parts of the Enterprise virus-free, the Enterprise was re-integrated, dropped a warning buoy, and we left the Iconian system.
Thankfully, we did not encounter any Romulan Warbirds. That would have made the situation many times more dangerous. It is very likely that the Romulans didn’t even know we were there. The Neutral Zone is about a light year deep. Ship sensors – from ships on either side of the Zone -- are not powerful enough to cover that distance.
It’s been a long day. Lieutenant Archer is, thankfully, alive, and we have hope that the rest of our away team is still out there, somewhere, as well. We have many things to figure out, but, at least we aren’t still sitting helpless inside the Neutral Zone. We have completed Captain Varley’s original mission. I don’t think anyone will be going back to Iconia any time soon.
-Lieutenant (JG) Tessa Kensington
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October 29, 2364 -- (Original Devron Timeline)