Chapter Text
“I’ve gotta tell ya, I won’t mind having an easy mission.” Trip reached to adjust one of the buttons on the flight deck, eyes on the controls in front of him.
“That would be a refreshing change,” Malcolm quipped from the copilot’s seat.
Trip chuckled. “This one should be easy peasy lemon squeezy,” he added.
“Pardon?” Malcolm asked.
“It should be easy,” Trip said, rephrasing. He waved a hand at the viewscreen, through which they could see the blue green orb of the nearby planet. “The planet’s unpopulated, the environment’s almost the same as back home, and we’re only going down there for a day, grab those samples, then back,” he added. “What could go wrong?”
“Please be careful what you say, Commander,” Malcolm said in an overly solemn voice. “This is, after all, Shuttlepod One.”
“True, true,” Trip said, hands glancing over the controls. He reckoned that everything that had ever gone wrong for them, which also involved a shuttle, seemed to have happened on Shuttlepod One. If he didn’t know better, he’d swear the thing was cursed.
Trip could see Malcolm’s nod from his peripheral vision. “Don’t want to tempt the fates.”
“Sure don’t,” Trip said, eyes on the viewscreen.
The planet did look peaceful – very Earth-like, the majority of its surface being water, with some large land-masses. It would be nice to have a visit planetside, and he was glad it was with Malcolm, now that they seemed to be on the way to repairing their friendship. He’d kept Malcolm at some distance after his sister had died in the Xindi attack on Earth, and pushed him away even more after baby Elizabeth had died. Despite all that, Malcolm had persisted – it was like once you actually managed to make friends with the man, you couldn’t get rid of him. And thank God for that. Still, he wished he could step back into the past and undo some things, or at least un-say some of the things he’d said to Malcolm during his dark days.
Trip noticed a flicker of light, looked up, and frowned. “That’s odd.”
Malcolm’s head shot up to look at him.
Trip waved a hand to the scene before him. Where, a moment ago, there had been nothing but the view of the planet, now, there was some sort of… weird color wavy thing, semi-transparent but steadily becoming more substantial, screening their view of the planet beyond it. Weirder, he could see it with his eyes, but the ship’s sensors didn’t register it at all.
Trip’s hands flew over the controls as he heard Malcolm’s sharp intake of breath from beside him. Even at half impulse, they were moving too fast to avoid it. “Damn it,” Trip said as they went through the forward edge of the thing.
The ship shook violently. “Intertial –“ and that’s as far as Malcolm got before the ship jerked to the left and down, and Trip heard something impact the inside of the hull where Malcolm was sitting, cutting off what Malcolm was saying.
He didn’t have time to look to see what had happened to Malcolm. Eyes glued to the controls, Trip struggled to keep the shuttle from spinning out as they entered the phenomenon fully. He swore as the ship tumbled, then exited the back edge of the waves, spinning as they entered the planet’s atmosphere. They were falling fast. He saw sky, then the planet’s surface, then sky again. They were out of control. There was nothing he could do.
The surface of the planet filled the viewscreen. He knew this was it. Then when the shuttle hit the ground, he knew nothing at all.
x-x
Please let me know what you think of this so far. Kudos are awesome! Fun with the time travel trope!