Rescue operation from the prison planet

 "On the bridge of the flagship, Captain Kheren contacted main engineering from his command chair.

"Engineering; are we ready?"

The voice of assistant chief Robert Baoule came over the comm with a definite tone of nervousness.

"Aye, Captain... I guess..."

"Do not... guess, Mister; lives are at stake here."

"I apologize, Captain... but if I could speak candidly Sir..."

Letting an officer speak freely over a ship intercom channel where every one on the bridge could hear was certainly not a recommended practice for a commanding officer; but this crew had been through hell and back with the Andorian, so much that he was past the point of having to impart his authority from his rank and position. They trusted him as much as he trusted them, they knew him as much as he knew them, some even most intimately... Only Chief Engineer Solius and Chief of Security Aron'Son were fairly new to his command. But they would have to learn sooner or later how Kheren dealt with officers on all levels. Now was good a time as any.

"Go ahead, Lieutenant."

There was definite hesitation at the other end, Then, with a forcibly measured tone, baoule spoke his mind.

"Sir, I do not have much faith in this... contraption you had us made."

"I have no faith at all, Lieutenant. I always base my hopes on facts, never on wishfull thinking." the Andorian replied matter-of-factly.

"Err, yes Sir, I know... but I mean... well, It is the facts that I'm not so sure about."

"You have rechecked the calculations about the strenght of diamond nanotube fibers."

It was not a question and the engineer acknowledged readily.

"The numbers add up, aye... still... I can't imagine such a thinly-stretched, fragile-looking thing doing what it is supposed to do... especially with this crazy negative energy field around that planet..."

"That scientist brother of yours assured us that this is exactly because of the nature of that field that it will work best. After all, gravity is negative energy; it can only be countered positively,  by other forms of energy applied against it. Whatever that field is, it behaves for all intent and pruposes as some kind of singularity. Knowing that, we can use it to suit our pruposes."

"Powerless power... Sorry, Captain, I'm an engineer and still I can't grasp my head around it. And there is the pod itself."

"Is it able to complete atmospheric entry safely?"

"Structurally-speaking, no doubt about that... but getting back up into orbit might be... problematic if anything fails to work once down there."

"Redding and Jureth are resourceful people... and there is the entire crew of the Polaris to help them, if not also some survivors from the Draxx ship. We send them what they need and they should know what to do. After all, they alone have first hand experience with crossing the planetary field."

"But no one has any experience with this... contraption," insisted Baoule with obvious nervousness.

"Not exactly true, Lieutenant. Some of the USS Voyager crew did experience this... contraption as you call it, one even a competent technician and pilot that succeeded in doing nearly exactly what we are about to attempt. It worked once... it can work again."

There was a moment of silence over the comm before the engineer finally sighed audibly.

"Mister Snow will have to ensure perfect geosynchronic orbit for the whole time it will take them to manage to propel themselves back to escape velocity... and preserve themselves during the crossing of this vampire field... I recommend again to keep scanners locked on the... shaft so that we may transport them all at once directly to sickbay the moment they emerge from it."

"As Doctor Nasaro-Myth insisted on," Kheren agreed.

"You bet your sweet aft section I did," the Deltan chief medical officer grumbled from behind the command chair.

"I'll keep her steady as a rock, Captain," assured helmsman Snow, as long as nothing will come to interfere with us."

He was eyeing the Draxx battleship that had reformed to follow the Phoenix on a parallel course towards the next M class planet of the system.

"Captain Syntron has already defused several touchy situations in recent hours," Counselor Lyrya reminded them all. "He has established a respectful working status with the Draxx. He should be able to consolidate our situation for the better."

"Let's hope it did not flame up down there," Elliago mumbled just loud enough for sensitive Andorian antennae to pick up.

"Let us first get them all back here," Kheren sighed. "Anything else, Mister Baoule?

"Guess not... I mean, negative, Captain. Ready to proceed... and luck be on the side of the brave, the foolish and little starships named Horizon."

"Luck is something you can never count on but can never ignore," agreed the Andorian in the command chair. Then he switched to shipwide channel. "Attention crew, this is the captain; we are about to launch Operation Fisherman. You all know your assigned duties. Our crewmates down on the planet, one Federation citizen and possibly alien survivors are depending on us. We shall not let them down. Stand by."

Standing up, Kheren adjusted his uniform and crossed his brawny arms behind his broad back, looking straight at the viewing screen with unblinking silvery eyes, antennae pointed forward over his thick white mane. His deep, soft voice resonated with resolute firmness.

"Viewer aft."

"Viewer aft," confirmed the shrill voice of chief of Ops Cheonghi as the image became that of the huge stern of the flagship.

"Mister Aron'son; launch the line."

As soon as the Jem'Hadar's fingers activated the proper controls, something shiny and deceptively thin looking shot out from the underbelly of the secondary hull. It looked as nothing else but a long metallic wire trailing a pilotless workpod plunging right into the gravity well of the planet at full thrusters.

"Entering planetary shield in three... two... one..."

As science chief  Ke'Leysha bowed towards her main scanners finished her count down, the thruster exhausts of the pod falred out suddenly. The shiny wire continued to stretch behind it. There was a long moment of silence before the Illythirii woman spoke again, as the strange line suddenly became as thaught as a rod.

"Planet fall... within one kilometer of estimated original landfall of the Draxx destroyer."

"Engineering to bridge; the shaft is secured at maximum tensile strenght."

"Keep us steady, Mister Snow," the captain insisted. He spoke without ever moving his eyes or antennae from the screen. "Mister Solius; launch the pod."

From the engineering station, the fingers of the Romulan chief engineer obeyed the captain's order. On the viewer, a large object detached itself from the lower shuttlebay of the Horizon. It was cylindrical and a dozen meters accross, made up of two tiers of eight escape pods fused together to form a kind of segmented donought the center of which was entirely filled up by the deceptively thin-looking wire now straightened taunt as a rod between the ship and the surface of the planet.

There was a short burst of the top pods' thrusters and the entire contraption shot down the wire, straight down at Eden IV. 

They all looked up silently at the screen for long moments after the flower-shaped module disappeared from view, the energy-draining effect of the planetary field masking from their eyes even the view of it's fiery entry into the atmosphere of the prison planet.

*     *     *

"Commander Redding! Look! Up there!"

They were all standing together at the lip of the small, shallow crater left by the fall of what had appeared to them as a workpod falling freely through the morning sky. Those that had been sleeping had been brutally wakened by the thundering impact over a kilometer deep inside the jungle. There was also something that was strangely cutting vertically through the light of sunrise, a thin line going up from the estimated point of impact  beyond the clouds, as if the sky itself had been a titanic door suddenly cracked open.

It took them a good solid hour through the thick foliage before they reached the impact crater, fuming still with the metallic debris pulverized at it's center. But what had immediately caught up there eyes was the enormous metallic pylon shining under the morning sun, deeply imbeded in the ground and reaching up to the sky. I was easily ten meters accross and perfectli octogonal with a perfectly smooth, shiny surface.

Before they could ponder about the strange thing, the Draxx had lifted their ears then their heads high up, followed by T'Lana and then all the others. It was J'Lan who had exclaimed and pointed with her green-skinned finger at the dark obect apparently falling straight down the mysterious shaft.

Prudently, they moved away from the crater. A few minutes later, something big and amorphous impacted the crater, lifting high clouds of earth and rock, then rebounded up before coming down again, then up, than down and finally rested on the ground. filling up most of the crater.

"What the blazes is that?" security officer Kalaar wondered as he protectively rose first to face whatever thrat this thing might be.

Followed by the others, they approached the now inert object that looked nothing less than a netted mass of gigantic silvery eggs two dozen meters accross and a good dozen meters high. Each egg was easily half a dozen meters in diameter and were emitting a thin whistling sound, like a long, unending sigh.

"Impact floaters!" Hunter exclaimed suddenly. 

"Impact what?" Kalaar wondered again.

"In early days of space exploration," the helmsman explained, "Earth sent probes to nearby planets like Mars, using inflated outer shells blown up by a simple mechanical pressure gauge at proper atmospheric pressure to absorb the impact with the ground as they landed, instead of using struts that could break if the landing angle was wrong or the terrain too rough. It would have rolled away for several hundred meters had this thing not being attached to that... pole."

As he spoke, the deflating eggs made of a thin metallic skin collapsed on the ground, stretching like flattened petals around a large hard-shelled center they all recognized instantly.

"Escape pods!"

"The Horizon sent them down!" exclaimed Kalaar, recognizing the markings on the closest ones.

Suddenly, Hunter whistled as he looked at them and then up the monstrous rod rising to the heavens.

"I... I can't beleive this... it's a space needle!"

"A... what?" it was now Ji'Lan who wondered out loud.

"A space elevator! It's an old concept that was forgotten when transporter technology made it completely obsolete; a constructed shaft reaching orbit, along which could travel a pressurized cabin, allowing planet-to-space travel without the use of costly and fragile crafts and at a fraction of the energy cost... usually through something like a maglev system."

"That's crazy!" the big Capellan security officer now exclaimed, goggling the entire thing mouth open like may others around him. "How can such a thing stand upright? Planetary rotation, air pressure and wind velocity, altitude speed discrepancies... and if it reaches all the way up through the planetary barrier, it can use no power to reinforce itself, let alone work!"

"Without a structural integrity field, you need a superstrong material... diamondrod nanotubes I would guess here," the Polaris chief engineer then explained, admiring the thing with obvious fascination. "Then you need to anchor it solidly on one side, usually deep underground... but here, the shaft does not reach deep enough into the ground, so I would say it's anchored up there... probably to an orbiting geostationary satellite... if not to the Horizon herself."

"Only one big problem," Hunter then said gloomily. "Any energy on board is now depleted after passing through the field. The escape pod thrusters appear intact but they are assuredly inert. And no energy sent through this shaft will reach us. How will we get back up? And even if we do, how will we surivve contact with the field?"

"Look! Inside the pods!" Ji'Lan announced, already having opened one of them to peer inside. "This thing is crammed with materials; chemicals, solar panels, fiberoptics, replacement parts... even Starfleet rations and water!"

"There is all we need here to refuel the thrusters," T'lana confirmed after a moment. "They sent the chemical components for the thrusters separated so that they would not react and produce energy that would expend them. We only need to recombine them and get active fuel for getting them ready and able for lift off and reach orbit with residual momentum, like the Polaris must have done."

The Draxx leader exchanged a brief look with his comrades as he lifted his head in obvious respect.

"You people are quite clever. We will stand guard against any Zetarian interference while you work on this."

"And these solar panels will allow us to reactivate all systems and power back up the pods' batteries, sufficiently to build a temporary shield that will last just long enough to survive going through the field if we go up fast enough," Ji'Lan added excitedly.

She turned towards Redding and Jureth, adressing them both.

"With your permission, we will start right away. We should be ready to lift off in two hours.""

Jureth, with his injuries now stabilized, was starting to really see how Captain Kheren had earned the reputation he had. Of course the Bajoran had read all the after action reports, and listened to the talk around the starbase, but the kind of ingenuity he was looking at here was only inspired by leaders who led from the front, and commanded the utmost respect from their people. It wasn't that the other officers he'd served under weren't capable leaders, but this Andorian was far and away above them all from everything he'd both heard and experienced. Those thoughts aside Oseno took Ji'lan's question in stride, but instead of giving the obvious answer he deferred to Commander Redding as the senior officer.

"Sir, your call." 

Redding just smiled.

"What do you think Commander? Shore leave's over people! Let's put gas in the bus and pack it all up! It's time to go home."

Redding walked over to Garawl with his usual half smile.

"We have room for you as well, I think." remembering their girth. "Providing you can stand to be cramped up for a short while with non-Draxx."

"Better than roam on a haunted planet," the big caninoid answered with a snarl that was probably a smile for his kind, although with that gaping, fanged mouth of theirs, it was hard to tell the difference. " This will not be all that much more cramped than what we are used to on our ships. And we know of this... space elevator technology your follower described. It is widely used on many of our planets. But I could not have tought it possible to manufacture one here, even as temporary a structure as this one and in so short a time. It seems our people could learn much from yours."

And already, the other Draxx were hard at work helping unloafing the escape pods while the Starfleet personnel, under Ji'Lian's expertise, sorted out food supplies from medical ones and thruster chemicals from tools that would allow them to revive the makeshift rocket cabin that would lift them up asll the way beyond the clouds, up to the orbiting starship overhead they currently called 'home'.