| Stardate: 90624.7 | Report Submitted: Commander Athini Aeregon |
The alert came through roughly around 2210 October Standard Clock, so it was a little shock to the duty staff who'd settled in for the quiet shift. I was requested by the current deck officer to take the transmission to the station's conference table, where I was able to enlist the assistance of the reserve staff for the stations current gamma roster. The briefing explained the issue within the transmission, a medical distress call relayed from one of the 26th Fleets listening buoys. Having gone through the known details we proceeded towards the transporter room and boarded the 'October, which with most of my senior staff around Sherman's planet currently, Mr. Kermit took the helm; Ambassador Drexia took Communications and Science - while Colonel Zala and Da'nia handled Fore and Aft weapon systems.
I wasn't expecting combat, so, the rag-tag group didn't seem too much of an issue, and with all that noted I must say they were exceptionally useful and performed under the sudden request to head out to the Dorza system with quite the level of professionalism.
It didn't take too long to arrive and establish contact. Mr. Kermit placed us inside a standard orbit around Dorza Four, and it was soon after that Ambassador Drexia was able to establish communications with the government body on the surface. Speaking with Talla Vashet of the council present, they explained the situation concerning a plague outbreak on the surface. The issue being any science team sent would soon become infected, which would hinder the progress of locating the cure... so their idea was to request non-Dorza persons to take a look.
After making sure there was little risk, I along with the reserve team from Deep Space Thirteen beamed down to a small platformed location on the surface of the water world and prepared our Environmental Suits for the coming dive. After hitting the bed of the water expanse, we split into two small teams to expand our chances of finding anything significant. Myself and Ensign Kermit headed North-West. We came up with nothing exceptionally conclusive aside from a few samples from the more interesting looking fauna, however for the most part the contagion hadn't any source on the facing plant life, however we did locate one sample that contained the particulates towards the end of our search. A small purple-stemmed growth with small blue tear drop buds, or seeds. Mr. Kermit was able to get a small sample and we returned to the other three, who by this point had already collected three other source samples ready for the science team to begin analyzing. We beamed back to the ship.
It was then of course, that the Dorzan Council had already known of this contagion previously, and had already used the cure a number of times. The trouble was on this occasion, the cure was unavailable, and so we offered to travel to the Summan system to collect the venom from one ... Sellik spider. We arrived inside of the system fairly soon after, though we were met with a small fleet of vessels from the surface... explaining that we were unable to obtain the venom. The government lead, Sh'sh'l, expressed no effort to offer the aid once again... however after some persuasion allowed us to beam to an abandoned part of the planet to search for the source of the venom. It took some doing, the tricorders weren't able to easily obtain a lock on the spiders bio-matter signature, however after some quadrat-searching, Mr. Kermit located one of them up in the hills, and we were able to some-what simply obtain the specifications and sample what made up the supplement.
Once we had beamed back to the ship and made our way to depart, the Summan ships hailed us, explaining that Sh'sh'l had no longer decided to allow is to leave, and proceeded to open heavy fire on both the U.S.S. October and the Nexan ship, Ernasot. We were able to mostly over power them with little damage, though the October itself took a number of heavy hits to the ventral phaser relays, something to book into the dry dock repair book once the queue is clear. Though nothing else was seriously documented. Initially trying to just disable the vessels, it was made impossible with the relentless hostility, Lieutenant Fon believe a number of the vessels may have self destructed, or simply suffered numerous containment breaches. Sh'sh'l hailed us from the surface condemning our actions, but at this stage, I was in no mood to listen to his words after the unprovoked attack, and decided it best we leave the system in what little peace was left before further vessels arrive.
We were able to return to Dorza Four in time and without further combat to provide the genetic sample data on the venom to fabricate an antidote once more to the outbreak. Upon learning that the Summan's had opened fire upon us, they didn't show too much concern for themselves, but for us. I personally don't predict major conflict in this zone in the future... however for an undefended planetary body, the defense of all citizens there would fall with the jurisdiction of Star Fleet in terms of peace with it falling under Federation space, I'd warrant caution on random attacks when operating around the further planetary systems there.
We're currently enroute back to Deep Space Thirteen to debrief, where I'm quite certain a full formal report shall be drafted, finalized and submitted ontop of this preliminary.
Commander Athini Aeregon
Acting Captain
U.S.S. October