The Last Shuttle (Part I)
Posted on Wed Nov 12th, 2025 @ 4:54am by Ensign Kaelun Merak
1,452 words; about a 7 minute read
Mission:
Collating Data
Location: USS Portland
Timeline: BACKPOST - Evacuation of Earth
Location: San Francisco Evacuation Center, Earth - During Borg Attack on Sol System
The evacuation center in San Francisco was collapsing into chaos.
Ensign Kaelun Merak pressed himself against the crowd barrier, his Starfleet Medical Research Command uniform torn at the shoulder where someone had grabbed him in the panicked surge toward the shuttle pads. Above, the sky was wrong—streaked with green energy beams and the burning trails of falling debris. In the distance, a massive cube hung over the city like a geometric nightmare made solid.
"Next shuttle departing in two minutes!" shouted a harried operations officer over the roar of the crowd. "Priority personnel only—medical, command staff, essential research—"
The rest of her words were drowned out by desperate voices. Kaelun could see the shuttle on the landing pad, its engines already cycling up, emergency lights pulsing red against the darkening sky. Around him, hundreds of people pushed forward—some in uniform, most in civilian clothes. A woman clutched two children to her sides, both crying. An elderly man in a Starfleet admiral's dress uniform had blood running down his face. A young couple held each other, both shaking.
Kaelun's combadge chirped through the noise. "All Starfleet Medical Research personnel, you are cleared for immediate evacuation. Report to Shuttle Bay Seven. Repeat—immediate evacuation."
He started moving, pushing through the crowd, guilt clawing at him with every step. Why did his specialty in virology make him more valuable than that woman's children? Why did his research credentials matter more than the hundreds of others being left behind?
The shuttle bay was worse—a bottleneck of desperate humanity trying to force their way onto vessels already packed beyond capacity. Security personnel had formed a line, checking credentials with handheld scanners, making impossible choices about who lived and who stayed.
"Merak, Kaelun, Ensign, Starfleet Medical Research Command," he said, holding out his identification with a hand that wouldn't stop shaking.
The security officer's scanner blinked green. "You're clear. Bay Three, Shuttle Roosevelt. Move now!"
Kaelun ran. Behind him, someone screamed, "Please! My daughter is only six! Please!"
He didn't look back. Couldn't look back.
The Roosevelt was packed beyond any reasonable capacity—people standing in the aisles, sitting on the deck, pressed against every available surface. Kaelun found a space near the rear bulkhead and wedged himself in next to a Tellarite engineer and a human woman who was quietly sobbing into her hands, her shoulders shaking with each breath.
Through the viewport, he watched more people streaming toward the landing pads. Watched security hold them back as the shuttle doors began to close despite their desperate pleas. Watched hands reach out, grasping at nothing as the shuttle lifted off.
The Roosevelt banked hard, dodging weapons fire from somewhere above. Through the viewport, Kaelun caught a glimpse of the full evacuation center below—thousands of people still waiting, still hoping. Then Earth's surface fell away beneath them, and the woman next to him let out a broken sob.
The USS Portland loomed ahead, an Ambassador-class vessel with her shuttle bays glowing with frantic activity as dozens of craft made their approach. The Roosevelt shuddered as it passed through the atmospheric forcefield and settled onto the deck with a jarring impact that knocked several standing passengers to the floor.
The doors opened and people poured out—some collapsing immediately, others helped by waiting medical personnel who looked as exhausted and shell-shocked as the evacuees themselves.
"All evacuees report to Medical Assessment!" announced an automated voice. "Mandatory screening for all personnel who were on the surface. Medical Assessment stations have been established on Decks Six and Seven."
Kaelun moved with the tide of survivors through corridors that were packed far beyond their designed capacity. The Portland hadn't been built to carry this many people—he could see crew converting cargo bays, setting up emergency shelters in rec rooms, placing three or four people in quarters meant for one.
Medical Assessment was organized chaos. A converted cargo bay lined with portable biobeds, exhausted medical staff moving between patients with the kind of grim efficiency that came from too much practice in too short a time. The air smelled of disinfectant and fear.
When Kaelun's turn came, a young medical technician—she couldn't have been more than a year out of the Academy—ran a tricorder over him, her hands shaking slightly as she worked.
"Clear," she said after a moment, relief flickering across her face. "No signs of infection or contamination. Move along. Next!"
Kaelun stepped aside, but something made him pause. Medical training, research instinct—whatever it was, he noticed the pattern. Three people on nearby biobeds showed similar readings on the medical displays mounted above them. Elevated neural activity. Unusual nanoscale particulate readings in their bloodstreams. The waveforms were almost identical.
One was a middle-aged woman in civilian clothes, still wearing a torn coat from the surface, her face blank with shock. Another was a man in a damaged Starfleet operations uniform, gold shoulders visible through the rips, his hands clenched into fists. The third was a teenage boy who sat very still, staring at nothing, a thin line of blood dried at the corner of his mouth.
"Excuse me," Kaelun said to the nearest doctor, a Vulcan woman whose uniform was stained with someone else's blood. "Those three patients—their readings are similar. Have they been exposed to—"
"They were all attacked by the Borg during evacuation," the doctor interrupted, not looking up from her current patient. "Physical contact, but they managed to escape and reach the shuttles. We're monitoring them, but we don't know what we're dealing with yet. The nanoprobes in their systems are unlike anything in our medical database." She finally glanced at him. "Are you medical staff?"
"Research. Virology and pathological systems at Medical Research Command."
"Then you understand that we're operating blind here. No baseline data. No treatment protocols. Nothing." Her voice was steady, but Kaelun could hear the edge of fear beneath it. "We're doing everything we can."
Kaelun nodded slowly, his eyes returning to the three patients. The woman's hands had started to twitch rhythmically. The man's breathing had changed—too steady, too mechanical. The boy's eyes were no longer focused on nothing; they were moving in small, precise patterns, tracking something invisible.
"How long ago were they infected?" he asked.
"Two hours, give or take. Why?"
"Just...." Kaelun didn't know what else to say. He didn't have the words for the unease crawling up his spine. He simply nodded and made his way out of the frenzied area towards the next assessment station where he would receive his temporary quarters.
He was assigned temporary quarters on Deck Nine—a storage space hastily converted for evacuees that he shared with five other survivors. As he sat on the thin bunk, the full weight of everything crashed down on him.
He'd escaped. He'd made it onto that shuttle while others hadn't. The woman with two children. The elderly admiral. The young couple. How many of them were still down there? How many would never leave Earth?
His hands were shaking again. He pressed them against his thighs, trying to steady them, trying to steady himself.
A PADD sat on the small shelf next to his bunk—standard issue for evacuees. He picked it up, needing something to focus on besides the guilt and the fear. He began documenting everything he'd observed—the Borg attack patterns, the chaos of the evacuation, the strange readings from those three infected patients.
He didn't know if it would matter. Didn't know if anyone would ever read it. But he had to do something.
Outside his small viewport, stars moved past as the Portland maneuvered through Earth's orbit. Somewhere behind them, the planet was dying. Somewhere behind them, people were still fighting, still hoping, still dying.
Kaelun stared at the PADD and tried to find words adequate for what he'd witnessed. His fingers moved across the screen, recording clinical observations, vital sign patterns, timeline estimates. The scientist in him needed the structure, the data, the analysis.
But underneath the clinical language, fear hummed like a live wire.
He didn't know what woke him.
He'd been dozing fitfully on his bunk—real sleep was impossible with five other people in the cramped quarters and the constant background hum of the Portland's overtaxed life support systems. But something pulled him to consciousness, some instinct that prickled at the base of his skull.
Then the alarm sounded.
"Security to Deck Seven Medical! Emergency! All security personnel to Deck Seven!"
The voice over the comm was tight with barely controlled panic.
Kaelun was already moving.
Ensign
Kaelun Merak
Evacuee - USS Portland
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