Rescue Mission

[KejalBuris]

This mission is based on the horror that happened this year in Japan.

It is a fact that certain worlds are more "active" than others. And at times, disasters just happen one after the other, across a world. And it is at that time that the closest starship is called in for aid. Usually, Defiant and Nova class ships are excused from this, but that's not by any means an absolute. Starfleet's highest duty is to protect the people of the Federation from harm, internal and external.

The lunar colony is generally called Muriah II-b, a K-Class moon with a retrograde orbit of Muriah II (itself a Class-F world), equal to about .5 Terran planetary masses. The Muriah system is located almost centrally between the Klingon Empire, the Gorn Hegemony, and the Federation. But it is a Federation exploratory colony, sent to terraform the world into one of peace and prosperity. Unfortunately, the added weight and general disturbance has caused multiple natural disasters.

First was the sequence of earthquakes that rocked the colony and the planet as a whole, rupturing one of the colony bubbles. It was at this point that an emergency call was put in. What the planetary lead team didn't know was that one of the geothermal generators, which provide both life support and heat to the colony, went down into the planet a bit too much. It brought up lava, and before a Starfleet ship could arrive, a new volcano was born on the planet's surface. It would be a beautiful sight, if it didn't mean that people were dying in droves.

When the starships arrive, the volcano (and the birth of a new mountain range) has wreaked absolute havoc upon the world as a whole. While the domes that protect Federation colonies are strong, they can only be as strong as the foundations upon which they stand - and this one has been eroded. The main colony dome has sunk 6 inches since the initial earthquake. Even more disconcerting is that the scientists on the world have identified the most likely place for the next pocket of lava - right underneath the dome!

The starship's crew have 6 hours to save everyone.

Unfortunately, thanks to Muriah being a fast-spinning Type F2 IV (A brightly burning type-F {yellow-white} subgiant star) that throws off more than the average amount of radiation in both the main and subspace spectra, most starship systems are going to be encountering difficulties while in-system. To be exact: phasers, shields, and transporters will be highly ineffective without significant modifications. Subspace radio will come out garbled, either outgoing or incoming (this was the main reason for the delay in Starfleet's response to the emergency - the Murians used an old sublight probe travelling to the edge of their system to deliver the news). Warp fields will be somewhat affected as well, meaning that going above Warp 2 while in Muriah's gravity well will tax the engines greatly - even at the risk of the dilithium crystals!

Can the crew rescue the survivors?