Descent

“Okay,” I said, standing up from my console. “I’m done.”

“See you later,” First Officer Stevenson said. We’d recently rotated shifts, putting her on night watch whenever we were en-route. That meant Captain Ryan and I had been spending a lot more time together, which was fine, except that I kind of missed the solitude of night watch. Solitude, and my collection of vintage Chris Hemsworth movies, which I couldn’t watch with Buzz sitting behind me on the bridge.

“I’ll head down with you,” Ryan said as I walked toward the bridge exit. “I’m starving,” he added. We stepped into the turbolift at the rear of the bridge. Now, if you’ve ever seen Starfleet’s recruiting videos, then you’re familiar with the turbolift. It’s a fast elevator. They can run sideways as well as up and down, although ours only runs up and down. The doors have that famous swoosh noise, except ours kind of creaks shut instead, with the left door panel closing much more quickly than the right one. A light panel on one wall of the lift mimics the movement of the lift itself, except that ours had been broken since time immemorial. The Troll was not a Starfleet recruiting video.

“Fancy some tacos?” Ryan asked as the doors squeaked shut.

“Um,” I said. “Yeah, I guess.” I’d kind of been hoping to dig into the pulled pork I’d had stewing all day, but I suppose a taco shell was just as good a way to transport slow-roasted pork into my mouth as anything. “We could–”

Just then, the turbolift shuddered and stopped.

“What was that?” Ryan asked. Buzz didn’t care for elevators, and I think he only tolerated the turbolift out of a deep loyalty to Starfleet technologies.

“I think the lift is stuck,” I said. I toggled the communication panel on the wall. “Shan?” I said. “I think the lift is stuck.”

“I don’t know what we have that stupid thing,” she replied. “It only goes down three levels. It’s not like stairs would have been a huge burden. I’ll tell Adam.”

Adam Stevenson filled a quadruple role on the Troll. He was the husband of our First Officer, as well as her judo toy. He was also our Medical Officer and our Chief Engineer, a duality that makes a lot more sense if you’ve been on the Troll for any period of time.

“You think it’ll just start up again?” Ryan asked nervously.

“Spontaneous functioning hasn’t been the Troll’s basic mode of operation, but I suppose anything is possible,” I answered. He was beginning to sweat a bit, so I decided to try and put him at ease. “Shit!” I cried out, hunkering down suddenly as if the lift had dropped out beneath us.

“SHIT!” he agreed, grabbing for the handrail along the back wall. It came loose, clattering to the floor. I almost laughed out loud, but it was so funny I instead found myself sitting on the floor, holding my abdomen and gasping for breath as tears ran down my face. Comedy gold, that. “Shut up!” he said. “I hate elevators!”

“I mean, I suppose we could climb out the access hatch in the roof,” I said, recovering my ability to speak.

“We can?” he asked, looking at the ceiling.

“No,” I said. “I was kidding. This is a turbolift. They’re designed to move at really fast speeds, and the system can operate multiple cabs in a single shaft. You can’t just climb out the roof.” He glared at me. “SHIT!” I said, hunkering down again and causing him to grab for the no-longer-attached handrail. This might get old at some point, but that point hadn’t arrived, yet.

“Hey guys,” Adam’s voice came from the intercom. “You okay?”

I nodded, still laughing silently. I realized Adam couldn’t see me, and waved at Ryan to answer.

“We’d be fine if Jones here stopped fooling around. Can you get this thing started again?”

“It looks like you’re stuck about midway between the bridge and the main access corridor,” he said. The bridge was in an elevated position atop the Troll’s hull; the main access corridor ran fore and aft, from underneath the bridge all the way back through the engineering hull. It was our main means of accessing the rest of the ship and, frankly, a set of stairs going up to the bridge would have been more than sufficient, disabled access concerns aside. “But the system says you’re still on the bridge. I’m going to reboot it.”

“Will we be okay in here while you do that?” Ryan asked worriedly.

“You should be. The system’s got you braked. Honestly, ten feet either way and you could just pry the doors open and walk out. Rebooting now.”

The lights went out.

“The lights went out!” Ryan cried.

“He can’t hear you,” I said, standing. “The intercom will be out, too.”

“What if we suffocate in here?” he demanded.

“He’ll get it fixed before out bodies start rotting,” I said. “Especially if we deplete the oxygen and actually do suffocate.”

“Could that happen?”

“No. The turbolift cab isn’t airtight.”

“I thought they were,” he said.

“They’re supposed to be. SHIT!” I said, stomping on the metal floor.

“STOP THAT!” Ryan yelled. The lights came back on.

“Hey, guys, that reboot didn’t work,” Adam’s voice came over the intercom. “The system still thinks you’re on the bridge level. I think the shaft sensors must be messed up.”

“This thing is a death trap,” Ryan said.

“It is,” I agreed. “We should get rid of it and install a spiral staircase.”

“We’d be in violation of Federation accessibility requirements,” Ryan muttered.

“Yeah, accessibility requirements are our problem,” I said. Most of the Troll was in violation of one Federation regulation or another. “I imagine they’d be upset about that megaphaser before they even got to the lift,” I reminded him. “Or that medical module we stole and welded to the side of the hull. Or that extremely illegal skiff you’ve got bolted to the bottom of the engineering hull right underneath your own quarters. Or–”

“Okay, okay,” he said. “If we survive this we can discuss replacing the lift.”

“Guys, would you mind just climbing out the floor hatch and taking the ladder down?” Adam asked.

Ryan glared at me. “What?” I asked. “I said there was no ceiling hatch. There’s definitely one in the floor.”

“You said we could be killed,” he reminded me.

“We have a 40-foot turbolift shaft with one cab. We’ll be fine,” I said. “Yeah, Adam, no problem. You want to shut the system down?” I leaned down and flipped open a small panel, revealing the handle for the floor hatch. “Move over, Buzz,” I said. “You’re standing on it.” Ryan moved, and I hauled a roughly meter-square panel up, hinging it against the wall where the handrail and formerly been mounted. The lights cut out. “SHIT!” I yelled, once more, just for fun.

“STOP IT!” Ryan screamed.

I looked down the shaft. “Oh,” I said. “We’re only about six feet from the bottom.” I jumped down through the access panel.

“Can you pry the door open?” Ryan asked, peering down at me. The emergency lights in the shaft provided just enough illumination.

“Keeping the doors shut is the problem on this ship,” I reminded him, wedging my fingers into the seam between the door panels. “Not opening them.” I pulled the door panels apart, ducking through the opening into the access corridor. “Come on down.”

Ryan clambered down and through the opening. “Finally,” he said.

“That was, like, six minutes,” I reminded him.

“I told you,” he said, “I’m hungry. Let’s get tacos.” A crashing noise came from behind us as the turbolift’s cab brakes released and the cab fell to the bottom fo the shaft.

“Huh,” I said.

“WE COULD HAVE DIED!” he yelled.

“It’s a 40-foot drop, worst case,” I said. “We’d maybe have twisted an ankle.”

“DIED!” he yelled, glaring at me.

“Guys,” came Adam’s voice from inside the cab. “I think I got it reset.” He did: the doors squealed shut and we heard the cab accelerate upward.

“Tacos?” I asked Ryan, walking toward the crew’s quarters in the aft hull.