Who picked up the survivors at Wolf 359?

[SicOne]

Has this been described in any published Trek Lit? We were discussing this over in Trek Tech, but had developed a variety of theories on the matter. I vaguely remember some discussion of this subject a year or so ago here in Lit, but couldn't find the old thread or remember the context in which it was discussed.

Per discussion in Tech, I was generally of the opinion that it was the USS Endeavour, which her captain Amasov had described in log entries (prior to Voyager getting lost in 2370) the predations of the Borg. I was thinking he was describing how the Borg sucked up some escape pods after Wolf 359 (which AFAIK explains the presence of Borgified Starfleeters and Klingons in the Delta Quadrant).

We know that 39 starships were destroyed at Wolf 359, and Hansen had said there was a fleet of 40 being assembled, so either he was using an approximation or there was one survivor (I am not inclined to think it was Enterprise-D, because it was known by Hansen that Ent-D wouldn't arrive at Wolf 359 in time to participate in the attack), and Endeavour fits the bill nicely. It also explains how, when E-D got to Wolf 359 and drifted through the ship graveyard, they found no survivors in the wreckage and didn't stop to gather escape pods. Because Endeavour did that, then left for the nearest Starbase.

What I wanted to know, though, was has this immediate aftermath of Wolf 359 been described in published Trek?

Thanks in advance, folks.

(and thanks if anyone can dredge up a link to this discussion previously in Trek Lit. I was pretty sure this was where it was, some time ago.)

 

[Enterprise1701]

Well, DS9 - "Emissary" showed many Saratoga crewmembers escaping by shuttlecraft. But I've never thought before that there was any sort of rescue operation at Wolf 359. Just escaped shuttles and the sole survivor U.S.S. Endeavour.

 

[tomswift2002]

It's been over 10 years since I last read it, but I remember Vendetta by Peter David featured the U.S.S. Chekov, and that it was suppose to be the 40th ship, but it was delayed for some reason, so it missed the battle.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Those escape shuttles had to go somewhere, didn't they? I doubt they would have lasted long if they just drifted in open space without being picked up by SOME starship. The Borg would probably have gone after them, at the very least.

 

[The Wormhole]

The Borg would probably have gone after them, at the very least.

Would they? The shuttles themselves posed no real threat to the cube, and the Borg would have been more interested in moving onto Earth rather than bother with a handful of individuals.

 

[Cyfa]

It's not really Trek Lit, but Andrew Probert's September image for the Ships of the Line 2015 calendar shows the clear-up eight days after the battle.
Description here (Memory Beta), and some images here (8of5's Trek Collective).

 

[vegaslover62]

It's been explored in TrekLit that technology and certain minerals exist that can mask lifesigns, and some smugglers and intelligence agencies possess scanproofing. Don't ask me where I read about them, though.

 

[bbailey861]

It's not really Trek Lit, but Andrew Probert's September image for the Ships of the Line 2015 calendar shows the clear-up eight days after the battle.
Description here (Memory Beta), and some images here (8of5's Trek Collective).

Thanks for that link. It's the first time I've seen the photos of the fleets tugs in action. It's a different take on things we normally see, i.e. just the battles and the main crews.

 

[SicOne]

Those escape shuttles had to go somewhere, didn't they? I doubt they would have lasted long if they just drifted in open space without being picked up by SOME starship. The Borg would probably have gone after them, at the very least.

I figured that was how Federation (and some Klingon) Borg drones ended up in the Delta Quadrant, assimilated from escape pods or wrecked ship components tractored into the cube post-Wolf 359, to replenish drone losses suffered in the battle.

 

[Timo]

Or then the Borg did what they did in ENT "Regeneration", assimilating defeated starships and slowly turning those into new Borg vessels that eventually sailed to Delta.

It would take a bit more effort to turn a lifepod into a Borg ship, but I wouldn't put that beyond the skills of these crafty cyborgs. The "Regeneration" transformation from a primitive moon shuttle into a warp four starship was impressive enough...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Markonian]

The Canon Fodder section on Ex Astris Scientia offers the nice theory that Klingons arrived in time to participate in the Battle of Wolf 359, or skirmished with the cube shortly before/after. Before Loctutus's cube resumed its course for Earth, it transferred the surplus of newly assimilated drones to its Borg sphere. The sphere was then dispatched to the Delta Quadrant and remained merrily on its way while the cube was destroyed.

The First Contact cube had a lifeboat sphere as well, and the movie showed a memory with the interior of a sphere.

 

[Enterprise1701]

Those escape shuttles had to go somewhere, didn't they? I doubt they would have lasted long if they just drifted in open space without being picked up by SOME starship. The Borg would probably have gone after them, at the very least.

Federation shuttles are warp-capable, aren't they?

I do concede that the Borg must have searched at least some shuttles and wreckage because VOY - "Unity" states that Riley Frazier was assimilated at Wolf 359. Though that plot point was pretty stupid since Borg auxiliary craft were only introduced in Star Trek: First Contact, but "Unity" didn't even use that as an explanation.

 

[tomswift2002]

Federation shuttles are warp-capable, aren't they?

.

I think the shuttles we saw in the first 5 seasons of TNG were low-warp capable --- I.e Warp 1 or Warp 2 Max. Although I can't say just how comfortable those Type-2? (El-Baz) would be for long trips.

Escape pods probably just had thrusters---impulse engines at most. Enough to get you up to an escape velocity, but then the engines would cut out at the maximum speed, and let you coast.

 

[Idran]

Going by Buried Age (only 24th century incident covering a bunch of escape vessels fleeing a ship and the time immediately after that I can think of offhand), that's right, yeah.

 

[tomswift2002]

Picard also mentioned in "The Battle" that the shuttles that were used to abandon the Stargazer were the crews home for weeks (or was it months?)

 

[Timo]

Indeed, Picard refers to shuttles there, although it may be that this is a synonym for the dedicated escape craft of the Stargazer, or encompasses that sub-category, or the shuttles towed the other survival systems to safety at warp.

Picard says they "limped" for "weeks" before they were "picked up". So in theory the trip could have been at sublight and would have gotten them nowhere much before a warp-capable vessel arrived to rescue them. But in practice, it would be much more satisfactory if those shuttles put good distance between themselves and the Stargazer - otherwise the pickup vessel would surely have visited the Stargazer and either decided to tow her home, scuttled her properly, or discovered the fact that the Ferengi had already stolen her!

Early TNG shows shuttles invariably against an impulse starscape, and when Q kidnaps Picard into a Type 7 shuttle, the other heroes originally search within the radius a shuttle could cover at impulse in the time allotted. But early TNG shuttles also tend to travel across very short, "ship-to-shore" distances - and in the "Q Who?" scenario, Riker and the others have to start somewhere even if they fully well know the shuttle is also capable of warp.

TOS shuttle performance is subject to continuing argument. In theory, all the sorties there were of the type where one end of the trip or the other was the warp-capable mothership - so they could have been short impulse hops, even if the ultimate goal was to cover interstellar distances. But again we have no pressing reason to think that these craft, nicely equipped with what looks like warp nacelles, would be incapable of warp.

Late TNG refers to explicit interstellar travel by the smallish Type 6 shuttles, and VOY shows such shuttles against proper warp-starstreak backdrops. But those small Type 15 shuttlepods, despite having nacelles, get busted down to impulse-only performance: in "Time Squared", Riker flat out says that "the shuttle doesn't have warp capability", and a graphic in "Descent" rationalizes those nacelles as "impulse nacelles".

Then again, the equally tiny Type 18 pod of DS9 is capable of warp (it generates warp fields and does independent if limited interstellar travel). Perhaps Riker was merely saying that the pod in that episode was damaged and therefore had lost the ability to do warp?

Then again again, the bigger DS9 pod, seen in "The Sound of Her Voice" and possibly seen from the inside in "The Search" (note the rear hatch!), is used in the former episode when our heroes deem warp cores inadvisable... Does that pod type go to warp without a warp core? Or is it simply easier to remove the warp core of that pod than to remove the warp core of the Defiant when the need for core-free travel arises in the episode?

The bottom line still seems to be that there's no technological reason not to have warp drive aboard a spacecraft of porta-pot size, at least not in the 24th century. Whether Starfleet installs warp drives aboard its escape pods is thus completely open to speculation: they have the means, but they also have many means of bringing the pods to safety without using onboard warp drives.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Idran]

Since we're talking the Litverse, Timo, then Buried Age actually happened to cover the Battle of Maxia Zeta and its aftermath; it was both shuttles and escape pods linked together to travel as a unit. I believe they were briefly carried at warp by the shuttlecraft until the shuttle engines burnt out from the mass being carried, and had to fall to sublight afterwards. Meanwhile, the reason why the Stargazer was thought lost was because it was on a degrading orbit around a gas giant, but by chance happened to hit at the proper angle to instead skim off the atmosphere and get boosted to a higher orbit just long enough for Bok to find it. It was assumed to have burnt up on entry, so no effort was made by Starfleet to recover it.

 

[Timo]

Yup. There's the slight problem of Picard in his final log being convinced that the ship would actually survive, but apparently he was just waxing romantic...

Do other ships from the era have non-shuttlecraft lifepods in evidence? In the novels and short stories, that is (onscreen, Probert's TMP Enterprise lifeboat signs never quite made it to our field of vision, and the escape means of the Saratoga a century later might be anachronistic for the Mirandas of the earlier decades.)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[tomswift2002]

Timo you are also forgetting that in the final seasons of TNG (and it was introduced with DS9) but the runabouts were capable of being stored on a Galaxy class starship just like shuttles, so the runabout is a shuttle as well (I believe it was in "Emissary" where it was mentioned that the Enterprise was carrying runabouts that were being offloaded to DS9).

But with the El-Baz shuttle (or whatever it's class is called), "In The Mind's Eye" has LaForge make a trip to and from Risa in it, all while the Enterprise is nowhere near the shuttle or Risa. So it must've had low warp speed, or else in the 24th century people are able to take months off to go on vacation. (Although as I said, that shuttle I would not want to take on a long trip. From what I remember I don't recall seeing a replicator or a lot of storage for food in that shuttle, let alone any washroom facilities or even a bed on that shuttle. It looked more like a short range shuttle, since you had the driver/passenger seat, and then essentially a wall right behind, blocking access to the engine, so I don't know how LaForge managed more than 6 hours in that thing.

And Idran, "Reunion" also features Picard and the Stargazer crew in the shuttles, albeit in a dream sequence that involved Jack Crusher.

 

[Enterprise1701]

I'm reading TLE - One Constant Star right now. The book features Starfleet's Gagarin class warp shuttle. So at least in the litverse warp-capable shuttles weren't new to Federation in the late 24th century.