The darkness slowly receded from his eyes, as Captain Kirok Skyrunner struggled to open them. His head was spinning from the heavy celebratory drinks he had last night. He celebrated his wife, Captain Sophia Rodriguez, coming out of that General Inquiry with her skin. He slowly stirred, due to nature’s call. All that damned Irish Whiskey he had last night.

He noticed he was laying on his back and started to move onto his side so he could move to a sitting position on his bed, but realized he was not in his own bed. He opened his eyes and tried to focus on the ceiling of his quarters. It should be a dull grey colored sheet of duriniun metal. He was met with an unfamiliar ceiling, a canvas of leaves and branches above him and thin rays of moonlight.

“What the hell,” Kirok mumbled, half slurred.

Groggily, he sat up, his head spinning as he took in his surroundings. He was in a sleeping bag. His confused mind had started to let panic slip in. As adrenaline was starting to circulate in his system, he started to become more alert, which shoved any particle of fear and panic out of an airlock in his mind. His mind now on red alert, he looked around his surroundings. He noticed his sleeping bag, not Starfleet issue, was nestled among the roots of a massive tree.

He spotted his wife, Captain Sophia Rodriguez, in a same looking sleeping bag. He spotted a pile of clothes, not Starfleet issue but looked civilian looking and made for hiking or camping, next to Sophia. He looked around his sleeping bag and found the same clothes next to his bag and an old fashioned looking tiki torch he remembered seeing in a very old Indiana Jones film he saw when he was a kid. As Kirok became more fully awake, he looked around and spotted a Starfleet issued tricorder and a handwritten note. The air was crisp, filled with the scent of damp earth and decaying leaves. He shivered as a very cool breeze blew through.

“Wow, that was cold,” he said to himself, freezing when he heard a noise.

As he looked around for the source of the noise, he noticed another figure stirring beside him, his wife. Captain Sophia Rodriguez slowly sat up, rubbing her temples. Her eyes narrowed, squinting in the dim moonlight filtering through the canopy above.

“What…where are we?” Sophia muttered, her voice husky from sleep.

Kirok shook his head, equally disoriented. “I don’t know. I don’t remember getting here.”

Sophia’s gaze snapped to him, her eyes widening in alarm. “You don’t know either? How did we…?”

Kirok shrugged, “probably some cruel prank from someone in the Q continuum.”

He scrambled out of the sleeping bag. He stumbled, his legs unsteady as he took in their surroundings. He noticed that they were in a forest, surrounded by towering trees that seemed to stretch up to the sky. A small clearing lay before them, with a cold fire pit in the center. A sudden gasp came from Sophia. Kirok’s head snapped to look at her. She pointed at him. He looked down. Shock and surprise hit him like a photon torpedo explosion. He saw he was naked.

“Son of a…,” Kirok exclaimed.

He quickly grabbed the clothes that he spotted next to his sleeping bag and tried to cover up.

“Q!! NOT FUNNY AT ALL!!!”

Sophia emerged from the sleeping bag, her movements cautious. She peeked in her sleeping bag, more careful than her husband. She also noticed she was naked. He watched her and saw her facial expression, as he was sliding on the clothes that were next to this sleeping bag.

“There is a pile of hiking clothes next to you, a Starfleet tricorder, and an ancient torch. Might want to put the clothes on,” Kirok suggested.

Sophia glared at him, “no sh**.” She grabs the pants, brings them in her sleeping bag and works to put them on. “This doesn’t make any sense. I was on our ship, in our quarters, dealing with the aftermath of…and then…nothing.”

Kirok’s eyes locked onto hers, a spark of concern igniting. “I passed out in bed. I remember we joined the crew in a celebration in honor of you getting cleared from the general inquiry and we went to bed late. I don’t remember how I ended up here.”

The silence that followed was oppressive, punctuated only by the distant calls of birds and the rustling of leaves in the gentle night breeze. Both captains stood frozen, their minds racing with questions and fears.

“Let’s take stock of our situation,” Kirok said finally, his voice firm. “We need to figure out where we are and how we got here.”

Sophia nodded, her eyes scanning their surroundings with a practiced intensity. “Agreed. Let’s see if we can find any clues.”

Sophia finished getting dressed while Kirok was using his tricorder to try to identify the plant and animal life in the area through the Federation databases. When Sophia got dressed, she noticed a handwritten note. She picked it up and started to read it. Kirok saw her pick it up and he grabbed his note.

“I got a note just like that. Do you know what it is about or says,” Kirok asked her.

Sophia carefully opens the note. Inside is something written in an alien language and explained about some ‘Team Building Exercise’ from Captains’ Trevenan Williams and Zarroc Thakrass.

“This looks like the message we got in our command messages we skimmed through yesterday as we were rushing to get ready for the inquiry hearing I had,” Sophia said.

“A team building exercise? I wonder why,” Kirok asked.

They looked around the campsite they were at and noticed an orange glow coming from a distant mountain top. Both Kirok and Sophia open their tricorders and start scanning it.

“It looks to be a huge bonfire,” she said first, smiling at Kirok.

“I seem to have found where we are at, at least what planet we are on. It is Minos Korva Prime. But why here…,” Kirok said, having a quizzical look on his face. “Only one way to find out I guess. It looks like sunrise is a couple hours away and the tricorder says that fire, or a primitive beacon, is about 4 miles away. Want to start heading that way and go on an adventure?”

Sophia looked at him in his, raised a hand to caress his cheek. She gave him a soft kiss.

“Sounds like fun. Reminds me of how our honeymoon started out,” she replied.

Kirok and Sophia rolled up their sleeping bags, slide the torch inside the bag. They both had a simple backpack that contained a few things, like a basic first aid kit, compact fishing reel with line and general hook, and some rations. They managed to macgyverize the sleeping bag and backpack to be carried together. They put the tricorder on their hips and slowly made their way towards the beacon.