In the Bast of Time?

Posted on 17 Sep 2024 @ 10:18am by Captain Bane Plase & Lieutenant Commander Temerant Bast & Lieutenant Commander Stovek & Lieutenant Commander Raviran Dattek-Winters & Lieutenant JG Dylan McConnor & Chief Warrant Officer Rommie Rath RN

2,129 words; about a 11 minute read

Mission: Stranded
Location: Main Sickbay/Bridge
Timeline: Current

Ravi's arms and lungs burned, climbing for what felt like a couple of millennia, she continued up, trying to keep up with McConnor. (pretty unsuccessfully... she wasn't unfit by any means but clearly this young crewman was a lot fitter as he climbed steadily and without any sign of slowing) It was good that they should get there as fast as they possibly could as time was going by and clearly McConnor had climbed down first before they began to ascend together. It all made the problem of whatever had happened to Commander Bast, more perilous with every pain filled minute that they hauled themselves up the unending steps of the access ladder.

Finally, her chest heaving with the effort, still clutching her familiar med-kit, Ravi and McConnor appeared on the Bridge. They found the Captain, holding the prone body of the XO in his arms, looking exhausted, dejected and wounded himself, surrounded by debris and sparking pieces of detritus that used to be parts of a working bridge full of state-of-the-art equipment and was now a scrap yard of bits, bodies, wounded people and the apparent set of a disaster movie played out in full and torrid reality.

Worse than the macabre mayhem of the Sickbay Lab massacre she had just left, this battered bridge was filled with an even more desperate air, the panic of initial reactions over and the resignation of death and pain that was all around now and almost palpable as survivors seemed to have exhausted the resources available to them.

Judging by the wreckage of the consoles, equipment and staff littered around, almost all blown to pieces, it was somewhat surreal to see the dismembered parts of what remained of their beautiful home - the USS Cygnus!

Ravi's already tear stained face began to leak more salty regrets but she knew from looking, first glance, that Bast and Temerant were in big trouble. She almost hurled herself, bag still attached to her fingers, opening it as she rushed over to the Captain's side, flicking her tricorder open and taking in all the whole situation as fast as she could. She barely had time to even acknowledge or speak to the Captain, so intense her need to intervene was immediately taking over all of her thoughts.

Bane looked over to see his Chief Medical Officer emerge, sweating, from the open doors of the turbolift shaft, Lieutenant McConnor preceeding her. Apparently it was a much more arduous journey for a humanoid rather than a feline, thinking of how Seitha came through those very doors a bit earlier, looking non the worse for wear. Immediately Bane's whole body posture relaxed. "Oh, thank the Prophets you are here, Doctor," he said to her as she closed the distance between the two. "Lieutenant, good work," he praised McConnor.

"I'm sorry it took so long" Ravi croaked, her throat closing with the emotions she was suppressing which were currently in full mortal combat with her already straining lungs, labouring with the aftereffects of the exertion of the long climb. "It's a blood bath in Sickbay too" she explained almost robotically as her mind stayed completely attached to the data she was getting on the XO and his symbiont, speaking on auto-pilot as it were.

Plase nodded, then looked down and set Temerant's head down slowly onto the makeshift pillow, and the deck. He extracted himself from the First Officer so Dr. Winters could perform her work. "How many," he asked, referring to the casualties aboard ship.

"I wouldn't like to try to count but probably as much as a 30% death toll" she guestimated. "Obviously I'm taking this Bridge and Sickbay plus the Labs into account and averaging them but I can't give you anything on any other parts of the ship so that could be just a drop in the ocean if there were whole parts blown away?"

"Sweet Prophets," Bane exclaimed lowly as he heard her give the preliminary reports. It was worse than he imagined. Currently, they had no way of knowing if large portions of the ship had been destroyed. If they had, the casualty figures could be much higher.

The new CMO's Tricorder was reading out all kinds of data as she ran it over the Joined Trill Commander and hovered it over where his Symbiont's readings would be clearest as well. By the time she had mechanically spoken about the changing casualty figures, Ravi was beginning to shake her head in concern and more tears silently fell down her standard issue "trained" doctor's impassive facial expression.

"I don't know if I'm in time" she murmoured with only enough volume for the CO to hear and not the other survivors on the Bridge.

"Bast is stronger than the Commander, as far as I can tell, but I don't know how he would be affected if I tried to put Temerant's body into a medical coma to keep him with us whilst I try to heal his wounds."

This was not Bane's wheelhouse. "Do what you need to do, Doctor. I trust your ethical and moral compass." Those words would be something Bane would think about much later, when processing the events of today, him, a Bajoran, telling someone with Cardassian heritage that he trusted their ethics and morals. The Bane Plase of 30 years ago would have labelled the Bane of this day a collaborator. Still, it was true, Plase did trust Raviran, completely. "Do you want me to check on the Chief again," he asked, pointing at the woman on the other side of the bridge that he had helped out before attending to Temerant.

Ravi looked up and across. "Yes please" she answered. "Can you update me on her previous condition, the last time you checked on her if you wouldn't mind please Sir?" She shifted her focus slightly but continued to put the appropriate medication in to a syringe for the XO as she spoke.

Bane quickly told her what he did to stop the bleeding on the Chiefs wrist, what the diagnosis was, the medication used and how he came to his decision. By the time he has finished, he was across the bridge kneeling in front of the Chief, checking for a pulse. "She is alive. It feels strong and steady to me."

"Is your bandaging still effective?" the CMO asked without taking her eyes off her tricorder, regenerator and patients.

There was a noise from the turboshaft as the silhouette of Nurse Rath emerged, carrying additional medical supplies. "I thought you might require assistance here," she said, kneeling next to Doctor Winters. She grunted at the sight of the First Officer's face, bruised and bloodied from the blunt impact he'd sustained when his head had met the railing.

Bane busied himself looking carefully at the dressing he had applied to the stump at the end of her arm, where her hand used to be. Once the Doctor and the nurse that had just arrived finished talking, he got the Doctor's attention. "Yes, it is still good, though I think it will likely need to be changed again, soon."

With no functioning systems save the emergency lighting, there was no way for the Vulcan Operations Chief to ascertain...well, anything. System diagnostics required a functional computer; a functional computer required auxiliary power at the bare minimum. From what the tricorder was able to tell Stovek, there was no plasma running through the EPS step-down conduits; this meant both the warp core and the impulse drive were completely offline. Stovek needed to focus on the machines, though. Yes, he had received basic emergency field medical training and had passed those basic competencies...but he felt that his abilities would be better utilized by getting life support back online and getting something of a damage report. But he was also not in command. He folded the tricorder and placed it in the storage pouch on his hip.

"What are your operational priorities, Captain?" Stovek knew what standard procedure demanded, but he wanted to be certain that he and the CO were on the same page.

McConnor tapped on the useless Engineering console, uncertain where to direct his energies. There was no power to the console, and try as he might, there was little use reconnecting the console to a new power conduit when that new conduit was just as powerless as the first.

Bane looked over to Lieutenant Commander Stovek. He had a little bit of dried, green blood on his face, but beyond that, he didn't look beyond much worse for wear. He wondered for a moment just how badly the Chief of Operations was injured. Internal bleeding? If so, it could be deadly. Still, Plase's first priority, now that Medical was on scene, was to tend to his ship. "We already have people headed to Engineering. Hopefully before long, we will get information back from that area of the ship. Do we have any portable power units we could hook up to these consoles? Would those instruments even be useful right now, if we did that?" Bane was not grasping at straws. He was genuinely asking and trying to see through the problems currently facing them.

The Vulcan Operations officer paused for a short moment, as if deep in thought. "Assuming they are intact...each deck has caches of emergency supplies in storage compartments beneath the deck plating. These include therminium power cells." He looked at the Captain with a grave expression. "We can attempt to reboot the consoles using those. If my memory of Nebula class designs is correct, the supply cache is beneath deck plate 268. Directly fore of the Master Systems Display."

McConnor made his way over the debris and removed the carpet off the deck plate. He opened the compartment underneath, and revealed four power cells. Two were cracked, and leaking fluid. He pulled the third out of the compartment and looked at the power levels.

"Only ten percent charge," he said. He pulled out the fourth. "This one is at fifty percent. It should be enough to power a couple of consoles for about twenty minutes."

Bane, who had been paying attention to the help that Bast was receiving, thankful that Nurse Rath had shown up. Dr. Winters must have told him to follow her up to the Bridge after tending to the people in Sickbay. At least, that was his assumption. The information his Second Officer gave him pulled him out of his attention. "Damn. Ok, link them to internal and external sensors. We need to know what we are working with before we can make a gameplan. If possible, download all the information you can get from the readings to a PADD so we can reference and work from," he ordered. Finally, Bane thought, they were making some progress.

"The Operaations console will give us the clearest picture of the situation," said Stovek flatly, walking toward the center of the bridge in the pale emergency lighting. "As well as allowing us access to the internal and external sensor networks, assuming the Main Computer is intact. Mister McConnor...the power cell, if you please."

The much younger Junior Grade Lieutenant passed the palm-sized triangular power module to the Operations Manager. He placed the device on the lower starboard quadrant of the console; the adaptive technologies contained within both units allowed for a quick handshake and the console powered up in less than a second. With all due haste, Stovek examined the status board's incoming data.

""Captain, the news is obviously not good," began Stovek. "The lower saucer and the secondary hull took the brunt of the damage. Life support has failed on eighteen decks. Emergency batteries are at seventy-two percent and falling. The current decks with life support will only sustain the remaining crew for four hours and nine minutes. However, structural integrity will fail in three hours and seventeen minutes."

Stovek allowed the gravity of their situation to hang in the air for a long moment before proceeding. "There is a possibility, however. The saucer's starboard impulse engine on deck ten is intact, merely severed from the Deuterium supply. If I could get there and execute the restart sequence, we would have partial auxiliary power. enough to sustain us and replicate medical supplies."

The situation was much more dire than Bane had expected. With main power, auxiliary power and life support down, the surviving members of the crew couldn't even abandon ship, not that Bane could even give that order right now, with communications down. They would find a way to salvage the ship. They had to. "That seems to be our only option right now, Commander. Make it so," he said, not realizing he was parroting a rather famous starship Captain of yesteryear.


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