Reporting back

Posted on 04 Oct 2024 @ 9:20am by Captain Bane Plase & Lieutenant JG Lisald Vaat

945 words; about a 5 minute read

Mission: Stranded
Location: Main Bridge
Timeline: After Adagio Symbiont

ON
Bridge
USS Cygnus


Lisald gulped the air and swallowed, his throat sticking hard as he had done so. It had been since before the disaster occurred that he had any water.

Relatively young and fit, Vaat was not used to this sort of physical exertion. It would have likely been far easier had he taken the Jeffries Tubes, but he remembered the warning that Ensign McConnor gave prior to him and Lieutenant Seitha descending into the bowels of the ship to follow the orders of their Captain. Lisald had not seen Seitha since. Idly, he hoped the Security Chief was well.

With the final deck beneath him, Lisald reached up, his muscles screaming, and planted his arm on the deck of the Bridge, pulling himself up. Huffing and puffing as he fully emerged from the turbolift shaft, and through huffs and puffs, said, "I sure will be glad when we get those turbolifts fixed."

Captain Bane, who had been watching carefully the administrations of Lieutenant Commander Bast, looked over to see Lisald emerge, and made his way to the younger Bajoran. Bane placed his personal feelings aside and helped up the young man. "Report," he asked, though it came out sharper than he intended.

"Thank you, sir," Lisald said, then got to business. "The isolinium is still contained in a forcefield, though the emergency power is failing. When I left it twenty minutes ago, it was at 61%. I estimate we probably have another twenty minutes, maybe half an hour, tops, before the containment field collapses."

Plase furrowed his brow. This was not good news at all. It had been maybe 15 minutes since Commander Stovek and Ensign McConnor left for the Impulse reactor. If they were hustling, they could already be there. If there were any obstacles in their way, who knew how long it would be before they got there. If they opened a Jeffries Tube section that was flooded with plasma fire, Bane knew they would be dead. At this point, he still didn't know if anyone in Engineering were alive. If they did get there, Bane estimated much longer than the time they had allotted for the two to make repairs. On top of that, with the information that Commander Stovek gave before he left, and now Lieutenant Ziyal had given him just a few minutes ago about the structural integrity field on the verge of collapse, things were not looking good. Even though it seemed more and more likely that the Cygnus had been mortally wounded and been dealt her deathblow, Bane knew the crew that was still capable was fighting for their lives, and the survival of their ship.

"Thank you, Lieutenant." Bane stated, starting to turn away to go back to work.

Lisald grabbed the Captain's wrist to keep him from turning. "Ah, sir, there is more," the younger Bajoran stated, hopefully.

Bane looked down at his captured wrist, then back up to meet Lisald's eyes, Bane's own eyes filled with both surprise and contempt for being touched. "You will get your hand off me, Lieutenant," he stated, the threat very much there.

Vaat looked down, surprised to see his own hand on the Captain's wrist, and released it immediately. "Oh, sorry, Captain. I didn't mean to offe---"

"I am sure you didn't, Mister Lisald. What more do you have?" The Captain was extraordinarily annoyed, first, that he had been touched, and second that Lisald thought he could block the Captain from moving on to other pressing matters. Yes, it was true the isolinium was extraordinarily important, but his main concern was getting power back to his stricken ship. He still had to ensure the power distribution network hadn't been compromised in such a manner that even if the power were restored, that said power could get to all the most vital systems first.

Lisald heard the tone, saw the look, and knew he had crossed a boundary, again. Lisald could not seem to do anything right, and it frustrated him to no end. "Ah, just that I found survivors on my way down to the Cargo Bay. I sent them to their respective rally points, and told them to send word up here of the number of survivors and casualties once they got that information." Lisald was pleased that he had done that, and hoped that the Captain would be pleased with him, too.

"Did you get the names and how many you came across? Did you see any dead or casualties and count those for us as well?"

Lisald looked down, realizing immediately that he should have done so. "Oh, uh, no sir, I did not. I was more concerned with..."

"I see," the Captain said. "So you just told an unknown amount of crew to go to their rally point, didn't get names, and didn't get a running casualty list that would help us out up here considerably to figure out what sort of resources we had at our disposal. Lieutenant, you used to be a senior officer on this ship, and as I understand it, were on the command track before you were wounded. I expect better of you. Please report to Lieutenant Ziyal for further instructions. Dismissed."

The order was clear and concise, and could not be more clear. In fact, it was so clear, that everyone on the Bridge stopped talking and looked when the Captain said his last word, then quickly went back to their own tasks. "Aye, sir," Lisald said, meekly, then turned and moved towards his Department Head, defeated.


OFF

Lieutenant Lisald Vaat
Assistant Chief Science Officer
USS Cygnus

and

Bane Plase, Captain
USS Cygnus, Commanding

 

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