In the Darkness (It Comes to Blows, Pt. 3)
Posted on Fri Mar 25th, 2022 @ 2:47pm by Rear Admiral Yoshi Minawara & Captain Ewan Darrow & Lieutenant Jek'Lar Son of Thrawn & Lieutenant Njalia Sayffier & Lieutenant M'rrina & Lieutenant Rufus Marocain
Mission:
Between Realities
Location: Bridge
1334 words - 2.7 OF Standard Post Measure
A pulse of red light filled the bridge, the only light coming from the emergency lighting recessed into the ceiling of the room. Yoshi's console was dead, and a quick tap of his comm badge showed the same dull response. He sighed and stretched, all the bracing in the galaxy didn't stop the ache from having been jostled so hard. Standing from his spot he glanced about, looking to see any obvious injuries, but didn't see anything too immediately worrisome. "Sound off if you're dead," he called, as he glided towards the back of the bridge, tapping the pool table - also dead - and then around to the centre to check on Rufus and Njalia. "Ms. Sayffier, see if you can reboot the bridge power and get me a report on what is happening."
"I'm dead," Ewan groaned as he pulled himself up from underneath the engineering console, "Write a good eulogy for my funeral."
"I am not dead." M'rrina growled; she'd come down near her station, but landed on her feet and palms with a hint of the righting ability her ancestors had relied on. "My console is, though." She appended as she sprung up and tried to get it to respond or reboot to no avail.
The helmsman had worn a wild, almost feral, smile as they'd ridden the warp wave, and then fought the controls, 'Come on, baby' becoming almost a mental mantra and he practically willed the ship's glide toward, and safely through, the asteroid cluster to the nebula they'd sighted on entering the system. Now Rufus blinked, flexed his fingers and then shook - ears and fur flapping momentarily as he 'reset' himself before setting to work checking that bridge power was the only issue with his console. "We should be inside the nebula based on last coordinates before ...this." He glanced around at the darkened bridge. "I'll get exact location once nav's back online."
Njalia was frozen in shock as the ship went dark but the command voice brought her back to the present. "On it, sir." She knelt and drew a multitool from her satchel in a practiced motion. She quickly popped the control panel. "Good news, the system has not burned out," she said to herself. "Triggering emergency batteries now," she announced turning the emergency activation key and hoping that it worked.
Jek'Lar rose to his feet about a foot away from his station. The pinkish coloured blood oozed from his head where it had collided with a bulkhead. He got to his station and began to reboot it. "Emergency shields are holding. Weapons are down and damage reports are coming in sir. Attempting to track what hit us as the sensors come back online." The Klingon made tactical sensors his priority as he worked to get the ship's defensive capabilities back online.
As Njalia's changes brought. consoles back online and the barest of dim light switched from red to a blue-tinged white Yoshi couldn't help but heave a sigh of relief. Batteries working was a good sign. "Good work Lieutenants," he said to both as he swung back around to the pool table and watched it weakly fizzle to life. An overlay of the Vesta as a see-through ghost popped up and showed just red. Systems were down across the ship and without internal sensors there was no pinpointing. He didn't even think about it - of course, Jek was focusing on tactical and that was going to be far more important right now. They needed to see what was around them and be able to fend off the surrounding space. He quickly scanned the reports as various manual reports were being entered. "Looks like the main computer is down now, focus on that first Lieutenant, we will see the rest of the systems after." His eyes drifted to M'rrina. "Lieutenant M'rnnia, I need you to be our runner. Get to Sick Bay and get me a status update, comms look to be down. And apologize to Doctor Sorrenson, I have no doubt there are going to be choice words."
"Yes sir." M'rrina rolled her R's even a bit more than usual in the reply; a subtle sign of stress as the natural vocalization patterns of her species came more to the forefront, and departed quickly, or at least as quickly as the slow, emergency power level response of the doors let her. It was a good choice, for the task at hand, honestly: Agile and balanced, quick on her feet, and able to see in any dark areas much better than most species, she'd have a better chance than most at navigating well around any obstacles in between the bridge and the medbay.
"Lieutenant Sayffier, prioritize main systems for computer restart, you might have to manually shunt processes around, but I'll leave that in your hands."
"Yes, sir," Njalia replied scanning reports. "No damage to main computer," she closed her eyes for a split second of silent thanks, "systems restarting. Tactical, routing probe feeds to your board, you may be able to make something useful out of it. Commodore, sending damage reports to your chair as they come in, there are looking to be quite a few."
Moving from the pool table he nodded to his executive officer and friend. "We don't necessarily need a command team right now, grab any structural engineers you can and start a deck by deck sweep and look for stress on the structure. You know that better than anyone else, so take whoever Jack can spare and focus down on it. I would recommend EVA suits, I would bet money there are hull breaches we can't see, and I don't know how well the forcefields will hold. We don't need anyone sucked out into space." There are probably a fair few casualties, we don't need anymore the commodore thought but didn't say.
"Can do," Ewan said as he stood and started moving towards the turbo-lift doors, "I'll make sure we dont have any tiny holes waiting to get bigger." He winced a bit at the pain in his shoulder as he moved, that could wait though he had other things to do and he was sure sickbay had a lot worse to deal with.
"Rufus and Jek, I am going to leave you the bridge, focus on getting us navigation and tactical, everything else can wait a little while," Yoshi added, looking between the pair. "If we are in fact in the nebula I want us moving on maneuvering thrusters only, impulse engines will likely paint a big target on our backs. Let's use this space to our advantage, we can shake the Tholians for a while. Put some effort on keeping our EM down and we can run as dark as we can."
"Yes, sir," Rufus replied, hardly looking up from working on the console slowly coming back to life. "We'll rig to run silent and scentless."
"Aye sir! There is an old trick I know which keeps weapons on standby but with little to no power output. However, shields would be another story. If we keep the shields up there will be no way to cover their power output." Jek'Lar replied as he got most of his console back online. "We need to work quickly. The Tholians are not going to wait too long before coming in after us."
"Cycle them into diagnostic mode, we should be able to keep them in the lowest output mode, and quickly cycle to full power if we are attacked." It wasn't a perfect solution, but without a better way to scatter their EM, there was no real good solution to the need to keep shields up. "But I'll leave that to you to manage." Yoshi finally came to rest in the centre of the bridge and looked around at those there. "Okay, with all that said, let's get to work. Any questions? No? Then let's get to work, if you need me I'll be in engineering."
