Through the Breach (Part 1 of 12)

Posted on 18 Jul 2015 @ 2:51am by Rear Admiral Lirha Saalm & Captain Jonathan Holliday & Commander Norvi Stace & Commander Andreus Kohl & Lieutenant Jared Nicholas & Lieutenant Min Zhao & Jynn

2,348 words; about a 12 minute read

Mission: Episode 09 - Empires
Location: USS Galileo - Various
Timeline: MD 01 - 2005 hrs

Previously, in Episode 08, Vortex (Part 3)...

The anomaly was now at full dilation directly ahead of Galileo. Its event horizon rippled and distorted casting colorful green and blue hues across the Nova-class while simultaneously pulling the tiny starship towards its dark center. The force of attraction was so significant that nearby starships began to experience power failures, and the frantic hails from the rest of the Federation task group weren't able to establish a subspace connection to each other.

The sheer gravitational force of the anomaly pulled and stretched Galileo's hull violently, resulting in a series of cascading hull breaches across the ship. With main power and backup generators failing and all propulsion systems offline, there was little the valiant crew could do to prevent their fate. The Nova-class rolled on its side and listed sideways into the vortex, and was swallowed whole as it disappeared from space and the anomaly collapsed back in on itself.

And Now, the Continuation...

[ON]

The dark and star-sprinkled cosmos suddenly exploded with a bright and violent rupture in the fabric of space-time. An enormous and very dilated green vortex suddenly appeared and spewed out its contents into the universe, of which was the tiny Nova-class USS Galileo.

As it was ejected, and with severe force and acceleration, the ship spun uncontrollably on all axes with its main power offline -- a rag doll in space that had been used and abused by its cosmological guardian and tossed aside out of the rift.


USS Galileo

All over the ship, warning sirens blared and accompanied severe gravimetric distortions which threatened to tear Galileo apart. Main power swiftly went offline and was followed by a failure of auxiliary power, leaving the interior of the starship bathed in nothing but emergency red alert lighting which pulsed rapidly on every deck. Structural integrity and artificial gravity failed across the vessel and caused multiple hull breaches, including some many in critical areas, and most the tiny valiant surveyor was now helpless in its mission.


Main Bridge

Holliday, having been swiftly thrown from his chair, awoke to find himself hovering in the space above the forward consoles, seemingly weightless. Opening his eyes, the red glow of the emergency lights burned like wildfire in his eyes as a headache emerged with a vengeance. Reaching down to grab a hold of the helm, he desperately tried to stop himself from spinning off any further across the Bridge.

"Report!" he called out to anyone who could hear him - the pounding in his head was enough to make even the sound of his own voice painful to hear.

Stace, tightly gripped to her own chair's armrest, had managed to cling to her position in the centre of the bridge but with her legs spun outwards in the direction of the viewscreen. Without casting her head around to look at the captain for fear of losing the fast hold she had of her chair, she pulled herself back to it in a sort of hovering sitting position. She leaned over to the central console and began, with one bruised hand, to happlessly tap away at the dancing lights to ascertain their status but without success.

"Our command readout is down, Sir," she called out, now looking to him fully. She quickly reached across in her chair and pulled the safety belt that strapped her down into it across her lap. At least she wasn't going to be floating about the bridge like those unfortunate officers spinning over her head.

One such unfortunate officer, slowly spinning over Stace's head, was one Andreus Kohl. Without magnetic boots or micro-thrusters, he could find no leverage to change his momentum in the zero-gravity environment on the bridge. Similarly, his limbs couldn't quite reach any solid surfaces to push off against. "Remember when we were talking about weathering this together, Commander?" Kohl asked of Norvi Stace, who was safely buckled into her chair beneath him. "Mind giving me a shove in the direction of the science console?"

Stace unclipped her belt and with her left hand, grasped the floating piece of material. She allowed the seat of her body to rise with the lack of gravity and this extended her upwards to reach, with her right hand, Kohl's. With a calculated jerk, she sent back him over to the port side as he began to spin again.

Kohl tried hard not to blink as his body swirled through the open air across the Bridge. As the distance between himself and the science station was closing, his sapphire eyes locked onto every groove, every protruding bit of machinery and decor that he could hope to grab onto. His first attempt to grab hold of the LCARS console failed, and then his body collided with the bulkhead side of his workstation. All hands and feet, Kohl clambered down across his LCARS panel and secured himself into his deck-bolted chair.

Upon the initial breach into the unknown Jynn had been thrust against the helm before him, his head making contact with it with great force. He grasped on tightly to stabilize himself, keeping his bearings straight as he attempted to ascertain Galileo's.

As gravity began to loosen its ever present grasp on his body, Jynn locked his legs within the helm's chair. As he saw the captain float by and dock with his station, he almost wanted to join him in floating freedom but decided that at this particular moment it would not be prudent. "Mind the console, sir," he spoke to the pained face floating in front of him. "Warp, impulse, RCS. All propulsion systems are offline. Location unknown. I'm afraid until we get power back to critical systems we will remain paralyzed and blind" he spoke as he tapped away at the console with one hand and reached his other out to help stabilize the captain.

"The emergency diagnostics report back that the sensors are technically functional," Kohl added, once he'd oriented himself with the significantly reduced functionality of his LCARS interface. Emergency back-up power had limited his interface to one small square of the console, and yet that was more than enough, since so many of the systems were dark. "But they're not getting enough power to actually operate them

"So it looks like we're adrift." Holliday replied with a sigh. With main power and the backups offline, the ship was dead in the water - even worse was the fact that the emergency batteries were not designed to last more than a few hours, and after that the basic life support supply they had still operating would cease to function, and the crew would meet their unenviable fate in the darkness of space.

"Commander Stace - I want to see if we can get one of the Jeffries tubes open. If so, please take a team to Deck 2 - we might be able to fire up one of the impulse fusion generators from the control room there, and tie it into the EPS relays. Without communications we have no idea if anyone is even alive in Engineering to be working on the problem from there, so we need to assume the worst."

The Trill, as she was settling back into her chair, looked to Holliday and with a twinkle in her eye released the belt entirely. She looked over to main access door to the bridge and with a gentle shove propelled her way over to it, gripping at the bulkheads as she connected with it, "Min, you're with me. Commander Kohl, I want you too." She then looked over to the captain. "We'll access one of the Jeffries tubes from out here. There are four full EVA suits in the bulkhead by one of the escape pods and another four lightweight compression suits. The bigger ones aren't going help us much in the cramped access tubes but I'll send them through to here."

Min nodded her understanding and let go of her restraints, pushing herself off, and towards where the lockers would be. She hated EVA and zero-G but right now she had no choice, if she wanted out of both, she had to do the job. She could feel her stomach getting quaesy at the thought of eva but forced the feeling down. There was no way she was going to get sick in front of the rest of the bridge, or in her suit for that matter.

"Keep it short and sweet - tricorders all the way, we don't know how well our hull integrity has held up and with main power out there's no way to generate emergency containment fields. Your first priority should be to get some juice into life support, sensors and communications. That way we can get a hold of someone in Engineering and restart the warp core. Understood?"

"Understood," Stace parroted as she checked her tricorder was fastened to her belt. She pulled out the manual release clamps and slowly began to heave the door open enough for her to glide through. Within two minutes, flooding through open doors came spilling out four white EVA suits and two additional compression suits, filling the space of the bridge like a cloud of fabric and helmets. As Stace poked her head through, she fastened up the remainder of her suit and fastened the collar about her helmet.

"Don't say I don't give you anything guys," she joked.

"Ugh," replied Kohl in a jokey-petulant tone. He was pulling an emergency kit out from a hollow compartment beneath the science station. He explained, "I always hated when gifts turned out to be clothing."

Min grabbed one of the compression suits as it floated past, staying inside the ship was a bonus which meant she only needed the lighter suit. Slipping into the suit, the suit felt a little tighter then usual around her torso. ~Probably just a little extra weight.~ she figured as she finished slipping the thing on and sealed up. Quick check of the seals and she gave Stace the thumbs up.

By Min's side, Andreus Kohl was pulling on the other compression suit. Where Min had slowed down half-way through because of some tightness, Kohl slowed down as well, because he was fumbling with his emergency kit, trying hard not to lose it as it tried to float away from him. Once he snapped all of his own seals shut, he began inspecting the seals on Min's compression suit too.

Finally Holliday grabbed a suit for himself and slid into its encompassing form. Whilst there was no danger of a hull breach that he could see in the immediate vicinity, he would damn sure be grateful for the extra oxygen supply in a few hours if they didn't get some semblance of power back online in time. With a side thought he reached below the helm console and grabbed one of the phasers hidden there, clipping it to his belt subconsciously, hoping this was all a simple accident and nothing more sinister.

"Very well - let's see if there's anything that can be done from here. The escape pods at the far end of the deck should have emergency power cells correct? We should be able to hook one of them into the local power grid to at least get some of these consoles up and running."

Jared was hanging onto the science console with one hand, wishing, not for the first time he'd taken more hard science courses. He tried accessing the sensors, but everything was off line. This was bad, very bad indeed.

Jynn was practically sitting on his hands if not for the fact that he needed them to anchor himself to the console. He stared intently at the captain as he gave out orders from almost in front of his face. Suddenly, the spark of inspiration had shocked his mind with a most powerful idea. Power! He reached out and poked Holliday's nose, no doubt getting his attention.

"Hey, boss. If we need power I know where we can get some. I've got four perfectly functioning warp cores sitting in the shuttles of Galileo's two shuttlebays. Four baby cores aught to give use life support and maybe other functions if we hardline it to the power grid. Shall we check with engineering?" He smirked as he stared at his free floating superior, a bit jealous as to the floating freedom he was experiencing.

Holliday nodded to himself as he thought the idea over. The shuttlebays would have some rather power-intensive relays running through them in order to supply the power necessary, if they could run the same relays essentially in reverse to draw power from the shuttles, it wouldn't be a terrible idea.

"A good idea Lieutenant - head for the shuttlebay and begin preparations. If you haven't heard from us over comms before you are ready, feel free to plug in."

The CO paused for a moment before continuing.

"And Lieutenant - for future reference, it's 'Captain' or 'Sir'. Not 'Boss' - this is Starfleet, not a cargo ship."

"Yes, sir," he said with a giddy smile as he released himself from the helm with such elegance as to imply actual flight over mere floating. With a swift push Jynn propelled himself towards the jefferies tube. He'd have to move fast if he wanted to accomplish anything in reasonable time and fortunately for him Jynn almost felt more at home in zero gravity than he did planetside sometimes. A short while later and he would find himself in the main shuttlebay with the rest of his flight crew counterparts.

To Be Continued...

[OFF]

--

RADM Lirha Saalm
Mission Advisor
USS Galileo

CAPT Jonathan Holliday
Commanding Officer
USS Galileo

CMDR Norvi Stace
First Officer
USS Galileo

Lieutenant Commander Andreus Kohl
Chief Science Officer & Second Officer
USS Galileo

LT Jared Nicholas
Science Officer
USS Galileo

LT Min Nicholas
Chief Operations Officer
USS Galileo

LTJG Jynn
Chief Flight Control Officer
USS Galileo

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