Through the Breach (Part 3 of 12)

Posted on 18 Jul 2015 @ 2:52am by Rear Admiral Lirha Saalm & Ensign K'os Beaumont & Petty Officer 2nd Class Eva Kovalev & Chief Warrant Officer 2 Riley Cameron & Lieutenant Benice Gyce Ph.D. & Naima Mirwazi & Chief Warrant Officer 2 Vasily Sokolov Ph.D. & Lieutenant JG Grayson Jones

2,167 words; about a 11 minute read

Mission: Episode 09 - Empires
Location: USS Galileo - Various
Timeline: MD 01 - 2028 hrs

Previously, on Through the Breach (Part 2)...

It only took a few seconds but eventually the pressure equalized between the room and the corridor, and Min was able to maglock herself to the deck plates. It was only then she realized what had happened and went white as a sheet, her hands trembling.

"Let's not waste time trying to seal that microfracture," Stace said quickly, securing herself to the floor and taking in a few breaths to calm herself down after the anxiety had left her racing heart. "Radiation," she looked to Kohl, "and fusion reactors," she added, nodding to Min. "Let's go."

And Now, the Continuation...

[ON]

Main Engineering

Lirha had braced herself as best as possible by holding onto a nearby console, but nothing could really prepare her for the most violent torment of passing through the anomaly. While the ship had shaken violently at first and thrown her off her feet to the ground, there had then been a calm and tranquil moment of solidity, which was suddenly followed by the most extreme starship turbulence she had ever experienced.

Her green body was tossed through the air as Galileo emerged through the vortex and collided solidly with the nearest wall in the ship's engineering bay. A loud crunch echoed across the room when she impacted, signifying several broken bones. The lights suddenly went dark and her limp form began to float in the air.

Eva braced herself as the ship shook. She knew what was coming and curled on the floor into a fetal position underneath the table, holding her tummy with her hands. Riding out the worst of the bumps, Eva managed to avoid serious injuries. She did however notice the sudden change in the grav plating. Floating, Eva managed to grab hold of something before she floated away.

Being in propulsion, zero-G was familiar enough but not with the added complication of a pregnancy. Feeling the sudden onset of nausea, Eva tried to avoid bringing things back up but failed.

When K'os opened his eyes, it was clear to him that he'd been knocked unconscious during the bumpy ride. What was more disconcerting to him was his entire world was upside down. He saw the mayhem in engineering as far away and distant and it took him a moment to realize that he was floating. Near the ceiling. He twisted his body but found it difficult to do in zero gravity. Thankfully his foot was close to something he could hook his foot to and he used that to generate a little momentum to right himself. He saw Copper buzzing around using his thrusters to inspect injured people no doubt collecting casualty reports. It was step one in damage control and he was glad to see the machine going about his business as normal. His eyes scanned the department looking for the chief.

Riley awoke to chaotic scenes, having ended up in a heap under his console the artificial gravity shutdown meant he had only found himself hovering a few inches above the deck plate but otherwise unharmed.

The young Scot thanked his guardian angel that he had bothered to take the EVA course before he shipped out, and after pulling himself free, floated towards the warp core and the diagnostic console.

"Holy shite. The containment field is intact but the core shut itself down - the antimatter regulators have locked themselves up as a fail safe so the MARA reaction is barely registering."

"Good... Can someone catch me?" Gyce had been smart enough to grab on to pipe with the handle of her cane when the ship lost gravity, but now she was in jeopardy of falling down a few feet more than she would like for comfort.

Eva, her supper what little she'd had now floating beside her, saw Gyce nearby. Her zero-G training coming into play, and her stomach no longer queasy, Eva pushed herself towards Gyce. Taking the ladies hand as she sailed past she smiled. "Got you Ma'am." A somersault and she was pointing in a better direction for a push back to a more solid spot.

Gyce nodded her thanks, but then looked about the room to ask, "Someone tell me if Admiral Saalm is OK."

The sounds of commotion slowly caused Lirha to regain consciousness. A most strange sensation enveloped her body, and she suddenly realized it was the familiar sense of being weightless. Why and how, she had no idea, and her thoughts were still foggy as well as her vision. Everything was dark. Very dark, and the only blurry objects she could make out were what appeared to be the ship's dark red emergency lighting.

The Orion admiral opened her mouth to speak, but her words came out in a quiet whisper. "Report...?"

"Everything's buggered ma'am!" Cameron called out as he finalised his gear and stowed it into his kit. The engineer wasn't sure what exactly he would be doing next, and neither was his speech the most eloquent or thorough of reports but it was accurate, and would leave plenty of time and space for the Chief to go into exact details.

K'os didn't see or hear the Chief yet, and with the chaos surrounding Engineering, now wasn't the time for him to just float there and wait for someone to make a decision on what needed to be done. He was always used to being the one to wait for orders but as the assistant chief he now had a responsibility to the crew. In the absence of the Chief, people would look to the young man for direction. From the ceiling he had a vantage point and was able to spot enough available engineers to begin forming teams. No one had heard from the Bridge yet, and he assumed at this point that communications were down.

"Petty Officer Mercy!" K'os' voice rang out. His voice was calm, but just loud enough to be heard. He was impressed with Eva's work during the ride through the vortex. Her knowledge of propulsion would be needed and he was confident choosing her for this task. "Take Warrant Cameron and a small team to deck 2. Manually reboot impulse fusion generators one through three from the control room. It'll provide us enough power to begin restoring communications and emergency field generators. Try and make contact with Bridge if you can after that."

Eva nodded. "Yes Sir." First thing they needed was pressure suits. They had no idea what lay between them and Deck 2, or what they'd find when they got there for that matter, but the suits would at least afford some protection. But right now those fusion reactors were the best hope, assuming she hadn't fried the EPS taps back-flushing them as she'd done.

Grabbing a suit from the locker, Eva tried to slide into the thing. The lack of gravity didn't help, as well as the slight bulge from the twins starting to poke through. It took some work but she finally slipped into the suit. Checking pressure seals, Eva grinned at Cameron. "I swear they need to make a maternity version of this thing."

"Trust me - they're no' exactly comfortable for us non-pregnant folk either." Riley replied as he clipped his engineering kit into place and magnetised his boots to the deck plating, glad to be standing the right way up at last.

K'os used the footing on the ceiling to kick off towards the floor. He spotted Gyce by Eva and he directed his next words to her and the other non-engineers in the room. "If you're not an engineer, help distribute EVA suits and begin managing any casualties we have."

"Sure," Gyce agreed and slowly made her way to the storage closet. There she brought out the EVA suits and began to distribute them to anyone in range. All the while she kept one eye on Lirha. Something told her the admiral was being stubborn, like she was.

As he got nearer to a console he grabbed hold of it to slow his momentum. He pivoted and kicked off again towards the lockers where emergency kits and suits were and began getting himself into his own suit and anti-grav boots. When he'd done so he bellowed as loud as he could, "Mirwazi head to the main server room and asses the damage to the computer core. When Mercy's got a bit of power back, begin rebooting systems and do what you need to protect vital life support systems."

Inexplicably Naima Mirwazi was laughing; she'd been thrown off the upper level of main engineering and saved only by the loss of gravity, though she was stuck in a kind of perpetual somersault that was spinning her around the room and apparently providing some sort of amusement. She caught a passing pylon, timed her released just right, and went swimming through the air with arms outstretched like a torpedo straight for the open doors leading into the corridor.

"Okay, bossboy, we fly like light-ribbons to the server room," Naima said, grinning wildly as she flipped her body to spin in its trajectory. Apparently she preferred to forego the EVA suits to take advantage of the speed of null gravity. Since she "saw" things through the sensor data provided by the subdermal nodes running along her body, the loss of gravity was substantially less disorienting; it was just a subtle and even welcome change in the code.

K'os began forming another team together of any other engineers that he could find that had their EVA suits on and were ready to begin restoring power. "You, and you three. On me. We need to reboot the warpcore." At the back of his mind he worried about the Chief and his condition. K'os was just an Ensign in the grand scheme of things but he had over five years under his belt with Engineering specialties. He was bottom of the CoC, but was certainly not a newbie. With his anti-grav boots on he headed towards the warpcore.

Dr. Vasily Sokolov had been among the first to get himself suited up, having gone through just such a loss of gravity twice during his service in the war. Well, well, new Assistant Chief Pretty Boy has some oomph, eh?" Vasily asked, grinning inside his EVA suit.

The first thing K'os did was start doing a visual inspection of the warpcore itself. Everyone was so busy trying to mess around with systems and consoles, the warpcore itself was only given a once over to ensure the containment field was still intact. He didn't have the first clue as to why the core had shut down, but he did have enough experience as a matter energy specialist to know that when a warpcore shutdown unexpectedly it resulted in various issues when the proper shutdown sequences weren't performed. His gut told him there was more to the puzzle then just restarting the core.

"There. Do you see that Dr. Sokolov?" K'os moved around the warpcore looking near the top of the reaction chamber. "Shit." K'os swore uncharacteristically "Those reactant injectors are in the open position."

K'os gave Vasily a calm and passive look, but his eyebrows were raised in slight alarm. His hyper emotionalism was threatening to lose control, but so far he was doing well enough keeping his mind intact. Now was not the time for his emotions to unravel. The last thing he needed was to have himself begin crying or worse, laughing.

Coming out of his haze, with a pretty deep and nasty gash that spread across his forehead Grayson was already tapping away at restoring the warp core and main power. For the past few moments he was trying to speak out, but no words seemed to escape his mouth. Eventually he was able to speak at the blood trickled past his lips, "Yo-you're all doing great. K'os, good work. I need you to get a team together to get as much, if any power we have to the Grav systems. Everything else will be a damned sight better when we can keep our feet on the ground. Sokolov, you are already suited up. Grab all you can, visual inspection of hull breaches. Manually seal off the bulkheads and sections, let's prevent as much loss and atmosphere as we can. The Gally needs us people, let's move." Grayson called out his odors with an authority and command that was well beyond his years. Instinct had taken over.

To Be Continued...

[OFF]

--

RADM Lirha Saalm
Mission Advisor
USS Galileo

ENS K'os Beaumont
Asst. Chief Engineering Officer
USS Galileo

LTJG Grayson Jones
Chief Engineering Officer
USS Galileo

PO2 Eva Mercy
Propulsion Specialist
USS Galileo
[PNPC Zhao]

LTJG Benice Gyce
Chief Security/Tactical Officer
USS Galileo

CWO2 Riley Cameron
Engineering Officer
USS Galileo
[PNPC Holliday]

CWO2 Vasily Sokolov
Engineering Officer
USS Galileo
[PNPC Mott]

CIV Naima Mirwazi
Computer Systems Specialist
USS Galileo
[PNPC Mott]

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