Panko Breadcrumbs (Part 6 of 10)

Posted on 22 Oct 2016 @ 2:56am by Rear Admiral Lirha Saalm & Commander Langdale Wiggins & Commander Allyndra illm Warraquim & Lieutenant Min Zhao & Lieutenant JG Natalya Kirilova & Lieutenant JG Noah Khoroushi & Lieutenant JG Lenaris Marika & Lieutenant JG Braxton MacKenzie & Lieutenant JG Jonas Flynn PsyD & Ensign Miraj Derani & Ensign Mimi & Lieutenant Commander Ryan Alexander & Petty Officer 1st Class Unit Cu-47 "Copper"
Edited on on 22 Oct 2016 @ 3:47am

3,988 words; about a 20 minute read

Mission: Episode 12 - Recluse
Location: USS Galileo/Paulson Nebula
Timeline: MD 03 - 0035 hrs

Previously, on Panko Breadcrumbs (Part 5)...

There was a rock against the ship and Amaranai knew that it was laser fire, most likely from whatever ship these Klingons had beamed over from. Then a general warning to brace for impact. It was a split second too late as the ship was jolted and Amaranai was tossed into a bulkhead behind her. She heard an explosion and then blacked out for a second. The wind was knocked out of her and as she slowly tried to gather her breath - and feel pain as she did so - Amaranai had to hope that the Klingons down the hall were just as injured as she was. Instead of checking, however, Amaranai slowly got to her feet and made her way toward Sickbay. Even if there wasn't anyone there, she could get a hypospray to numb the pain until a doctor could look at her.

And Now, the Continuation...

[ON]

USS Galileo - Main Bridge

Aboard the bridge, the explosion was so severe that Lirha was sent flying two feet into the air before landing head-first back into the deck plating. She was momentarily knocked unconscious and didn't notice the overhead bulkhead that suddenly collapsed in the middle of the bridge.

The large duranium and tritanium structure fell squarely on top of Lirha's legs. More consoles overloaded throughout the starship and sent flaming debris wherever they so pleased. Galileo began to shudder in a most unnatural manner -- the first indication that something was horribly wrong.

The explosion threw Mimi from her seat, crying out in pain as the muscles in her tail that was still wrapped out the chair were stretched and strained almost to the point of tearing. In a heap on the floor she managed to uncoil herself and tried to get back up to her console.

"Main power is offline!" yelled one of the bridge Operations officers with urgency and fear trembling in her voice.

"WARNING," said the ships computer in a loud female voice which echoed through the ship. "WARP CORE CONTAINMENT FAILURE IN TWO MINUTES," it added. There was a brief pause as a new set of emergency alert lighting activated and the message repeated itself. "WARNING, WARP CORE CONTAINMENT FAILURE IN ONE MINUTE FIFTY SECONDS."

"Captain, the ejection system is offline! I can't confirm total containment failure from up here... I need to get down to engineering, or back in contact with them!" Natalya wanted to start tearing her hair out. If anyone was still alive down there, they were probably in the process of sealing the place off.

Allyndra had gotten thrown forward into a console as the hit came and she felt and heard a cheekbone crunch before sparks flew into her face and hair. She beat at the smoldering bits and the adrenaline kicked in. Turning she turned and saw the Admiral pinned. There was no way to move that beam currently.

She moved over to the Admiral and said, "I am going to give you something for the pain," she produced a hypo.

There wasn't any room for the Orion to protest or try to negotiate her treatment. Adrenaline was surging through her body yet she was still in a visible amount of pain which was hampering her ability to focus on the tasks at hand. She merely nodded towards the doctor.

"We will get this off later," she said.

Allyndra realized that the Admiral was hurt, the Executive Officer was somewhere below and unknown if he was still alive. The systems were off line, no comms working and the intruder suppressant would be off line as well. She heard Natalya.

"Get down there, take anybody else! We have to get the core out of here. I am officially taking command."

Natalya looked around, but who could she take? Everyone had a job to do, and many were injured. She looked at Marika, and considered asking her to go with her, to have someone to watch her back, but she couldn't. It could be dangerous... not that being on the bridge wasn't.

"Marika..." Natalya said softly, but aloud. To the others it might have sounded like a half-hearted plea for assistance, but to them it was more than that. Engineering was probably in bad shape and Natalya didn't know if she would be coming back.

Not waiting for an answer, Natalya turned and rushed off the bridge. She couldn't afford to wait. It was doubtful she would reach engineering in under two minutes, not with Klingons aboard, but she had to try.

The young Bajoran dropped the now useless fire extinguisher she had been holding on to in a corner and rushed after her lover. She was mostly useless on the bridge anyhow. If she could be useful elsewhere, so be it. However, if they were to blow up, she much preferred doing so aside the beautiful engineer.

A thought struck her. "Tell everyone to start tossing anything out the hull breaches, out airlocks. Get me some sort of shield!" She knew she had to explain.

"In the old Terran movies sometimes a submarine would play dead by tossing things out the tubes. If we can eject the warp core and get a bit of shield the explosion will push us away. Think of riding the wave like a surfer and should blind the Klingon ships. If we are lucky enough before their sensors recover we will be out of range. In the nebula that will not be hard."

"Most of the maneuvering thrusters are burnt out." Miraj told her. "And we're just tumbling through space. We'd have to time it perfectly."

Allyndra nodded, "If anyone can time it and use what we have I know you can. If need be we will vent hull breaches by temporarily modulating the emergency breach shields. Crude but might give you something to work with."

Miraj tapped her badge. =^="Derani to engineering. We're going to try and surf the core breech. I need to know the moment it goes. Count down if possible."=^=

Allydnra wanted to hopefully save what she could of the ship. At the damage they took, the conditions in the nebula and the hostiles out there abandoning ship with the life pods was basically a death sentence anyway.


Deck 7 - Main Engineering

Wiggins heard the computer give the warp core meltdown warning and his eyes grew wide. Most of engineering had been evacuated save for a few specialists working on the core. He’d been told that the ejection systems were offline and there was no way to contact the bridge.

“Copper, Petty Officer Harris, Petty Officer M’vak, get up there and release the manual locks. See if we can eject the core from there. Everyone else, get out!”

Wiggins knew he’d just ordered those officers to their death most likely. One of the hardest parts of being a commander, but he had very little time to process it. He would have to live with the guilt, but he’d have to worry about that later. He and the rest of the officers evacuated Engineering.

Charles Torchwood grabbed Cooper, "Right, you head on out. I have fiddled with this thing more than once and besides, I think you have a sweetie as well." He did not wait but using is long lanky arms scrambled up the ladder to the manual release. He quickly punched the controls and the lid came open exposing the handle. He put his hand on it and turned to look if the others had gotten to theirs and noted the Executive Officer.

=^=Right, sir, ready to turn, best get out now sir. Once we turn these buggers the doors will open and anything not tied down is going to space with the core.=^=

Wiggins was both saddend and honoured by Torchwood's sacrifice. But also stunned into silence by the gravitas of the whole situation. He found himself nodding sharply, then, almost as an afterthought came firmly to attention and saluted the man.

=^=Right everyone, Helm here we go to release, ten, nine, eight....^=

The First Officer, Copper, and the last of the engineers to evacuate left the room quickly as the countdown began.

Galileo's warp core managed to punch its way through the twisted bulkheads of deck 8 once the emergency release system had been manually activated. The ejection sequence, however, was hampered by the friction the core sustained during its transit, leaving it floating dangerously close to the Nova-class once it had cleared the primary hull.


USS Galileo - Main Bridge

Miraj felt the core judder through its housing all the way on the bridge, where it made her bare, bloodied feet, curl in distress, It had fallen under earth gravity, just ten meters a second per second. It might as well not be moving. They were still at just under quarter impulse. "All power to aft shields," she told Min, and fired thrusters to give them them best angle. in Space explosions were spherical, no ground or gravity to contain the force, so they wouldn't take the full blast of the warp core, but at this distance all the difference that made was between chunky remains and vapor. "Everything to the shields and inertial dampners. Life support, lighting the lot. I can't get enough speed to outrun it. And if I can't ride it we're so much jam on toast."

Still standing at Tactical, Jonas noted the power transfer from Ops and used it to focus the aft shield strength directly above the jettisoned core. He was no expert but even he could tell what little shielding they had would likely not be enough. He kept his eyes on his station but silently reached out his left hand for Brax.

Braxton took Jonas' had and gave it a squeeze.

A blinding flash illuminated every deck and corridor of the starship when the core's containment failed. Within the nebula, a brilliant explosion manifested followed by a intense shockwave which began to ripple through the purplish-blue cosmological fabric at blistering speed.

Galileo was hit on its lower aft quadrant as she tried to escape. The shields held just for a moment,and Miraj kept shunting the thrusters she had left this way and that to try and hold the shield between them and the blast, as the stress on the shield began to overcome the inertia and start the push. "Hold the course, hold the course," she chanted as the pressure built.

And then the last port side thrusters failed, the starboard one overcompensated and the blast was focused ona weaker part of the shield, only for a split second before she recovered, but long enough. Miraj felt a split second of terror. "Oh, bug-"


Paulson Nebula

The sheering forces of the blast wave tore off the remaining nacelle and buckled the hull below the main deflector array. The tiny starship's structural integrity field collapsed, and the entire rear section of the ship was torn from the front and pushed upwards. Bulkheads snapped and twisted, and the terrible sound of a starship being ripped in two echoed silently through the depths of the nebula.

The secondary hull was ripped free of the primary hull and was violently expelled into the nebula to float away on its own. It was as if a giant had bent the backside from the starship until it snapped and twisted off.

What remained of the secondary hull began to tumble out of control; the main impulse reactor lost containment and detonated in a massive secondary explosion which tore apart the top half of decks 4 through 6. All of Galileo's cargo bays and its auxiliary shuttlebay were instantly consumed with flame and decompressed into the vacuum of space. Secondary explosions along the exposed ruptured arteries sparkled brightly with ruptured conduits and explosive ordinance from the aft torpedo launcher.

In the remains of the primary hull where most of the crew quarters were contained, the secondary deflector array flickered and went offline as relay failures and EPS overloads turned the slim spaceframe into a fiery coffin. The exposed rear sections sucked any unprepared crew member out into space well before any sort of emergency forcefield could activate itself.

The beautiful Nova-class vessel who once cared for the Federation's brightest minds now floated in two burning, spiraling pieces of barely-recognizable debris. It was the final end of the starship, but also a testament to the crew that many of Galileo's personnel were still alive and trying to find their way to safety.


USS Galileo - Main Bridge

What remained of the bridge was suddenly turned into a whirlwind of chaos. The awesome force of the shockwave's impact turned metal in paper and bulkheads into bent paperclips.

Gravity turned to negative Gs upon the initial hit which meant the slab of tritanium ceiling plating crushing Lirha's legs now suddenly lifted its weight and was tossed into the main viewscreen. Lirha was helpless to control her motions and her body quickly followed. With a sickening thud, she, too, slammed into the main viewscreen with a loud cry of pain and despair.

Mimi ducked miliseconds before a huge chunk of debris slammed into her console but even with her natural reflexes she didnt manage to avoid the trio of much smaller peices that hit her cutting gashes through her right arm and a series of smaller cuts in her cheek and forehead.

"All systems off -" Noah broke off as he felt something slice into the back of his shoulder, jarring him forward. "Offline," he ground out. "Life Support is shot as well." He could feel whatever it was like a fine, brutally sharp edge burrowing into nerves and muscle - the former evidenced by the pain shooting down his right arm.

Min managed to avoid most of the debris but a loose padd of all things came rocketing across the bridge, richocheting off her head before smashing against a bulkhead in a splinter of alloy and plastics. She saw stars from the impact but didn't have time to see how bad as her board was going crazy as the ship, what was left of it, died around her.

"Emergency force fields failing all decks Admiral. We're losing containment. We need to abandon ship." She said as her hand hovered over the button every officer had at their bridge station, the command to abandon ship once the order was given.

Lirha was still under the influence of the doctors sedatives but wished she wasn't. Her reaction time was slow, her vision was blurry, and she couldn't make her legs work for some reason. When the status reports came in, however, she sprang into action...mentally. "...All hands this is the captain...!" she managed, reaching up with a broken arm and trying her best to subdue a severe amount of pain, "..Abandon ship..! I repeat...get to the escape pods!!" She let out a heavy breath and slumped back weakly against the bulkhead which still trapped one of her legs. The scent of burnt flesh and electrical wiring permeated her nostrils while the flickering red alert strobes forced her to close her eyes.

Wiping the blood from her face Mimi pulled herself up and floated over to one of the bridge escape pods, as she clambered inside the pain of her injuries and her fear about what awaited her and the rest of the crew suddenly became an after thought when she realised that everything that she had from her original homeworld and therefore the only chance she ever had at finding it again had almost certainly been destroyed.

The word given, Min slapped the command on her console. Anyone not hearing the Admiral's order would see or hear the evacuation alarm in what was left of the ship. Helping an officer who'd been knocked senseless from the explosions into a lifeboat, she strapped them both in. Once the remaining three seats were filled, Min punched the launch button. As the launch system shot them away from the ship, Min looked around at the officers with her.

Mimi looked at her boss with a little despair and a lot of anger in her expression, she knew from experience that Klingons didn't tend to take prisoners and would probably leave them to die but if they did capture them she would fight and kill as many of them as she could get her claws into.

Min looked at her her subordinate, trying to be reassuring in the face of a lot of uncertainty. The Galileo was certainly ruined, the damage too extensive to repair, her home and most of her service was on that twisted ruined hulk. As the acceleration from the launch slowed, more so then usual as the nebula's gasses created a lot of drag on the hull, Min could finally move around a little in the artificial gravity.

She needed something to focus her people and right now, the injuries they'd sustained were as good a focus as any. "Mimi. Grab a medkit from the locker. Everyone scan the person beside you. Basic injuries we'll treat, anything major stabilise as best you can and we'll have to get medical to look at once we link up with the other lifeboats."

Disentangling himself from the console, Noah stood upright and instantly regretted the move as his vision greyed at the edges and he felt himself start to crumple to the ground. A quick grab at the seat-back steadied him, and he swallowed down what pain he could. His right arm hung useless - moving it caused more pain than anything, but he managed to force the elbow to bend, grimly clutching his forearm across his stomach lest it dangle to cause more issue.

Half-stumbling, half-swimming in the depleted gravity, Noah made his way across the shattered bridge to join his Department head.

The death scream of twisting metal hit Miraj like a punch in the gut, and for a moment she froze, gasping, as the lack of gravity set her to floating up. Then self-preservation kicked. in. Abandon ship. She'd grown up climbing round old abandoned vessels, moving in 0G was something she had more experience than most in, and found herself oddly calm amidst the chaos.

The life boats were off the bridge, down the corridor. All around people were struggling to haul themselves tot he doors. She looked around for anyone who needed help, and saw the Admiral bumping off the viewscreen, trying to get leverage with damaged legs. she grabbed for the ops panel, and then heaved herself off it to float over to the Admiral, batting a few pieces of floating debris down and away to clear the path. "need help?"

Blurred images of someone next to her forced Lirha to squint to try and identify them. It was useless however, for her concussion was not something simply overcome by willpower or makeshift fixes. She registered the words spoken to her, however, and tried to shake her head. "...No... go! Leave me.." she tried to yell. "...I must secure the ship," she ordered.

Miraj blinked, and couldn't stop herself glancing at Lirha's belly. Surely the Admiral wasn't going to do something as dumb as go down with the ship? "This isn't a ship any more, this is salvage. There's nothing left to secure."

"Leave me!" Lirha repeated. There was no reason for more of her crew to perish doing something as stupid as what Lirha deemed necessary. The purging of the computer core's classified data -- what was left of it -- was something which only took one person to accomplish, and a person with the highest command codes.

Miraj looked doubtful for a moment, then she gave a reluctant nod. "Aye, aye sir." she said with misgiving evident in her tone, but she turned away and moved to help others.

"Miraj!" Jonas shouted from the back of the bridge. "I... I can't..." He couldn't finish his sentence but it was evident he was saying he couldn't free himself. The counselor and chief science officer had been pinned against what was left of the master systems display. He had landed at an angle on top of Braxton, and though they had managed to dislodge some of the debris holding them captive, they could not gain the leverage to free themselves.

"Hold on!" the half-boslic hauled herself towards them, seeing how they were trapped, part of the roof beams had wedged in. Not hard, but iwth no leverage they couldn't move it. She pulled herlsef to the wall, braced herself as best she could against it, and heaved. It may have been weightless, but it was stuck. She tugged it as besst she could, and it gave just a little bit. She repositioned herself. "When I say now, push your hips back." she told Flynn. Between her pulling and his shoving they should be able to move it.

Braxton was able to have one arm free and he was glad for his Vulcan strength. He helped Miraj and Jonas to push so that they could roll out.

"three, two, one, Now!" she heaved with everything she had, and felt something more tear open under her shirt.

The debris moved and Braxton was able to push Jonas out of the way but as he himself moved something sharp slid onto his leg opening a gash rather large and deep on his thigh. He gritted his teeth.

Once out he ignored his bleeding and looked at Miraj. "Are you alright?"

"Ship shape," she said weakly. She knew she had a dozen cuts on her arms and hands and face and her uniform was sliced and shredded. But she hadn't bee half brained like the Doctor, or half crushed like the Admiral.

"Thanks," Jonas managed, having caught his breath. Unlike Miraj and Brax he appeared to be barely injured, and now that he had caught his second wind he looked from one to the other, trying to determine who he she help scramble to the escape pod.

Braxton looked at Jonas. "Help her...I'm fine. Just help her!"

Miraj gave them a slight shove towards the bridge door. "We have to get to the lifeboats. I'll be fine."

"Okay, okay, I'll help Brax, but you lead the way." Jonas could now see that Miraj was likely the most severely wounded of their trio, but the shock of the attack had triggered an acute stress reaction that was going to keep her going as long as she could. It would be impossible to truly reason with or offer her assistance at the moment, so the best bet was to play along and keep her ahead of them so he could pick her up when she inevitably collapsed.

Miraj helped them shove off, and started the slow haul towards the lifeboats.

To Be Continued...

[OFF]

--

RADM Lirha Saalm
Commanding Officer
USS Galileo

General Ko'raH
Klingon Commander
SS Recluse
[PNPC Saalm]

Ensign Miraj Derani
Chief Flight Control Officer
USS Galileo

Lieutenant JG Noah Khoroushi
Assistant Chief Operations Officer
USS Galileo

Lieutenant Commander Luke Wyatt
Chief Strategic Operations Officer
USS Galileo

Cmdr Allyndra illm Warraquim
Chief Medical and Second Officer
PO2 T'Lin
(PNPCP)
USS Galileo

Lieutenant JG Jonas Flynn
Chief Counselor
USS Galileo

Ensign Mimi
Operations Officer
USS Galileo

Ensign Ryan Alexander
Operations Officer
USS Galileo

Commander Langdale Wiggins
First Officer
USS Galileo

LTJG Natalya Kirilova
Chief Engineering Officer
USS Galileo

Lt. JG Braxton MacKenzie
Chief Science Officer
USS Galileo

Petty Officer Eviess (PNPC)
Medical Officer
USS Galileo
(PNPC played by Braxton MacKenzie)

Lieutenant Junior Grade Lenaris Marika
Archaeologist/Anthropologist
USS Galileo

Lieutenant Min Zhao
Chief of Operations
USS Galileo

and other Galileans...

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