Through the Fold (Part 1 of 2)

Posted on 09 Oct 2012 @ 3:42pm by Rear Admiral Lirha Saalm & Captain Jonathan Holliday & Lieutenant Commander Dea Mialin & Lieutenant Commander Pola Ni Dhuinn M.D. & Lieutenant Commander Evelyn Coleman & Lieutenant Theron Rhodes & Lieutenant Kiri Cho & Commander Andreus Kohl & Commander Scarlet Blake & Command Master Chief Markum Quinn & Lieutenant Lilou Zaren & Amril & Rachel Hardaway Ph.D. & Anthony Hardaway Ph.D.

4,097 words; about a 20 minute read

Mission: Episode 02 - Resupply
Location: USS Galileo - Main Bridge, Various
Timeline: MD 01 - 0010 hrs

Previously, on Survival Instinct (Part 2)...

In space, Galileo's propulsion systems went offline. Her large red impulse engine faded to black, and the nacelles and bussard collectors powered down and went silent as the moment of truth arrived. A bluish-white ball of gravitation fields began to form around the ship, expanding and twisting around the vessel in an awesome display of pure energy. The stars began to bend as space folded in on itself, then the energy field reached critical mass and collapsed, producing an enormous flare of light which consumed Galileo and sent an energy wave blistering through space on all radials. The trailing Klingon warships broke off their pursuit, uncertain what was happening, but the shockwave emanated with incredible speed and sliced through their hulls like a hot knife through butter, destroying them instantly. As the shockwave expanded and dissipated, Galileo was suddenly nowhere to be seen, and all that remained was a cloud of shredded and flaming Klingon debris.

And Now, the Continuation

[ON - START EPISODE 02]

Lirha slowly came to as her mind regained consciousness. Her eyes snapped open and she began to take in the scene around her, as well as noticing a strange sensation...one which was strangely familiar to her: Weightlessness. A quick visual scan revealed that the entire bridge was pitch black and the viewscreen was offline. She could feel her body floating in zero-G but without being able to see, she couldn't orient herself towards any familiar markings. There were no sounds around her, only complete silence. "Report!" she managed to say, hoping someone else was still present who could tell her what had just happened.

It took a moment for Dea to reorient herself when her eyes opened. The first thing that caught her attention was the lack of gravity. Thankfully zero-G training was something Mialin had been through. Floating her way back over to the helm console one quick look gave her everything she needed to know. "All power is offline to helm console. We're in the dark here and essentially a floating duck until we get some form of propulsion back online."

There was nothing on the tactical display. Rhodes tried battery back up, nothing was responding.

Kiri gagged, she wanted to cough her lungs so deprived of oxygen, her body was shaking so much that she couldn't. Her fingers writhed on a phantom console as she floated every so slightly off the ground, still in her seated position. She felt terror, displaced and without a know cause. In the darkness it was hidden, but her already pale skin became more so, her whole body convulsing she moved on complete auto pilot. Zero gravity made her sick normally, yet her movements were small, graceful and almost effortless. The darkness of her work station and the lack of response meant there was no power, there wasn't any more information than that. Still shaking she pushed off from the dead terminal, twisting while shaking reaching the box on the wall. Without a ships sensors, without light, with a fear that rocked right though her, she was still a Science Officer, if she had predicted the problems, maybe this wouldn't have happened. Opening the catches she pulled out a tricorder and a palm held light, the light cut through the darkness from where she floated, upside down, tall shadows cast in every direction. With a Tricorder in hand she was able to give answers, her voice tiny, high pitched and burning with fear, "All power, offline, computer offline, life-support offline, atmosphere leaks on outer hull, Plasma leaks, decks four, three, six," With each it got quieter until finally she was just mouthing words. Floating in shaking silence, eyes wide, lips moving and little orbs of red starting to blossom from her nose.

As she floated above the console she had been seated at, Rachel held on with both hands so as to ensure that she didn't end up going anywhere. Her first thought was Anthony. Frantically she clawed at her commbadge, "Anthony....Anthony...TONY!!" Frantically she realised that there was no response, as she kept hitting her commbadge. Looking around, her eyes found Kiri, "Engineering...is everyone ok in engineering?!?


Main Engineering

Lilou rubbed her forehead where it had struck the console. Main Engineering was dark and the only sounds were the grunts and grumbles of her fellow crew members gingerly coming to after the shock of Sienna's activation. Few kinks to work out on that front. She rolled in the air, tugging her goggles up and flicking the reading to thermal. There was everyone. And there were the current lines of the ship. "If you're conscious, say 'aye'," she ordered the room and listened gratefully as the others spoke up in the weightless dark. A few attempts at the combadge left only silence from other parts of the ship. Right. She nudged off a console, groping her way up the wall to open a hatch and wiggled her fingers past ODN lines for the emergency switch. A second later, the emergency lighting in Main Engineering slowly grew: tiny dots of softly glowing red outlined the inactive consoles and led the way to the doors. "Bridge, come in," she said again, poking her combadge uselessly. Nothing. "All right, people, we're in the dark. Let's get the lights back on. Take it easy, watch for energy spikes, and don't pull too much. We don't know what we've got to run on."


Bridge

Rhodes reported with feet floating a foot off the deck, "All controls are non responsive." Looking to the center of the room, "Helm, do you have anything there?" Rhodes asked.

"No we're sitting blind," Dea reported as she met Rhodes gaze, "Sensors are still offline." She didn't like what she was seeing at all. However the current situation couldn't be ignored either. Without power she couldn't give anyone much relevant information and that was more than a bit frustrating.

Rhodes held on with his left hand while he picked up his phaser with his right. The display was blank. He popped the panel and looked at the powercell. There was a small light, which told him it still had some power, but the system could not properly use it. Whatever it was they experienced had drained power and confused all circuitry.

It took a moment before John opened his eyes to find the power systems had finally given up, after having taken so much punishment, there was simply nothing left for them to give. Having been through the zero-G training on Titan, Holliday was able to push away from his chair and head through the now-weightless debris towards the Ops station, nudging against a bulkhead as he landed and began to tap away at the controls.

"Everything's dead....main power is gone....backups are drained....Cadet see if there's any life in the emergency batteries?" The XO spoke out into the darkness, looking for the young officer that had been assigned to Ops, finding it strange that she was not at her station.

"I'm afraid the cadet is indisposed, captain." It was Amril who spoke as he floated up from the floor next to the operations console. Mor'an was floating a short distance away, motionless still, but looked relatively uninjured. The vorta tapped at the nearest controls and glanced at them briefly. "I believe your emergency batteries are nearly drained as well."

With a small bit of light shining from Ensign Cho's flashlight, the captain was able to orient herself and slowly pushed away from the ceiling and down towards her chair. Grabbing the armrest for stability, she pulled an emergency release hatch beneath the command chair and opened the panel. Inside were an assortment of emergency items, and Lirha grabbed a wrist-mounted flashlight and slipped it on, then activated the bright beam to give the rest of the bridge crew some light before shining it back towards the young Tarkannan. "What is her condition?" she replied to Amril, hoping that Mor'an was not badly injured. The batteries could wait; right now, the captain wanted to make sure no more of her crew were casualties.

"Just a minor concussion I'm sure," Amril replied with too much joviality.

Quinn looked to his console. "We are running on battery power only, Skipper. We can do this for a few hours, but we will need to be sure power is cut to all nonessential systems and labs."

"Shut it all off Mr. Quinn!" Holliday called back, before pushing himself away from the Ops console and heading back towards his chair, flipping open the panel next to him to try and get some power to his monitor, which after a little convincing finally spluttered into life.

Quinn's console went dead for a moment, then it kicked back on following a kick to the consoles base from the grumpy engineer. "Damn thing, shut off when I'm using you, you little bastard." Quinn suddenly realized he was talking aloud, then silenced his thoughts and proceeded to reroute power and shut down systems that had no real need to be on.

"Well....we aren't where we were...but that's all I know....has anyone got a fix on our position? Dammit people I need to know what's out there!"

The rest of the bridge seemed a shadow, somewhere where her body was but her mind wasn't. Kiri's mouth was still listing damage in its silent vigil, her motion completely still. Their actions didn't seem apart of the universe she was in, looking from the outside in. Shock more than anything had left her this way, a half dozen tiny red globs of blood drifting towards the ceiling. The loudness of the XO edged into her attention, bringing back voice to her words, "Coordinates unknown, drifting at seven hundred KPH to starboard," Still barely audible, kicking off from the wall she twisted again, back to her station. The light in her hand dancing around the dark room, back to her terminal, unnoticed blood trailing behind her. Most power was offline, she only needed a second with the sensors though. Just enough to take a snapshot of the stars, the greyscale image appeared on the dull screen. Using the tricorder her stunned mind started to narrow down star charts to find a rough location, her shaking body doing just that. Kiri had snapped several of her small fingernails and bruised the tips of her fingers in the chaos. The blood still very slowly escaped into the air. Starting with their target destination, it didn't take long, "Sector Zero, zero one, nearest inhabited planet is Memory Alpha, Federation Space." They may have missed, not by much though.


Sickbay

Looking around, the place was in chaos. All instruments were slowly tumbling through through the stale air, as patients huddled, some of them silently weeping. "Andreus, Scarlet? Are you both ok?"

Blinking his way back from unconsciousness, Andreus Kohl's first thought was to wonder where his blanket had gone. The Nurse Practitioner's second thought was for the patient who had been bleeding on his shoulder. Where was he? Kohl wondered. Flailing his limbs uselessly, he couldn't find his patient. Hovering in Sickbay, in the absence of gravity, the tall Argelian's body was stretched out, vaguely parallel to the ceiling and the floor. Kohl craned his head around to look for his patient, but the overhead lights were gone. Sickbay was only illuminated by the glow of tricorders and medical instruments that had been operating before whatever happened... happened.

The pads of Kohl's fingers brushed against something that vaguely felt like a biobed. Kohl reached out suddenly, straining every muscle in his body in the hopes of holding onto the biobed, but he couldn't manage to move his finders any closer. It had to be a few centimetres away, only centimetres away, and he couldn't reach it, with nothing to push off from. Kohl pulled back his arm and clasped the tricorder in the holster on his hip. Using it as a source of light, Kohl sounded out, "I'm here, Pola."

"Me too," Scarlet called out through the dark, although it was difficult to work out where she was, only a general direction towards the back of the bay could be ascertained by her voice.

Swearing, Pola tried to grab something herself. "Guys we've lost the EMH, it's just the three of us. We need to account for all of our patients and get them secured down. If the gravity comes back and they are mid air, we'll have chaos on our hands. Ideas?" Pola founds herself against a wall and used her feet to push herself back towards the centre.

"Well the securing bit is easy, we can use the restraints on the bio beds, but getting them there?" Scarlet tried to turn herself and had to resist the urge to tense her body. But she was tense. She was more than tense. Her little girl was out there somewhere in this. "I have no idea. I can't even figure out where I am, let alone anyone else, I can't see a thing. We need light. Even the decontamination sticks we use to scrub up would do, they have a pretty good glow on them."

"We need gravity boots, but I can't think where to find them on this deck... If the surgical support frames had power, we could use the forcefield generators like tractor beams..." Kohl said from where he was floating helplessly. He held the tricorder close to illuminate his face. He was thinking out loud, in the hopes one of his impractical ideas might spark a thought in one of the others. "In the absence of those, I dunno. Tear out some ODN cabling and start lassoing one another?"

"That might be our only option. Each person grab one to two patients and anchor them to you. At least we can keep an eye on them. We should still have power to the bio beds as they would have their own independant source of power, we can activate the restraints via that means, hopefully the power will work long enough until the ship is up and running." Pushing herself away from the wall she had just floated to, Pola hit a switch on one of the bio beds, breathing a sigh of relief as she was suddenly illuminated by light. "Try keep it that we use 1-2 of the beds, only restrain the people in most danger if a fall occurs."

Kohl floundered out of arm's length, and out of leg's length, from any good solid surface. He tucked his tricorder halfway into the collar of his uniform to afford some little illumination while he swung his arms like a swimmer. Despite his best efforts, and force of will, he couldn't move those centimetres closer to the biobed just beyond his grasp.

Scarlet found herself in much the same position. Or at least, with a lack of control over her position. This wasn't going to work well. She only hoped that someone managed to get the systems under control.


Bridge

Lirha tapped away at her console to no avail. There simply wasn't enough power to process her commands or even run a detailed diagnostic. For now, restoring power was their primary concern. "Commander Holliday, get down to main engineering and see what the status of the warp core is." she ordered. The core was their main source of energy, and if it was damaged then they were in serious trouble. "Mister Quinn, please accompany him."

"Yes ma'am....I doubt there's any power going to the turbolift system....looks like we'll have to take the Jeffries Tubes...Mr Quinn let's see if we can break through one of the access hatches behind the science stations...what do you think?"

Pushing off again, the XO headed towards the station he needed, hoping that the emergency access hatch to the intricate web of maintenance tunnels throughout Galileo would have power, or indeed if not, that they could force it to open for them.

"Aye-aye, Skipper, responded Quinn and he rushed to the main secondary science station. He knew that an access hatch to a tertiary junction that lead into the main jefferies tube system lay just behind the hatch. The trick was, getting off the hatch. Quinn grabbed a hold of the hatch with his right hand and pulled. With a loud CRUNCH, it came off. Tossing it to the side he motioned for Holliday, "After you, sir."

"Nice work Chief....you must be great for opening the beers." And with that, John ducked into the hatch, and began his weightless journey.

Grabbing the XO by his leg before he floated away, Rachel glared at him angrily. "I'm going with you." Her tone left it that there was no room for a disagreement or refusal. She hadn't heard from Tony and she wanted to get to where he was.

"Fine...just don't get lost...or in the way."

The XO replied, before twisting his leg to free it from her grasp and heading back towards the hatch. He had no time for civillians lacking emotional control, but he had to admit, the extra pair of hands in Engineering might end up being useful.

Dea resisted the urge to try and move her shoulder too much. The first attempt had sent a wave of pain rippling through it. She must have landed against something rather hard when Galileo lost gravity. Currently that's the only thing which made any real sense.


Main Engineering

The data available through the consoles was less than optimistic. A few hours of battery power, and that was taking into consideration the fact that they were out of gravity in the dark. The next thing to go would be the oxygen.

"Doors on emergency lockdown," Gibbs reported.

Lilou made a noise of assent, scanning the incoming data. "Okay. We've got minimal information to run on. Teams, I need you suiting up, taking relays and lamps. The coms may not be working, but we do have the ODN lines. Fire impulses through those and we should be able to register them down here. One way communication, but it'll have to go. Slak and Ameen-"

"Here!"

"You two triple check the emergency shuttles. We need to know what resources we have available on those, if the project knocked them out like it did the ship." She made a note on her PADD and looked up again, "Rothgra and Gibbs, check in with the Bridge and Operations, see if you can gather any useful information. Maybe they've got a better sense of things up there so we're not running blind."

"Got it," Rothgra chirped.

"Brauer and Willis, engine sweeps. If there's a way to get the power running at even 30%, we're going to find it. And guys, if anything happens, anything worth reporting, you come right back here. Got it?"

"Yes, sir."

"Off you go then. May the spirits guide your actions." Lilou watched them sally forth and returned to the console. "Don't suppose you folks know how to interpret pulse communications...?" she asked quietly, looking at the Hardaways curiously.

From the back of Engineering a faint scurrying and scratching noise could be heard, as if something was moving within the walls. It took a few moments to localise, before a much harder force could be heard against the main hatch into the room, tucked neatly behind the warp core in order to give the best access to the ship's key systems.

After a second, the two halves of the hatch parted by a few millimetres, and two hands could be seen poking through, one wearing the red uniform of command, the other in gold, as slowly the two halves were forced apart to reveal the Chief Engineer and the XO in the shadows.

"Miss Peers! Report! Mr Quinn and I have spent far too long in these tubes...I need to get up to speed ASAP."

Quinn grunted as he wiggled out of the small hatch. "Hi dear, I'm home. What's cooking?"

Floating out behind the man, Rachel zoned in on Lilou immediately, shoving the others out of the way as she looked around frantically. "Where's Doctor Hardaway!"

Quinn looked around and shrugged his shoulders. " I have no idea. I thought he was here?"

"I'm fine," Anthony's voice declared. the rest of him appeared out of the darkness, struggling to reach them. He looked unhurt besides several gashes on his face and body. "It worked!" he declared, pushing off a wall and practically tackling Rachel in a mid-air hug. "It worked. We did it! You and me, Rachel." Without further ado he leaned in and kissed his wife firmly.

"Yeah yeah, it worked, but now we're sat without power, adrift, and nowhere near Earth...so don't be putting in your application for a Nobel prize quite yet ok?"

Holliday replied with a hint of sarcasm. It was true that whilst the device had saved their skins from the Klingons, they were still in a situation that was far from ideal. Engineering seemed to be as powerless as the rest of the ship, the warp core almost completely shut down in the middle of the room.

"We need to get power back to primary systems...we're blind up on the Bridge."

Keeping herself in Anthony's embrace, Rachel glared over at Jonathan. "And what precisely did you expect Commander? Sienna worked, the crew is alive and not obliterated by the Klingons. We warned you all that Sienna was untested and you didn't come close to having the power needed to properly sustain the connection. We got this far and that is a massive achievement." Rachel unloaded her built up anger now. Sienna had worked, Anthony was fine but still no-one cared about the achievement which had just been made.

"Ask me that in about five hours when we're all dead from oxygen deprivation...the Klingons would have been a damn sight faster if we wanted to just expire."

Brushing past the doctor as he floated off towards the MSD at the rear of engineering, Holliday was surprised to find a little power was still being supplied to those circuits.

"Mr Quinn what are we looking at? Are the impulse fusion reactors still online? We could shunt power back into primary systems from there?"

Quinn looked intently at the MSD. "Yeah, we could. Except both the primary and secondaries are..." the Chief Engineer paused for a moment, then an instant later his fingers were rerouting power supplies through tertiary junctions and various backups. "There ya go, sir. We have at the least, minimal power back. Full emergency and main gravity controls shouldn't take muck longer either. After that, I'm not sure." Quinn took another look over the MSD and then looked back to Holliday. Then pointed to a system display on the MSD. "See that? That is the anti-matter injectors. They are dead. Completely seized up. I was afraid that would happen, but we did manage to get that damn Sienna Device to operate off of our power-plant . Warp is gone, sir. We'll do what we can, but I'm not a miracle worker."

Holliday couldn't help but look a little disappointed as his eyes moved over towards the injectors. It was true that as a critical component within the warp drive, they wouldn't be going anywhere fast any time soon without replacements, and they certainly didn't have the power to replicate them.

"Do what you can Mr. Quinn...I'll check in with the Captain and head on back to the Bridge...communications are a priority - at least we can send a distress call."

To Be Continued...

[OFF]

--

CMDR Lirha Saalm
Commanding Officer
USS Galileo

LCDR Jonathan Holliday
Executive Officer
USS Galileo

Lieutenant JG Pola Ni Dhuinn
Chief Medical Officer
USS Galileo

Ens. Theron Rhodes
Security/Tactical
USS Galileo

Chief Warrant Officer Markum Quinn
Chief Engineer
USS Galileo

Lieutenant JG Evelyn Coleman
Chief Intelligence Officer
USS Galileo

Ensign Andreus Kohl
Nurse
USS Galileo

Ensign Kiri Cho
Assistant Chief Science Officer
USS Galileo

Ensign Scarlet Blake
Counselor
USS Galileo

Amril
Vorta Defector
USS Galileo

MWO Lilou Peers
Asst. Chief Engineering Officer
USS Galileo

Rachel Hardaway
Lead Scientist
Project Sienna
NPC'd by Pola Ni Dhiunn

Anthony Hardaway
Lead Scientist
Project Sienna
NPC'd by Amril

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