Far From Home, Part II

Posted on Sun Mar 6th, 2022 @ 12:35am by Lieutenant JG Kassandra Selin & Captain Ivan Petrov & Lieutenant Commander Andrei Petrov & Lieutenant Commander Troy Marshall & Lieutenant Johnathan Anderson III & Captain Fergus Williams & Lieutenant JG Melissa Jones & Callie Marshall & Lieutenant Commander Yana Petrova & Lieutenant Cael Maz & Lieutenant JG Karen Lamont & Lieutenant JG Revana Nazar & Ensign Mika Petrova & Commander Cyrus Cain
Edited on on Sat Oct 1st, 2022 @ 11:39am

Mission: S1 Episode 2: Caretaker, Part II
Location: Various Locations
Timeline: Mission Day 1 at 0900
3079 words - 6.2 OF Standard Post Measure

Bridge
With Lieutenants Anderson and Maz back on their feet and Commander Cain quickly regaining his bearings, Ivan took to dusting off the ship plaque and replacing it on the wall. It was time to get everyone moving. He had tried to activate the viewer, and as soon as it powered on, it conked out again.

“Cyrus, I need you on your feet. Get this viewscreen running so we can get a visual on the outside. I want to know if we still have the cover of the Badlands or if we’re exposed and easy pickings for an Alliance ship.”

“Ay, sir.” Cain said, pulling himself to his feet and lumbering over to the operations console.

The Turbolift doors opened and Ensign Selin exited, blood drying on her face from a cut in her hairline. "Captain" She said as she did so. "Lieutenant Morrison is dead." her tone was flat, but professional. "I am here to assist."

“How did it happen?” Cain asked from the Operations console, his stare suspicious and even, sweat and stress on his brow.

Kass merely stated. "He got pinned to the deck by two beams. I was unable to free him. He bled out."

Not wanting to focus on that right now, Ivan pointed to the Intel console which was situated on the rail directly behind the command chairs.

“Take your station, Ensign,” he said with care in his eyes, glad to see she was okay, “see if you can get those positioning sensors to tell us if we’re still in the Badlands or if we’re sitting ducks for an alliance ship.”

Kass saluted and then moved to the console, pausing to place the Lieutenant pips on the arm of the Captains chair. Then she moved to the console and brought up scans.

Lower decks.
Williams crushed to himself as pain shot through his side. His phaser still pointed dead ahead as did his flashlight. He'd passed more crew all who seemed to have been knocked out by whatever had happened. Movement pulled his touch around as he illuminated someone moving in the glom. " Halt. Name and rank or you will be shot." He yelled as one of the broken ribs pressed into him sending another burst of pain through his head.

A woman stumbled through the corridor, confused, her eyes watering from the smoke and her head and hands covered in blood. She coughed but didn’t respond to William’s command. She could barely understand where she was and was walking around in a haze. The silken night-slip she was wearing had fallen open, exposing her naked body underneath. It was a beautiful sight, even in a crisis. She moaned gently and came into Williams’s view; Yana Petrov needed medical attention.

Williams's eyes ran her face through his memory placing her as the captain's wife. " What are you doing down here ma'am." He said as he walked over undoing his jacket letting out another groan as he did so. Draping it over the clearly shocked woman he put his arm around her shoulder and began to guide her. " Let's get you to sickbay."

Yana responded with a few confused moans and grunts, but nothing more. She collapsed into Fergus's arms without another word, her body going limp.

Sickbay
Troy entered the crowded Sickbay and looked around for the person in charge. He gently guided Callie to the front of the line of casualties. "Lieutenant Vali needs immediate attention so she can assist in Engineering."

“I can take care of the Lieutenant.” Dana motioned for Callie to join her. “If that’s a clean break it should be an easy fix.” She nodded to Troy leaving him to get a status update.

Troy handed Callie off to the nurse before pulling out his PADD and syncing it to the server in medical. He sighed as he looked at the list of names on the screen. There were at least 4 dead so far and a dozen more wounded more serious than a few scrapes and bruises. That was based on only a third of the crew having been reported on.

"Are you injured, sir?" Mika asked to Troy. She was one of the cleanest and least injured members on the crew as she had been safely tucked in bed and fast asleep when the displacement wave hit.

Troy was about to shrug off the question when he coughed into his hand reflexively. Bloody spittle was there. It didn't take a doctor to tell him that one of his cracked ribs had just pierced a lung. He kept his breathing shallow, but gave Mika a nod with a slight shushing gesture.

Over on one of the biobeds Callie sat waiting for Dana to fix her arm.

“This won’t take long” Dana offered a smile. “Were you unconscious at all? Any other injuries?”

Callie nodded. “I think so, not for long though. I feel fine apart from a slight headache. If it doesn’t go away I’ll be back but right now I have to get to engineering.”

Nodding Dana finished repairing Callie’s broken arm. “Okay, that arm will be tender for a couple of days. If you need pain relief I’ll arrange a mild analgesic. If that headache gets any worse make sure you come back.

Nodding Callie hopped off the biobed. “Thank you.” With that she headed for engineering.

Troy gave Callie a slight nod as she left Sickbay. He got about two steps in the direction of the biobed she had vacated before collapsing. (Concussion, several cracked ribs with one rib having just puncturing a long)

"Get him on the biobed" Mika said, looking toward two male nurses who were nearby. They worked together to move the Chief of Security onto the bed as ordered. When he was securely there, she walked up to the console over his bed and activated it once again. "He's got a concussion and several cracked ribs which resulted in a punctured lung a few seconds old. We need to prep him for the surgical suite."

Even Troy's condition, Mika had to stabilize him for a little bit before a surgical suite opened up. Longer than would have been advisable under normal circumstances. Such were the realities of triage. Then Gretchen came out of the suite looking grim. The last patient had not made it, despite her best efforts. "I'm ready for Lieutenant Marshall, " she told Mika.

Bridge
Kassandra ran her scans several times. She looked up and said "Captain?" Her tone, was steady, Just.

The Captain was on his back under the tactical console, his hands moving from wire to wire as he made a temporary fix. “You have something for me, Ensign?”

"Yes Sir, I have our location sir"

He leaned his head out and pulled himself up to a standing position. He could see the stress on her face, a face he was starting to see some of himself in for the first time. The signs were always there..

“Well, spit it out, Kassandra.” He said, taking a slight step toward her.

"We are 70,000 light years from Terra." She said. "I ran it several times."

Ivan looked at her with a confused expression, first considering whether he might have misheard her and then considering whether it was some wildly inappropriate joke. When he decided that neither was the case, he moved quickly to her side at the console, thoughtlessly placing a hand on her shoulder. He looked down at the console and his mouth hung open.

"Gods...we're in the Delta Quadrant.."

"Yes sir" She said, her own tone shaking. "I will keep scanning, see if I can find more.."

"You do that." he said, his mind racing. Turning to Commander Cain, he spoke again. "How's that viewscreen coming along, Commander? I want to see things for myself."

"I think I've finished the workaround, sir." Cyrus said. In this moment, he was fairly glad he was actually not the one in command here. "Activating it now."

The viewscreen transitioned from the black off-screen to a grainy image of something that became progressively clearer. A space station of sorts, with large arms filled the screen.

"Scans can't penetrate it, Captain." Cyrus said before his boss could ask. "All I can tell you is that this array has a massive power reading."

"Lieutenant Anderson, how long until we can turn those comms back on?" the Captain then asked, turning to his pilot now standing at the tactical station with a gold-shirted crewman.

"They should be up in about five...five minutes, Captain." He was sweating heavily as he worked diligently through the pain in his body.

From the floor, a groan was let out from the Trill who had collapsed but avoided the exploding console. "...better late than never." He said looking up, vision blurred. He blinked a few times as he went back to leaning on the wall. "What is the status of the weapon? Still intact?"

"We haven't determined that yet, Lieutenant." Cain said with a frown, crossing the Bridge to the Science station. "Can we insure its security here or do you need to do some from the forward torpedo bay?"

"We should be able to see it from here. Sensors would be going off on the console if there was a leak. That bay should stay sealed and isolated until we are stable again. Whatever hit us, well, we don't need a leak lets just say that." Cael said before adding, "Sir." to the end of it.

“Alright, good. Go ahead and take a look…see what we have to work with.” Cain said, settling to watch the Lieutenant work.

Cael moved his fingers across the console checking the information available with the ships internal sensors. "Everything looks normal. We should be in the green."

Engineering
As she made it to engineering Callie stepped through the partially jammed open doors. “Lieutenant ...” She headed towards the engineering crew. “The Captain sent me down to help, what’s our status?”

“Lieutenant Jones is still out, ma’am. I am in command down here.” Nazar said, showing some confidence in that fact. “ The systemwide diagnostic is complete. We have a whole breach on deck 14, communications systems are nearly back online, weapons systems are offline, as is the cloaking system, and we’ve detected some instability in the warp core from the displacement wave. All in all, ma’am, we have a lot of eps relays to repair and esthetics to patch up, but it doesn’t look very bad with a two day repair schedule.”

Callie nodded. “That’s a lot of work for two days, I’ll see what personnel I can get you to help with that.”

The console on the red bar that surrounds the warp core started to beep. The crewman working at it turned to the two of them, uncomfortable.

“Ensign, several components within the intermix chamber have been knocked out of alignment. With the current matter/anti-matter imbalance, we’re looking at a warp core breech in the next two minutes.”

Nazar looked at Lieutenant Vali with a frown. “We may need to shut it down in order to avoid the breech and to make repairs.”

“It’s not like you have much choice, we can’t risk a core breach. Shut it down!”

Nodding, Revana moved to the warp core diagnostic console on the red rail and began to work her way through the barriers that stopped an uncontrolled shutdown.

Callie tapped her comm badge hoping comms we’re back up. "Vali to Captain Petrov, we’re two minutes from a warp core breach, we’re shutting it down until repairs can be implemented."

=/\=Petrov here. That will leave us dead in the water, Lieutenant. We don't yet know what we're up against out here.=/\= he said, knowing she and everyone not on the Bridge were unaware of their location.

=/\= I understand that Captain! But if we don’t the Core will breach and we’ll all die! =/\=

=/\=Fine. Do it.=/\= Petrov said, some stress in his voice.

Suddenly Melissa's eyes opened. In her internal HUD she got a damage report. "Organic component damage.. Right leg integrity compromised. Owww." She felt pain from her leg. "And it hurts like hell."

Callie looked towards Melissa. “Lieutenant ... welcome back to the land of the living” she knelt beside her. “How are you doing?”

"I am damaged, but operational." Melissa noted.

"Lieutenant, I could use your access codes to speed up this process!" Nazar said as she stood in front of the core, its contents roiling quickly and a dull shake beginning to occur. across the ship.

"Accessing." She accessed the computer and began the shutdown process. After a few moments, the warp core powered down. "Lieutenant Nazar. You showed intiative taking charge here while I was damaged. You showed both loyalty and skill. For the time being until I am functional again, you are acting Assistant Chief Engineer. You have full authority to see to the repairs here while I am in sickbay." Melissa noted. "I'm using my interface to minimize secondary damage, but we will need these systems operational soon. Snap too it, and maintain discipline. That is important above all."

Bridge
As lighting flickered down to emergency lights, Ivan leaned against the helm console, now manned by a junior pilot. They had avoided a crisis, but the gods only knew what was in store for them next. For now, however, he knew what his duty required. Reaching for the console, he activated the shipwide comm, making himself heard on all decks and in all sections of the ship.

"Crew of Vengeance, this is your Captain speaking to you. If you can hear my voice, that means that you have survived the mysterious wave that hit us. While traveling through the Badlands, this displacement wave struck us, knocking everyone aboard, it seems unconscious. This was not, however, the primary effect; that was to carry us to a position for away from where we started." he said, pausing now and breathing to calm his beating heart. "Our location is now in the heart of the Delta Quadrant, nearly 70,000 lightyears from where we were. Our exact position is, at this point, unknown."

The Captain clasped his hands, the gravity of the situation finally hitting him.

"Our mission before...it doesn't matter now. Our goal is to return to the Terran Empire and to continue to fight for our Emperor. Our warp core is now in emergency shutdown in order to avoid a breach. Our departments will have to spend the next several days repairing Vengeance and getting her ready for whatever is in store. Flight, Operations, & Security will assist Engineering in their own respective areas to get engines, weapons, and systems back online. Medical and Discipline Inspection will attend to the physical and mental health of the crew and save whom they can. Science and Intelligence will gather as much information as they can about our location and its political realities. And we will bury our dead..."

Captain Petrov stood taller now, resolving himself from the inside out.

"We will persevere, we will excel, because we are Terran. Get on your feet and do your duty. Long Live the Empire!"

Down in engineering Callie stood stunned as did everyone else around her. For a moment no one moved before there was a sudden rise in activity as people were spurred on to do their duty.

From where he was working, at Tactical, Johnathan gave the best salute he could, given the current sharp pain along his entire back. There was a power that the Captain seemed to exude, that had the ability to block a portion of the pain the young pilot was currently in. At that moment, Johnathan would follow Ivan to the very bowels of hell, with no doubts that is was the right and just thing to do.

Once the commotion died down, Ivan walked to the back of the Bridge and tapped Ensign Selin on the shoulder. When she looked up from her console, he offered a very sad smile.

"I need to check on Andrei, Mika, and Yana, but I wanted you to know how happy I am that you survived." he said. "But there is one more piece of business that needs to be settled. I hereby grant you a field promotion to the rank of Lieutenant, Junior Grade; your new billet is now Chief Intelligence Officer. Ensign Mattison is to take over as your Assistant Chief. We will have to have a conversation about a noncom to promote to the third officer position."

Kass nodded and saluted "Aye sir. I will make sure the list of eligible candidates is ready for when that happens. Thank you Captain"

Sickbay
The doors sld open again as Williams stepped through still carrying the captain's wife. " I need a medic here. " He managed to hiss out through gritted teath. " And down in the holodeck first platoons in bad shape."

"Get her on the biobed," Gretchen said, "and then get yourself on one. Nurse Monroe, assist the EMH. Cadet Petrova, Nurse Hodgkins, with me to the Holodeck. Medkits and gravsleds."

"Yes, Doctor." Mika said, leaping into action and following orders.

Dana nodded as she assisted with Yana. First things first she needed to inform the Captain his wife was in Sickbay. "Sickbay to Captain Petrov ... you're needed down here Sir, your wife was just brought in." She paused suddenly realizing she’d called on dead comms. “Someone needs to find the Captain! He needs to know his wife is here.”

"We can't spare medical personnel, even for that," Gretchen said. "Next person you clear to get out of here, send them to the bridge with a complete list of the dead and wounded, including the captain's wife, before. they return to their station. Or try comms again. Hopefully they'll be back up soon. With Dr. Lamont injured and the EMH not a..." She shook her head. "Sickbay's yours until I get back, Dana." And then, having left that burden on the poor nurse, she was out the door and headed for the holodeck with the team she'd designated.

"Just give me a pain killer and let me worry about....." Williams began before his brain pain receptor finally kicked in and he collapsed with a thud on the floor.