Flying Dark (Part III of VIII)
Posted on Tue Mar 17, 2020 @ 4:29am by Captain Maritza Soran & Commander Amia Telamon M.D. & Lieutenant Commander River Morgan & Gunnery Sergeant Terry Henderson & Miral Annhwi & Civilian Tianys Dalav’ni
1,617 words; about a 8 minute read
Mission:
Et In Arcadia Ego
Location: Various
Timeline: MD 01 1500
Previously on Gremlins
There was screeching, at the same time the lift lights went out. The brakes brought the lift to a stop and the security pins popped out, holding the car in place
But Maritza wasn't going to stay here whilst her station was falling apart.
She pulled herself out of the car. She was at 137, and there was engineering support labs on 145. She would head there, and see if she could get hold of Mr. Lovok and Mr. Hartmann from there. Pushing off, she headed down, and hoped no one turned the power back on in the next five minutes.
And now the continuation
Romulan Embassy
Half way through the day, Miral gave up on doing any real work. The power fluctuations ruined any hope of communication off-station, or reports. She could write them on a data pad and transfer them later, but she decided her time would best be used in house cleaning. She'd given instructions on what changes she felt were needed to the embassy suite, but she had not done a detailed inspection. She generally trusted those under her to keep on top of the details. Now, however, it would behoove her to see for herself, if for no other reason than to let her staff know she paid attention and appreciated their work.
It was going well, until she was commenting on the pottery in the main reception area and the power went out completely.
"Calm down," she said sharply when someone screamed. "Power will be restored shortly." And then pottery, personnel, and everything else in the room lifted off the floor.
"Save the vases before Starfleet fixes the problem and they all break," she ordered. "The furniture will survive the fall." It wasn't just the paperwork, it was cleaning every shard, and then contacting artisans for more pottery. She wasn't going to simply replicate fine art. Not here, anyway.
She carefully found a large vase and, using the furniture, made her way to a cupboard.
Primary Sickbay
Terry was caught a little off guard by the complete loss of light and gravity, but didn't panic. He had been trained in zero-g operations when he entered the Marines. As far as light, he had his tricorder that he could use for enough ambient light to get to an emergency supply unit. Five minutes of swimming through the zero-g pool, he found the supply unit and got a light.
He flashed it around and called out, "Who needs help?"
River called across to Terry. She was trying to keep a patient who had been on life support stable. "I need oxygen," she called between giving CPR breaths and compressing the patient's chest.
"I'll go," Amia called. "There's an old fashioned metal pressurised container in the very back of the stores." She did her best to hurry through zero-g to get there. "This shouldn't be happening. Why haven't the emergency generators cut in?" she despaired aloud. "This can’t happen! It's impossible - it's all safely backed up." She got to the stores and looked back to see Terry assisting River and was relieved. She hurried on and then back with the cylinder. At least for once it wasn't heavy, she thought.
Bringing it back to the trio, patient and two doctors together, she set it up so River could put the mask over the patient's nose and mouth. It all seemed horrifically primitive.
Amia heard cries for help from the nearby cubicle and left the ever competent and extremely promising and helpful Terry with River and their mutual task, wading through zero G to find her way around to the cubicles. She had been able to get to the store with a handheld flashlight, but the battery flickered out and left them in the darkness apart from Terry's light, which was luckily still working. Once in the cubicle however, Amia was once again feeling her way around in blackness, still unable to conceive how all the power and back ups could be out at once. It was unthinkable. She found the injured patient calling for help and managed to help her to get her injured ankle back across something that could be strapped to support it in the loss of the bed underneath that had been doing that job before this all started.
With that patient helped, Amia moved to the next, and the next cubicles, finding and assisting all kinds of people with injuries that wouldn't have been so much of a frightening or painful situation if it weren't for the zero-G and the darkness.
She found many of her other nurses and corpsmen. She had healthcare assistants and senior medics all around who had responded to the emergency by rushing as best as they could to the Sickbay to see if they could help, hindered in their progress by the lack of comms, but still with the sense to turn up anyway. It really did help, and the more staff Amia found the more proud and grateful she was to them, telling them so as she circulated.
The Lotus Lounge
“Rybok and Rutax,” Tianys Dalav’ni cursed as the power and gravity went out. Comms weren’t working, either, so she couldn’t contact station operations. She pulled a wrist light from a drawer. Carefully extricating herself from behind her floating desk, Tianys pushed off toward the door to her office. As she yanked on the manual release, she could hear the commotion starting out in the Lounge beyond.
Chani! Vestasina! Tianys called out to her daughters with her mind. They responded back quickly. One good thing about the Communion, she could contact any of her Rowa’ni employees without needing the comms.
Get the drinks and edibles secure, Tianys instructed. And lock the main doors. Don’t let anyone out until you confirm they are sober. And if anyone is in flagrante we might want to encourage them to finish up and get dressed.
Tianys shook her head. This kind of thing wasn’t supposed to happen. Emergency power should kick in. Tianys made her way to the grow garden where the Lounge raised its intoxicating plants. She forced her way inside and to the secret door where her private garden was hidden. It was still locked and secure, thank goodness.
Tianys turned around and secured the grow garden behind her. Get everyone into the main lounge. Keep them calm, however you need to. Sit tight until Operations figures out what’s going on.”
Deck 145
Through some ungainly aerobatics, Maritza was able to heave the turbolift doors open and come out on 145. Most everything in here was generally to support the Promenade above, a secondary computer core to handle all the extra civilian load, some science labs, and the engineering support bays, mostly staging posts for repair crews and areas for minor fabrication and restoration jobs.
It was pitch black, but it wasn't quiet. In the distance she could hear people shouting, the echoes through the bulkheads of people pushing and kicking against them to manoeuvre. She roughly knew where the engineering labs were, and headed off, swimming through the corridors. Once she got further in, she found some emergency glow-in-the-dark guides, and things got a lot faster as she no longer had to feel her way around.
She entered the first engineering lab she came to. In the gloom of the glow in the dark strips, she could see many of the lockers open. Technicians and engineers had obviously grabbed their tools and headed out as soon as everything went. Mugs were hanging around, padds, and thankfully, there was a torch. She switched on and swung it around the room. There was a large console on the wall, and whilst it was dead, it would probably have a direct line to the comms system. With a little power in her badge, she might be able to get a pulse out to one of the docked ships, get them to pick up comms traffic so she could at least coordinate this mess.
She popped the panel and looked inside. Everything seemed normal. The fine EPS conduits that ran power from the main trunk into the console was dark by the time it got to the circuits, though where the connection entered the panel was not quite black, but glowed with the faintest sickly yellow that reminded her of old bone. Was there something further back blocking the power?
A problem for another time. More immediate, comms and life support. At this stage, whether you froze or suffocated would depend on how close you were to the hull.
It didn't take her long to wire her badge into the comm system. She didn't know if it would reach anyone, or if the badge could drive enough power into the nearest rely to broadcast very far. The station was bigger than a ship, the relays were further apart. Badges had a good range, more than enough to cover the station, she just needed a network to link to. Hopefully this would at least reach the USS Gorch, which was at dock this side of the hangar. "Knock knock," she muttered to herself, then pushed the button.
"Soran to DS5, is anyone receiving?"
To be Continued…
Tianys Dalav’ni
Owner
The Lotus Lounge
NPC Caleb Ryan
Gunnery Sergeant Terry Henderson
Combat Medic
NPC Jason Haines
Lieutenant Commander River Morgan
Assistant Chief Medical Officer
NPC Amia Telamon
Commander Amia Telamon
Chief Medical Officer
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