Emergence - Part 4

Posted on Fri May 29, 2015 @ 11:38pm by Captain Isha t'Vaurek & Commander Caden Aldrex & Lieutenant Commander Steven Wyman & Commander Caleb Ryan & Commander Amia Telamon M.D. & Lieutenant Saria Rex & Captain Tam "Demon" Haican & Lieutenant Kyle "Loki" Carter & Sebina Haican & Captain Maritza Soran

1,953 words; about a 10 minute read

Mission: Eye of the Beholder
Location: Various
Timeline: MD 3/1515

[Command Level Operations]

Aldrex watched the turbolift doors closed behind last of the evacuees. "Right, back to work," he said with a nod. "Resume beaming away procedures for all transporter rooms. Give the last transports permission to depart." He stood next to t'Vaurek and added, "Everything is proceeding well, Captain. If there are no further complications then we should be alright."

"Elements willing," Isha said, her voice almost a whisper. Part of her was in awe of the way the crew had come together to handle the situation. A Romulan crew would not have melded in the same way.

Panels everywhere were alive with the sound of imminent doom. Security bleeped steady reports of casualties and dead. Operations thrummed with warnings of power overload, transporter failure. Strat OPs flashed with panicked accounts of air space gridlock and imminent collision. Engineering showed stress tears, infrastructure collapse, and the generators reaching critical. At Science, gravimetrics was shouting of actual massive bodies, and the environmental sensors were showing electromagnetic radiation climbing and climbing, the beeps between milestones coming quicker and quicker until they screamed.

There was a flash of light so searing that the tints on the windows were useless, and the whole station gave a lurch that threw one and all from their seats. For a moment everyone was blind, seeing nothing but white.

And then the windows adjusted and the after-images were blinked away, and the panels went from screams to anxious beeping, and everyone could see the new star that hung outside the darkened windows, the orange tint that hung in the haze of its lazy undulating corona.

Rubbing away the blindness, Steve dragged himself to his feet. He stared, mouth agape, at the sight before them for several moments before collecting himself. "You just HAD to say it, didn't you? Commander, you know full well that this is a Starfleet facility. As such, it's fully afflicted with SRES -- Starfleet Rapid Entropy Syndrome, where everything goes to hell at the seeming drop of a hat." Though the engineer was completely kidding, his expression and tone were utterly serious. Just to make sure they knew he wasn't serious, he added on, "I mean, this place needs a bar called Murphy's Law, for crying out loud."

"Obviously I spoke to soon," the XO deadpanned, rubbing his shoulder where it had hit a nearby railing. He hoped no one other than Steve would hold it against him. He shielded his eyes against the intense light. "Seal off the observation windows, please." The duranium shutters rapidly descended over the large observation ports.

Caleb picked himself off of the floor after the shaking had ceased, his bad leg giving out on him. It screamed at him, but he ignored it and started taking in the extent of the damage and calling for reports from the few Security members that remained aboard.


[Sickbay]

It had been difficult enough to deal with the huge scale of casualties flooding into Sickbay that the teams of paramedics being sent out to locations from where calls were coming in for remote help were torn between staying and helping in the main bays to being called out, but Amia had every member of medically trained staff out of the woodwork and on duty so the away teams were packed back out as soon as they had unloaded their most injured casualties and turned round their groups to answer the next call in the list of those awaiting response.

It was so busy it was bordering on chaos because the patients were hurt, frightened, and many of them had become separated from their loved ones and were trying to find out what had happened. The medical staff couldn't treat them all and at the same time stop to reconnect them with whomever they had been beside when they were hurt, no matter how much they would have liked to.

Keeping everyone calm was paramount for the whole thing not to descend into mayhem, and Amia had her work cut out for her trying to coordinate all the sub-departmental sections and maximize the effectiveness of the treatment the new arrivals were getting, as well as that of those who had been admitted earlier.

Setting up a triage team within Sickbay as well as at least one triage officer in each away team, Amia knew she had ring-fenced any fall out in a safety net of sorts. The numbers kept rising and the staff was looking fraught, not to mention the temperature of the mood of the injured, but Amia's natural charisma and outward calm were essential to keep as many people confident and reassured as possible. She seemed to float from crisis to crisis, but unruffled, she just answered quietly but firmly, and much to hers and everyone else's relief that seemed to work.

She couldn't make the injuries less, she couldn't make there be more medics than there were, and she couldn't stop the numbers of casualties pouring in or calling in for remote assistance but she could do what she did effectively, and that did seem to distract her from the rising feeling in her gut that they were losing this particular battle against the odds.

Cade would stay calm if he were here was all she could keep reciting to herself inside her head as a mantra underneath all the automatic and reflexive reactions to the injuries and situations she was being presented with.

There were a couple of particularly nasty injuries coming in more frequently now and theatres were straining to cope. Torn as to whether she was more needed in there operating, Amia did not abandon her hold on her calm floating from one department to another with speed that belied the serene look she wore as she gave orders, assessed situations, directed armies of medics and nurses and was here one second and there the next, yet without ever being seen to run or flap.

Still, despite the mesmerizing trick of the eye that her deceptive speeding around mixed with an apparently controlled stride gave onlookers and participants in the weave that was the giant infirmary on this station, Amia was everywhere; her mind working overtime at a speed that would burn her out in time, but which she could maintain for at least the current crisis.

All around her, the CMO was proud to see how many of her staff were doing the very same. Calmly moving briskly, giving help at fullest possible speed but without any sign of panic. If she had time to speak to them Amia would have been more than happy to tell them all how well they were doing, but that would have to come later.

Just then the station, which had been rocking, bucking, and behaving more like a starship in an eddy than a stable city hanging in space, suddenly lurched in one direction, sending patients, nurses, doctors, and beds flying.

"This station needs a good pilot," Amia muttered ironically, suddenly wanting to run up to Ops and find the best pilot in the universe and see if she had been right to reassure herself that he'd have been calm if he were here. "Dammit," she cursed as she fielded a projectile piece of equipment that should have been firmly anchored, only to find herself winded from behind by a falling nurse, who had been desperately trying to keep a patient on top of a sharply angled bed. The three of them landed in a heap, tangled with the equipment.

Picking herself up, bending over double as she tried to refill her battered lungs and gasp in air, Amia helped up the nurse, dusted her off, and tried to speak to her, but nothing came out until after the breath finally returned to her. "Are you okay?" the nurse asked her CMO in a bizarre seeming turnabout. "Just...what I was...trying...to ask...you!" Amia gasped back.

The nurse nodded and turned to check her patient over whilst Amia stood, her hands on her knees, bent over, sucking in air just briefly before the station lurched again, not so violently this time, but followed by the order to evacuate.

Ye Gods! How the hell am I supposed to get all these wounded souls off the station? It was a rising tide of "SERIOUSLY???" growing in the CMO's bruised ribcage, but she took in a deeper breath as soon as she could get one and her mind took in a metaphoric breath too. Cade would stay... She didn't finish the whole mantra because that was enough to sum up the situation. Cade would stay on board; he would stay calm, but he would also stay!

His wife made a decision in the moment and suddenly her serenity returned. She stood tall and began issuing orders for the patients to be moved, by emergency transporter if they couldn't get up, by hover gurney if they couldn't walk, by someone's arm or shoulder if there weren't enough gurneys. Amia was a sergeant major. "Do this, go here, take that." She didn't shout, she just raised her tone and they all reacted. That was the beauty of an emergency. People didn't have time to bicker or argue. Off they all went, by one means or another, gradually emptying the facility. The enormous infirmary that had been filling to bursting over the past few hours was now all flowing back the other way as they all left or were taken to the escape routes and out towards the escape pods.

Amia would stay. Cade would stay and so would she.

She set about shipping people, patients, staff, sick, hurt, dying. Nobody else would get to stay. Amia would see them all off the station, but then... Then, at last, she would follow what every fiber of her being was crying out to do. She would find Cade and stay beside him, perhaps forever.

"Yes, take that with you, but hurry along. No, we can't go back for that, you must move towards the exits please. I'm sorry, I haven't seen her, but she will be in another pod even is she's not in the same one as you. Please don't try to go looking right now. I will see that no-one is left behind. You go on and let me do my job. Yes, take all three. No, sorry, we won't have room for that but the pod will have its own oxygenator that you can use. No, if you do start to bleed again you won't actually bleed to death, because the nurses and doctors will be situated so that there will be one in every large pod. Move this way quickly but quietly please so you can hear any instructions you are given."

:: Breath :: Scan around, how many left now? We're winning; yes, I do think we're winning!

:: Distraction ::

"Yes, please do help her; I'm sure she'd be glad of that. No, put that back, you don't need to take phasers as there will be plenty of Security personnel to protect the escape pods without civilians arming up. No, give it to me please, is the safety on that? WHY THE HELL NOT. GIVE IT TO-- Oh crap… "

"Doctor Telamon! OH MY GOD! Doctor... HE'S SHOT THE DOCTOR! Someone disarm that stupid *******"

Amia heard no more as she faded from consciousness, only the mantra inside her head. Cade would stay calm... Cade would stay…

To be continued ...


Lt. Cmdr. Maritza Soran
Chief Strategic Operations Officer

Lt. Cmdr. Steve Wyman
Chief Engineering Officer

Lt. Cmdr. Caden Aldrex
Executive Officer

Lt. Cmdr. Caleb Ryan
Chief Security/Tactical Officer

Captain Isha t'Vaurek

 

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