Broken But Unbowed

Posted on Tue Oct 31st, 2017 @ 6:08pm by Captain Remas McDonald & Lieutenant Commander Shadi Zatra

1,601 words; about a 8 minute read

Mission: S1: These Are The Voyages...
Location: Deck 10, Secondary Power Relay
Timeline: 18.25

The trio flowed along with Engineer's decked out in firefighting gear, looking for all the world like well-dressed fops heading for a knights field of battle. The air of deck ten had a metallic bite to it, and a grey smog was quickly being drawn from the air by the life support network.

"Either one of you witnesses any fighting in your careers?" Remas asked as they stepped to one side, allowing a medic to stagger past carrying a severely burnt man on his shoulder.

Arivek walked along side the CO, carrying a phaser, gently, with his fingertips. It was obvious he had no idea how to use the weapon. "None, at all," the man said, his eyes locked onto the metallic device of death. "And I'd prefer we keep it that way."

"We'll do our best old friend," Remas said softly.

"I am a daughter-spawn of the Ragolar brood of Sauria." Shadi had accepted the dress jacket from an officer's uniform to cover up the nudity she had displayed earlier. It sagged to her knees. "Don't expect me to hit anything with a phaser, but any foe who gets close to us is as good as dead."

"Scrapper, I like it. Do the spawn of Ragolar have any stories and songs? We Rish love trading those sort of things," he asked as they approached the nexus of all the activity.

Shadi raised her head and hummed a tune with syncopated pops and clicking.

"With a strong and mighty talon's girth
carried by glorious afterbirth
the young claw of our brood
shall take all our foes for food
and never shall know dearth!"

They entered the scene of the explosion. Fire retardant foam caked the walls like a fungal forest, cracked and flaking into small drifts of acrid snow. The area approaching the access to the maintenance crawlspace was blackened, with the hatch firmly embedded at head height in the opposite wall.

"Alright Ari, you're the Engineer. What do we lose without a secondary power relay in the works?" he asked allowed, his eyes following the medics as they moved a yellow biohazard bag out of the crawl space. It was man-sized, but the way the bag didn't fill out suggested it wasn't man shaped anymore.

"Well, we won't get very far," Arivek said in response as he closed his eyes to not see the gore that surrounded him. He took a deep breath, suddenly thankful that he had no sense of smell or ability to throw up.

Shadi once again shed her clothing, albeit merely a borrowed dress jacket, and made to slither through the singed crawl space. "Allow me. Just give me a warning if you think something is about to blow."

And then she disappeared down the hole. After a moment's time, her muffled voice came through their communicators.

=/\="Zatra to McDonald and Zhuri. This looks bad. The whole starving section is burned to a crisp, and I haven't even reached the junction--famine!"=/\= She interrupted herself with a streak of hisses. =/\="The meat-wagon missed a pile. I hope it washes off because this tasty piece looks important."=/\=

'We'll keep the medic's informed Ensign," Remas said as suddenly a peculiar personnel file arose in his mind. Yes, the dress had thrown him, but there weren't exactly a million Saurian's manning the Traveller. "Just be careful in there."

Shadi grunted again. =/\="I'm coming back out now. Please avert your eyes. I won't be pretty."=/\=

Arivek didn't need an invitation to close his eyes again. Despite the physical ability being gone, nausea was definitely something he could still experience.

Several profane hisses later, Shadi slithered back out. Her scales were covered in grime, grit, and soot. The "tasty piece" she had mentioned was in her hand, a fragmented hunk of twisted metal dripping with a dark, pasty goop.

"I'm no weapons expert, but this looks like the remains of an explosive ordnance to me." She tossed it to Remas. "Maybe Security can make heads or tails of it."

Remas caught it in his hands and didn't so much as bat an eyelid. He then sniffed, looking down at the pipe and the pasty goop that was even now trying to slide free to the floor. He turned the pipe over in his hands, teasing the goop back up.

"This makes no sense at all," Remas muttered. "The Traveller is a stock Starfleet vessel with some additional components strapped to the hull. As for the Long Jump Accelerator, it's particular use within the scope of our galaxy is negligible. It's good for one thing and one thing only: catapulting vessels clear across a vast gulf of space. I mean the real prize here would be the thinking meat between Ari's ears. Can think of at least 3 Alpha Quadrant power's that would pay a small wars worth of damage to get their hands on the man who helps build this thing atom by atom."

Remas mused thoughtfully, his hands still looking at the mangled pipe.

"You two are revolting," Arivek said as he turned and took a few steps away from the gore that the two officers were handling. "But perhaps it is not the technology that the perpetrator wishes to dismantle, but the Traveller's mission itself? Your ship represents the first Alpha Quadrant vessel to go on a long-term exploration outside of our galaxy. You will be planting the Federation flag and perpetuating Federation ideals in an area that no other power has access to. It can be considered...detrimental to our enemies."

"Do you think that scrap piece could give a clue?" Shadi asked. "I could always go back in and look for more."

“It might tell us what sort of explosive was used, but really all this tells us is there was an explosion. An explosion with casualties,” Remas mused throughfully as a crewman came along and deposited the length of pipe in a evidence baggie. He then turned to Ari.

“Of all the ways I’d thought to ask you this over the years, I didn’t think of this scenario. But right now the Traveller needs the very best at her beck and call,” Remas said gravely. “How soon can you pack up your office on the I Know I Forgot To Tell You Something and move into engineering here?”

Arivek looked around the room, his face still twisted with disgust at the scene. "Will it be cleaned first?" he asked. "It's in a bit of...disrepair."

Shadi spit on the floor and began wiping the corroded ash and bloody muck off her naked body. "Engineers. You would think they never got their claws dirty as much as they complain about a mess."

“And yet you still find this mans face next to the word Genius in the dictionary!” Remas said with smile, almost slapping Ari on the back before remembering his friends quirks and the fact he was standing in a crime scene. “It's a bit of a fixer upper, but we don’t need to worry about fixing it all right now. The Accelerator will get us out beyond the Galaxy, and whats a few days spent standing still to fix things as opposed to our five years of exploration to come? Besides, I’m something of a nuts and bolt man myself. I could chip in, lend a hand to the enterprise as it were?”

Remas shuddered.

“If I have to sit in another meeting for another minute I might scream blue fire out of my nose.”

Arivek smiled slightly at the word "genius". If there was one thing he enjoyed, it was being reminded of how amazing he was. "Not exactly an ideal scenario. But if there's one thing you can be glad about, be glad that you're getting a superior Engineer from this ordeal. I am quite a better choice than Daton."

"And modest too, let us not forget that," Remas mused, looking at the ruined maintenance area. "Still, it's a secondary system. The primary is still up and running, so at least nothing mission critical is busted up. Well, no more than it was before. Ensign Zatra, mind if I task you to help our new Chief Engineer settle in? He packs light but you know how Engineers get. Probably half of Utopia Planitia hidden away in his office."

Shadi snorted in laughter at the suggestion.

"Assistance is neither desired nor required," Arivek said as he turned from the wreckage that was the room. "All systems will be functional for launch, as expected. I don't think either of you two need to worry about things that fall under my purview. My superior intellect has given me... " As the man walked away, he continued talking, his voice becoming softer with distance until they couldn't hear him anymore.

"History will remember him as a great man for the things he helped build. But Maker of Ways save him if history browses social media looking for peoples opinions of him," Remas chuckled.

"The ship's log will remember him as the man who threw a fit when he gets to his old quarters only to find his possessions and effects already transferred aboard the Traveller." Shadi squinted her eyes and hissed a long, breathy hiss. "His tantrum will be glorious."

"Just remember he has control of the ships thermostat before you go all crazy," Remas chided lightly. "Wouldn't do for one of the support pillars of our Operations team gets turned into popsicle because of a prank gone wrong."

Shadi shivered at the mere thought. "You warm-bloods and your fear of fire."

 

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