Where Angels Tread
Posted on Wed Jan 31st, 2018 @ 1:55pm by Master Warrant Officer Tsabina & Captain Remas McDonald
2,430 words; about a 12 minute read
Mission:
S1:2: Rubicon
Location: Deck 5, Section 15B
Timeline: MD 14, 12.00pm
The scene that opened to the first responders entering deck five was one of carnage. Lighting panels flickered or lay shattered on the floor, and the air hung heavy with the scent of smoke and burning chemical fires. A droning low-pressure alarm wailed somewhere, reminding everyone there that the hull had been compromised and only a forcefield was keeping the air in.
Wall panels had come away, revealing the conduit work and ducting beneath. Some of it leaked or sparked. One wall further down the corridor had come away entirely, metal supports protruding from the floor like broken ribs. Opposite the gaping hole where a science lab had been, across the corridor, a smaller hole punched through the wall. An ominous fizzing sound arose from within.
And on top of all of that, the wails of the injured. One of those was close to the turbolift, the man's body lying in a crumpled heap on the floor. Judging by the spatter of blood on the ceiling when the hit struck the Traveller he’d been thrown around like a rag doll.
Loren was a trauma nurse he'd been exposed to just about everything in his time at various Emergency Rooms, so the cries of the wounded didn't particularly phase him. However what did bother him, despite the fact he'd been so the scenes of mass casualties, was the mass chaos and the extent of the damage to the ship. He didn't know much about engineering, but he knew the ship was under a lot of stress and stain and it was only going to get worse.
Triage, he knew was the top priority, but right now he was the first to arrive and he couldn't do that alone. So he moved over to the man beside the turbolift, pulling out a tricorder, checking the extent of his injuries.
Rena was on her lunch break when the sudden jolting of the ship sent the sandwich into her face. Wiping away the resulting mess with her napkin, she promptly got up, instructing the others to either get to their stations or to safety as she left for sickbay. It was the deck above her, and another jolt made her grab the nearby wall before continuing to the lift. As she approached, however, she saw that others seemed to be having difficulty, so decided to take the jefferies tubes instead. As she opened the hatch, she heard a loud boom above her, which made her pause for a moment.
That wasn't sickbay... was it?
Moving fast, she crawled into the tube and to a junction before heading up. It didn't take long for her to arrive to a hatch, and she went to open the hatch but found it wouldn't budge. It opened, but there was something in the way. Turning so her feet were toward the door, she braced herself and kicked, the door falling after the third try. Sure enough, there was a beam in the way, and Rena poked her head out to make sure nothing would fall on her before pushing the beam away from the access hatch enough to shimmy out.
She was on the science side of deck 5, and there was a maze of debris from an evident explosion between her and sickbay. She started to head that way when she heard a groan, and turned to see a science officer stuck under some beams. "Sickbay, prepare for heavy casualties. Get a team to the science labs," she said to her comm badge.
"Acknowledged," came Tsabina's voice over the comm. "Prepping trauma units now. Medical team en route."
Looking around, Rena saw her head nurse by the turbolift. "Report, were you here first?"
"Multiple contusions," he responded, quickly, automatically, "Three fractured ribs, internal bleeding from a damaged, more than likely perforated spleen."
"Make a hole!" Someone shouted from behind, and a trio of engineer's in bright silver armour came out of the turbolift along with a few more EMTS. The engineer's in their damage control gear looked like knights off to kill a dragon, the suits designed to withstand fire and vacuum for short periods. One of the figures stopped by Rena and Loren.
"You two need help getting him out here?" he asked, looking at the broken science officer before them. "Force fields are the only thing keeping the air in. We lose AUX power you won't have time to worry about holding on before you're outside."
"What he needs is an emergency site to site transport," Loren said, "but I'm betting with this level of chaos that there's not enough power for that. So, we'll have to move him the old-fashioned way. But we need to exercise extreme caution. He's severely hurt and may have a spinal injury. The tricorder reading is inconclusive."
Rena nodded and added, "We also need to get anyone else out of here. From the sounds of it, there are others." A grav lift was going to have trouble navigating the mess, and as much as she would have preferred they use that, they would have to carry him. "Fan out, engineer and medic, that way one of you can watch for weak spots while the other looks for people."
"Sickbay to Kal." Tsarina's voice rang out over Rena's commbadge.
"Go ahead," the Trill responded, after tapping her badge.
"The medical transporter went offline, but we managed to get it working for now. I can't guarantee how many transports it'll be good for, so make them count.."
"Gotta love duct tape and prayer," the engineer grinned, before being called away by a shout from the other silver armoured damage control specialists. This left Rena and Loren close to the ruined science lab. Through the shattered wall hints of equipment could be seen, the torn trunk of a table support or the flickering power cable. But past that, through the massive torn hole in the flank of the ship, the gently curving white expanse of the Traveller's hull.
And the immense, curving structure of the alien vessel. The ice cladding its hull glistering sinisterly as the blinking running lights of the Traveller were reflected back at them. It was like watching a deep sea fish, adapted to the lightless depths, lure prey in with the promise of light just before its gaping maw.
Oh hell... Rena thought, finally seeing how precarious the situation was. A field of light was the only thing keeping them alive. "Good, get as many as you can to sickbay. What's the situation in sickbay?"
Sickbay seldom had warning about incoming patients, so the staff always had to be at the ready. That the ship had been rocked by weapons fire was the most advance warning Tsabina would ever expect. With Doctor Kal and the other head nurse out and about, it fell to Tsabina to prepare the wards.
"Stand by all trauma units. Prep dermal regenerators and anesthetics. And for pleasure's sake, somebody get that medical transporter on and keep it on!"
A gaggle of medical and engineering personnel scattered to follow her orders. It was not often that Tsabina raised her voice, and even now she was more passionate than bitchy, but everyone kept their distance nonetheless.
That is, everyone but the intrepid corpse retrieval unit.
"Hey, boss lady! We got more bodies for you!"
The deep, panting voice startled Tsabina out of her focused tunnel vision. "What? Oh..." Another lost crew member. The sight was a kick to the stomach. "Put them in the morgue. You know the drill, Meth."
The big, burly Amican practically danced in place with excitement. "I know! But Hayk said we had to tell you about each one!"
Hayk the Ktarian slapped his forehead. "After we're done, Meth. I said after we're done." His gravelly voice piqued in a frustrated falsetto, or the closest Ktarian equivalent. "Preferably in report form rather than face to face."
Turning to Tsabina, he added, "My apologies, Miss. Meth..."
"Is an Amican whose adrenaline mixes with serotonin which makes him excitable under duress," Tsabina said with a tired smile. "We have had this discussion before, Hayk. It's all right."
"Oh." Hayk rolled his eyes in recollection. "Probably so. I gotta' make excuses for this big lug so often I can't keep track."
"Hey!" Meth protested with his ears folded back. "I resent that!"
"You liked it," Hayk countered. "Now grab the biobed so we can get the stiff out of the nice lady's way and in the morgue where he belongs."
"You need to apologize first!" Meth clenched his paws together.
"And you need to shut the fuck up!" Hayk yelled back. Looking back to Tsabina, he said, "Again, sorry."
As the two led the quarantined biobed away, Tsabina could hear squabbling, whimpering, and profuse profanity filling up the morgue.
Tsabina sighed, shook her head, and returned to the task at hand. Sickbay was filling up fast, and there was no sign of it slowing down. They might need to break out the auxiliary spaces.
"Tsabina to Kal," she said with a tap to her commbadge. "We're running out of space up here. Permission to access our auxiliary med units and call in all off-duty personnel."
"Hey. HEY!" hissed the damage control tech as he and the rest of his team hurriedly walked past and around them. "You need to get out of this compartment now. We're gonna seal the pressure doors and vent, it'll make fire control easier to handle and let us get to work when everything's back in order."
Not to mention save on power, which was on everyone's mind.
"Look, Doc you did what you could. But if we ain't seen anyone else there's a reason for it."
As much as she wanted to search every inch of the department, Rena knew he was right. Besides, she was needed in sickbay. Giving a nod, she recalled all of the medical staff, having them grab the last couple officers who didn't make the transport. "Tsabina, granted. I'm just down the hall, coming to sickbay now."
"That's the best news I've heard all day," Tsabina said.
Sickbay was as chaotic as she had expected it to be. Everything ranging from lacerations to burns and shrapnel. Moving quickly, she sanitized her hands and threw on gloves before assessing the numerous injuries. The interns and other medical officers were tending to the more minor injuries, while the doctors were focusing on the more serious ones.
A rapid beeping caught her attention, and she quickly moved to the source, an officer in blue. She recognized the man from his file, Lieutenant Tolkath, and saw that he was crashing. There were severe burns on his chest, with green blood seeping through his uniform, and a quick scan told her that he had stopped breathing and his blood pressure was dangerously low. "I need a pulmonary support and a crash cart, stat!" She yelled, while starting CPR. She did a couple compressions before her hands started sliding from the blood, and she corrected herself and kept going.
Tsabina slid the crash cart next to Rena and tapped her back. "Applying assisted life support now." The crash cart warbled and beeped its completion. "Defibrillator is charged."
Rena nodded to the nurse and paused the compressions long enough to grab the device from the cart. "Clear!" She made sure everyone was clear of the body before putting the device on the man's chest, hearing the device whir before it jolted downward slightly. She lifted the device and looked up at the monitor, frowning when she saw no change. "Nurse, administer a vasoconstrictor. We need to lift his blood pressure."
The code that had grabbed her attention turned into a flat line, and after another nurse administered the constrictor she told everyone to clear the body before using the defibrillator again. The monitor above showed weakening brain activity but no pulse, but after a second, then a third try with the support unit, the bar monitoring brain activity dropped to zero. "Neural stimulator!" Feeling the small device press into her hand, she put the adhesive sides on Tolkath's temple before telling whoever was nearby to activate it with the standard setting. Rena grabbed her tricorder to look for anything that would suggest the man was still alive.
"Doctor," Tsabina said with gentle but pushy emphasis, "he's gone. There are others who need you now."
Rena stared at the science officer in front of her, the single tone fading out as she paid less attention to it. After a moment, she nodded, glancing at the tricorder. "Time of death, 12:01. Clear this biobed and get him to the morgue."
Tsabina nodded, having already notified the morgue crew. "The pathology techs will take it from here.
As they walked away, Hayk the surly Ktarian and his burly canid companion Meth shuffled up to the biobed with a hover gurney in tow.
"Oh my dog! Not another one!"
The Ktarian sniffed. "That makes seven so far. Probably won't be the last either, Meth, so let's get crackin'."
Meth took Tolkath's remains from under the arms and hefted him to the hovering gurney. "It's so sad, Hayk. Look at him. He was struck down in the prime of--" He gasped. "Hayk! He's Vulcan!"
"So what?" Hayk grunted as he lifted the corpse by the knees in transition.
"So, can't they haunt you? I heard Vulcan ghosts can jump onto people's bodies and live inside them like--"
Hayk reached up, slapped Meth across the face, and jabbed two fingers into his chest. "I am not going to say this again, Meth: shut your stupid mouth. I don't want to hear about any more funny smells, Vulcan ghosts, or talking assholes." His voice dropped to a mutter. "You already got that last one covered anyhow."
One look at Tolkath's already stiffened body -- an ashen gray pallor where it wasn't charred from the explosions -- did not speak well for any afterlife. The man was stone cold, to be sure.
Hayk's contemplation was broken by whimpering from his coworker.
"No! No, no, no, no!" Hayk protested. "You can talk about ghosts and ghouls and star-children all you want, just cut that shit out!"
Meth trembled with excitement. "Oh boy! There was this old story I heard from an instructor from the Academy, and he heard it from a Ferengi cargo hauler..."
Rolling the gurney along with his eyes, Hayk settled in for what promised to be a long day in more ways than one.
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