USS Minotaur: The Away Team
Posted on Fri Jan 18th, 2019 @ 7:38am by Commander Abigail Prescott & Lieutenant Commander Catrina (Cat) Tendai & Lieutenant JG Jonah Masters & Lieutenant JG Leonardo 'Leo' Giordano & Lieutenant Connor Turner & Master Chief Petty Officer Freya Duffell
Edited on on Wed Jan 23rd, 2019 @ 1:46pm
2,897 words; about a 14 minute read
Mission:
Mission 2: Into The Breach
Location: Planet's Surface/Medway
Timeline: MD04 - 0250 Hours
With all of their gear in tow, the away team consisting of everyone except Mint and Duffell beamed down to the planet's surface within view of what was visible of the Medway. Catrina looked over to where the ship had ended up once they rematerialized and her heart sunk. She couldn't believe what she was seeing. But they didn't have the time to stand around. She turned to the team with a heavy sigh.
"We all heard Prescott. Don't be the hero. Turner, work on stabilizing whatever systems you can. Giordano, once we have some of the injured gathered you'll beam back up with them and start treating them. Masters, help find everyone that we can. Don't go near the buried area until we can verify whether or not things are stable. Let's get in and out."
She wasn't used to being in charge of an away team, but knew what had to be done. "Get going," she finally stated, letting the others go off ahead of her.
Giordano nodded as acknowledgement as he stared at the crashed starship. “I’ve never seen anything so dramatic.” He commented.
Jonah stared at the hull, or what remained of it, plunged deep into the stone bedrock. He pulled out his tricorder, but from their distance, the readings were erratic at best. Squinting against the settling dust, he let out a low whistle of startled amazement, agreeing with Giordano's assessment.
Cat rubbed the back of her neck. "You could say that. If we do get things stable, it's going to take a lot of man power to dig that thing out, if we even attempt it at all."
Turner squeaked out a "Yes, ma'am." He just hoped that would not be his last squeak. The Medway was a ticking time bomb. Worse, it was a time bomb that he had no idea how it was created or exactly how to diffuse it. He became convinced they were all going to die. I'm too young to die!
“I don’t envy you, Commander.” Leo stated before pulling out his tricorder. “I am picking up life signs but I can pinpoint locations.” He reported after a few moments of scanning. “If they survived the crash they should be very thankful by the looks of it out here.”
"Connor, calm down," Cat stated as she brought up the rear. "And any life signs is a good sign at this point. Maybe we'll be able to get a better picture once we're inside."
"Maybe we can set up a search and rescue pattern from out here. I can deploy my security officers to different positions at equidistant points so we can establish and triangulate a search algorithm?" Jonah suggested.
Cat shook her head. "As much as I appreciate it, Masters, we just don't have that kinda time until we get things stabilized in there from an engineering perspective."
"Yes ma'am," Jonah responded seriously.
“I wonder how hard they hit the ground.” The medic mused as they approached the downed Starship. “Any ideas on how we get in?”
Connor looked at Cat horrified. "You don't understand! Some people are fused! They can't be extracted! It would be like removing your lungs and heart and expecting you to survive. They're now something else. Others are fine. I just don't know. It...it...it will be awful!"
“Would you like a mild sedative, Ensign?” Giordano said with a smirk.
Cat put up a hand as she looked to find their way in. “Leo, enough. This is stressful on all of us. And we engineers know what can happen if one of those engines goes bad. I’ve tried to keep it out of my head.” She nodded Connor to go ahead and stopped Leo. “This is going to be hard. He wasn’t lying, we might have things just like what he described.”
Connor looked at Giordano and asked, "Do you have no feeling? What if that was your wife that was now forever half rock or ship or whatever?"
"Connor!" Cat stated in a frustrated voice and pointed him off in the direction of the Medway. "We can't stabilize anything until us engineers get in there, so get in there! We don't have a lot of time! Everyone, get going, double time!"
Squeaking, Connor rushed off in the direction that Cat sent him. He did not bother to question if it was the right way.
Leo followed the rest of the team. He wasn’t going to be needed until they got inside and started finding survivors.
Letting out a heavy sigh, Cat caught up to the others after a moment. Finding what seemed like the only safe entrance, she looked back to the group. "Okay, Turner and I will work on stabilizing any systems. I'll tell you now, this isn't going to be pretty. But we have to do this. Anyone who can be saved, we're beaming back up to the Minotaur. Giordano will beam up with the first group that goes up. Do not mess with anything if you don't know what will happen."
“Commander, can I remind you that the Minotaur only has a limited capacity. We may need to run a shuttle service between here and the Station depending on the amount of survivors we find.” Lieutenant Giordano stated.
“I know that,” Cat stated. “If we quickly end up over capacity, we’ll call for more assistance. Until then, we bring everyone on board we can. Let’s go guys, no more time to waste.”
Connor shuffled along after Cat, not feeling very hopeful as to his prospects of stabilizing anything, given that someone mishandled a quantum slipstream drive. How was he going to figure out exactly what the variances were and how to shut it down? Were the controls even accessible? And were they still connected to anything? So many unanswered questions and the likely result was BOOM. I don't want to die.
Leo pulled out his tricorder and began scanning as they approached the Medway. "I picking up life signs scattered throughout the ship. Any ideas how badly ships damaged yet?"
Stopping at the entrance, Cat could see sparks flying inside, and very little lighting. Grabbing the torch she had, she kicked it on and looked inside with the light. "I don't know, but let's get in there before we're too late." She took a step inside and then waited for the others to file in.
Connor followed Cat, who could occasionally hear him mumbling something about "Fool's Errand" and "too young to die."
Keeping her mouth shut on Connor’s mumbling, Cat took a few more steps inside while pulling her own tricorder out. “I don’t like these engine readings, but we will have to get closer to the warp core to get anything positive. Leo, find the life signs, get them out of here.”
“Is there any no go areas?” Leo asked as he adjusted the medkit on his shoulder.
Connor replied to Leo with some uncharacteristic biting sarcasm, "Anywhere that is rock. You will have to figure that out the best you can." He huffed despondently at the away team and said, "Let's just find a control panel that can connect into engineering. We have to stop the reactors before this all goes BOOM. It would be best if we could get to any part of engineering itself."
“Connor!” Cat snapped. This was stressful enough. “Everyone but Turner and I stay out of anything engineering. We will handle all of that. Much as I hate to say it, there are going to be people we can’t save, or get out of here, even if they are alive.” She continued in further, the mess ahead of them told her already that it was not going to be pretty once they got into the heart of it.
Connor gave Cat a questioning look. The only thing worse than her using that tone would have likely been to hear her use his full name with the emphasis on his middle name. He cringed. "I do not believe there is a direct path to engineering, Commander," Connor told Cat very carefully. "We are going to need a point to point beaming and pray that there's space for us and...." He stopped, letting his other warnings go un-reminded.
Waving the others to continue on, Cat stopped Connor. “We can’t beam in there, Turner. We can’t even get a clear enough reading to know if there is anything left of engineering. We just have to hope we can access all those systems from somewhere else while everyone else does the rescue mission part.” She sighed and rubbed the back of her neck, “Get your head on straight and focus, Connor. We can panic later, okay? I’ll leave you behind next time if you can’t keep focused, got it?”
Jonah moved into the wreckage, using his wrist beacon to light the way. If the ship was anything other than destruction, he couldn't find it. His tricorder kept track of the twists and turns in the labyrinth, keeping him from becoming eternally lost, but every turn was a dead end into more wreckage or impenetrable stone.
Without another word, she continued on, “Anyone find anything,” she called out as she caught up.
"Just dead ends!" Jonah called back, a thin bead of sweat on his forehead. When he wiped it, he could feel the grit of the pulverized stone clinging to his skin.'How could anyone survive this?' he wondered silently.
"Follow any signs of life you get on your tricorders," Cat called ahead as she tried to get what seemed like a dead control panel up and running. They had to stabilize the systems or they wouldn't be able to rescue anyone.
“I’m no Engineer, but it looks like the bottom deck has been compacted. Probably on impact.” Leo stated as he continued to scan for life signs.
"The readings are erratic!" Jonah called back. "It's like they're phasing into and out of regular space-time. One minute there's a lock, the next it's shifted somewhere else. I don't know if I'm getting the same reading or multiple readings."
“Let’s see if we can find some survivors.” Leo said to the Security Chief as he turned on his palm beacon to create more light for them to see. “I’m picking a faint life signs down that corridor.” He said point down a dark corridor which had only the red flashing ‘Red Alert’ lights for illumination.
Jonah turned his attention to the medic. “I’d say after you, but it’s my job to lead the way this time, Doctor,” Jonah said, directing his wrist beacon and a phaser down the red corridor. A sudden flashback of the Potemkin hit him like a tidal wave and he stopped almost a meter in to the darkened corridor. There was a sudden tightness in his chest as his breathing quickened. Before he’d been sweating, but a cold sweat followed the chill that ran down his back. Jonah willed himself to continue walking, forcing himself to think of Callan and their time on Pacifica - relaxing on the beach, sunset dinners, blue skies matched by clear blue waters.
Cat closed her eyes for a moment as she heard what Masters and Giordano were saying. "Do what you can! Keep on the part of the signal that doesn't change, that's the best I can give you." She opened her eyes back up and looked around. "Connor!! We've got work to do. Help me get this thing patched into the engineering systems!“
"I can try," Connor responded. "I don't think it will be successful. I think we need to beam to engineering itself." He gulped hard as he admitted the last statement. "Of course, we could beam into.... I don't want to think about it."
“Connor, I told you, we aren’t beaming into somewhere we don’t know can hold us. We have to do all we can out here until we can get another team to start on digging this ship out.” Cat turned and met Turner’s eyes. “We stabilize. We don’t try to be heroes. Got it?” She got underneath the console and started to pull out what wasn’t working, rearranging to attempt to get them a working panel.
“Try it now,” she called from underneath, still listening for the rest of the team in case they needed help.
He muttered under his breath again, "We're going to die." Louder, he told Cat, "Nothing is working. You might want to try rerouting the secondary power couplings and see if you can tap into the force activators. If you can do that, you might be able to manipulate the matter/anti-matter mixing chamber and potentially defuse our bomb here. Of course, that assumes that those things are not phased into the rock," he finished dejectedly.
Cat sighed, she’d hoped to not have to go through all that. But, knowing Connor was right, she switched around a few things, matching to exactly what he’d said. “Maybe not defuse, but stabilize long enough to get more teams out here.,” she said as she climbed out from under the console. “Give it a go,” she told him as she looked back down along the corridor the rest had gone down. “You guys find anyone yet?”
Connor furiously pressed the required console buttons and spoke softly and sweetly to the computers, reassuring them that everything was alright and to just give him a little bit of assistance. Like magic, the screens came to life and signs of Engineering could be found. He smiled and looked at Cat, "They're stable for now, ma'am." He then turned back to the computers. "I'll keep my attention on this, though. I know that it would prefer that. Maybe buy us some time."
Raising an eyebrow, Cat put a hand on Connor's shoulder. "Anything changes, let us know immediately. I'm going to see if I can help them. I'm trusting you with this one." She gave a small smile and went off towards the rest of the group.
Talking to the computers, ignoring Cat, Connor said, "That's it. Just keep it up. You're doing great...."
"Connor...don't just focus on the computer. Remember, there are others on this ship..." Cat shook her head and took off.
"Huh? What?" Connor turned towards Cat as she spoke to him. Nearly immediately, the computers revolted and the warp core of the Medway started to turn to the worse. "I have to maintain this!" he replied calmly but annoyed. Immediately getting his attention back at the computer, he tapped some buttons and soothed his ward. "There, there. That's OK. Connor's going to take good care of you. I just need you to stay with me a little bit longer while we get all of the people we can off of you. Is that alright?"
Cat glanced over her shoulder. "You know what to do, Turner!" she called and ran off.
Connor said nothing to Cat. He just kept talking to the computer, soothing it and gently cajoling it to do his bidding.
Giordano kept looking at his tricorder. “I wonder if it’s the problem with the engines which is making life signs look like they’re phasing.” The Medic thought out loud. “Lieutenant Masters, are you reading the same thing on your tricorder?”
Cat caught up to the other two. "Phasing?" She pulled out her own tricorder and frowned, but then saw one clear reading. "I'm going up to the bridge...you two keep going."
The medic nodded, “Ill make my way up the bridge as soon as I can, Commander.” Replied Leo as his tricorder began to beep. He moved towards what seemed to be an organic mass. When he got closer and shined his light in the area the signal was coming from the mass made sense. Several bodies lay together, most limbs not at the correct angle or even missing. “Christ, they must have hit the planet hard for that to happen.” He commented.
Pushing away some debris, Cat tapped her combadge on her way to the bridge. =^=Tendai to Prescott. =^=
'Oh thank heavens,' she thought, letting out a breath she didn't realize she was holding. =^= Prescott here, what's going on Cat?=^= Mint looked over to Duffell hoping this wasn't a call to say they couldn't stabilize the ship or find anyone alive.
=^= We've stabilized it for now, Mint. Turner is watching the readings, but I'm not sure how long it will hold. So many sections down here are compacted, and the life sign readings are erratic at best. Giordano and Masters are searching to the lowest decks they can, I'm heading to the bridge. I've got one mostly stable signal up there I'm going to check out. =^=
=^= Good job. We'll continue to try to scan the wreckage from here, and I'll see if I can get more engineering help. Keep us updated. =^=
=^= Will do, Mint. Let us know if you see anything, Cat out.=^= She kept making her way up to the bridge, stopping when she got there to make sure she could get through without causing any issues.
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