Lending Assistance
Posted on 05 Mar 2021 @ 1:23pm by Commander Calliope Zahn & Lieutenant Commander Lance Quinn (*) & Lieutenant JG Rhiannon Hokir & Major Declan Finn
Mission:
M1 - Emergence
Location: Enviro Control Room, Upper Utility Ring
Timeline: following the events of Combat Engineering and Overcome
1606 words - 3.2 OF Standard Post Measure
Having a squad of marines for an escort had been rather useful, Lance had discovered. Despite the inconvenience of leaving the engineering section in the hands of some less-than-qualified workers, he was confident that the state of the reactor start-ups wasn’t something that they’d completely fail at. Unless of course they were all killed by invaders, but in that case the point would be moot as everyone would be dead pretty soon after.
Thanks to his thankless work over the last week, he’d gained a reasonably good knowledge of the inner confines of the station - shortcuts, things that weren’t intuitive about the design of passages, that sort of thing. It meant he could direct the marines a little more efficiently and avoid the likelier hot-spots.
After what felt like an age inside the EV suit, they finally delivered him to the Environmental Control section, and busted-out the manual door locking mechanism to allow him to squeeze in - a task made far more difficult due to the bulky suit he was forced to continue wearing.
Environmental Control was in a shabbier state than he expected. Half the consoles had been severed from the network, and the other half looked like someone had taken a hydrospanner to them. It took him several long minutes to run an needlessly complex bypass and gain some semblance of access. At which point he was gratified to see that the systems did have power and were operational again. The next task was to tie-in the transporter systems with the internal sensors, and cue-up a tactical setup that he could pass on to the marines for whatever it was that marines did.
Meanwhile, Rhian was moving out of range of the Commander, catching only whispers of the woman’s presence at the back of her mind as she drew closer to the control node and her rendezvous with Quinn. Pausing behind a strut to check her location yet again, she noted that her target was the environmental section - good, she was headed in the right direction, at least. Rhian closed her eyes, reaching for one last brush of Zahn’s mind to assure herself the woman was still as well as could be expected, and then drew away, turning instead to focus on her direct location. She was unfamiliar with this Quinn - only knowing that he was Engineering Chief. Maybe not the best point man in a fire fight, but he should be able to at least as much damage as herself.
Checking the passage, Rhian nodded to herself and stood upright for a quick sprint to the entrance just ahead. She moved a good deal easier without the bulky EV suit, but in a way Rhian missed the extra protection the heavy padding offered. Of course, the clunky mag boots - her only option unless she wanted to run sock-footed through the station - were doing a fair job of announcing her approach on the metal plating, a fact made evident when she rounded the corner to find a phalanx of Marines facing her with weapons drawn. Rhian skidded to a stop, just barely, and threw her hands up before her in a gesture of what she hoped would be accepted as peace. “Lieutenant Hokir,” she announced in a breathless gasp.
“Stand down, Marines,” a gruff voice declared, approaching from behind their assembled defensive positions. They were crouched and ready to fight, using the recesses of the corridor for some measure of cover, but he stood upright. “You part of the Command team?” Staff Sergeant Loreth asked, waving for her to hurry forward, “Are you being followed?”
“No,” Rhian shook her head. “I’m not being followed, but I had to leave one of my team members behind - Commander Zahn.” She looked back over her shoulder, even though she already knew she was out of range.
“You left the XO behind?!” Loreth replied in disbelief, “What happened? Why?” he asked sharply, “Parker, Miller, Vorath, Teelk, front and center,” he barked over his shoulder before he could answer. From farther down the corridor, heavy footsteps began to come their way. Loreth turned back to the woman, awaiting his answer.
Rhian swallowed hard, then tilted her chin up. She wouldn’t be intimidated for following an executive order. “I left her in a secure position because dragging her unconscious through the corridors until I could find help would have been just as detrimental to her as it would me. She is back that way, in an empty worker bee storage unit.”
“Wait, what? Who’s out there?” Lance demanded, not having fully heard the conversation with his head so deep in the hastily-assembled mess he was working on. “Whoever it is can wait - I’ve got to purge the environmental control subsystems before someone notices we’re sitting in here choking the life out of their comrades!”
“I can help with that,” Rhian insisted. “Go get Commander Zahn and I’ll assist here with … I’m assuming you are Lieutenant Commander Quinn?”
“Cali!?” Lance fully turned away from his work. “What the devil is she...never mind.” He looked sternly at the marines and the Lieutenant. “She had better not be in some sort of danger, or I’m zapping the rest of you into deep space.”
Rhian started. She’d known the Commander was married, but had not put the connection together with the man she was supposed to be teaming up with. “I think she had a spell,” she explained. “I made sure her pulse was steady and she was positioned so breathing wouldn’t be an issue before I left her. She was insistent that I get here to assist you, sir”
Of course she was… Lance thought to himself silently. Stubborn woman. Probably thought it was heroic or something. “Well I am insistent that someone assists her,” He replied.
“We’re on it, Commander,” Loreth answered emphatically, taking the med-kit off Corporal Westerbaum’s back. They’d left the Corpsman in main engineering not thinking they’d need it (or if they did it would be because they were grossly overmatched and dead anyway). But they at least had one emergency kit. “You four, on me, let’s go,” he waved, heading off down the corridor the way that the woman had come.
As the troops moved off in the direction she had indicated, Rhian tried again. “What do you need me to do here? I’m Operations and the Commander has already asked if I can work Transporters - I can.”
“Then work them.” Lance pointed at the console. “Do your Starfleet transporter jockey thing. Beam the bad guys out and keep the good guys in.” It felt obvious to say, but the entire crew was on edge (including himself) and he’d been used to working with barely-competent technicians for about a week.
“Ah, right, then.” Rhian was a little taken aback by the abrupt command, but shrugged it off as she moved over to the transporter console. It was a work of moments to familiarize herself with the specialized controls and begin surveying the scene in question. Beam out the bad guys, he said … Commander Zahn had said to beam out the enemy weapons, not the enemy themselves. And, seeing as the woman outranked Quinn, albeit being unconscious at the moment, Rhian focused on the original task.
Pulling up every visual she could of the scenario, Rhian began identifying and sectioning out the signals around the intruders and started directing the transporters to ‘liberate’ their belongings. The result was a motley collection of various different armaments and more than a few items of clothing which had been within close proximity. Her mouth quirked at that, thinking that if she’d taken just a bit more care she could have been more specific. But, all things considered, the more confusion and unsettlement she could cause the better for their troops, so she set about targeting the next group for similar treatment.
A rough commotion announced the return of Loreth and the team he’d taken with him, the rear units walking backwards to cover their progress while Loreth himself had Commander Zahn over his left shoulder. She was awake, ish, and at least partially upright but not much beyond that. “Lieutenant Commander,” Loreth called out, pulling the woman out of the corridor and out of the way so he could render more significant aid. Something that would be a little bit harder without the atmosphere. When her helmet was removed, her mouth was slack and her eyes unfocused. She was no longer quaking, but completely exhausted through every fiber and not even attempting to be present in her senses. Something small slipped out of her hand to the deck plating.
Lance was at her side in seconds, cradling her head and performing a quick examination of her face for anything that looked out of the usual.
“What happened to her? Why is she like this?” he asked, looking around for one of the marines to come forward as a medic and provide an explanation. As he did, his eyes spied the little necklace on the deck. He scooped it up quickly, his heart skipping a beat just a moment as he recognised it. He was amazed she had still been wearing it after all these years. In that moment he felt a pang of regret at their last words to one another having been spoken in anger. He just wanted her to be okay, and right now she was far from it.
