Medevac

Posted on 31 May 2023 @ 6:28pm by Chief Petty Officer Ibis Xeri & Chief Deputy Marshal: Ridge Steiner - FMS & Commander Anson Corduke MD

Mission: M3 - Into the Deep
Location: Pathfinder, Shuttlebay (and other locations), Korix System
Timeline: Concurrent with "A Rift Between Us" & "Shadow Games" and just prior to "A Shadow Revealed"
2830 words - 5.7 OF Standard Post Measure

Nine years ago, the Sunrise had been pitching around the way this ship was now. It was as if she were in her own dreams again, the repeated nightmare with the flashing red lights and the sirens. She’d been in a number of engagements in her time aboard the USS Nimitz. Several had been harrowing in their own right, but all of them had resolved such that she could see them from the other side and process everything that had come to pass. She’d often played a part in responding to the unfolding events on her ship, even as a young crewman, and that had given her a sense of purpose and intent against all kinds of scenarios. The final moments of the USS Sunrise remained frozen in memory, however, unlike any of the rest, because it felt as if it had never reached a resolution. For nine years she’d watched everyone die while waiting for a conclusion to their plight. And here, the moment her feet found the desk of another starship, it began to buck and shift and lift and fall, in seemingly all directions once more. She was a curse, Ibis thought to herself. She was a curse and she’d brought it to this ship too. She’d volunteer to throw herself out an airlock so it would just end, except she had to be sure the kids would make it.

Ibis found the broadest door in the corridor, the one that read 'Shuttlebay' and she remembered that she had been searching out a shuttle bay. Trying to keep herself to her feet as the deck lifted and dropped again like a turbolift with a poor stop setting, Ibis lurched forward through the doors, just to be sure there were any craft in it that might be flightworthy.

Being thrown forward, she grasped the first thing that presented itself— one of the support girders in the structure holding the bay’s catwalk. From there, Ibis watched as within the bay a small deck crew was earnestly moving two shuttles in the parking grid to clear them from the landing area; one shuttle was just being set down neatly and already cycling down, and another one lifting under thrusters while someone was signaling the pilot where to reposition it. As soon as it lifted from the deck, the whole ship jinked, causing the shuttle to bash against the ceiling as the relative positioning was unaccounted for. There was screech that went right through everyone’s teeth, and a shower of sparks from the contact. The flight team on the deck scrambled to be out of the way while the pilot realigned the craft to put it down in the grid. It was good everyone made it clear. The shuttle didn’t correct enough to land gently. Before they had the situation completely sorted, the bay doors began to part.

The whole view of the sky was nothing but stormclouds and lightning. Ibis knew instinctively that she was looking at Korix from above now, no longer below. The Nova was flying up and out of the storm and she was looking out the rear view, watching them try to achieve orbit. Although she still clung to the post she had latched onto, the ship was no longer pitching and quaking; the red lights remained on, but the klaxons had been cut.

The bay doors hadn’t completely reached a fully open position when an Arrow Class shuttle came through the skin of the containment field, whipping around in a one-eighty to land in an unloading position in the bay, setting down rear first then settling the nose of the craft. With the thrusters still powering off, one of the exit ramps on the front of the craft dropped open and people began exiting in a hurry.

Ibis let go of the post and wandered toward the craft. She had reasons but they seemed so jumbled and confusing. Were they here to take passengers to safety? She needed to tell them where the kids were. The rear compartment of the runabout made a large decompressing *pop* and Ibis jumped back on the balls of her bare feet while the ramp lowered. Voices and bustle were apparent before there was even anything to be seen.

A relative mob of Marines crowded the end of the ramp, looking as if they’d just come out of one hell of a fight. Their EVA suits were tattered and dirty and they all looked as if they’d been doused with dirt, debris and then rained on to set it all in nicely. Two of the Marines cleared out quickly, hopping off the sides of the ramp to make room for three more, two of whom had the third between them. He was clearly badly injured. The Marine was bleeding from multiple wounds, his nose looked broken and squashed and he seemed barely able to walk. He was wearing the remnants of the same EVA suit that the Marines carrying him were but his had somehow been ripped off at the top.

As they streamed away from the vehicle with purpose, Ibis walked towards them as if in a dream. The man in the center, the dirty, battered Marine Major between his comrades, triggered a memory of Porter, returning to the Nimitz following an engagement. She started directly for him, until someone bumped her as she became underfoot. The shoulder check checked her own memory. It couldn’t be Porter. He was far thinner and unshaven now and hadn’t worn any uniform or gear like that in many years… One of the Marines served her a questioning side glance as he resettled the weight of his injured brother. But something else kindled her heart. Was it possible? Would Wallace be in the runabout with them, yet? She was afraid to hope.

“Clear the ramp, clear the ramp!” a man’s voice called out, moving the trio aside. A dark-skinned Marine was at the front of a collapsible stretcher laden with a patient. A tall, thickset man carried the other end, wearing a gray uniform that didn’t really match what the others were wearing. He held the other end of the stretcher while an older man in a Starfleet uniform trotted alongside it, moving at a sideways trot to keep tending the patient and move along with everyone.

“You,” Doctor Corduke said, turning around and pointing to a flight deck officer trying to stay out of the way, “Over here, now,” he ordered.

The young, dark-haired man ran quickly over to join them. “Commander?” he asked, trying to keep up and out of the way at the same time.

Corduke hit the Junior Grade’s commbadge and it chirped in answer, “Corduke to Sickbay. We have a medical emergency. I need the surgical bay prepared, immediately,” he ordered, tapping the man’s chest again. “I need you to tell us where the hell we’re going,” he said, pointing to the Marine leading the caravan.

“Go left Binns! Out the ‘bay,” Steiner called. “Turbo lift on the right!” He gripped the stretcher tightly and followed it down the ramp.

Ibis was at the foot of the ramp as everyone was hustling carefully down it, and as they oriented themselves she forced her way between and among them, eyes wide as she saw the condition of the patient. Things were covered everywhere in so much blood. Limbs turned neatly, but blanketed in straps and gauze. Lines and tubes trailed and mobile field monitors were clipped along one side of the head of the stretcher. The long haired patient's face was covered with an oxygen mask, but Ibis knew the tattoo on his sun-weathered left shoulder, the skull and crossbones and the emblem beneath. Porter’s rib cage was disturbingly exposed— on the opposite side of him where there should have been a list of his battle engagements from the Dominion war, there was muscle and bone and open guts. She found his arm and sought his hand, finding his big, bony fingers beyond the medical tape holding IVs into his sinewy wrist.

“Porter!” She said desperately, gripping his calloused fingers and leaning to brush his knuckles against her cheek. The hand was limp, blue, and cool to the touch.

“Please, not now, ma’am,” Doctor Corduke tried to disengage her, “You can follow us, but I need you to stay clear,” he said as firmly and delicately as he could. “He can’t hear you. He’s sedated,” he added as if to convince her that it was fruitless.

Obliging, Ibis’ hand trailed down the side of Wallace’s body, but she clung to his toes, unable to let go. Porter’s toes were as chilly as his fingers, and she massaged them as if she could get him to wake up and stretch them, even if he was sedated. As she trotted to keep up with the medical team, she looked up at everyone, gauging their faces to try to understand Porter’s chances. Everyone seemed serious, and grim. Was it as bad as it looked? her eyes seemed to ask.

Steiner had no idea who the suntanned, thin, plainly dressed woman was, but she looked in similar shape to the man on the stretcher and so he presumed she could only be one of the other survivors. Quite how she was already on the ship was a question he did not have time for right now. Although he saw Zhan’s Runabout was back as they ran past it.

“You know him?” he asked her.

“He’s my—” Ibis had never had to explain before, not to anyone. Who was there to pose the question? The Korinn they knew had always called them mates, like they were a pair of seabirds. “He’s Major Porter Wallace.”

“I guess he was in a fight with a Pyrryx.”

Ibis remembered what she had feared was the last time she would ever see Wallace, on the ground below, dashing away from the darkly armored hulking figure. “He stayed behind, so I could get the kids away in the Pyrryx ship.”

“He’s in a bad way,” Steiner stated the obvious, the guy would be lucky to survive it he thought personally. “Best let the Doctor here work on him, ok?”

They piled into the turbolift, crammed in together as it made its way to the right deck. As soon as the door slid open they were running again, two doors down and left. That was as far as Steiner knew. “Where to?” he asked a waiting Nurse already in surgical scrubs.

“Follow me!”

They passed through a couple of compartments to the surgical suite where a masked and gowned team took over. The man was slid from the stretcher to a gurney and whisked away into the operating room.

A Nurse arrived with scrubs and gown for Corduke and he followed on, the doors sliding shut behind him.

Ibis circled in front of the doors, sobbing between sharp inhales of breath as she was overwhelmed with uncertainty and gratitude. “I can’t believe you found him. He’s off the planet, that’s… that’s more than I even dared to hope for any more. I tried so hard, I tried. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t get him off that planet.”

Steiner nodded to Binns as the Marine left to rejoin his squad, then turned to the woman. “You're both off, we heard there were four of you? Are the others here too? Children?”

“Yes, Olivia and Ikemba, they’re in guest quarters. When the red alert started I… I was looking for…” what had she been looking for? Phasers? A shuttle? Answers. Safety.

The deck lurched and shuddered as the ship picked up speed. Steiner put out a hand to brace himself on a bulkhead, while Ibis braced against him. “Right now the safest place for you is going to be back in those quarters with Olivia and Ikemba, was it?” He held her shoulder reassuringly “Let’s get you back there, the Doctors will take care of Major Wallace.”

He led the way back out of medical, hand on her arm, once back in the corridor he realized she had no idea who she was or where they had assigned her a cabin. “I’m Ridge Steiner by the way, Marshal’s Service and er.. Security. You are?’

“Chief Petty Officer Ibis Xeri. My last assignment was the Sunrise.” The deck began to creak loudly and the ship felt as if it were being pulled aft. A damage control team ran across one of the corridor junctions. After living between sand dunes for the best part of a decade, it was all surreal. “I was in the Sciences.”

“Ok Chief, so where did they assign you quarters? Can you recall?”

She named the deck and the room number. With the kids relying on her, Ibis had made it a point to recall the room, even through the fog of grief. A fog that seemed to be some other kind of cloud now, dense but not quite as crushing.

“Two decks up,” Steiner confirmed and they entered the turbolift again, the deck pitched again as the ship began maneuvering he grabbed the hand rail. “I think you brought that storm up here with you.” He tried to lighten the mood a little, but Ibis didn’t answer. The grim joke to her mind was a real possibility. “I saw your camp, you get many hurricanes like that?”

“The rainy season was always bad. Sometimes we had to take shelter in the compound maintenance tunnels. But I think that was the storm of a century brewing.”

“And the locals started a war right in the middle of it,” he muttered. The doors slid open and they stepped out. Steiner checked the nearest two door numbers. “And we're going for-ard,” he pointed right, starting along the corridor.

“They had things already planned.” She explained as she ran alongside the Marshal. Strange, she managed to think, that she’d never really operated with Marshals in her career. Yet here was one working as ship security. She wondered if the partnership was becoming more common. “When they got word of the Federation contact, they went to Wallace to finalize the revolt. After that, we knew we had to get off. We didn’t have a choice to just hunker down. I think if anything, for the Irix slaves, it sounded like the storm made it more of an opportunity to cover the sabotage and escape operation.”

“We met with one of their leaders, seems they thought the Pathfinder” coming into orbit meant the Federation was going to join in. They didn’t like hearing we don’t operate that way.” Tadpole indeed! he thought to himself.

“You must mean a leader of the Free Irix? We never met them. We were with the slaves. We were… also forced laborers. Sometimes there would be word that came through from Irix spies. I taught standard to a few and they tried to teach me Korinn. I don’t really know how much of what I shared made it back to their Grand Crest.”

“We did bring a couple of them onboard. They told us about you and the Major.”

“Is that when you went looking for us? Is that how you found Wallace?”

“We found your camp, seems your Major laid it out in proper Marine fashion. That got our Marines very interested. But there was no one there, we ended up finding him half way up some damn mountain.”

Ibis smiled at that. “He ran our camp the only way he knew how. Order and discipline. We weren’t very good Marines, most of us. But we tried.” She pointed to the numbers on the doors. “I think it’s the next block.”

When they came to the door, she hugged him. “Thank you.”

He gave her a friendly pat on the shoulder. “Sure, and I know the doctors will try their best with the Major. Right now I need to get up to the Bridge.”

Nodding, she broke away quickly, eager to be sure the kids were still inside. When the door slid aside, two heads popped up from the other side of the living room sofa and she ran in, greatly relieved to find they’d obeyed, and still trying to figure out how to tell them the mixed news. Whatever engagement the ship was going through, she just had to hope it would resolve well. It had to, because she wasn’t about to try to evacuate without Porter. The door closed behind her.

Tough lady to survive down there for years Steiner mused as he jogged back to the turbolift.