Combat Engineering
Posted on 18 Feb 2021 @ 10:14am by Captain Corvus DeHavilland & Lieutenant Commander Lance Quinn (*)
Mission:
M1 - Emergence
Location: Engineering
Timeline: Immediately Following: A Trap, Sprung
1787 words - 3.6 OF Standard Post Measure
“What the blazes is going on!?” Lancelot demanded, as sparks suddenly burst from a recently-repaired bulkhead not five feet from his head. He didn’t need anyone to tell him - it was obvious from the shuddering and damage he was seeing. The reactors were fine, still in slow start-up mode, but new problems were rapidly developing all over the damage control readouts across from him.
“Someone get that comms line to Ops back up again!” he shouted over the rapidly building noise. “We still have to get the reactors stabilised and up to strength if we don’t, someone marching in here with a disruptor will be the last of your problems.”
The Starfleet crew was moving into action, which is what he would have expected of them, but Master Sergeant Patrick Loreth wasn’t thinking about engineering protocols or repairs right now. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to understand what was happening to this station, which meant his role just changed from helpful engineer here to lend a helping hand to Marine rifleman. That’s the job they were all trained for first, and right now that job was priority.
“Kaplan!” Loreth barked, stepping away from the terminal he had been working on. Staff Sergeant Kaplan nodded, understanding the order he hadn’t given.
“Delta Company!” he called out loudly, stirring every one of the Marines back to him, “Gear up! Action stations!” he barked.
As if they’d planned it all along, the entirety of Delta Company of the 3rd Combat Engineers in the engineering bay stopped what they were doing and hurried to the emergency kits they’d each brought with them. Being that they weren’t part of the standard compliment aboard the ship and that they were working in spaces that could easily be compromised, they all had their EVA suits nearby on standby, tucked into heavy-duty duffel bags and set out of the way. But Marine EVA suits only had one thing in common with the Starfleet variant, and that was that they protected one from the vacuum of space. In all other aspects, the Marine variety was nothing short of aggressive. It was as much a tool in their job as their handheld weapons.
Loreth suited up as well, turning to Kaplan who had put his on with lightning speed and was already trying to power up the short-range transmitter built into Corporal Parembathil’s suit as the designated comm Marine in the unit. Loreth waved a rather confused looking Quinn over as the Corporal’s comm came alive. It was staticy and a touch garbled, but it was clearly Captain Finn’s voice.
“...ines, listen u… Starbase is b-...eached. Repeat. Starbase is breached. Repel all b…. Repel all boarders. You are weapons free,” he said.
“Loreth the Finn, do you copy, Captain?” he spoke as he held the button on Parembathil’s wrist.
“Loreth. Priority is Engineering. I’m deploying everyone I can,” his garbled voice declared.
Lance tried not to be distracted and indeed disturbed by the Marines swarming all over his Engineering section. They were a necessity, but an unhelpful one. No doubt some grunt would insist he put on an EVA suit, which would absolutely hinder him from doing his job of keeping the station’s multiple reactors from failing or worse.
“You. Ensign...Petersen?” Lance acted almost as though inspired by the marines around him by grabbing the shoulder of a young officer and dragging him in front of the damage control monitor. “Watch that reading. If anything goes over 4200psi you need to reroute the induction flow capacitor and recycle the heat exchanger.” He didn’t wait to see if the Ensign could keep up. He turned back to the pair of deer-in-headlights technicians standing nearby. “Shields. Weapons.” He pointed at them in turn. “Fix.”
Finally, the Engineer looked over at the assembling marines. A pang of worry went through him as he thought of Calliope, and where she might be. But he couldn’t afford to be like that. He had to concentrate on making sure the reactors didn’t fail start-up completely, or they’d be completely dead in the water - and likely actually physically dead along with it.
“Alpha company, secure the entry hatches,” Loreth barked in order, “Beta, secure all critical stations. Gamma, Delta, form on Commander Quinn, get back to work!”
The Marines deployed quickly, moving to their assigned tasks with the exception of Kaplan, Parembathil and Loreth, the former of which was trying to raise the CIC. He could see on the readout on Parembathil’s arm that the feed from Finn was still there, but weak. But despite the Corporal trying every emergency band, they couldn’t raise the CiC.
“Find a spot where the signal’s strongest to Finn and let him know we’ve secured main engineering. Find out everything you can about who or what’s breaching the station,” He ordered the dark-skinned man. He nodded curtly and hurried off.
Kaplan took Parembathil’s leaving as his cue to as well, and began his own rounds, checking that everyone was where they were supposed to be. Loreth headed now to the Chief Engineer. Already the rest of the company was back to their set tasks, only now suited up. “Commander,” he said as he approached. “Sir, I appreciate that there’s important work here, but I really recommend you suit up. At least get the suit on, and seal it later. You’re too important to this operation.”
“If I suit up I can’t monitor these flow patterns,” Lance snapped back at the Marine. “If they go out of alignment too far there’s no recovery; the whole station either goes totally dark or it goes up in several thermonuclear explosions. No EVA suit is going to protect you or I from that.” He turned back to the console, rapidly tapping controls to maintain things as they were. “It’s your job to make sure I don’t die while keeping us alive.”
Loreth chuckled darkly, “Alright, Commander. We’ll do it your way,” he smirked. He looked up to the upper catwalk and saw Parembathil looking down offering a thumbs up meaning he’d connected to Finn and communicated their status. Now it was the waiting game. Which happened first? A breach by the enemy, or a failure on Starfleet’s part to bring things online that sent them all to a quick end. There was only one of those outcomes he could control, so he set his mind to that.
Lance did his best to push the Marine presence out of his mind - as well as the potential outcome of an open firefight going on around him while he balanced systems restarts. He studied the possibilities in front of him. Shields and weapons were an obvious priority - and it had been no wonder the Captain had wanted them online first. However the power drain had to be balanced with the reactors he had online, which for the moment was one-and-a-half.
“Petersen!” he barked. “Keep on those flow regulators. We’re going to have to push consumption up quickly without overloading the current output.” He looked down at the array of controls he had in front of him, and the options for bringing things up to power. A number of them were less important; the drydock was basically empty space and the tractor emitters were no help. Those were relatively low-cost but not helpful, and the station was protected from external threats by starships equipped for battle. Inside, however, they were vulnerable. He needed to focus on what the marines might need. He needed to find something more useful. “Internal sensors…” he muttered. He looked over at Loreth. “I can give you partial internal sensors within the next five minutes. Past that, maybe short-range transporters.”
“It’s a start. We can relay that information back to Captain Finn,” Loreth nodded, “I think the priority should be the command team. We have to find the Captain and XO. If we can transport them here, great. If not, at least we know where to send the extraction team.”
If anything, just knowing what and who was there would be a huge blessing on its own. Anything else would be icing on the cake. Though, he had to make a bet, whoever was aboard this station would be making their way to Engineering right about now. This was going to be ground zero. He didn’t want to tell Quinn that and set him any farther on edge with what he was doing, but if anything they would be transporting help here - or enemies out into space.
“Do you think you’ll be able to access environmental controls soon? At the very least outside these doors?” he asked.
“Environmental controls?” Lance echoed, sliding over to investigate for himself. “Those controls were severed during the ‘incident’. We hadn’t prioritised re-routing them back to Engineering yet so the only way to access them is manually from Environmental Control itself,” he explained, his brow furrowed. Yet another complication from this spaceborne deathtrap, he noted. That they were expected to do anything with this place while under attack was preposterous. “If one of your soldier buddies wants to try to get there and secure it, they’re most welcome to,” he added.
“If we got to it, would we be able to access the controls to the corridors around this section and vent the atmosphere?” Loreth asked. It wasn’t going to be worth risking lives if it wasn’t going to result in them being able to secure their spaces a bit longer. “Site to site transporters would be preferred, but if we could vent atmosphere, that makes their job breaching this deck that much harder,” he added. Part of him wanted just a good ole’ fire fight to this digging in and waiting game that they were playing. But he knew there were more important aspects in play. He just hoped the rest of the Marine contingent was faring just as well.
“Those sorts of minute adjustments would be extremely difficult without clear communications and the security of knowing your backup forcefields were working...but yes…” Lance nodded. “It would be possible to do that from environmental control.” He grabbed one of the nameless ensigns from nearby, and pointed at the control panel. “Monitor this. If the core manifold temperature exceeds 75% you need to shunt power to the control matrix.” He didn’t bother to check whether the ensign fully grasped his words, instead turning back to the Marine. “I’ll take that environmental suit now.”
