Collateral Damage

Posted on Wed Jul 20th, 2016 @ 5:03am by Captain Charybdis MacGregor & Commander Fiona McCray & Lieutenant Commander Selune
Edited on on Wed Jul 20th, 2016 @ 5:04am

0 words; about a 1 minute read

Mission: Taking Chances
Location: USS Bonne Chance, Deck One, the Bridge
Timeline: 2265

Manipulating the deflector controls, punching in new calculations to keep them corrected, running vectors and variable speed equations in her head the savvy scientist simply trusted that her math was correct... it had to be. The ship was counting on her, and right now Lieutenant Charybdis had to be more than human... she had to be a living computer, performing actions that would require months of research and double-checking of calculations to insure anything other than catastrophic failure. Ensign Sato was studying the viewer, keeping an eye on the rest of the station and feeding her telemetry, silently assisting her efforts to enable her to concentrate. Because right this minute she had to live up to the standards of a Vulcan.

She could do this.

"All right Lieutenant, I think we have a sufficient fodder... let's go deliver our surrender message, shall we?" Charybdis sad as she vaulted the railing again to land in the command chair. She was beginning to like that little trick, despite the way that it startled the bridge crew. Of course, at the moment most of them had other things on their minds.

Nodding silently Selune barely registered the command, the only noticeable change being a slight shift in course that would bring them along an intercept vector with the pirate vessel. Her arms were rigid over the console, her hands orchestrating a careful dance across the instruments as she and the ship played 'dodge or be reduced to molten slag' with a hurtling debris field that the madwoman in command was attracting to chase them.

Down below chief engineer Fiona McCray rushed from one area to another in the tubes. Half sliding, half crawling... her team in engineering went about their designated repairs with urgency and economy of motion. The chaos was organized chaos and the team maintained their calm despite their relative greenness. Her drills and instruction were paying off gloriously right now, and she was proud of her boys. Char had better save the damned ship so I have a chance to tell them so later, she mused.

"Ensign Rondborstig, open a channel to the Admiral," Charybdis ordered as she mussed her hair. When the Nausicaan came onscreen, she looked as though she were frantically flipping switches and fighting with controls at the navigation panel... in truth she was doing no such thing.

"Do you mean to self destruct, idiot? What are you doing?!?" he demanded.

"We have lost helm control... we are trying to compensate..." she began, but he interrupted her.

"I don't believe you and I don't care. You had your chance... now you die, fools!" With that the Bonne Chance rocked as weapons fire began striking her rear shields, while the science officer calculated the timing.

"You first..." she muttered under her breath.

"Engine room, stand by to reverse polarity on deflectors, helm come to nine zero point one five on my mark... five... four... three.. engine room, reverse polarity! Helm, mark!" Charybdis prayed to Janus that this would work, and thought of her Captain, wishing he were here.

"Wait, what? What is she babbling?" Admiral Thog bellowed in confusion.

That tune in her head was back and Selune hummed along to it, improvising where she couldn't remember the words as she dodged and wove and forced the huge vessel to perform acrobatics that were definitely not covered under the standard operating procedures manual. Apparently if they survived this she was going to have to revise that manual just a bit... like, by a few pages.

Fiona reversed the polarity on the deflectors again and rerouted some of the mains to give the shields extra oomph. "Suck on thet ye great pirate scumdog!" she growled as the ship screeched, the duotronic systems sparking as short circuits arced and sizzled all around her.. "Hold together... hold together darlin'!" she coaxed and cajoled the engines.

The great ship shuddered once more at the shift, but the smooth hand at the helm turned the velocity into potential, and rather than fighting her inertia Selune used it to slingshot the Bonne Chance around the asteroid carrier to reorient her, slowing the engines once they were clear of the impact field.

And quite an impact it was.

The first few larger asteroids were the expected show, but in fact it was the millions of micrometeors impacting the asteroid's shields all at once that produced the most visually satisfying effect, as the shields sparked and scintillated, being steadily worn down by the millions of tiny individual impacts before the larger asteroids tumbled in. The shields held briefly, but then the great boulders of space began crashing into the carrier, demolishing the outer facing and careening off of the surface, destroying the emplacements and engines until the great body of the mobile base actually cracked in half, then those pieces began breaking up as well, as more and more debris continued to pound it.

The explosions were quite beautiful if you were in a position to appreciate them.. and Selune had made sure that the Bonne Chance had a ringside seat to do just that.

Charybdis had assumed the maneuver would have a profound effect, but she hadn't quite anticipated anything this spectacular. She made a note to be sure to file this with Starfleet Command... while this was not something to try every day, it was certainly effective.

Walking over to the helm, she placed her hand gently on the Caitan lieutenant's shoulder. "Good work, Lieutenant. No... amazing work. You just saved the ship... that was some outstanding piloting. Good to have you on the bridge."

Waving an arm at the clearly insane Vulcan, Selune let herself slowly sink onto her console as the tension flooded out of her, "Do you treat everyone like this on their first day?" she inquired weakly.

"Only the truly great ones," Charybdis replied, patting Selune's shoulder with a smile.

The adrenaline was beginning to fade, and the curvaceous commander sat down heavily in the captain's chair with a sigh then flipped the switch to Engineering. "Lieutenant Fiona McCray, report," she said with a grin, expecting a flood of harsh words and reprimands for what she had just put the Chief Engineer's baby through.

What she got was silence.

The eyebrow raised, then she flipped the switch again. "Engineering, respond!"

More silence... and a pit grew cold in her stomach.

"Lieutenant Selune, you have the conn, keep us a safe distance from that carrier and alert me if any survivors hail us. Comm, keep channels open for escape pod beacons. Science, track all debris and maintain scans." Then she was in the turbolift with the doors closing, headed for Engineering.

"Wa... wait, what!?" Selune managed to stammer in near panic after Charybdis, coming half to her feet before a soft feminine voice chimed from her console, "Warning. Collision alert," forcing her back, flailing at the console and keeping the ship out of harm's way.

Selune took a long deep breath, carefully brushing away the hair that had drifted over face and looked around the bridge. Matching the stares of the crew before raising an eyebrow in what she assumed would be an impressive expression... it looked impressive on the Vulcan, after all.

"Well? Carry on," she stated casually, trying to ignore the things she couldn't help and keep the ship from further harm.

As the turbolift doors opened Charybdis could hear chaos in Main Engineering, and she moved with a purpose. Smoke filled the air as well as klaxons, and everywhere she looked red shirted engineers were diligently working, keeping the great ship moving and repairing what she had done to her.

Fiona... Fiona would have been manning the shields or the deflectors... shields, because once the polarities were reversed she could have routed that control through the shields. But the auxiliary controls would not have been sufficient... she would have been working manually, in the access tubes amongst the energizers. She shouldered past the engineers, moving amongst them to make her way to the shield housing access tubes... which were heavily damaged.

Her heart was racing, but she calmed herself. Panic would serve no one. If she had thought of it before she had left the bridge she could have used the sensors to pinpoint the engineer... but hindsight would not help her now. Instead she reached out with her mind, as Siivas had taught her... this was her friend, she knew her well, and she could find her.

Then she touched the mind of the diminutive engineer... and panicked.

A little known fact aboard the BonneChance was that the science officer possessed rather inordinate strength for her frame... quite considerably beyond human, in fact. In theory this was because she came from a higher gravity planet, but in truth it was because, quite simply, she had been built that way. It was not common knowledge because she took pains never to demonstrate physical strength beyond human norms most of the time, displaying her exceptional strength only when necessary, and even then only to whatever degree the situation called for. In this case, however, there was considerable debris blocking her path to her friend... and there was no caution to be had in her mind.

The engineers were aware of the situation and they were moving cutting torches and lifting equipment to apply to the task, but Charybdis had no time for such delicate measures. Aluminum bent and shrieked in her bare hands, heavy pipes and conduits hurled aside like children's toys and she powered through the wreckage in the engine room like a woman possessed. The engineers formed up in units behind her, efficiently moving debris to keep it out of the way once she had cleared it until she managed to gain access to the tube... and then her breath caught at the sight that awaited her.

The pathetically small frame of the ship's engineer was halfway wedged beneath a pile of rubble. Her uniform was a shade or two darker than the standard duty red. The shouts and sounds of shifting debris caused the woman to stir just enough to let them know that she was still alive. Fiona coughed once, a frighteningly liquid sound and her eyes opened the barest of slits. "Did we get him?" she asked, but didn't wait long enough for Char to answer before she slipped back under.

The overwhelming instinct was to move her, to get her out of there and out of harm's way, but Starfleet training told her better. And as angry at herself as she was, she was still in command and her friend's life was her responsibility. Passion had gotten her here- intelligence would save the engineer's life. Balance, as Siivas reminded her, was the key. "Get me a communicator," Charybdis shouted over her shoulder, and she clutched the small bloody hand to her chest.

"Yeah... we got him. We got him pretty darn good. You hold on now, Fiona... I'm gonna get you out of here, I swear. You just stay with me." The engineers passed a communicator down the line to her in short order, and she flipped it open then tuned it in.

"Lieutenant Charybdis to transporter room. Lock on to my signal, two to beam."

The transporter chief came online, his voice sounding slightly confused. "You want me to beam you here, ma'am?"

"Unless you can beam us directly to sickbay, then yes, Chief, that is exactly what I want you to do. This is an emergency, and I understand that this is unconventional, but I accept full authority for this action." She changed the channel and spoke again. "Sickbay, prepare for an emergency trauma case, triage priority one."

With a twist of the dial Charybdis changed frequencies again. Tears were filling her eyes and she bit her lip. She was an officer and she was in command, she was not going to fall apart. Now was not the time. "Transporter room, energize."

The familiar effect of the transporters shimmered about them, and then they reappeared in Sickbay in the main entry. She could see the damage to the tiny form more clearly now, and blood immediately began pooling from beneath her. Before she could move, Xian and one of the Sulamids were there with a grav stretcher, loading up and immobilizing the Engineer to hustle her to surgery.

There was nothing more Charybdis could do here... she looked down at the bloodstained smear on her uniform from the hand of her friend and folded her lips in as her brows knitted together... now was not the time. The Sickbay team were professionals... while she desperately wished that Siivas was here, he had put together his medical team personally, and she knew firsthand they would do everything in their power to save her friend's life.

She could do nothing more here. She was in command. and there were duties to attend to.

Flipping open the communicator as she moved, she bypassed more wounded as their shipmates helped them get to Sickbay. "Charybdis to transporter room... that was outstanding work, Chief."

The enthusiastic reply from the transporter chief clearly showed his excitement. "I never thought of doing that, picking up a transport like that from one location and just holding the patterns in the buffer and reorienting it somewhere else within range, but it worked..." He went on, but Charybdis wasn't listening, and idly snapped the communicator shut. She would discuss this with the excitable technician later, and they would file a report that could change Starfleet policy. For now, she had work to do.

The turbolift took her back to the Bridge, where she walked on to expectant eyes all around. She took a deep breath and straightened up, tugging downthe hem of her uniform skirt then smoothing back her hair. "Chief Engineer McCray was wounded, as were many of the Engineering section... but Sickbay is working on them, and Engineering is doing their jobs. We have ours to do as well, people."

With slow deliberate steps Charybdis walked to the Captain's chair... she stroked the arms of it with her fingertips and very, very much wished Patrick were here. But he was not... his ship and his crew were her responsibility right now. She moved around to the front of the command chair and sat down slowly, truly feeling the weight of it for the first time, as she exhaled slowly.

"Stand down to yellow alert. Ensign Sato, I need scans of that asteroid- if there are pockets of atmosphere with survivors, I need to know before they run out. Comm, I need to know if any escape craft made a getaway, and if so I need to know any and all transmissions in the area. I need damage reports from all decks and repair estimate times. I need injury and casualty reports from all decks. Helm, I need an intercept course laid in for the rendezvous point with Shuttlecraft Odin near Falchion Depot and a projected time estimate."

When this was over, Char would allow herself to feel it, to feel it all, the triumphs and the tragedies, her own perceived failure and her sorrow over her friend. She had followed procedure, she had done everything right according to the book. But the ship had been damaged, her crew injured and her friend was... she pushed that thought aside. Right now there were tasks and duties before her, and there were over four hundred crewmen on board who were trusting her to make the right decisions, and to chart the right course.

Lieutenant Charybdis absolutely refused to fail them ever again.

 

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