(PNPC) Cadet George Marshall - Ship in Chaos

[Jo Marshall]

(( OOC: Just throwing Jo's brother's reaction to the news into the fray, although he's not in a position to do anything about it like everyone else!))

(( Cadet Quarters, Starfleet Academy ))

:: The groaning of metal and gears, the sound of screaming and flames as the hull of the USS Gorkon ripped in two, spurting out bodies in all directions from a hull fissure the size of a planetary mining vessel, a loud klaxon blaring...::

:: Shooting up with a start, George whacked his forehead off the steel beams of the bunk above his and was forced back down onto his bed with a loud thump.::

:: It took a few moments for him to come around, groaning and rubbing his forehead with the palm of his hand, only to register he had been dreaming and that his alarm clock was happily now starting to regale him with the Federation News, as though he hadn’t heard enough of it already. A sleepy hand reached out for the clock and slapped the off command with practised ease.::

:: George rubbed his eyes as he sat up carefully on his bunk, his eyes sticking together from a line of many broken nights’ sleep. His entire body was tired, and he felt it in his toes. In short, he was weary down to his bones. Dragging himself up off the bunk he stretched toward the ceiling, ironing out some of the kinks in his back, stumbled into the bathroom and looked at his unshaven face in the mirror.::

:: Two weeks had gone by and not a word from Jo, his older sister.::

:: Usually that wouldn’t have been a problem; they had gone weeks before, when Jo was on training or George had a particular grueling test to take, but she wouldn’t have gone out on a mission with her new vessel without informing her youngest brother. It was completely unlike her to not get in touch with anybody in their family. None of her friends had been in contact with her, their mother and father hadn’t heard anything, and Orson, their oldest sibling, was unusually tight lipped about the whole thing.::

:: His dark eyes stared at themselves for a long moment, searching for something, though even he wasn’t sure what that was. Perhaps a reason for this mess. Perhaps a logical conclusion he could come to. Perhaps a sliver of hope.::

:: He leant on the edge of the sink and started the tap running, running his hand under the lukewarm water, trying to remember what he was supposed to be doing. He had been barely sleeping, crawling onto his bunk as late as possible in the hopes that he would receive some form of communication from the Gorkon. It seemed he wasn’t the only one with hopes set on that either.::

:: The latest report from Starfleet had been to call off the search for the ship and the crew. All hands were to be considered MIA, or KIA if one were to skip a few months forward to the inevitable conclusion, and that meant Jo was gone.::

:: Which, in George’s universe, was never going to happen. He wouldn’t let it.::

:: He turned off the tap, not bothering to wash his face and pulled at the uniform jacket on his upper body, unzipping it, balling it up in his hands and throwing it toward the recycle pod. He had become used to sleeping in them now, used to the scratchy feeling in the morning and still couldn’t find it in his weariness to undress before going to bed. What was the point? He might have to get up at a moment’s notice.::

:: He tugged off his boots, every inch of his tired soul ready to crawl back into the bed he had just emerged from, fully ready to quit his commission in Starfleet and go home, back to Volan III, back to his mother and father, to be with people he knew would understand. Finally clothes free, he turned on the sonic shower and stepped underneath the sound waves emanating from the shower head, feeling every bit as tired as he was before.::

:: And for the first time since reading the call off notice the night before, George started to cry.::

As simmed by

Ensign Jocelyn Marshall

Operations Officer

USS Gorkon

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