Lieutenant JG Roy Bancroft - What's in the box?!
Carter Schimpff
(( Exterior Afalqi Project Complex – Meranuge IV ))
Tarsan: ::loudly:: Fire in the hole! Take cover!
Roy required no further persuasion. He dropped behind the low wall that had already done its level best to disintegrate around him – its surface cratered and flaked where the turret’s previous volleys had chewed at it like an impatient animal – and assumed the posture of a man who had, at some point in his training, been told how to survive an explosion and had committed it to memory with the same grim sincerity as anatomy.
Eyes shut. Ears sealed with his fingers. Jaw slack, mouth open to spare the delicate architecture within.
The blast came not only as a sound but as terrific pressure – an abrupt, concussive insistence that shoved against his ribs and teeth and spine all at once.
He counted, because that was what one did when waiting to discover if the world had decided to continue.
One. Two. Three.
Silence returned in fragments. Dust drifted. Something metallic clattered once, then stilled.
Roy opened his eyes and leaned just far enough past the edge of his cover to confirm what his mind already suspected.
The turret was down.
Tarsan: Turret down! But it’s still live, be careful!
Roy watched as the new engineer – fearless, or perhaps simply too new to appreciate the distinction – approached the ruined mechanism with a kind of earnest optimism that Roy associated primarily with first-year cadets and particularly confident golden retrievers.
If it was going to fire again, Roy reasoned, it would almost certainly select the most narratively appropriate target – an eager Ensign.
He pivoted in the opposite direction.
The Da’al security officer lay where she had fallen, her form twisted at an angle that suggested the turret had not been content with a single point of entry. Roy was already moving by the time he registered the extent of the damage, his tricorder in hand, its display blooming with data as it swept her.
Commander Munro arrived just as he dropped to one knee beside the patient.
Munro: :: to the security officer :: Get help! Medical personnel! Now! :: to Roy :: Can we move her?
He didn’t answer immediately. Not out of hesitation – out of necessity.
Roy’s attention narrowed, the world constricting to the small, brutal geography of the wound. The tricorder’s readouts scrolled in rapid succession: erratic cardiac rhythm, internal hemorrhaging, compromised pulmonary function. The energy signature of the weapon still clung to the tissue, a residual interference that made clean assessment difficult.
He snapped the tricorder closed with a practiced motion, set it aside, and reached for his kit.
A hypospray hissed softly as he loaded it – coagulant first, broad-spectrum stabilizer second. His hands moved with quiet precision.
Bancroft: ::to Munro:: Iffy, but there isn’t an option. ::activating the hypospray:: I can stabilize her here, but if she doesn’t get to a surgical center soon…
He let the sentence fall away, unfinished.
There were some conclusions that did not benefit from additional articulation.
The first injection reduced the external bleeding to something more negotiable. The second chased her blood pressure back from the edge with stubborn insistence. Roy followed with a dermal regenerator, sealing what he could – though closure and repair were two very different things – while his other hand worked to maintain airway alignment, adjusting her position just enough to ease the strain on her lungs without exacerbating the trauma.
Stay with me, he willed her silently.
He monitored the readouts as he worked, watching for the small, incremental victories that defined field medicine: a steadier rhythm, a less precipitous drop, a body that had not yet decided to surrender.
By the time the stretcher team arrived, she was no longer actively dying.
Which, in this context, qualified as success.
Tarsan: It’s offline, we’re good! I’m uh.. Sixty percent sure that there’s no booby traps.
Munro: Considering it's not trying to put some holes in me right now. I'll consider that a win. But let's just run a scan to make sure, ensign?
Roy rose only after ensuring the patient was properly secured, his gaze lingering a fraction longer than necessary as she was lifted and carried away. Then, and only then, did he retrieve his tricorder and make his way back toward Munro and Tarsan.
Bancroft: ::to Tarsan, pointing at the turret:: And you’re sure that thing has no further homicidal tendencies?
Tarsan: Ninety-five percent sure. How’s that security officer doing, Doctor?
Roy’s expression tightened – just slightly – as he lowered his voice.
Bancroft: Alive, but barely. If they get her to a surgical center quickly, she’s got a decent shot at making it. ::gesturing at the turret:: Whatever that thing is, it’s nasty. Not clean – nothing like one of our phasers.
His eyes tracked the stretcher as it disappeared from view, and for a moment the scene fractured – overlapping with other places, other patients, other versions of the same looping calculation: what was done, what could have been done, what would be done differently next time.
The two remaining Da’al security personnel approached, their posture a study in contrasts Roy found difficult to ignore. Shoulders slumped. Movements hesitant. Their attention drifted rather than fixed.
They were, in every measurable sense, security officers.
They simply did not resemble any Roy had ever known or trusted with his life – Nat, Alex, Commander Silveira.
Munro drew a steadying breath and addressed them.
Munro: Good job, Roy. If she survives, it's because of you :: to Tarsan :: And you, Tarsan. Great work, Ensign. We do have to work on that throw though. That wrist movement :: tsk tsk :: You need to bend it more.
The praise landed in a place Roy did not often permit such things to settle. It was unusual to get an attaboy from either of the Artemis command staff – something he was no stranger to from his own upbringing – which meant when you did receive one, you knew damn well you’d earned it.
It was also – immediately and reflexively – contested.
If only I’d gotten to her sooner.
If only I’d been faster.
If only–
The thought began to spool, familiar and insistent, before Munro’s laughter cut across it like a well-placed incision.
He allowed himself the ghost of a smile.
Bancroft: ::sly aside:: Do not let her challenge you to a throwing competition. ::beat:: Or any competition, for that matter.
Tarsan: Response
Munro turned to regard one of the two Da’al security guards.
Munro: :: curious :: What are these? Is there anything you can tell us?
The guard fidgeted with his uniform, clearly unused to being asked questions of any sort – let alone ones of consequence.
Da'al Security: :: shrugs :: Dilithium storage? I don't know. That's the engineers responsibility. We don't interfere, that's not our orders.
Roy watched the brief exchange of glances between them – small, uncertain, and laden with something that might have been ignorance, or might have been caution.
Munro exhaled and raised her tricorder, scanning the turret. Surprise flickered across her features as she angled the display toward them.
Bancroft: Residual hadrons and ions? That’s a very distinct signature.
Tarsan: Response
Munro: Klingons? :: she shook her head :: Ever known a Klingon to hide the spoils of their battles? Steal ships without claiming glory? Something doesn't feel right about that. Lets try and find that jamming device.
Roy, as if to test the hypothesis personally, swept his gaze across the ground – and, with exaggerated deliberation, drew in three sharp breaths through his nose.
Bancroft: Klingons aren’t generally known for subtlety, no. No blood. No scattered limbs. No lingering suggestion that personal hygiene is a theoretical construct. The scan may say Klingon… but the scene here does not.
Tarsan: Response
Munro: The turret was the jamming device? The turret we just destroyed?
Roy nudged the charred remains with the toe of his boot. A fragment broke free and clinked to the ground with a soft, accusatory sound.
Bancroft: In our defense, ma’am, it did try to destroy us first.
Tarsan/Munro: Response
Bancroft: Gavrin, you can put that back together, right? I mean the tales about Starfleet engineers are… legendary. ::dryly:: You’ve got five minutes.
Was that... a bead of sweat, distinct from those from the ambient heat they were all enduring, tracing a careful path down Tarsan’s temple?
Roy chose not to acknowledge it.
Generosity, in its way.
Tarsan/Munro: Response
He lifted one shoulder in a mild shrug, already shifting his attention.
If the turret – and whatever secrets it had once held – was temporarily beyond them, then there remained the matter of the crates. The ones dismissed with a shrug by the Da’al security guard. The ones that, in Roy’s experience, tended to contain precisely the sort of thing one ought not dismiss.
He turned, gesturing toward them with a faint, knowing tilt of his head.
Bancroft: Well, if the turret’s out of the question – for now, anyway – I suppose it’s time for us to find out… ::gesturing at the storage crates:: what’s in the box?
Tarsan/Munro: Response
TAG/TBC!
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Lieutenant JG Roy Bancroft
Assistant Chief Medical Officer
USS Artemis-A
A240205RB1