[End Act Two] Lieutenant JG Roy Bancroft - Tenuous Hope
Carter Schimpff
(( Faraday Room, Garden Cave, Inside the Cliffs – Callis I ))
Jovenan: We don’t have that much brown mush, so the trade is off. Well, I’m not sure if we can accomplish anything else by playing the guessing game. I’d say we get back outside and rest, I’m not going to be sleeping with these loud… ::pause, look on the console:: Was that icon always blue?
Roy’s head whipped around to find that Jovenan was right – one of the icons, previously gold, was indeed now blue.
He knew what blue meant, but didn’t react. Didn’t trust it.
Nothing on this planet had rewarded hope. Every flicker of it – aside from the garden outside – had been a mere trick of light, every sound in the dark yet another thing with teeth and hunger.
His mind braced automatically for disappointment.
Someone pressed the icon, and a screen flickered.
Static crawled across it, furious ants slowly disappearing to reveal an image. An image… in color.
His mind dismissed it instantly. It was just a trick – the same live feed of the room they were in, but this time in color. The cruelty of the assumption made perfect sense to him.
But, he realized, the figures on the screen… were all wrong.
There were too many of them. Different uniforms. Different stances.
Someone on the other side stepped closer to whatever passed for a console – nobody in their own room had moved.
Roy’s world narrowed to a pinpoint, and Roy felt his heart slam once – hard – against his sternum.
It was Commander Munro – really Commander Munro this time. Behind her he could make out Commander Silveira, sporting a beard rivaling his own, along with Doctor Jaran, a young woman in science blue Roy had never met before, and Imril.
The realization didn’t arrive gently. It hit him like a sudden change in altitude – the violent rush of air back into lungs that had been braced for cold vacuum.
For days – God, or had it been weeks now? – he hadn’t allowed himself to picture something like this. Not really. He’d compartmentalized it, sealed it off behind layers of duty and triage and survival checklists. Because imagining the alternative had been unbearable.
But here it was. Proof. They weren’t the last four.
The demise of the Karnack hadn’t taken everyone.
His fingers curled into the edge of a nearby table and he felt them tremble. He tried to steady them and failed.
Something broke loose in his chest.
It wasn’t a sob. Not quite.
But the sound that tore up out of him was dangerously close – a sharp, strangled inhale that caught halfway, like his body had mistaken relief for grief and didn’t know which one to commit to.
He swallowed hard, jaw tightening, moisture pricking at the corners of his grit-streaked eyes.
When he finally spoke, his voice was rough. Honest in a way that he didn’t often allow.
Bancroft: We’re not alone.
K’Wara: Jo, it’s-
Jovenan: It’s them! Can we talk to them? Do we have…
Speakers hidden somewhere in their room crackled, then–
Munro: =/\= Jovenan! Is that you?! =/\=
The voice wasn’t clear. It buzzed through interference, flattened by alien circuitry and thin speakers that had no business carrying Starfleet authority.
But it was hers.
Roy felt it before he processed it.
A sharp prickle flared at the base of his skull, just behind his right ear – that strange, electric place where adrenaline lives – and raced down his spine in a clean, icy line.
Jovenan: =/\= Yes! Yes, Commander, I am! It’s so good to see you! Can you hear me? =/\=
Munro: =/\= :: elated :: We can hear you?! I think we're in some kind of … =/\=
Jovenan: =/\= We can see you. The room you’re in is quite similar to the one we have here. ::pause, looks to the console:: We also have several symbols on the screen. We’ve figured the triangles reference to your health status, but there are also some prominent semicircles. No idea what they mean. =/\=
Munro: =/\= I think I know what they mean… if I'm right this is some kind of crude transportation network. =/\=
Jovenan made an aside to K’Wara.
Jovenan: Do you have any idea what she is talking about?
K’Wara: Rudimentary transporters. ::looks down at the console:: Not free transporters, but curated travel between point A and B. That may be why the sensors are registering lifesigns… ::looks at them:: It may be a way to differentiate between those that shouldn’t be transported, and those that should.
K’Wara: We have no clue how to work it though. And considering that we don’t know how it’s powered-
Bancroft: -or whether it’s set to filter out and remove non-Callisian DNA…
Bergmen: We are Starfleet. We'll figure it out.
No one moved.
Roy’s eyes stayed locked on the flickering image, as if looking away might cause it to vanish. They had only just proven they weren’t alone. It seemed no one – at least on their end – was eager to gamble that away.
Jovenan: =/\= You might be right, Commander. But we can’t take the risk using it on people, the probability of incomplete or corrupted transportation is too great. We could try it out with objects, first… is everything alright in there? =/\=
Munro turned, conferring with her team. The words dissolved into static.
But beneath the interference–
Roy heard it.
A sound he remembered far too well. A sound he’d likely never forget.
His stomach dropped to the floor.
No. Not now. Not like this.
Munro faced the screen again, and whatever deliberation may have existed moments before was gone.
Munro: =/\= Commander, we're ready. Do what you need to do. =/\=
Jovenan: Okay. Let’s push some buttons and hope something happens.
K’Wara: Right. Roy, help me: we need to find the actual transporter technology. It must be physically present here somewhere, if Ava was able to reach that conclusion, just hidden. We need to make sure they don’t appear fused with a gardening shovel kept in a wrong place. Ollie, you’ve had the best luck with these pictograms, get on that interface and find the correct button.
Bancroft: ::terse:: Yep.
He was moving before the word finished leaving his mouth.
Roy tore into the room like a man searching for an artery to clamp. Panels were yanked aside. Stone shelves scraped against the floor. He ran his hands along walls, pressing, knocking, listening for hollow space beneath alien masonry.
He refused to let this miracle end in a smear of misplaced atoms.
Bergmen: ::whispers:: Ok, Ollie… This one did lead to nothing… What this one… ::loud:: Yes, yes… YES!
The first crack of sound hit like a detonation.
Roy flinched instinctively, shoulders tensing as the air itself seemed to split open. It wasn’t a single thunderclap – it was sustained. A rolling, bone-deep concussion that swallowed the cave whole and vibrated through his teeth.
The lights came next.
Not from the ceiling. Not from the console.
From the floor.
From the space they had just cleared.
A white-hot bloom began bleeding outward from behind the jagged edge of broken furniture – light so intense Roy had to squint against it. The air thickened, metallic and sharp, ozone burning the back of his throat.
He started to move, but K’Wara was already there, hurling the desk aside, wood grinding against stone as the sound intensified, the glow coalescing into something structured.
For one impossible heartbeat, it looked wrong.
Distorted. Warped. A suggestion of a body stretched through static.
Roy’s pulse hammered.
Don’t you dare.
The shape shuddered–
–and then resolved.
Boots.
Legs.
Uniform fabric snapping into definition.
A shoulder.
A face.
Solid.
Breathing.
They were here.
Roy didn’t realize he’d stopped breathing until the transport hum collapsed inward on itself and the cave fell abruptly, violently quiet.
Alive.
End Act 2 for Bancroft
===
Lieutenant JG Roy Bancroft
Medical Officer
USS Artemis-A
A240205RB1