LtCmdr Jovenan – Could you guys stop warming up to each other, we need something cold to scare off these creatures.
Jovenan
((Corridor near engineering, Deck 4, USS Karnack))
Light poured into the corridor through the rupture in the wall. Dust glittered as it floated through the beam of sunshine, reflecting it. To Jovenan, it looked a lot like the oculus of the Garden Cave, except here it felt wrong. Here there was a clash between the two world, the one outside, with the sky arching far above and the land to run across until exhaustion, and the one inside, with small rooms, confinement, limits… and safety. The breach introduced not just a rupture to the hull, but to the border where those realities met. It would kill them if they didn’t fix it. The question was, how?
Jovenan: We might not have much usable material around here unless we start ripping the bulkheads apart. There shouldn’t be any shuttlecraft here, and we have already scattered many of the escape pods around the planet.
Vitor seemed to wince. He could find humour in almost any situation, but his attitude grew visibly more serious when the topic had returned to their survival. Although she loved how he could lift her spirits up, she also knew that their continued existence wasn’t a matter of her mood, and they were going to need all their focus and effort to this job.
Silveira: We won’t have enough bulkheads to do it anyway.
Storm: Is there any way that we can just focus our attention on the smallest part of the ship possible and keep everyone in that area? It would give us less space to cover.
Bancroft: ::nodding:: An Alamo, if you will – that’s a good idea. Main Engineering is more than large enough to hold all of us. Plus, we’ll save quite a bit of energy only running life support in that area.
Right. They could salvage scrap metal from the unnecessary parts of the ship and leave the breaches in those sections bleeding. She looked through the rupture again, to the sky where the sun was steadily making its journey towards the horizon. They could have squeezed through the hole if they had wanted to, but so could almost anything else. Something coming from the outside would meet their team, and they would have little warning. Pursing her lips and knitting her eyebrows, the image of the predator more than a week ago flashed in her mind. They still couldn’t fight them – or they could, but they wouldn’t win.
Jovenan: We discovered that the, um, Dark Things don’t like cold water, but I’m not sure how that would be useful against them here. Did anyone else happen to figure out how to keep them away or fight them?
Silveira: Not really, we basically avoided them.
Jovenan felt both relief and disappointment. She was happy that Vitor had managed to stay out of some of the danger, but on the other hand, he might have learnt something that would help them now. She turned towards Lt Storm, hoping that her team might have figured out more.
Storm: Our group discovered two things. They are attracted to heat, and they disrupt telepathy.
Jovenan nodded slowly. The attraction to heat explained why the predator in the Waterfall Cavern had enjoyed their campfire so much – and why her attempt to scare it off with a flaming ball of moss had failed so spectacularly. The ability to disrupt telepathy didn’t have much influence on her, but remembering the chaos among the Da’al and their Betazoid crewmembers when the chemical compound had confused their senses, she knew how dangerous it could be. The image of Vitor impaled with a sword still made her awful.
Storm: They also - at least during the night - can cause telepaths a lot of pain. Brexis and I are your early warning systems, which is probably one of the reasons that I was assigned to this task.
Bancroft: So what you’re telling us is we’ve got ourselves our very own Starfleet-issued canary?
Shooting a glance at Bancroft, Jovenan saw him wipe off the grin from his face and turn away from Lt Storm.
Bancroft: That– that wasn’t funny, sorry. ::clearing his throat:: We have advance warning, and we know they hate the cold – how do we leverage that?
Vitor stepped to look through the breach, and Jovenan gave him space. Having an advance warning of the predators was an advantage, but for as long as they didn’t have the means to do anything with the time it would give them, it wasn’t worth much. Right now, their only available option was running, and Jovenan wasn’t going to put her bets on them being able to outrun the predators.
Silveira: If we had some way to find a hose or something to dretch them that would solve that problem.
Storm: Oh, we also discovered that they only seemed to hunt at night. We even saw one during the day, and it surprisingly didn’t charge us.
Although they didn’t know the part of the day when they first encountered the Dark Thing, Jovenan was rather certain that it was in the night, or at least late in the day. Meanwhile, when they travelled to the Garden Cave, it happened to be a sunny day outside. So far, their experiences supported the discoveries of Lt Storm’s team.
Bancroft: ::pointing down the corridor:: By the look of it, our light’s going the wrong direction.
Jovenan: We might have some hours before dark. If the Captain is right and they can’t climb, we should probably focus on the lower decks first and leave the upper parts of the ship for when they are the most active.
Silveira: And for the next problem ::He pointed to the breach.:: Do we haul the bulkheads around to each breach?
Lt Storm stepped back and seemed to evaluate the state of the corridor. Further down, Jovenan noticed a few other light beam cross the otherwise dark space.
Storm: We’ve got four large gashes in this small area, but there are dozens of smaller holes. For the larger ones, we may need to use bulkheads or portions of them, but for the smaller ones, if we could find something more fitting to the size or easily welded into place, that might be better.
Bancroft: ::nodding:: Some of these are small enough that pressurization alone should hold something sufficiently stiff against the bulkhead.
Right. Jovenan remembered that they had touched on the subject of hull breaches during the Starship Emergencies course in the Academy, but none of the teammates were engineers nor technicians, unless one of them happened to have a history she didn’t know. Her own job was probably as far removed from the emergency repair teams as one could be, but she, too, realised that the pressure was working on their side.
Jovenan: For the larger holes, we might need to enforce the joints with welding if possible. Lieutenant, you mentioned–
She was cut off by Vitor wincing and stepping away from the rupture. It was rather subtle, not shouting in pain or in surprise, but she could tell that something was wrong. He wouldn’t have recoiled for nothing. Worry flashed in her eyes.
Silveira: Sorry… You were saying…
Reaching out to help him, Lt Storm extended her hand but stopped before touching him. The hand was left hovering in the air before she withdrew.
Storm: Sorry. Habit.
Her eyebrows lowered, Jovenan measured the Lieutenant for a moment. She didn’t know what that had been about, but it could probably wait for another day. Instead, she turned back to Vitor, and to the Doctor who could probably help him more than she could. That said, she had now formed her own hypothesis, which she feared to give much focus: it transformed…
Bancroft: Commander Silveira, sir – ::softening his tone, smiling:: Let me give you a quick once-over. I know it’s probably nothing, but it’ll make your doctor sleep better tonight, alright?
Jovenan followed on the side as Bancroft checked on Vitor with whatever limited means he had. She hated that she was so helpless with the pain her boyfriend was going through and would probably have to just bare until they’d reach a functional hospital – if even then. She might have been wrong with her hypothesis, she hoped she was, but there was no way knowing if the changes were reversible. It might have been her who had doomed her love and her colleagues by allowing them to use the Callisian transporter. Please, don’t be that.
Jovenan: ::softly to Vitor:: Are you able to continue?
She tried to judge his expression to see if he was still in pain. However the case, the mission needed to go on, and Lt Storm addressed Bancroft.
Storm: If you were a surgeon operating on a person in a similar state to this ship, how would you go about saving them?
Bancroft: ::ticking his fingers:: Intensive care. A team of specialists. Rooms full of equipment. ::idly:: And probably a religious representative, if they were a person of faith. ::beat:: Out here? Field medicine’s ugly. You don’t fix everything – you just try and stop the dying. Keep as much blood on the inside as possible. Protect the airway. Stabilize until you can get them to advanced care.
Jovenan tried not to grimace, but despite her visceral reaction, she knew he was right. Lose a leg to save the body, it was a perfectly reasonable sacrifice. Or in this case, it was better to lose an arm, since they needed their legs for running.
Silveira: Response
Storm: So, how would we best replicate that here?
Bancroft: Prioritize the big breaches first – the structural hemorrhages. Mid-sized ones? Flesh wounds. Patch them just enough to hold pressure. Anything stiff enough ought to do. The little ones? Those are your capillary bleeders. Annoying and messy, but not fatal. If we’re short on materials, we accept some loss there.
Jovenan: Fair. Minor ruptures can’t leak out the atmosphere anywhere as fast as the big ones, so we might even make it to the space without patching them. After that, it’s a question of how far we need to go before being picked up.
Silveira: Response
Gesturing to Bancroft, Lt Storm turned to Jovenan.
Storm: Feasible? Or, no?
Bancroft: I’m spectacularly unqualified to comment on starship engineering. But on a patient? ::beat:: Hard, but absolutely feasible.
Jovenan turned to Vitor. Besides being her boyfriend and providing her comfort and support just by being there with her, he was also her fellow Lt Commander and a Department Head. Neither of them was the superior to the other, so she wouldn’t be the one to make the decisions alone. After leading a few teams on her own, sharing the responsibility of command was a relief.
Jovenan: I don’t think we have any options. The Doctor’s, um, triage-style order of priorities is the way to go in my opinion. It might not be feasible, but it’s the best we can do, and if that’s not enough, then… ::shrugs::
Silveira: Response
There it was. They had a plan now. The light beams continued to cut through the corridor, ever changing where they landed on the floor or in the opposite wall, as the planet continued to roll along its axis. It might have been possible to come up with a better approach to their tasks, Jovenan wasn’t sure, but even if there was, they didn’t have the time to consider the alternatives and acquire the data needed for a truly informed decision.
Bancroft opened a panel indicating that it had emergency resources within, and soon he was handing each of them chemlights. She could notice the faint, unhappy smile that he shot to her in an apology. If the lantern colouring the caves with their sickly green hue was enough tfo trigger her phobias, the same happening in the dark, narrow, familiar yet changed, twisted, damaged starship corridors were going to be breaking her completely. Her mind was already struggling, but she just accepted the object and nodded.
Bancroft: We’re rapidly losing light – we’ll need these to get anything accomplished before too long.
Jovenan: Let’s not waste time. I would imagine this corridor is the best place to start, what do you think?
Silveira/Storm: Response
Bancroft was already crouching to lift up a panel that had fallen off, so Jovenan set out to look for something among the clutter that they could use as wedges. They were, luckily, working against the pressure, so they could probably get away without beams to press against the plates. Then again, they were likely going to return to this section after all other parts of the ship, due to the proximity engineering, and if they by some miracle had more time in their hands, they could reinforce their most important fixes. She picked small triangular pieces of Cordry rocks from the floor – would that suffice?
Bancroft: ::whispering:: Listen. ::cocking his head toward the entrance to Main Engineering:: Do you hear that?
Jovenan stopped. She knew better than to ignore anyone, let alone Bancroft, if they heard something out of the ordinary while on this planet. At first, she didn’t know what they were listening for, but then she picked it up as well: skittering, something hard and sharp hitting the metal. Her heart was already racing.
Jovenan: ::whisper:: Is that one of ours?
Silveira/Storm: Response
Then, the howl came through. Just as terrifying, just as powerful as she had first heard it, shaking her from within, vibrating in her bones. It carried no words, but its message was clear; it spoke of lethality, of superiority, of the inevitability of death. Jovenan found herself unable to move or think until the long, alien roar paused, and she noticed that Bancroft was caring for Storm.
Bancroft: Alex! ::turning towards Jovenan and Silveira:: They're here! We need to find something – anything – that’s cold, quickly!
Jovenan’s eyes darted across the corridor, from the floor to the ceiling and to both walls. There was nothing that clearly shouted “cold”, she would have imagined that even the metal bulkheads were going to be lukewarm at best compared to the freezing pool at the bottom of the Waterfall Cavern. It was a dead starship that had been lying on the ground of a warm region, there was nothing cold in here. They didn’t have many options to fight it off; they had to run.
Jovenan: Run! Get to the Jefferies tubes, they probably can’t get in!
Silveira/Storm/Bancroft: Response
They opened an access hatch, and Jovenan crawled in. The darkness inside the Jefferies tube was even more oppressive than in the corridors, as there were not even breaches on the sides to let the light in. Claustrophobia hit her worse than perhaps ever before, as the tight confinements were stopping her from fulfilling any desire to stand up and run away.
Jovenan: Close it, lock it! We can’t help anyone by running headlong towards the predators!
Silveira/Storm/Bancroft: Response
Jovenan: Could we try to lure them in somewhere and lock them in? The doors and bulkheads would surely stop them or at least slow them down.
Silveira/Storm/Bancroft: Response
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Lieutenant Commander Jovenan
Chief Science Officer
USS Artemis-A
E239911J11