Lt. JG Natasha Cole - One Heartbeat at a Time
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Natasha Schell
Feb 20, 2026, 11:33:41 PM (15 hours ago) Feb 20
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(( Karnack Engineering - Deck 4 - USS Karnack))
Lieutenant K’Wara nodded at those remaining, placing their palms on their hips. After a brief moment they repositioned themselves, before addressing those assigned to their team.
K’Wara: Imril, do we have an estimate on how much of Main Engineering is functional beyond the warpcore?
Imril: There’s no way to be absolutely sure what’s working or how well until we get the Faraday effect around the whole room, but…
Imril pointed towards the Master Systems Display at the far end of the room, opposite the warp core. A dead black screen stood where a light-up cross-section of the ship should have been.
Imril: … Telling by the carbon scoring around its edges, the MSD won’t be active. In fact, it will probably be an impediment to our efforts. I was dealing with power-grid blowouts at the front of the ship, near the deflector array, when the evac order came. I’m guessing that they worked their way back here as far as the MSD. We’ll have to lock the whole system down and bypass it to keep the grid failure from dominoing any further. That’s just a conservative estimate, mind. We’ll know more after we get full power back.
K’Wara: ... We’re going to have to be conservative for now. ::looks around:: The only working consoles that I can see are the ones on the nacelle access. ::considers:: Natasha, if we use your security codes to trigger the quarantine forcefield around Engineering, do you think we can alter that to be more Maelstrom-resistant?
Cole: ::thinking:: That could work, similar to layering shields. I like it, but my work around won’t be elegant.
K’Wara: It’ll have to do. We just need it to work long enough for us to make more permanent fixes. ::to Jaran:: I know you’re hurt, Doctor, but there’s quite a lot of work to do. You’re up for it, I hope?
Jaran: Hey, don't let the limp fool you; I'm fit for duty. My engineering knowledge, however...
K’Wara: ::grins:: All right then. ::to everyone:: We’re on a time crunch. The other teams’ efforts depend entirely on us being able to get proper power running through the Karnack, and this is where we start. Let’s get to it.
Nat moved over to the consoles by nacelle access and plugged her security codes and got an error message almost immediately. Looking over what she had typed, she realized she had typed her codes wrong.
Cole: ::to herself:: get it together, Nat.
She focused through the mental static entering her codes a second time, The error tone felt louder than it should have. She entered it again. This time making sure it was correct, the system was a bit sluggish but responsive.
Imril: Before we activate the core, I’ll need to inspect the dilithium crystals. Make sure nothing got damaged in the crash, replace anything that was. There’s a manual release mechanism, so I can get started on that now. Care to help me, Doctor? Think of it like opening up a patient for exploratory surgery, but with convenient pull tabs.
Jaran: Aye, sir. I think I can do that.
Jaran: Ok, this is field medicine. I think I'm getting it.
Natasha was able to pull up the emergency quarantine protocols. As she looked over their options to modify the parameters of the quarantine force fields, the numbers were concerning. She ran them again to be sure, but the numbers didn’t lie. There was going to be a risk.
K’Wara: Could I get one of those too, Imril? The field emitter by the Main Doors need replacing.
Tamio accepted the wrench, just as Natasha leaned away from the console to deliver her report.
Cole: Good news ::beat:: and a bit of bad news. Good news, I can access the emergency quarantine protocols and it should work, but it’s going to take a minute to get working, and to do it we’re going to bleed just under seven percent of our already limited power.
Imril: ::Speaking to Cole:: If you need to juggle power allotments around to make it work, just be sure not to steal any of that power back from the structural integrity field emitters. We’re going to need them. In fact, if you could slide an extra percent or two into the emitters, it would be appreciated.
Jaran: You just tell me where to point this scalpel. I mean, wrench. I've at least seen dilithium before.
She looked up to answer Imril.
As she did she noticed Jaran’s limp. She made a mental note if they needed to move fast, they’d need help.
She exhaled, adding that to the ever growing list in her head.
K’Wara: Make it take ten minutes if you need to, just lower that power bleed as much as you possibly can, Natasha. We don’t know how many holes the Hull Team will have trouble fixing, and we need all the power we can get.
Imril: ::Speaking to the K’Wara:: I’m familiar with the methods Professor O’Brien used to keep the original Defiant from tearing itself apart under similar concerns of power output versus hull stability. Enacting them is near the top of my list after we’ve got Main Engineering up and running.
K’Wara: Good. ::gestures to the core:: I leave that to you two. ::looks towards Cole:: Give me a generous estimate, I don’t mind if you highball it. What’s the best case for the power bleed?
Reduce the power bleed.
Heat attracts them.
Sunlight deters them.
Multiple crew injured.
Hull compromised.
Warp core unstable.
No…
Don’t spiral.
One heartbeat at a time.
She pressed her fingers against the console.
Cole: I have it down to six ::beat:: I can try and squeeze more.
Imril: ::Speaking to Jaran:: First thing we’re going to do is rotate these handles 180 degrees around. They’ll click when they’re in position, and then we slide them out as far as they will go. The dilithium matrix will slide out with them.
Jaran: Sounds simple enough. It's been a few years since this simulation, but I think I can get it.
Natasha could hear Lieutenant K’Wara navigate the access ladder to deck three. She had to do better than six percent.
Imril: ::Speaking to Jaran:: I need you to go over each of the crystals for any visual flaws. Cracks. Chips. Discoloration. Cloudiness. So on. I can scan for micro-fractures later, after the ship is powered for our immediate purposes. That will only be an issue when we go to warp. You get started on looking them over, and I’m going to make sure there’s no misalignments in the chamber itself.
The sounds around her faded as she focused trying to reduce the power bleed.
K’Wara: Good news - the emitters up here all seem intact, so once we’ve got power up and running, Deck 3 is good for the forcefield. How’s the state of the dilithium looking, Imril, Doctor Jaran?
Jaran: I've gotten through about half of the crystals by now. We seem good to my untrained eye, but there are still a lot of them to look at.
Natasha, frustrated, hit the palm of her hand on the edge of the console.
oO Come on, work with me! Oo
The console screen flickered as if it was refreshed.
Imril: Response
She took a half step back. Whatever she did, managed to drop the power bleed to 4.2 percent.
She exhaled a sigh of relief.
Cole: ::excitedly:: GOT IT! ::more composed:: We’re down to 4.2 percent power bleed.
That was one thing off the list.
K’Wara: It’ll have to do. Curtain call’s coming real fast. Natasha, finalize preparations for the forcefield. The rest of us will run interference if we notice any funny business in the power delivery.
Jaran: I'll let you do the honours, Lieutenant.
Nat stepped back up to the console and started setting up the perimeters for the force field to activate when Imril was ready.
Cole: Alright Imril, emergency quarantine force field should auto execute when you give the word.
Imril: Response
A howl echoed through the ship. Natasha’s body tensed immediately.
Great, they're learning.
She blinked again.
The edges of her vision softened.
Strange.
That’s new.
Wait one more heartbeat.
K’Wara: Ready? ::brief pause:: Let’s turn the lights on.
Jaran: So we just... flip the switch, then?
Cole: ::looking to Jaran with a shrug:: I guess so
Imril/K’Wara: Response
She stepped back like Jaran did.
There were starting to be too many variables, and this was the largest.
Nat closed her eyes, expecting a volatile reaction, reminiscent of her and Charlotte’s time on the holodeck.
Jaran: Umm. Is it... it is on?
Cole: ::opening her eyes:: I … I don’t think so.
Imril/K’Wara: Response
Natasha tensed as she heard the sounds of claws on nearby bulkheads. The howls sounded like the creatures were getting closer. She saw Jaran move towards the doors of main engineering with their wrench.
Jaran: Not to be a doomsayer, but I think we're about to have company. A little help?
Natasha’s hearing rang as she was processing … everything.
Heat attracts them.
Sunlight deters them.
Jaran’s injured.
Doors are about to be compromised.
Warp core unstable.
If we lose Engineering, we lose the ship.
Imril/K’Wara: Response
As another heartbeat begins to thrum, slowly to life as a wall of consoles close to where Jaran had moved to erupt into a cacophony of sparks and crackling energy. Filling the area with an acrid ozone smell.
The brief moment of celebration was interrupted as the screeching sounds of claws digging into the main doors filled the room.
Everything was happening all at once as Natasha took a step back she heard a … noise and something crawling up her leg. It was the little creature that was following Jaran around.
Jaran: ::screams:: They're in!
She snapped her attention between the door and Jaran. There was no time she had to do something fast.
She couldn’t think and let instinct take over scooping up the little fuzz ball and tossing it off to Lieutenant K’Wara.
Cole: ::to Tamio:: Catch!
Acting solely on instinct and adrenaline as she ran directly towards her immediate priority … Jaran.
The last time she was remotely this close to these Darkling creatures, she was thrown across a room and wasn’t much help.
Wait … Sunlight deters them.
Cole: Imril whatever magic you're about to do, bring the lights up as bright as you can!
Imril/K’Wara/Jaran: Response
She had closed the distance as the darklings had finished tearing the doors down. She scooped Jaran off their feet as she pivoted away from the door and immediate threat.
Lieutenant K’Wara nodded at those remaining, placing their palms on their hips. After a brief moment they repositioned themselves, before addressing those assigned to their team.
K’Wara: Imril, do we have an estimate on how much of Main Engineering is functional beyond the warpcore?
Imril: There’s no way to be absolutely sure what’s working or how well until we get the Faraday effect around the whole room, but…
Imril pointed towards the Master Systems Display at the far end of the room, opposite the warp core. A dead black screen stood where a light-up cross-section of the ship should have been.
Imril: … Telling by the carbon scoring around its edges, the MSD won’t be active. In fact, it will probably be an impediment to our efforts. I was dealing with power-grid blowouts at the front of the ship, near the deflector array, when the evac order came. I’m guessing that they worked their way back here as far as the MSD. We’ll have to lock the whole system down and bypass it to keep the grid failure from dominoing any further. That’s just a conservative estimate, mind. We’ll know more after we get full power back.
K’Wara: ... We’re going to have to be conservative for now. ::looks around:: The only working consoles that I can see are the ones on the nacelle access. ::considers:: Natasha, if we use your security codes to trigger the quarantine forcefield around Engineering, do you think we can alter that to be more Maelstrom-resistant?
Cole: ::thinking:: That could work, similar to layering shields. I like it, but my work around won’t be elegant.
K’Wara: It’ll have to do. We just need it to work long enough for us to make more permanent fixes. ::to Jaran:: I know you’re hurt, Doctor, but there’s quite a lot of work to do. You’re up for it, I hope?
Jaran: Hey, don't let the limp fool you; I'm fit for duty. My engineering knowledge, however...
K’Wara: ::grins:: All right then. ::to everyone:: We’re on a time crunch. The other teams’ efforts depend entirely on us being able to get proper power running through the Karnack, and this is where we start. Let’s get to it.
Nat moved over to the consoles by nacelle access and plugged her security codes and got an error message almost immediately. Looking over what she had typed, she realized she had typed her codes wrong.
Cole: ::to herself:: get it together, Nat.
She focused through the mental static entering her codes a second time, The error tone felt louder than it should have. She entered it again. This time making sure it was correct, the system was a bit sluggish but responsive.
Imril: Before we activate the core, I’ll need to inspect the dilithium crystals. Make sure nothing got damaged in the crash, replace anything that was. There’s a manual release mechanism, so I can get started on that now. Care to help me, Doctor? Think of it like opening up a patient for exploratory surgery, but with convenient pull tabs.
Jaran: Aye, sir. I think I can do that.
Jaran: Ok, this is field medicine. I think I'm getting it.
Natasha was able to pull up the emergency quarantine protocols. As she looked over their options to modify the parameters of the quarantine force fields, the numbers were concerning. She ran them again to be sure, but the numbers didn’t lie. There was going to be a risk.
K’Wara: Could I get one of those too, Imril? The field emitter by the Main Doors need replacing.
Tamio accepted the wrench, just as Natasha leaned away from the console to deliver her report.
Cole: Good news ::beat:: and a bit of bad news. Good news, I can access the emergency quarantine protocols and it should work, but it’s going to take a minute to get working, and to do it we’re going to bleed just under seven percent of our already limited power.
Imril: ::Speaking to Cole:: If you need to juggle power allotments around to make it work, just be sure not to steal any of that power back from the structural integrity field emitters. We’re going to need them. In fact, if you could slide an extra percent or two into the emitters, it would be appreciated.
Jaran: You just tell me where to point this scalpel. I mean, wrench. I've at least seen dilithium before.
She looked up to answer Imril.
As she did she noticed Jaran’s limp. She made a mental note if they needed to move fast, they’d need help.
She exhaled, adding that to the ever growing list in her head.
K’Wara: Make it take ten minutes if you need to, just lower that power bleed as much as you possibly can, Natasha. We don’t know how many holes the Hull Team will have trouble fixing, and we need all the power we can get.
Imril: ::Speaking to the K’Wara:: I’m familiar with the methods Professor O’Brien used to keep the original Defiant from tearing itself apart under similar concerns of power output versus hull stability. Enacting them is near the top of my list after we’ve got Main Engineering up and running.
K’Wara: Good. ::gestures to the core:: I leave that to you two. ::looks towards Cole:: Give me a generous estimate, I don’t mind if you highball it. What’s the best case for the power bleed?
Reduce the power bleed.
Heat attracts them.
Sunlight deters them.
Multiple crew injured.
Hull compromised.
Warp core unstable.
No…
Don’t spiral.
One heartbeat at a time.
She pressed her fingers against the console.
Cole: I have it down to six ::beat:: I can try and squeeze more.
Imril: ::Speaking to Jaran:: First thing we’re going to do is rotate these handles 180 degrees around. They’ll click when they’re in position, and then we slide them out as far as they will go. The dilithium matrix will slide out with them.
Jaran: Sounds simple enough. It's been a few years since this simulation, but I think I can get it.
Natasha could hear Lieutenant K’Wara navigate the access ladder to deck three. She had to do better than six percent.
Imril: ::Speaking to Jaran:: I need you to go over each of the crystals for any visual flaws. Cracks. Chips. Discoloration. Cloudiness. So on. I can scan for micro-fractures later, after the ship is powered for our immediate purposes. That will only be an issue when we go to warp. You get started on looking them over, and I’m going to make sure there’s no misalignments in the chamber itself.
The sounds around her faded as she focused trying to reduce the power bleed.
K’Wara: Good news - the emitters up here all seem intact, so once we’ve got power up and running, Deck 3 is good for the forcefield. How’s the state of the dilithium looking, Imril, Doctor Jaran?
Jaran: I've gotten through about half of the crystals by now. We seem good to my untrained eye, but there are still a lot of them to look at.
Natasha, frustrated, hit the palm of her hand on the edge of the console.
oO Come on, work with me! Oo
The console screen flickered as if it was refreshed.
Imril: Response
She took a half step back. Whatever she did, managed to drop the power bleed to 4.2 percent.
She exhaled a sigh of relief.
Cole: ::excitedly:: GOT IT! ::more composed:: We’re down to 4.2 percent power bleed.
That was one thing off the list.
K’Wara: It’ll have to do. Curtain call’s coming real fast. Natasha, finalize preparations for the forcefield. The rest of us will run interference if we notice any funny business in the power delivery.
Jaran: I'll let you do the honours, Lieutenant.
Nat stepped back up to the console and started setting up the perimeters for the force field to activate when Imril was ready.
Cole: Alright Imril, emergency quarantine force field should auto execute when you give the word.
Imril: Response
A howl echoed through the ship. Natasha’s body tensed immediately.
Great, they're learning.
She blinked again.
The edges of her vision softened.
Strange.
That’s new.
Wait one more heartbeat.
K’Wara: Ready? ::brief pause:: Let’s turn the lights on.
Jaran: So we just... flip the switch, then?
Cole: ::looking to Jaran with a shrug:: I guess so
Imril/K’Wara: Response
She stepped back like Jaran did.
There were starting to be too many variables, and this was the largest.
Nat closed her eyes, expecting a volatile reaction, reminiscent of her and Charlotte’s time on the holodeck.
Jaran: Umm. Is it... it is on?
Cole: ::opening her eyes:: I … I don’t think so.
Imril/K’Wara: Response
Natasha tensed as she heard the sounds of claws on nearby bulkheads. The howls sounded like the creatures were getting closer. She saw Jaran move towards the doors of main engineering with their wrench.
Jaran: Not to be a doomsayer, but I think we're about to have company. A little help?
Natasha’s hearing rang as she was processing … everything.
Heat attracts them.
Sunlight deters them.
Jaran’s injured.
Doors are about to be compromised.
Warp core unstable.
If we lose Engineering, we lose the ship.
Imril/K’Wara: Response
As another heartbeat begins to thrum, slowly to life as a wall of consoles close to where Jaran had moved to erupt into a cacophony of sparks and crackling energy. Filling the area with an acrid ozone smell.
The brief moment of celebration was interrupted as the screeching sounds of claws digging into the main doors filled the room.
Everything was happening all at once as Natasha took a step back she heard a … noise and something crawling up her leg. It was the little creature that was following Jaran around.
Jaran: ::screams:: They're in!
She snapped her attention between the door and Jaran. There was no time she had to do something fast.
She couldn’t think and let instinct take over scooping up the little fuzz ball and tossing it off to Lieutenant K’Wara.
Cole: ::to Tamio:: Catch!
Acting solely on instinct and adrenaline as she ran directly towards her immediate priority … Jaran.
The last time she was remotely this close to these Darkling creatures, she was thrown across a room and wasn’t much help.
Wait … Sunlight deters them.
Cole: Imril whatever magic you're about to do, bring the lights up as bright as you can!
Imril/K’Wara/Jaran: Response
She had closed the distance as the darklings had finished tearing the doors down. She scooped Jaran off their feet as she pivoted away from the door and immediate threat.
((OOC: Coordinated this with Jira's writer))
Cole: ::to Jaran:: hold on, I’ve got you.
Imril: Response
At Imril’s word she jumped as high as her feet would lift the two of them.
K’Wara/Jaran: Response
Tags/TBC
----- ◌● -----
Lt. JG Natasha Cole
Security Officer
USS Artemis-A
Writer ID A240205NC4
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