Ensign Doz Finch - Under Troubled Waters
Ishwari Sting
((USS Azetbur, Rogue Planet))
It was an astounding interior. Frankly, she'd go as far as calling it glamorous, by Starfleet standards. Fifty meters long, twelve meters high. It was enough room to swing a cat! not that she would want to swing a cat in there. With its imposing armament built into its walls, swinging anything in there with too much force would mean goodnight irene and she wanted very much to make it through this first mission, thank you very much.
What an absurd situation she'd found herself in, she thought, as the craft scaled and punched its way through the thick blanket of cream and white before it. But was it absurd, or was it practically, and yet impractically exactly what she should have expected? As it goes, Doz wasn't disillusioned, but rather the opposite. She was ecstatic - well, a poor choice of words given the dismal circumstances, but this is how the woman thrived. Clearly in an onslaught of multicoloured lightning bolts.
She was determined, with the tiniest degree of nervousness, no doubt a harbinger of age, but still an absolute essential ingredient for any engineer. Alas, here she was, onboard quite an impressive yacht, about to not only meet many of her colleagues for the first time - so help them god - but also to assist them with this most volatile of missions. Under her small palms, a twitching signal illuminated, detailing the away teams whereabouts, and so with their location, she piloted the craft carefully to the nearest clearing of land, taking note of the sheer mass and heaviness of it, her hands shifting left to right, and her smile wide but focused.
Moments later, she emerged from the craft, silver-haired and strident. It was a little too much of a big reveal for her liking, what with the billowing aircraft dust swirling around her as she stood there in the frame, but when the reality of the environment dawned on her, her stars in their eyes moment quickly washed away.
Finch: My god.
Standing before her were two officers. One officer with pointed ears and a purposeful stare, and another one who's apparent excitement must have meant that her sudden, and brilliant arrival, was just the ticket they'd waited for. But either way, given the situation they were in, she knew the importance of protocols, and her slew of comments about what she had just had to surf the craft through could wait. Her brother, Wallace, lanky oaf that he was, always used to torment her piloting skills, but that flight had just blown his opinions into smithereens, not that he would have believed her for a minute.
Alieth: Welcome ensign, your arrival is more than welcome. I am Lieutenant Commander Alieth, Chief Science Officer and in command of this away team :: gesturing toward the Betazoid behind her:: This is Lieutenant Fortune, Ship's Counsellor.
Fortune: If only our meeting were more calm, I would encourage you to come have a snack with me. Alas. I lost all my snacks a while ago.
Doz spoke with a head-voice, higher in tone and with some words accentuated with inflections and clear facial expressions.
Finch: A pleasure to meet you Commander Alieth! And Lieutenant Fortune. ::She clapped the side of the yacht:: She's in fabulous condition, considering what's going on up there. What can I do to help?
Alieth:We are in a critical situation, we suspect that the planet will soon be jumping, and we need to evacuate all personnel on the ground and all locals who wish to leave with us as soon as possible. ::Opening her hands to acknowledge the damaged settlement around them:: But as you can see, we are not going to have an easy task, of course.
Of course. It was written everywhere, all around them. Bedlam. But there was a job to do here, people who needed evacuating from this hell-planet, whatever it was, and she was there to do everything she could to help with it. Imagine. A rogue planet soaring through space towards oblivion, with herds of civilians all displaced upon it, cleaving and desperate to get off it. From an engineering perspective, it was a nightmare. From a logistical perspective, a nightmare. From a human perspective, a nightmare. From Doz's perspective, a bloody nightmare.
The silver haired woman nodded her eyes and looked around her at scenes unfolding, then turned toward Alieth and Fortune with a clap of her hands.
Finch: Right you are, Commander. And the rest of the team?
Fortune: ::she nodded, tilting her head a bit towards the village.:: Unfortunately, Lieutenant Josett and Lieutenant Commander Marshall are a little tied up, we found someone caught under a house and they are attempting to free them as we speak.
Finch: ::stepping down from the doors ramp, hands on hips:: And elsewhere?
Her eyebrows crossed over and her grey eyes squinted, attempting to override the thick mist plowing its way past them, as rooftops, walls and other building components continued to grapple and shudder from their recent unearthly earthquakes. In a flash, her tricorder was out, pulling numbers and making sounds, busied with readings.
Alieth: ::gesticulating towards the turbulent yellow water of the lake:: We suspect there is a group of colonists in a structure inside the lake, taking shelter from the recent earthquakes. However, given the atmospheric interferences, our means of communicating with them are limited. ::looking towards the Betazoid:: Is it likely that they are harmed and/or trapped, ideas?
Fortune: I’d say to prepare for injuries, mostly based on the destruction we’d saw. I’m not able to tell more details beyond a base ‘pain’ scale, and it would most likely take longer to examine everyone’s minds if we proclaim it an emergency to do so.
Finch: Under those conditions, I can't see that structure holding out
Alieth: Response
Finch: I was thinking the exact same. How many are in there?
Fortune: If I had to guess, I would say perhaps six injured, twenty in total? ::she looked around, letting out a huff.:: They most likely have a hidden doorway to the shelter…::she looked back at Alieth with a frown.:: The tricorder wouldn’t be able to find a route through the ground, would it?
Doz began to circle for a moment with her tricorder between her hands, occasionally glancing over at the structure and its thrashing yellow water, her mind awash with ideas and possibilities. She wrinkled her nose, and snapped her head toward the captain's yacht, everything around her momentarily growing silent. If she were on the Gorkon, or any of the ships or stations that she'd previously served on, where everything tends to stay stationary thanks to the inertial dampeners, getting an internalized scan of the ship wasn't hard to do.
She wasn't on a ship, but she was near a ship... a small one. The Azetbur.
Finch: It would, or it could. But with all this interference, all these earthquakes, the instability of the ground, it would be like trying to scan a wasp. But who needs a wasp when you've got a hive right beside you?
Alieth/Fortune: Response
Finch: The Captain's Yacht. It's heavy, way too heavy to move, which is just perfect. With it's onboard equipment I could fix it to quickly scan the ground beneath us, between here and the structure. A tomographic scan, if you will.
She stepped up onto the ramp of the yacht, her face lit up now with fired focus.
Alieth/Fortune: Response
Finch: There's bound to be tunnels under there. They could be completely flooded of course, but I'm choosing to be an optimist, what say you both?
It's true that she was in the majority of situations, quite the flaming optimist. But her optimism and light heartedness wasn't due to a lack of empathy, and neither did it stem from a streak of arrogance. Her optimism in many ways formed part of her armour. It was her buoyancy that allowed her all those fulfilling years as an enlisted crewman. It was her buoyancy that steered her through fuel spills, engine leaks, generator explosions, and the loss of friends over the years.
But even buoyancy had its limits. Was it a waste of time? Was there another way? Did it matter? time was of the essence, and if this old broad knew anything, it was good time-keeping. But if those tunnels had indeed collapsed, and water had filled them, then it spelt disaster for those hurled up inside the structure. Perhaps buoyancy, in this case, was less valuable an attitude, and more valuable a tool for not drowning.
Still. Doz cracked on with it.
Alieth/Fortune: Response
Finch: I’ll get right on it!
Alieth/Fortune:
--
Ensign Doz Finch
Engineer - USS Gorkon
C239809SH3