Commander Jo Marshall - Into the Thick of It
Jo Marshall
((Rainforest Dome, Veonath Domes, Ereina Moon))
A harsh inhale, breath flooding back into her lungs—ironically, so did water—Jo shot up from the floor and lurched for the nearest thing to help pull her upright. Coughs spluttered from her lips, water coming out in sprays as she took deep lungfuls of air through a shuddering body. She could hear her heartbeat thrashing in her ears like a demented drummer playing doubles on her spinal column. Cold setting in her limbs, Jo moved her fingers as shivers sparked up her forearm.
Water in her ears, the lips of it just underneath her chin. She looked up at the ceiling, where the dome auxiliary roof had collapsed, sending the metal hurtling down toward them. Jagged spikes of metal and polymer sheets stuck out of the water, loftily pointing upwards toward the secondary ceiling high above. Trees groaned threateningly nearby as if they were about to topple over any second.
Marshall: Peek! Peek, can you hear me?!
No answer from the engineering yeoman, the dome answered her instead, sending a cascading wave of sparks arcing across the downed metal structure toward a tropical tree canopy. Leaves burst into flames with immediacy, igniting with the simplicity of foliage meeting fire and proliferating.
Water lapped under her ears and Jo tried to move her leg. Stuck. Damn the thing. It needed to come off, she had absolutely no time for a limb being this useless. She was not going to die today, this was not the day for it, not when she still had to give Bear a talking to, still had to manage a full pan of Caedan's triple moba fruit cake, still had to beat Quinn at pool, still had to water the plants, still had to go to that fancy restaurant on Palanon with Erin and get grassy in the Trill mountains…
Erin. Erin was in one of the other domes. Her blood ran like syrupy ice in her veins. She felt sick as adrenaline surged like an atom bomb in her chest.
Steely determination came with a grunt and an indelicate scream as the Operations officer yanked her leg out from whatever held it pinned to the ground beneath, feeling a rush of pain lurch up her calf and blood beginning to float on the surface. She reached down to feel the wound and winced at the touch of her fingers on the wet, raw skin. Whatever she'd done, it'd have to wait.
It took a second of concentrated effort to get her shaking hands under control as she gripped the edge of the downed metalwork, yanking it towards her body so she could half lie on top it. Emergency flotation devices were hard to come by; death metal would have to do. Able to breathe for a second longer than not at all, the water expelled from her lungs with the efficacy of someone who had done that before in a pinch, Jo looked around at the devastation around them, second only to the dread fear that the engineer hadn't answered.
Neither had the rest of her small team.
Marshall: I swear to the Prophets, if you don't tell me where you are right now, you're demoted. Not even a bit of a demotion. We're talking outer hull scrubbing crewman demotion.
Feeling for the floor beneath her shaking feet, the water came up to her hip. Deep enough to wade in and a force coming from somewhere, where the baffle tanks pumped in the water for the artificial river, undoubtedly. Water and power mixed together would be a deadly combination if they didn't treat one of the problems soon.
Tentatively, Jo stepped forward, sharp pain arching up her calf as she waded through the deepening water toward the incline sweeping upward, through the exterior of the dome, toward the upper level where the trees bent and twisted, and fired leaves fell from the canopy overhead. She tracked one of the orange leaves down as it fell, twisting in the air like a dancer on the wind, until it fell serenely to the water, unaware of the chaos around it.
She faltered. Body in the water. Golden shoulders floating on the surface, heavily scorched down one side. Discoloured water around.
Marshall: Peek!
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Chief of Operations
USS Gorkon, NCC-82293
G239304JM0