Commander Dal - Broken on the Inside
Jamie LeBlanc
((Bridge – USS Rahuba.))
The ship was broken.
He couldn’t deny it. The only way to survive and to keep the crew alive was to stare failure directly in the face, own it and move forward.
That wasn’t to say it wasn’t galling. They had entered this fight with a smart plan. A careful plan, a plan that measured their strengths against their enemy and factored in strategy and weaknesses. And, for a while, it worked.
It worked until pure chaos intervened. An unknown weapon that they hadn’t been prepared for destroyed their shields. The warp jump meant to bait Osben into blowing himself up was both a salvation for the ship as a whole from the plasma blast and yet destruction to one of the impulse engines and one of the four warp nacelles.
The strategy of facing off against Osben and running down the clock was met by a horrific and violent boarding maneuver that left too many dead, far too many injured and the ship damaged internally.
Everything Ishreth had done to plan well, play smart, mitigate risks ad lessen damage was undone by chaos as pure brute strength. He wanted to tell himself it could have been worse, but how could it be worse? All one hundred twenty crew on board dead? The ship broken in two? Worse was only shades of destruction beyond what they were already suffering.
He forced himself to accept it. He hated himself for being the idiot who allowed it to happen, but that he kept fully to himself. He had a lifetime of training in the highest echelons of Andorian society to master social graces and that careful professional mask that he always wore. He also had a lifetime of training to gracefully assimilate self-loathing into pleasant formality.
He had a duty to tend to and that duty was to keep who was alive still alive and get them back to StarBase 118. And then – worst of all – Commodore Taybrim and Admiral Hauke would be understanding of the whole ordeal. They would say that no amount of foresight could have predicted an unknown weapon or Osben’s suicide bomber boarding strategy. And they might be right, yet experience command officers like Commodore Taybrim seemed to avoid such monstrous outcomes. The only time the Narendra had suffered like this was a time that the Commodore was expressly crash-landed on an ice planet and the ship was sent to rescue them.
Experienced commanders avoided this sort of horror. Somehow. Maybe a sixth sense developed after enough experience. Maybe there were tiny red flags that Ishreth could not perceive from his own meager experience. Maybe some commanders simply got lucky on their first few commands and had reasonably simple obstacles to overcome.
But for his first Command, this was obscenely terrible. And he was placing the blame for the outcome squarely on his own shoulders.
He needed Max and Tatash’s help to stand, which was going to be a plain metaphor for the rest of this mission. He needed their help to stand in every way at the moment.
Dal: Thanks. ::he breathed.:: How is cleanup going?
Maxwell: ?
(Dunamis?)
Y’zyr: We’ve still got some stragglers, but I think we’ve collected the worst of them here on the Bridge.
Marine field triage was going on at the bridge. Ishreth mentally kicked himself again. Of anyone on the bridge he was the trained medic. Not a great doctor by any means, but a good triage medic from his search and rescue background. And he was also the one who had to stay put and not do something stupid that would land him in sickbay for a longer stay that he was already expecting.
No, he could be self-deprecating later. Right now there was duty. There were people to save. People to keep alive. Focus on the forward and the positive.
Dal: We need to meet back at the rendezvous point to protect and pick up any away teams, and we must stay well out of range of Miranda VII’s weapons.
That was a must. They were limping and bleeding both as a crew and as a ship. The had to avoid another fight. They could not last.
Maxwell: ?
(Dunamis?)
Tatash: Like I said, the ships a mess. You’ve got one impulse engine literally -gone-, one nacelle leaking plasma. If we even get back to the planet, we’re in no position to fight.
Dal: I know. ::he breathed a confirmation.:: As much as I would like to say we’ll cross that bridge when we get there, I am open to suggestions…
He knew. He knew all too well. He was a careful, patient man who had approached his first command with careful patient strategy.
Maybe he should have been a maverick with guns blazing going against Osben. His instinct said that would have gotten them killed. But here they were not much better than killed. So maybe he was just dead wrong.
Maxwell: ?
(Dunamis?)
Tatash: We still have the Asta, we can take a small strike team to evac as required. We didn’t shoot our way in last time, they won’t be expecting it.
The little hybrid, who had – Zel hated to admit – weathered far worse fights in his days looked about as nonplussed as one could look considering the situation.
Zel: Long range sensors say their shields are up. If you’re back and you completed your sabotage, I’d say they noticed.
Ishreth drew in a long, slow breath. It hurt. At this point he was considering the pain as fair payback for the miserable situation he commanded.
Dal: We need to repair and move this ship enough that the incoming shuttles can sense us. ::Another breath, a pause to prevent a cough. Again, it hurt. Coughing would hurt worse. That was just the way it was.:: I have to trust the remaining crews to have a plan to lower shields from inside or that they were able to clear the shield bubble before they were raised.
Truth be told it would be far easier to lower shields from inside than outside of a station.
Maxwell: ?
(Dunamis?)
The bridge doors opened again – at least one of them, the other one was stuck, not because of an equipment malfunction, but because something was stuck in the path and clearing it was not on the top of anyone’s priority list. And for a moment the form of Trovek Arys, their newest medical officer was silhouetted in the light of the hallway leading to the bridge.
Ishreth could only imagine the horror going through her mind as she looked around. He could feel the horror settling in the back of his own brain. For now he had compartmentalized it, pushed it away to be deal with later.
When? He didn’t know.
With who? No clue.
He was a single father with a nine-year-old daughter. He needed to be strong and protect her.
He supposed he would figure all of that out later. For now he needed to focus on the mission, the crew and the wounded.
Lieutenant Trovek gathered herself and in a very duty-bound way, focused on the positive herself. Ishreth could empathize with that more than she might ever know.
Trovek: Thank you for triaging the wounded, that really helps a lot.
They had done the best they could with the resources they had. It wasn’t pretty, but it was at least passable.
Maxwell: ?
(Dunamis?)
Dal: Doctor… ::he trailed off. Thank you felt horribly inappropriate for the scene. An apology felt necessary, but out of place. At the moment all that counted was saving lives. Moving forward.:: How can we help you get people treated?
That was the very best he could do. An inexperienced command officer in a horrible situation, injured and wondering whether it was his own inexperience that caused this level of horror to befall his ship. He had tried to mitigate the damage. Seven was too many. It might be more if the critical could not be stabilized. Far too many.
And all he could do was try to move forward and save who could be saved.
Trovek: ::calmly:: My main goal would be to get as many people back to work as we can - without causing any long-term damage.
Dal: I agree. Help can arrive within seven hours with the Trinity-Serellian patrols. Under four if they are allowed to break the warp limit.
And in a situation like this they would almost certainly be encouraged to come at warp nine. Once they got the comms working.
Again – he had to trust the crew. Amaase was a fantastic engineer and Taelon was a miracle worker. He had to trust those two could do it in time to save lives.
The doctor crossed to him, filling a hypospray with a pharmaceutical he could recognize if he really focused. But at this point he really didn’t care.
Trovek: ::to Dal:: I am opting for a short-term solution to tie you over for the next few hours. It will take a moment until it takes effect. I will need to see you in sickbay as soon as you can arrange it.
The relief was not immediate, but that made it even more enticing. A slow, spreading warmth and numbness filled his chest allowing each breath to come more easily. It helped him focus on the task still at hand.
Y’zyr: Is there anything I can do to help?
Trovek: ?
Y’zyr: Just point me where you want me. I’ve got two hands.
Trovek: ?
Maxwell: ?
(Dunamis?)
As help was offered to the doctor, Tatash moved towards Ishreth. The Andorian perked his antennae towards the Gorn.
Tatash: Orders?
Dal: Prioritize commlines first. Shields and hull integrity second and then engine repair. The USS Typhoon is on patrol and the closest ship to lend aid.
Trovek: ?
Maxwell/Y’zyr: ?
(Dunamis?)
Tatash: Just point me where you need me. I’ll stand at an airlock and throw Photon’s at the enemy if I have to.
He wanted to laugh. Maybe he even badly needed to laugh. But laughing hurt despite the medication. No laughing.
But yes, everyone on this mission needed some rest and relief.
But not now. Now was the time to focus and gather everyone home.
Dal: Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, Major. ::another deep breath. Careful. A pause.:: Long range sensors are still working. Get a scan on Miranda VII. We need to know if our teams are coming. ::a pause, a correction with the positive.:: When they are coming.
Trovek: ?
Maxwell/Y’zyr/Tatash: ?
(Dunamis?)
Dal: We do everything we can to re-route power and help the engineers. ::A pause:: triage isn’t just for people.
He was still, instinctually, careful and safety minded. It still galled him how badly he had failed, but once again he couldn’t imagine that being a maverick would help.
Trovek: ?
Maxwell/Y’zyr/Tatash: ?
(Dunamis?)
~*~
tags/tbc
~Julian Beck
E239010ST0