Lt. Cmdr. Kirsty Carpenter - Webway
Justin Partridge
Carpenter: Phasers are down, but the Khitomer data feed is still up. We just can't see the progress here. We'll have to eyeball it.
Beck: First degree burns on your hands, second degree on your torso. I can give you something for the pain now but I'll need to apply a dressing to the wound; normally I'd buy you a drink before I ask you to take your top off, but I'm afraid we don't have the time for it right now.
Beck: We can step into the break room if you'd like. Won't take more than a few minutes to get you up and running again. And before you argue, I'm going to have to insist - the more your jacket and shirt rub against the burns, the worst the blisters and pain will be and the more likely you'll get an infection before we're through.
Niac: The Commander was a Marine, Doctor, they make ignoring injuries a form of high art. Get her functional, fast. Mr. O'Connor, get us back to the station and signal the Khitomer to fall into position off our starboard side.
Carpenter: Cap's not wrong. But-
Beck: Thanks for the warning this time.
O'Connor: We’ve still got some maneuverability left. Although I don’t want to be be putting too much stress, well pretty much on anything.
The frantic energy of the Bridge started to feed poorly into her feeling of inaction. She turned an uncharacteristically pleading look toward Beck.
Carpenter: Can't y'all just wrap me up or something?
Beck: We can do it here, or I can let you stay at your station under protest. The wounds aren't severe enough I'll relieve you, but I am concerned about getting them treated as quickly as possible.
Niac: Chief Tucker, pull power from the phasers and route it to the deflector. If our pulse isn't strong enough none of this is going to matter.
Tucker: Juicing the deflector, aye sir.
Terminals other than her's started to scream and her mouth felt tinny with her own lack of information and contribution. She knew the Engine Room were working to restore weapons functionality as quickly as they could but she grit her teeth hard enough to feel and hear them clack.
O'Connor: Take as much as you need from propulsion, we’ll need to hold steady to pull this off anyway. I just want it back if we survive this.
She stepped into Beck, trying to drop her voice for them and them alone, but she knew he wasn't going to let this go. Neither would the blistering pain on her side release her to full focus. The reptilian, more draconian part of her brain knew that. It was only logical. But even without weapons and the ability to track the energy output of themselves and the Khitomer's chroniton pulse, she couldn't let herself leave her station.
She knew she hadn't the time (or energy) to convey all that, so instead she simply steeled her look once more, regripping her uninjured hand on the husk of her console.
Carpenter: I can't leave, Quentin. Not now.
Beck: ::muttering:: Should I just keep my mouth shut until one of you is bleeding out?
This time Kirsty did laugh, finally releasing her grip on the other side of her console and draping it carefully across the back of the neck of Quentin Beck. It was fast. Faster than Kirsty herself even realized she could move at the moment, but it felt like an entire world between them.
She brought her forehead into a quiet and careful contact to Quentin's. She hadn't done this with anyone in...years. Hadn't really felt like any deserved this particular brand of intimacy from her either. Save for V'Len, but this was something different. Something almost all the more personal for her. And she hoped she didn't feel or look like some kind of loon to anyone else that happened to witness the quiet and careful moment between the two.
The purity of his concern, the attentiveness of his attitudes throughout even the chaos of battle, it moved her. In a way she wasn't even sure she could be moved anymore. This crew...it had changed her for the better and she wanted more than anything to survive long enough to tell them as such.
And as quickly as it happened, she stepped back, turning now her full injured flank to Quentin for the full spectrum of his talents and care. She nodded carefully toward his instruments, hissing forward through her teeth.
Carpenter: Just do it, Q. I'll be good. For now.
She kept mostly silent as he tended to her burns. Clenching her teeth once more powerfully to keep her the sounds of her pain in her throat and chest. But she breathed a lot easier once Beck had fully attended to her burns, coating the rawness and hurt of her skin and arm with a bio-lative "second skin" that hardened and then crinkled into a comfortable range of motion over a few moments.
But there were still...ALL the problems of the outside. Problems which Beck himself even started to work once her burns had been treated to a workable status, crossing concisely to one of the open terminals of the Bridge as Kirsty finally found her even breathing now, thanks to her facilities being finally cleared of pain.
Beck: Uh, the energy level looks like its starting to level out… I think it's going to fire soon. Like eminently. And I don't think you wanna know what the s-wave levels are showing.
They all seemed to turn expectantly toward the center platform. They had a proposed action, but God only knew if it would be enough. Once again Kirsty didn not envy her Captain but she did love him. Deeply. And with the kind of precision and clarity that only a soldier could have for a CO. And like he had before, he rose to the occasion and her feelings. Decisively handing out his attention and voice as he moved about the area before the Big Chair, backdropped by the Main Viewer like an ancient play-actor commanding his stage.
Niac: Standby on deflector pulse. Emergency power to forward shields. Keep us close, helm.
Tucker: At your command Captain.
O'Connor: No where else to go. We are angled lined up with Kitty correctly:: a blip appeared on his screen:: Another ship has just dropped in between us and Kitty. Small Caitian vessel. ::He takes a beat:: I’m signaling it away.now.
Carpenter: Do we have enough juice to pull it in? Or at least get it out of field?
O’Connor: It’s small, It won’t take much. Engaging tractor
Carpenter: This day just gets better and better, don't it?
The logey, slightly groany warble of the tractor thrummed through the Red Alert klaxon and one of the datafeeds of the Main Viewer showed the smallish ship starting to move out of harm's way. Relatively. She spared a momentary through as to what and who that ship was and how they had come to be here and now, but there was too much spooling out in front of her now to think about it long.
Beck's methodically even voice gave reality to a thought they might have all been having.
Beck: If we're going to get the Kitty to work with us, we'd better do it now.
Kirsty's very nerves started to itch with the bombardment of the foreign radiation. The glittering through the front of the "Gun-Ship" had grown larger and more eye-catching. She gripped her knuckles together tightly, testing the tensile strength of the "new" skin on her injured hand. She was trying to refocus herself and thanks to Beck's inoculation before she was still on her feet. Despite the sickly feeling starting to boil across the back of her teeth.
Radiation was always a bear on the best of days. This S-Wave crap was on a whole other level. But The Captain kept them on rails. She spared a look across her shoulder toward one of the auxiliary consoles. They had the waveform process. And just about enough energy for their own "web". Like Q had said, it was now or never.
Kirsty was a little shocked at how calm she was. She turned once more toward their Captain, her stance stiffening as much as it could.
Niac: Signal the Khitomer to synch their deflector with ours and prepare to fire.
He turned stonily toward the Main Viewer. A hellish jewel of anti-matter dazzled from the head of the "Gun-Ship". A powerful baritone issued from his frame. One that brought an unexpected single tear to Kirsty's eye.
Niac: It has been the honor of my life to serve with each of you.
Tucker: ::grimly::It may have been short, Captain, but it’s been sweet. It’s been an honor.
O”Connor: One helluva ride, Cap.
Beck: RESPONSE
Carpenter: Thank you all. For everything.
Time elongated across the whole of the Bridge.
As the jewel from the "Gun-Ship" arched outward in pointed tendrils, exploding its vertices into spindly cables, each effort from the prow of the Ronin and the deflector dish of the Khitomer sprang forward in time. Barely a few seconds after the "Gun-Ship's" deployment. Kirsty could only see for a few seconds, the light from all three points flared and boomed through her view, brining her arm across her face more on instinct than reaction.
The only voice that sliced through the hollow booming of the ship around her was Their Captain's. She bent, more crumpled herself into a bracing position in her alcove, planting her feet as strongly as she could and bracketing both hands across any and all surfaces of her alcove to keep her body (relatively) still.
Niac: =/\= All hands brace for i...=/\=
The shockwave of the explosion and counter-explosions of their gambit hammered through their reality.
For almost a full second, Kirsty's entire body was rollicked through a sort of near-zero-gravity. Such was the force of the anomaly they had created throughout the sector. She floated for another half-second but then smashed downward just as suddenly, both jarring pain and chewy, gamey feelings of energy now shimmering through her body as she crouched herself into the fall, likely saving her aching bones in the process.
In her stance, she couldn't much see what was happening with everyone else but the bodily thrummping sounds and the odd feeling of pressure still wafting throughout the Bridge told her all she needed to know of the situation. They had survived for the moment, but the whole of the ship would likely be in a sort of disarray for a bit.
More consoles blew out across the compartment, in such a frequency and volume that the Red Alert alarm was momentarily drown out. Kirsty clamped both hands across the top of her ruined console, hauling herself back to her feet and not feeling one bit guilty about her using the stump of a computer as a sort of bench for a time being.
Niac: Sound......sound off... Damage...report.
Tucker: Reports are still flooding in, sir. I should be able to make heads or tails of it; just give me a second. Every deck is reporting damage, some of it structural. We’ve lost containment on deck eleven; it, too, is being evacuated. Shields are offline, shields are at two percent, it’s amazing they held that well. I’ve got major burnouts on the ship’s power grid.
Beck: RESPONSE
Carpenter: Still here, Sir. ::she smiles darkly::For my sins, I suppose...
Beck, as she expected, started to move toward CO Niac, but in an unexpectedly badass move, he started to wave him off!
Niac: Find someone else, Doctor, I'll manage for the moment. Kirsty...tactical status...can we get any readings from the Khitomer or DS33? Ian...can we move? Chief...is there anything that does work? It looks like there's still a significant Alliance force out there...even if they got their bell rung as badly as we did.
Tucker: It’s a small list, Captain. We’re adrift, maneuvering thrusters only. The WARP core is off-line, and impulse drives are off-line. Life support is failing on deck five, and we’re in the process of evacuating that deck as well. My grease monkeys are working on the impulse drive as we speak. According to Lieutenant Morgan, the expectation of getting the WARP core back online is slim to none.