Bringing Light Back To Darkness

Posted on Fri Nov 27th, 2020 @ 10:38am by Senior Chief Petty Officer Jonathan Stoun & Ensign L'johk Adams
Edited on on Fri Nov 27th, 2020 @ 10:40am

1,578 words; about a 8 minute read

Mission: Episode 1 - Phoenix From The Ashes
Location: USS Copernicus - Main Engineering
Timeline: Prologue Mission Day -2 @ 20:15 Hours

ON

Jon's eyes adjusted as the well lit transporter room faded away from view and the dark, emergency lit corridor appeared. "Sir, you here yet?"
The chief scanned the readout on the tricorder built into the space suit. All life support had been turned off in this section of the ship to prevent any additional EPS overloads.

L'johK had been here for just under an hour already. It wasn't in his nature to allow something to defeat him, call it throw back to his Klingon lineage. He had insisted he beam over early to make a start. He felt he owed it to the Engineering crew that had lost their lives in the initial onslaught. He had been closer to engineering when the alarm had started to sound and had arrived here in time to see the duty engineers be engulfed in a plasma rupture. Chief Fren, a Bolian women had crawled into the Jeffereies tubes to seal the leak while he had gone immediately to work on the warp core to secure it. He had later found out that Fren had not returned as another much small hull breach had claimed her.

"I'm here, and don't call me sir... You have far more experience than I do Chief" the burly hybrid said with an unmistakable smile through the helmet of his EV Suit. A smile that didn't reach his eyes. Something most of the survivors would like be able to shadow in their own way.

"Old habits die hard I suppose, you get people who are a little bit more up tight in rank and station sometimes. Had one guy right out of the academy dress me down once because I didn't call him sir, he did it in front of the entire engineering staff, what was his name, Benson? Benson maybe, he had a freshly minted pip on his collar and wanted to take it for a spin. From what I heard later, the CO gave him a pretty good chewing afterwards, he apologized to me later, but I thought the whole situation pretty funny." The chief grabbed his tool kit and moved over towards the Ensign. "Tough little ship you got here, I was doing some scans before I beamed back over, I'm not even sure what is holding it together to be honest.

"I think that could just be luck Chief!" L'johK offered with a chuckle. "If it had not been for Commander Haistro, Lieutenant Holt and Doctor D'BrooNi I don't think any of us would have survived".

He liked this person, the old earth saying came to mind, salt of the earth. He never really understood it before now but it rang so very true with this individual.

"I've checked the network of power conduits and enough of them are useable so we should be able to get main power back online in some limited form if we can coax the warp core or impulse reactors back online".

Stoun moved towards the core as he scanned the interior of engineering. Pieces and parts were strewn about, blood still stained the deck. "Major systems seem intact, I don't see anything that would give me and pause." The chief stopped at what appeared to be an undamaged console before kneeling down to find an access port.

"These situations are always tough, ya'll worked pretty hard to save her, let's just hope there is enough bones to drag her back to dock. I'm going to recommend starting with the impulse reactors, we can back feed it into the core to jump start it if we need, see if we can get the matter antimatter mix fired." Jon knocked open the access panel and found the data port. "I'm going to plug in this generator, see if the panel fires up for me would you?"

L'johK Pulled himself up from where he had been working and picked his way carefully over the rubble and debris until he was standing along side the Chief, the console in front of him waiting for the thing to spring to life which thankfully it did with a few flickers before fully illuminating.
"You have her Chief!"

He side stepped pulling the Chief up with the hand he had offered before returning to his own work, patching up the make shift communications array that the Merlin had stripped from one of its shuttles for Copernicus to use. In the long run it would make things so much easier for both crews.
"I've run scans on the super structure of the ship, she's still sound. Possibly why this design was very nearly implemented for the Defiant Class before the Borg swayed Starfleet's hand in that regard. Yes we have limited systems and plenty of micro fractures and hull breaches, not to mention decks one and two being exposed to vacuum... I think she can be saved".

"Probably" Jon looked over the console trying to read out some of the diagnostics. "Impulse fusion reactors seem intact, core is a bit beat up but matter antimatter containment is remarkably at ninety eight percent. We can shunt some power the impulse engines over to that." The chiefs brow furrowed as he tried to make sense of the hull data, "Looks like you got hit with some kind of magnetar pulse or something, may explain why the core went into safety stop, but there aren't any charted around here." His fingers moved through the different screens trying to get more information. "Normal weapons damage, but then there is some weapon signatures that are out of place, almost looks like modified cutting beams. Well, that is for a different time I suppose. Task at hand, I think we are secure enough to bring the core back up into safe mode at least."

"You ever thought about serving on a small ship Chief... I think you'd fit right in!"
The eager young officer noted as he sat down at the main engineering interface for the warp core start up routines. "And I think we may need one or two replacements when we get back to Starbase!"

"Yeah, grim business replacing crew, especially after something like this." the Chief looked over all of the different read outs. "I kind of just goes where there wind takes me, last posting was on the Brinell, but I've been kicking around SCE for a long time." He paused for a moment as the computer read diagnostic data from the panel. "That is another bridge we can cross when the time comes, let's make sure we don't blow ourselves and what is left of the ship up. Diagnostics are green, initiate startup sequence, keep the chamber intermix at point zero one before and then be ready to prime the injectors, with the state of everything lets run it lean at forty to one."

"Yes Chief... Warming up the injector assembly now, matter-anti matter ratio set... Here we go!"
L'johK half expected the core to implode the instant it was initialized but to his surprise a gentle hum started, the electric blue patterns of light began to shimmer from within the core shaft until, after just a few short moments it was back to running at almost seventy percent of its usual capacity.
"Well done Chief!"

Jon looked over all the readouts. "This is just really strange, the whole thing is strange." The chief walked towards the core with a tricorder, arm extended, waving it over the glowing cylinder as if he was holding an ancient bauble. "The core shouldn't be running this well, I thought we would have to kick start the thing. The damage done to the ship and such. I can't take credit for it really, we just modified standard start up." He leaned against the railing looking at the core. "Curioser and curioser." Stoun furled his brow, turned and looked back towards the ensign. "Well, if we want to move this thing, EPS manifold and conduit diagnostic, structural integrity fields next, then deflector, then impulse I'm suppose. I don't dare even breath an inkling of warp at the moment. Life support can wait for now as much as I'd like to take this suit off." The engineer moved over to the panel that Adams was sitting at. "Since you don't want sir, and hey you probably isn't appropriate, how would you like me to yell for you." The chief smiled a bit through his helmet.

"Well my mother always called me You Klingon Fool... But you can just call me by my name L'johK Adams... or Jock, the nickname that has haunted me from the Academy days!"

Ensign Adams had already started on the Structural integrity field generators and was immediately wishing he hadn't looked at them.
"All of the field generators are offline. If Merlin dropped us from its tractor beam then we would be ripped apart by the tidal forces of the nearest star and then beaten into even smaller pieces by the onslaught of the particulate matter and dust that is traveling through space on the solar winds".

The Klingon looked over to his counterpart with a smile. "I think I should start with the life support systems and then I'll get to the structural integrity field issue... I'll let you tackle the EPS Manifold and conduit diagnostic!"
He bounded to his feet with more joviality than someone should in this kind of situation.

"Aye, have fun with that, I think I'm making out on the deal"

END

 

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