Civilian Sh'eik | "Dreamscape" Part 3/3

Posted on 241503.19 @ 8:00pm by Cadet Sh'eik

Mission: Holy Cow
Location: In the Kitty's Head
Timeline: The Past

=/\= Starship Persephone - SD 240901.22 =/\=

Dangling from a rung, Sh'eik dropped with expected catlike grace, to the deck floor 2 meters below.
He still wasn't entirely sure what had happened. All he knew was most of the port aft upper section of the ship was gone. The power was out, and despite it being 0200 hours or so, he hadn't run into anyone yet.

Once he'd calmed them down, Sh'eik had left his sister with his brothers, telling them to stay put and tend to her while he went and found help. It was proving more difficult than he'd expected. The turbolift system, for obvious reasons, was offline and sealed off completely, half the Jefferies tubes were open to space, the computer was down, internal sensors were down, and comms were down. Not usually things a 10 year old would think to check, but when you're alone and on an adrenalin spike, you start going through a list of all the ways to find someone, anyone.

He padded carefully up the deck, it didn't feel right under his feet, not quite solid. Then again nothing felt solid anymore, Who knows what other damage their was. His adrenalin had long been slipping and he felt cold, tired and afraid. Mostly afraid for his parents, but also for the crew he'd grown up with. Surely he, and his siblings were not the only survivors?

As he rounded a corner, finally he found someone!
"Ensign Monroe!" He all but ran to her.

The Security Chief turned to the familiar purring voice of the Caitian youth, dropping to one knee and catching him, hugging him tight.
"Easy Sh'eik, I'm here." She gently disengaged herself from him, standing him back so they could talk.
"Are you hurt?" Sh'eik shook his head.
"Is anyone with you?"

Sh'eik shook his head again, speaking up, "My sister and brother's are in the crew lounge, or what's left of it. We were having lunch. Rn'ehk's hurt. It's pretty bad, but D'Triiq and Shan'iq are ok, and they're with her. I was looking for mother and father... but I don't know if..." His ears folded back as it dawned on him, "they might be dead."

Monroe made a face, trying to hide her reaction, "Come on, we'll look for them together. I haven't been able to find anyone yet either."
She stood, holding out a hand for him to take and follow her, which he did instinctively, the act being more a show of trust, than anything else.

They walked the deck, back tracking his original route, to the turboshaft. The door was dark, and didn't even buzz a refusal sound as they approached. Monroe was opening the access panel when Sh'eik piped up.
"It won't work. I think it's open to space..."

Monroe looked down to Sh'eik, realizing he'd been awake much longer than she had.
"What else isn't working? What can you tell me? I haven't been able to find out much about what happened yet."
Sh'eik ignored her question, "We need a doctor!" he said, reaching up to push a lock of hair off her temple. A mean looking gash, hidden behind it, was bleeding slowly. There was better light here, he could see she'd taken a few bruises in the blast, and was surprised she wasn't aware of them.

She looked at the boy oddly for a moment, touching near the wound and staring at the blood on her hand, "I... I don't remember hitting my head?"
Sh'eik frowned, which was somehow more adorable then when he smiled, though random thoughts like that told Monroe she wasn't thinking clearly.
"We need to get you to sickbay, you might have a concussion, and I can get a medkit and nurse to help my sister." He took her hand again, this time leading her.
Monroe followed dutifully, "How do you know about concussions, Sh'eik?"

Sh'eik blinked, stopping for a moment, remembering his internal map of the ship, before making a turn, "On my last birthday, D'Triiq and I were playing Predator versus Prey... I thought I'd be clever and get him from above. I was hanging down from one of the access hatches and lost my grip. Fell two meters and hit my head pretty hard. I don't really remember that part, that's just what Doctor O'Neill was telling me." He smiled, despite himself, remembering the day fondly up to that point.

They took two more turns before they reached a hatch in the floor at the end of the corridor.
"This one drops to Sickbay, but let me go first, I'll get someone to help you down." Sh'eik looked back at Ensign Monroe, who was starting to break a sweat, despite the ship's temperature slowly dropping around them.
"Be careful Sh'eik, it won't do for us both to be hurt."
The Cait just nodded as he pulled the manual override lever and the doors popped open a crack.

"Hello?!" Sh'eik called down.
"Sh'eik!" Mother and Father, Sh'eik breathed a sigh of relief, everything would be fine, as long as they were all together.
Two set of furry handpaws reached up through the doors and pulled them aside, their son looked down at them, "Ensign Monroe is with me, she's got a gash on her head, and is a little out of it."

Sh'Anik and K'Tal looked at one another and K'Tal disappeared for a moment.
"Have you seen your siblings?" There was a hope in her voice.
Sh'eik nodded emphatically, "Yes! We were having lunch when it all happened."
"Are you hurt?"
"No. Neither are D'Triiq or Shan'iq. But Rn'ehk needs help. She got caught in the emergency field, she's burnt..." he looked away, partially in shame, for being unharmed himself, and partially to check up on Monroe, who was sitting, propped up against a bulkhead but otherwise seemed ok for the moment.

"It's ok Sh'eik. You did the right thing, coming for help. We'll help Siobhan, and Rn'ehk too." Sh'Anik's eyes widened then "Emergency field?"
Sh'eik turned back, "Mother... The entire port aft section... it's just..." His voice caught in his throat when it dawned on him how many crew quarters are in that area, and what time of night it was. He looked away, closing his eyes tight, trying to will away the faces of the people he'd never see again.

Sh'Anik reached up to comfort her son as his father returned, pushing a bio bed, with Doctor O'Neill.
"Alright little one, we're coming up. It's going to be ok."

=/\= Crew Lounge =/\=

D'Triiq shivered, his teeth chattering, it was getting really cold in the lounge.
He was worried. Sh'eik had been gone a long time, and he wasn't so sure he trusted the emergency shield protecting them from space, at the moment.
His ears perked as he heard distant clanking and voices.

Sh'eik popped out of the access hatch first, followed by Doctor O'Neill, Ensign Monroe and then...
"Mom! Dad!" Shan'ik was already barreling toward them, D'Triiq close on his heels. Both boys were in tears by the time they reached the group.

Sh'eik quietly made aside, with Doctor O'Neill, leaving Ensign Monroe and his parents to his brothers.
He lead her to Rn'ehk, where the Copperheaded woman laid out her kit and pulled a medical tricorder, beginning her scans.
Sh'eik could feel tears welling up in his eyes again as he watched the doctor work over his sister, he looked away and then wished he hadn't. His eyes were drawn to the gaping hole in the room, craning his neck and looking along the blast damage, he realized he could see up into deck 3, and two... and some of the back wall of the bridge was open as well.
His heart burned as the faces of Captain Webb and Commander Findley played across his mind. He had to remind himself, they may not have been on shift, and their quarters were on the forward section of deck 2... which seemed intact from where he was standing.

Something was different from the last time he looked out... It took him a moment to process it, then he realized the moon wasn't where it had been the last time.
"Doctor O'Neill?" He reached down, placing a small, furred handpaw on her shoulder, grabbing her attention.
She looked up, "Are you alright Sh'eik?"
"The moon, it's moved since I left."
O'Neill was a naturally pale woman, being Irish, yet what little colour had been in her cheeks, drained away immediately as she looked puzzled and then very concerned, "We're decaying..."

Sh'eik's ears went flat as he looked back at her quizically. He didn't know what that meant, relative to the situation, but decay was a negative word, and her sudden paleness was a quality in humans he'd observed when they received sudden unwelcome news. They were in trouble.

O'Neill turned back to Rn'ehk, her whole demeanor changed as she focused on a whole different group of readings.
"K'Tal?! Come help me, we need to move away from here."
Sh'eik's father was there almost instantly, "Tina? What is i-?" His ears went flat too as he followed his son's gaze, He could tell instantly the their orbital trajectory was off, way off.
K'Tal nodded understanding immediately, "Is she safe to move?"
"Yes, we don't have long. The strongest part of the saucer will be the upper computer core. We need to move, fast."

=/\= Bridge =/\=

Findley sighed, gently closing the Tellarite's eyes. The feedback from the reactor overload had blown out the ops station next to him, fatally wounding the poor man. She sat at the helm, hair disheveled, looking tired and defeated. She had no control. All her tools were dead, she was cut off from her staff, sealed on the bridge when the rear turbo shaft and section of the aft bulkhead vaporized in the blast... it was just her, and an old flame.

Her hands danced across the helm, it still felt the same, 30 years later. She crooned at it, as if reminding the old girl of their past would coax it back to life. Much to her surprise... it did. The console blinked to life under her, in self test mode.
"What...?" Sarah tapped away, getting any info she could. The viewscreen blinked up, and a diagram of their orbit appeared on the helm, causing her to curse under her breath.

The warp cores had both ejected automatically, with the antimatter pods. The port reactor was gone, with the starboard severely damaged and offline. She had about 10% Thrusters available, and that wasn't enough to fix the trajectory they were on. They were going to crash. Or more accurately they would likely burn up in the atmosphere, at this angle.

She dusted cobbwebs off the back of her mind, remembering old formulas, and started calculating the safe entry trajectory. Her hands danced across the panel again, she was going to need everything the ship had left, just to get the nose pointed right, and she took it. Throughout the ship the emergency lights died, air recyclers and conditioning units shut down... as she reoriented the ship she let the moon's gravity hold them down, and took even the artificial gravity offline, shunting everything left out the thruster quads to hold the ship in place. The only things she didn't touch were the heat deflectors and the breach shields. Though she knew neither would hold out long.

"Come on sweetheart, one last chore for momma." Then started a dull roar, and an acrid smell, as the warped decks twisted and groaned under her. She had no illusions of what was coming, re-entry was unpleasant and often fatal. But she had to try. Anyone else alive on the ship needed her to try. Her thoughts drifted briefly to Webb, as she kept making inputs on the control pad, tryiing to keep the ship on course. It shrieked in protest as the duranium hull plating began to superheat.

Sarah's breath caught in her throat. The sight on the viewscreen was terrifying and beautiful. Orange and red flickered upwards, racing past, as the hull slowly burned away becoming charged plasma. The deck rocked under her with a loud groan was heard before the center seat, ops station a good portion of the deck to her left collapsed onto the deck below.
She held her post, calmly pressing at the control pad.

Hazard lights and failures sprang up across her panel, as the ship gave out around her.
"Come on you old tub, just another 90 seconds..." Her voice raised now as she threatened the ship instead, They were halfway down, at least halfway through the part she could do anything about.


=/\= Upper Computer Core, Deck 2 =/\=

The noise was terrifying. The world shook all around them, violently. Entire panels of computer circuitry collapsed and shattered, and the lights went out. Sh'eik clung to Doctor O'Neill and Ensign Monroe, over the body of his sister, as his brothers huddled with his parents. There was nothing else to do be done, except hope that the ship, all on her own would find a safe way down.

There were no windows here, no lights. Just the sound of laboured breathing, and the scents of everyone. Sh'eik focused on the intoxicating tang of the humans with them. He could taste their fear, palpable and provocative. He felt shame when he realized he was salivating, almost enjoying it. He'd never had a single thought about truly harming another, he wondered briefly, if it was the predatory instinct instilled by his father's lineage.

All at once the shrieking and shuddering stopped as they broke from the upper atmospheres and slowed through a reasonable speed. The smell he was drunk on, was quickly replaced by the stench of burnt metal, he panted. It had gone from very cold to very VERY warm in a few short minutes.

"We're out!" Monroe called out. Everyone huddled, scooping up Rn'ehk and moving as far towards the back of the room as they could, moving behind the back side of the physical computer core. It had been the officer's idea that the core would break free on impact, and better to be on the far side of it then crushed by it. So here they huddled again, waiting for the sickening sound of impact. There was hardly any sound at all now, just the quiet whistling of the wind outside.

=/\= Cinematic View ftw =/\=

The crippled Oberth class ship plummeted forward through the bluish sky. Unique and unusual animals looked up, as the strange burning star streaked over the plains. Inside the ship dozens of injured and helpless officer's and scientists clung for dear life, waiting for the inevitable. On the bridge a lone woman, caked in sweat and carbon hissed out un PG-13 words and stabbed at a burnt out console, shouting the damn pig of a ship into submission.

A thousand feet above the ground a loud bang was heard as the pylons gave out and the saucer separated from the lower module. It fell like a stone into the jungle below as the saucer continued on, falling at a gentler pace, as it's curved shape made a vulgar form of lift. As the saucer fell through 300 feet the jungle thinned, giving way to peaceful rolling meadows, in which terrified animals ran for the safety of the trees. This gave way to a few hundred feet of sandy beach, which the saucer drew a crease down with it's wake turbluence.

The woman on the bridge wailed at the defiant machine one last time, stabbing the controls, using the ground effect they encountered as they went out over water, and the last inkling of thruster power to tip the nose up. The water parted around them from the compression and at 300 kilometers an hour he saucer started skipping across it like a massive pewter stone.

All hell broke loose. Everyone, and everything that wasn't tied down was thrown. In the Computer Core, exactly as the officers had predicted, physical machine itself detached and immediately slammed into the forward bulkhead, the occupants in the room, landing upon it's backside a moment later.
On the Bridge a valiant First Officer was thrown against her helm console, the unyielding sapphire panel cracking many of her ribs.

Through the labs and crew quarters, things were thrown all over as the ship bounced, and bounced again... and a third time, before it caught on the opposing beach of the lake and began skidding up the banks.
Clearing the top of the beach's duned edge, the saucer became momentarily airborne one last time.
The great burned husk seemingly vaulted into the air, with all the grace of a terran elephant leaping into a pit of mud. Though it was a blessing in disguise.
The saucer cleared the thick trees on the far side, and came down to rest upon them, as opposed to breaking apart while shearing through them.

No alarms, no shrieking metal, no terrified screams, no wind whistling, no animals.
Just the rustling of leaves, amd quiet smouldering of ruined Duratanium.
For the first time in the last hour, the survivors of the Persephone felt peace.

* * *

=/\= End Part 3 =/\=

Civilian
Sh'eik
USS Enterprise

-=/\=- United Confederation of Interstellar Planets -=/\=-