Engineering post crash

Posted on Fri Oct 13th, 2023 @ 5:51am by Lieutenant Rea & Major Chiyo Shimada & Lieutenant JG Amari

1,653 words; about a 8 minute read

Mission: Starship Graveyard
Location: Main Engineering, USS Tokyo

Engineering was a mess despite it being near the middle of the ship the crash had dislodged panels, ruptured power conduits and sent anything not tied down and even some things that were flying across the multi deck room. The warp core sat idle, its usual thrum and blue glow now silent and dark as it was starved of fuel.

Amari still sat propped up against the wall where Ellie had dragged her, the screwdriver still firmly wedged in her leg and the blue blood still trickling out despite the makeshift tourniquet tied around her thigh, the stain on her white uniform getting bigger alongside the pool of blood beside her. She was far from the only one injured, another 2 men had been dragged close to her in bad shape while many others sported bruises and cuts from bad landings and flying equipment.

As one of the few engineers who escaped significant injury, Ellie had been working tirelessly coordinating the efforts to rescue trapped engineers as well as recover dead ones. Ellie had removed her uniform tunic and had been tearing it up to use as temporary bandage material to help bind wounds, and she was now wearing the simple tank top she wore underneath her tunic.

Having helped where she could in main engineering, and with what was left of her tunic tied around her waist, Ellie approached her boss, Lieutenant Rea, to deliver an update on the rescue efforts:

"Sir, we've cleared main engineering and stabilized the injured best we can until medical gets down here." She said. "We've got guys combing the Jefferies tubes and searching other Engineering areas as we speak."

As Ellie spoke, she noticed that her New York accent had subsided, so perhaps Rea understood what she had just told her:

An Ensign approached Lt Rea. "Sir we managed the manual shutdown just in time, warp core is stable in offline mode." He reported.

"Well we're still here, so that's a good sign," Rea smiled weakly as she looked around the wrecked engine room. "We should focus on getting main power back online and running damage assessments." She made her way over to one of the engineering lockers. "Everyone grab a tricorder and some basic engineering tools. If we're ever going to get back off the ground we need to see how the hull looks. I want you all to start making assessments of all ship systems."

It was at this time that a bunch of medical officers entered Engineering led by Ensign Wilson. He looked around in shock horror at the amount of injuries that the Engineering Staff had sustained. "Lets get these people patched up!" he ordered pointing his officers to where they were needed.

With their medkits the medical officers began to patch up the Engineering crews. Wilson made his way over to Amari after spotting she had a tool lodged into her leg. "Hello Lieutenant," he greeted her. He instantly began to assess the damage the screwdriver had done to her leg with his medical tricorder.

"Hi." Amari replied, she made a half hearted wave; her whole body felt weak and tired. "Is this better or worse than it looks?"

Wilson didn't seem happy with the result. "You've lost a lot of blood. But that's not the issue right now." He said. He opened his medkit and pulled out a roll of emergency bandage. "Put this in your mouth, and bite down. I'm going to pull this out..." he said pointing to the screwdriver. "I will warn you, this is going to hurt."

"Isn't it the only thing stopping me bleeding even more." Amari asked, she'd never been stabbed before but had heard it wasn't a good idea.

"Let me deal with that," Wilson said softly as he held out the bandage roll.

"....Alright." Amari took a deep breath and put the rolled bandage into her mouth, her whole body involuntarily tensed up despite her trying hard to keep relaxed.

Once the bandage was secure, Wilson grabbed the screwdriver and with one long yank pulled it out. Blood splurted out, so immediately he pushed down on the wound applying immediate pressure. He then quickly reached for the autosutre to repair the veins. "This should stop the bleeding..." he said as he worked. Then he used the dermal regenerator to heal up the puncture wound.

"There, all gone." Wilson said as he removed his blood stained hands. "Here," he said as he injected her with a hypospray. "This should promote the regeneration of blood cells."

A scream of pain followed by a stream of untranslated words came from Amari's mouth as the screwdriver came out, her fingers dug at the floor lining and she almost began hyperventilating from the pain that coursed through her body despite a pain hypo she had been given earlier.

Wilson looked her up and down briefly. "You'll be fine from now Lieutenant." He said with a smile.

One of the Engineers, Lieutenant Tomlinson stood up and rubbed his head where he had impacted one of the bulkheads. He picked up one of the tricorders and began to initiate a scan of the main power control console. The console had been fried and was now simply black and lifeless. "We've lost this console. It looks like the EPS grid overloaded on this deck. I doubt we'll have power back down here anytime soon. Luckily the backups have jumped into action."

Rea sighed, that was not what she wanted to hear. "Lets try to get main power back online," she said. "Amari, Ellie break into the EPS relay storage locker. Take as many relays as you can carry. Its essential we restore power to the EPS grid around Engineering. Once we have that online we can use the engineering sensors to assess any further damage."

"I'll grab my firefighter's axe." Ellie nodded. She had an axe she kept in her quarters from her FDNY service. The axe had been cleared by security to be displayed in her quarters, and it was about to come in handy, given how her quarters were so close.

"I don't know how much good I'm gonna be chief, something else is wrong here." Amari said, though she was now being clearly understood by those around her and could understand them, her vision still swam with distortion and barely legible symbols. She tried to stand but quickly stopped when she felt intense pain from her leg and extremely dizzy.

Wilson overheard what Amari had said. "You'll be fine on light tasks for now. But don't overdue it. In normal circumstances I would advise you head to sickbay, but they have more pressing concerns right now," he explained to both of them.

Rea nodded in response. "I'll deal with it. If medical needs you to rest, then take the rest of the day off," she said.

Amari looked back and forth for a few moments. She was hurt but there were; as Wilson had said 'more pressing concerns' in sickbay right now. A way she could help came to mind. "There is too much to do, can you help me up and over to that console." She asked Wilson pointing at one of the few consoles that came with a chair in engineering.

"Sure," Wilson replied as he held out a hand to the engineer, allowing her to grasp his wrist so he could help her to her feet.

Taking Wilson's hand Amari took several deep breaths readying herself for the pain that was sure to come. "On three?" She suggested. When Wilson nodded she mentally counted the first two. "Three." She pulled hard on his hand.

On the count of three Wilson pulled hard raising her to her feet. He placed an arm around her back to secure her so she didn't flop back down. "All good?"

Thankfully not translated the words "Jebati saya" left Amari's mouth alongside several long intense groans of pain as she was pulled to her feet. Keeping most of her weight on her good leg she leaned into Wilson. "I think so."

"Go sit down," Wilson said as he guided her towards a chair near one of the many engineering consoles. "Don't push yourself too hard."

"I won't." Amari said as she limp hobbled towards the chair, eventually after a lot more moaning and groaning she slowly plonked herself down on the chair. She turned towards the console an swiftly encountered another problem. "Whoa... Okay, I found out what the 'something else is wrong' is."

Wilson instantly flicked open his tricorder. "Whats wrong?" he asked as he began scanning. He just hoped there wasn't any internal damage to her body, that would mean taking her for surgery in the main sickbay, something which was under a lot of demand at the moment.

Amari blinked repeatedly before staring at the console for a few seconds, all the information on it looked like gibberish. "My ocular implant must not be working right, I can't understand anything on this screen."

"Ah, I'm afraid I can't help you with that one." Wilson replied with a small smile.

"I'll figure it out eventually, go help everyone else." Amari told Wilson before turning to Rea, while she couldn't understand anything she could still tell her what she did know. "We need to check the cooling system, when I touched the core it told me it was as dry and hot as a desert. The whole system must have gone down when we hit whatever caused all this."

Wilson nodded. He placed a hand gently on her shoulder before turning to attend to the next person. There were still many injured in the engine room, luckily however the more critical had already been taken care of, or shipped off to the sickbay.

Posting by

Lieutenant Rea
Acting Chief Engineer

Lieutenant JG Amari
Engineering Officer

Senior Chief Petty Officer Elizabeth "Ellie" Houston
Engineering Officer

Petty Officer Wilson
Medic

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