The Explosion [Part Two]
Posted on Mon Jun 3rd, 2024 @ 3:34pm by Lieutenant Callan Armidale & Ensign Aaron Soong & Petty Officer 3rd Class Brix Saad & Commander Lorut Vila & Lieutenant Commander Frasier Greene & Xavier X-1 & Lieutenant Commander Ukram Gocx & Lieutenant Rowena "Rena" Campbell
Edited on on Mon Jun 3rd, 2024 @ 3:38pm
2,810 words; about a 14 minute read
Mission:
Home Sweet Home
Location: Kaitos: A’ransari
Timeline: MD9: 1730 hours
Previously on Star Trek: Intrepid
Admiral Albion had overridden her communications lockout. “Commander Lorut, priority one NOW!”
Vila sighed. Of course that idiotic Caitian would find some way to harass her on her break!! Quickly, she dashed across the room. "Admiral! How lovely to hear from you, especially on shore leave. What can I do for you?" she said, in a sweet tone of voice. "Why aren't you contacting Captain Culver?" She asked, playing dumb about the man's whereabouts.
“Because he has taken the Intrepid to Krios, Commander Lorut, or did you forget that I was literally backed into a lose-lose situation there?
Regardless, you’ve got to have heard the explosion from your position…where else could you possibly be?” The Caitian grumbled, gnashing his sizable teeth.
Vila's brown eyes danced with mirth. "My CMO's room," she said, but shook her head. "I should've made him leave the yacht," she said, "And I did, yes. What about it? I figured it was part of the party for the newest State Elder or whatever they call it," she said.
“It has nothing to do with the funerary traditions of the El-Aurian. Some kind of explosion, so you and your CMO can get your asses up and find out what it’s about. The El-Aurians don’t need terrorism and explosions when they’re already in mourning their Head of Planetary Government. It’s an order and I do mean on the double!”
And now the Conclusion
Rena could feel Brix's emotions as she hauled her ass from site to site, doing what she could to read for life signs. Already, she'd identified five. Rena tapped her comms and opened a private channel.
=/\=Brix. Are you ok? Do you need a medic?"=/\=
Brix pulled herself together. She wiped her cheeks. “No, I just needed a moment. I’ll get back to it. There’s a building here that needs exploring.”
Rena simply nodded. "That's ok," she said. "We all might," she added. Her caseload just doubled, she knew. "Do you want some help?" The Counselor asked. "Both of us together should be able to get some life signatures."
Brix wiped away sooted eyes. “It looks pristine, but I’m not getting any life signs back, just a strange type of energy reading. Maybe you should come over before I go inside.
“Who knows what we might find in the only building not destroyed by the fallen hotel?” Brix wondered more for herself than Rena. She was sure the energy flux was familiar, at least.
Rena nodded quietly. She wasn't getting any life signs either. "I wonder," she said. "I am not getting much." She sighed. "Radio over to Vila, please, tell her," Rena wandered on a little more. She had sensed this kind of thing before but couldn't put a finger on it.
“I think we should go inside, there may be more of the Elder Council in there who can start making their own decisions for the their own planet,” Brix countered. “It would make sense for them to have some kind of…disaster management base attached to the Council building.
“Besides, the power structure looks enormous, so something in there is generating enough power for a dense shielding and more.” Brix looked at Rena and despite their age and rank differences, she wasn’t going to back down from this.
“There’s also no structural risk to us, the building is entirely intact.” She raised an eyebrow, as if daring the counselor to disagree with her.
Rena had to understand that there had to be Elders somewhere - aside from the one they had found.
Rena sighed. "I don't know. If neither of us are getting life signs...we should focus our attention on where they ARE. Save lives," she said. HOPEFULLY the building was just empty. But what if it wasn't? She should be able to read *something*. "Alright. Let's go in, I guess," she said. She turned on her COMMS badge.
=/\=Commander Lorut, Brix and I found...something. We're investigating. I will report back soon.=/\=
Vila was busy with SitRep stuff, and simply nodded.
=/\=Ok, Lieutenant. Please be careful, do NOT move anything, and report back ASAP.=/\= Rena was one of the few crew she didn't need to worry about "behaving" themselves.
Aaron materialized aboard one of the hospital ships in Starfleet and whatever sickbay he beamed into was enormous. He could easily fit six times the size of the Intrepid’s sickbay inside this one.
“Over here!” Aaron yelled at no one. “I’ve got one of the planet’s Elders!”
A crew of sickbay personnel approached with a rolling biobed and he gently lay the Elder down. Life signs immediately appeared, looking slow to Aaron’s untrained eye. But to his surprise, the heart rate and blood pressure stabilized within a minute of being safely aboard the ship.
Another minute later, she sat up and the dust settled off of her face. “Water please?” She croaked, the ashen soot was irritating and Aaron asked for a cup too.
“Do you require assistance,” a nurse asked him.
“No, I require getting back down there to assist with the rescue and evacuation. If you would, settle me back down where I was. Just, not inside that tube, if you don’t mind.”
The nurse nodded. “You are brave for being so young.”
Aaron nodded, “I am only three,” he agreed before disappearing into a transporter and materializing near Rena and Brix.
Aaron could tell he had confused the nurse, but that had nothing to do with the immediate situation. He was also now confused by his own surroundings - as Rena and Brix appeared to be trying to reach some conclusion but had no one to support one or the other’s position.
’Out of the fire and into the frying pan,’ he thought
"Soong!" Rena exclaimed. "We're seeing why this building is okay, intact, and so on," she said. "How're things?" She asked. She meant with the recovery stuff.
“Beats the hell out of me, I just spent the last twenty minutes crawling through a plasteel tube trying to save an Elder. Fortunately, it seems she’ll survive,” he answered. Even though she was a senior officer, nerves were sensitive and tempers were running high.
"Ok," Rena replied. "I am glad. Thank you. Radio back if you need help!" She watched as he disappeared again.
“Anyway, I’m off again,” Aaron added. He jumped impossibly high and over a twisted hunk of building material, landing back in the middle of a hellscape.
She sighed and turned to Brix.
"Let's start moving bodies, I guess," she said. "I am getting something faint coming this way," she said, stepping to the left.
Brix reached out, feeling like something was there. An energy field flared and looked like rectangles with rounded edges, and it was as solid as a wall.
“Uh, Rena, am I crazy or does this look very…Q-like?” Brix had the mission at Farpoint Station seared in her mind. She was certain this was the same blockade, on a smaller scale.
Rena was thinking something similar, but more or less like it was an inside thing. She looked at Brix. "Indeed, it does," she replied. "Do you want to call Lorut, or should I?" She sighed. This made things infinitely worse. The Counselor closed her eyes for a moment. She was tired.
Brix crossed her arms. “If there’s a Q in there and they’ve pitched a wall up, we aren’t getting inside. They can stop a starship, so we’d probably be transported to some uninhabitable planet. I say we leave it alone for now and go back to helping the people who want it, not these selfish Q who are clearly being selfish by hiding out in their Q protected tower.”
Brix knew it was a long shot at getting the Q involved, at best. At least, she had given them some verbal realism to chew on.
"There's no Q," Rena replied, trying to keep her tone even. Brix sounded a bit..paranoid. "You should come by and see me," she said. "After this." She stepped aside, though, and pressed her Comms.
=/\=Commander, ma'am. Petty Officer Sa'ad and I, and Lieutenant Soong, have found a few live people. They're being transported to the hospital ship Sydney. =/\=
=/\=Thank you, Lieutenant. =/\=
Rena hung up, and turned back to Brix. "If you're sure...let's move on. But Soong is finding people...It doesn't seem right to leave them here..." she said.
“Urgh,” female Q bemoaned as she flashed into existence. “How very boring of you to try morality against the Q…still, it is a small ask.”
As the female Q disappeared, so did the crashed hotel, leaving many people wandering about against the ghastly, hellish landscape.
“I’ll be damned,” Brix whispered. Now only was she right, but hundreds, maybe thousands of people who had been injured and trapped were now freed and, seemingly, wandering around dazed buy unharmed.
Turning to Rena, she asked, “Are you seeing this?”
Rena let out a breath. "Yeah," she said. "Let's get out of here," she said. "I am going to find Lorut. Maybe you can assist the others in getting bodies out of the other buildings." This changed everything.
With his attention focused on treating the wounded that had arrived at the triage area before being dispatched to the waiting ships in orbit Doctor Frasier Greene was oblivious of what Brix and Rena had experienced. However, it wasn't long until he became aware the changes as there was collective gasp from the crowd of patients and medical personnel.
Frasier squinted into the horizon having looked around he struggled to understand what had just happened. One moment the broken wreck of the crashed hotel littered the distance had vanished - including the far flung debris field leaving behind only the persons whom appeared understandably confused.
=/\=Greene to Lorut =/\= he called on the comm. =/\=Are you see thins? What happened?=/\=
=/\= Captain King to Commander Lorut, what the Hell just happened? The ionization of the air is completely negligible. We're reading minimal casualties at this point. I'm getting reports from the other ships that even their casualties are now conscious and walking! =/\=
Vila sighed, and clicked open Comms channel. =/\=One at a time, please. Thank you, Counselor. I'll be at your location in one minute, fifty-five seconds. Yes, Doc, I saw. =/\= But WHAT the hell had she seen? =/\=Captain, we've got...people alive. A whole building remains standing. It seems some kind of forcefield, perhaps. I am headed there now; my Counselor and the Yeoman are there. Can one of your scientists meet me there? =/\= In a moment, she was standing at Rena's side. "Brix, what is happening?" She turned on her Comms again.
=/\=Get me security to the far building.=/\= She clicked off.
"Brix thinks it's Q. But it's probably just a forcefield of some kind," Rena replied. She wasn't prone to conspiracies, and why would Q protect these folks, of all people?
Brix was sat on a granite ledge. Her hair was a mess and her color was off, pale. She could tell be the color of her hands. “I saw a Lady Q,” she kept mumbling to herself.
Every once in a while, people would walk past her and Rena, but Brix knew they were fine. She could tell by their faces - confused - but fine. She began to wonder at the power behind that snap.
The power to make the entire hotel disappear, to save the people inside, to heal those that weren’t dead. For a moment, she wondered if the dead would spring to life. It was a terrorizing thought - all that power.
Callan walked out of the formerly ashen landscape holding the hands of two children. His face couldn't have been more suspicious and surprised at the same time.
One minute, he was crawling through rubble to the sound of the trapped children, a boy and a girl, and then something happened, the rubble cleared, the atmospheric dust plume dissipated, and he was stood there looking at the pair dumbly.
=/\= This makes no sense=/\= Greene voiced over the channel. The wounded at the triage centre - they're no longer injured. There's no wounds, no trauma, not even a scar on them. Just a bucket load of bewilderment. Unfortunately the same cannot be said of the fallen. I've had them transferred to the waiting vessels. =/\=
Aaron had been straining to hold up a portion of plasteel as children and the adults quickly made their way under the arch he had created. Suddenly the plasteel was gone. He disappeared while he was holding it up. People looked around and he scanned the area with his newfound cybernetic abilities. None of them had so much as a scratch now.
The people with broken arms and legs, people he was planning on tagging for transport stood up and gasped at their sudden good fortune, however, those who were dead remained that way. He wanted to wonder but knew Brix was right about that energy field. It was Q…one of them, at least.
Xavier was shaking his head, unsure what his next action should be. Knowing he could do nothing to help the dead, he began comforting the wounded.
Vila sighed at both Rena and Greene's communiques. =/\=Security and I are headed for the building. Stay put. Greene, meet me there if possible for any further triage. Leave the others to Gocx. =/\=
In a moment, she appeared at the building. Indeed, it was still intact. She noticed Brix looking pale and unwell. "Petty Officer Saad, please see Dr. Greene NOW." She sighed and turned to the Counselor.
"It's not a forcefield, Lieutenant. They don't operate like this," she said.
Culver owed her big for this.
She tapped her badge again. =/\=All Starfleet personnel in the area. Secure everything. We have reason to believe a combative entity known as Q is in the area. Repeat. Battle ready. =/\=
As Brix approached the doctor, she said, “ I’m fine. Just a little shaken up. I really didn’t expect to meet a Q, let alone have one talk to me. That’s Picard and Janeway-level stuff, not Petty Officer third-class type stuff. I think I’m in a little bit of shock about it.”
Captain Madison King transported down to the site and found Commander Lorut, her counselor, a doctor - by the look of the medical wand in his hand - and a Petty Officer being examined by him.
Approaching the Bajoran woman, Madison asked, “This building is emitting no energy signatures, no connection to a power source, and appears, from a construction point of view, to be the first building on the site. The energy field around it is blocking every attempt to scan inside,” she explained to Commander Lorut and the counselor, Campbell. Madison had enough trouble remembering her own Crew’s names.
“It does suggest that at least one Q, or higher being, lives inside,” Madison concluded. “Wouldn’t it be thrilling to meet one, maybe even the original Q?”
A flash signaled the arrival of the Lady Q. She looked at the gathering of pathetic lesser beings. “I would hardly classify myself as ‘combative’, Vila,” she directed the comment to Lorut as she adopted a condescending smile.
"Well, I am," the Bajoran replied. "Get out now," she said, "If you know what is good for you." Her tone was even but the threat was not.
Directing her resting bitch face at Captain King, she folded her arms. “I do hope I make it into your report, Madison. And while I’m certain this will be the highlight of the rest of your boring life, I won’t even remember your name by the time I return to the Citadel.
“Now, I’ve done as much as I can for the El-Aurians since they are returning the favor. And that, Maddie and Vila, is all I will say about that.
“My good deed is done for the moment. Do NOT think my good will strong enough to do any more than I have already done.
“I have endangered the Continuum too much and I will be exiled from this place for my actions.”
With her statement made, Lady Q was gone. Apparently exiled for saving the El-Aurians, well, at least the ones that weren’t dead. Those people remained dead. There would be a lot of funerals in the aftermath but less thanks to Q.
Brix looked toward the sky. “Thank you,” she said, barely a whisper as a tear streamed down her cheek.
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