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velvetpage(Note to readers: I am not enough of a Trekkie to know a lot of terminology that a Medical Officer would probably know, and I'm not a doctor, either, so I'm faking an awful lot of this. Feel free to gently correct minor details. Also, please note that several of the events mentioned here are embellishments on what happened in-game. I forgot to do them last night, and realized in the middle of the night that they made sense to do and were implied in some of the things I said I was doing. So they're going into the character journal.)
Log date whatever-it-is, Starship Bellerophon, Acting First Medical Officer Kathleen Bell's private log.
I thought for a moment I was concussed when I woke up. Certainly my head hurt enough for that to be the case, and my eyes didn't seem to be working right. Then I realized that, rather than being too bright, it was instead too dim. The floating sensation was not a trick of the bump on my head, but the effects of zero gravity; and the headache, while awful, was not causing any feelings of nausea normally associated with a concussion. This analysis was simultaneously reassuring and very, very worrisome. I pulled myself back to full consciousness by force of will, and looked around.
Sick bay was a shambles. Even as one part of my brain was beginning to react as an officer, planning a reprimand for the cleaning staff, I realized that it couldn't possibly be anyone's fault. The room was a shambles because everything and everyone who hadn't been nailed or tied down was now floating. Those who had been moving at the time of impact - if it had been an impact - had been thrown against bulkheads and beds with the force of their momentum, suddenly in zero gravity. Several other people were rubbing heads and groaning. Only one, Lieutenant Medtech Gorlaev, seemed to be awake. He moved carelessly when he spotted me, and found himself bouncing his head off one of the bunks. To his credit, he didn't swear at it.
"Lieutenant, get these people back in their bunks and secured there, and see to their injuries." Slowly I pushed myself away from the ceiling in the direction of the communication console in the center of the room. I could see the blinking red lights and recognized the air pressure as that of a complete lock-down, but I had to at least attempt to figure out what was up in the rest of the ship. "And get yourself an analgesic for your head," I added, popping a pill myself. I bit back a sigh of relief as the pain receded in waves, then looked at the console.
There was not a single blue or green light anywhere. The life support lights were flashing, the display showing 98% of full power. I did a quick calculation: I had been out less than five minutes, probably, and sick bay had enough auxiliary power to last 36 hours at reduced power, but that wouldn't do us any good if we were the only ones left alive. I clamped down on the runaway thoughts of what, exactly, had happened. There was no point in speculation until I had a better idea what was going on in the rest of the ship. I flicked the switch to contact the bridge, and got nothing, not even a flicker of static. Engineering - nothing. Science - nothing. The console appeared to be completely dead, the only lights those related to the life support systems within sick bay. For all I knew, my one little corner of the ship was floating alone in space.
I tried my comm badge - dead as well. Keeping the panic out of my voice, I looked around for whoever else was awake. Another medtech was making her way towards me, more carefully than had the lieutenant. "Report," I barked.
"The panel readout by the door says that there's pressure and atmosphere on the other side, but I'm not sure how far we can trust it given the extent of the damage," she told me. "All the patients appear to be fine. Most were fastened into their bunks by sheets, and only one got hit with anything. At least two were ready to be discharged when this happened. Sir, what are your orders?"
First things first, I thought. "Detail every mobile person to clean this place up and strap down anything that shouldn't be floating. Check supplies of oxygen masks; we may get a few ox-dep cases down here. Make sure there's at least one operating theater ready to go, and at least two techs ready to scrub on command." I took a deep breath. "I'm going to suit up and try to get to the bridge. Lock the door behind me and open it as little as possible; it wastes life support power to open it too often." The chief medical officer had been on the bridge in a command meeting when this happened, and he and I were the only two fully-qualified doctors on the ship. Gorlaev was an experienced tech, though, and capable of organizing triage care. I raised my voice so he could hear me. "Lieutenant Gorlaev, you're in charge until either myself or Commander Raleigh returns. First-aid care only. No diagnostics unless absolutely necessary, and if it requires power, skip it. We don't have the resources for much beyond that at the moment. I'll see what I can do about necessary surgeries when I return." I realized that I was assuming my commanding officer to be dead. Shying away from the thought, I continued. "Have you checked your comm badges? Your tricorders?" They both did so, and shook their heads. "Fine. Assume catastrophic failure of all ship's functions except life support right here, until you hear otherwise. I'll be back when I can." By this time I had donned an environmental protection suit. Not as good as a fully pressurized space suit, it would nevertheless give me some protection if I happened to open a door with no pressure on the other side - hopefully enough protection to slam the door before getting sucked out of it. And it had an air tank with two oxygen masks. I grabbed a first-aid bag, then put out my free arm to stop my trajectory towards the far wall. Damned zero gravity was a bloody nuisance. I pulled myself hand over hand towards the door. Gorlaev met me there, to slam it behind me and cycle it shut. In moments, I was in the corridor. It had full atmosphere and pressure.
Slowly I made my way along the corridor, knocking on doors and listening for response. There was none - not surprisingly, since most of these doors led to storage rooms for rarely-used or surplus medical equipment. I passed through two more bulkhead doors before encountering anyone. The two junior science officers were pathetically glad to see me, and the medical tech who came up behind them was scarcely less so. They'd been heading to sick bay, assuming that people would be gathering there if they could. I made them dig oxygen tanks and masks out of the first-aid units spaced along the walls. It was a slim protection if ever there was one, because, if we ran into a depressurized zone, the tanks wouldn't protect them from the vacuum. But it made them feel better to be doing something. Then I brought them with me.
We made it to the lift shaft without incident. Carefully, because the lift shaft was the most likely place yet to have been breached, I cracked open the door, ready to slam it shut if I heard even the tiniest hiss. It had to be done manually, since door power was on auxiliary like everything else, but that gave me the semblance of added control.
There was no hiss.
I opened the door all the way, I looked up the shaft towards the bridge on the top level. There were people there, but since they were eight levels up, i couldn't hear what they were saying. In my best parade-ground voice, rarely used as it was, I called, "Lieutenant-Commander Bell, reporting! All personnel report!"
"We're blasting into the Bridge, Commander," came a voice I recognized as belonging to another Lieutenant-Commander, a science officer named _________.
"Are you crazy?" I blurted, and propelled myself upward as fast as I could go. One nice thing about zero gravity is the speed with which this can be accomplished. I even managed to keep from knocking myself out at the top.
While I was on my way up, I realized that the commander was not unopposed. One of the ship's Vulcans, Lt. Com. Selak, was grappling him in an attempt to stop him from melting through the bulkhead door with his phaser. He tried to pistol-whip her, and failed. He wasn't far enough gone to have tried to phase her - a good thing, since his phaser was set to its highest level. Several other people were floating around looking nervous. I addressed myself to one of them with a brisk command to report.
"He was trying to break into the bridge, but we don't know if it's pressurized so the Commander is trying to stop him." He looked uncertainly at me, nonplussed that two second-in-command officers were brawling. I couldn't blame him. I went for my bag, pulled out a hypospray, and sprayed the commander with it. In moments, he was limp, drifting in the shaft. I plucked the phaser out of his hand, and then turned my attention to the door.
It was hissing.
Commander Selak was faster than I; with her own phaser, she welded the door shut. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief.
It was at that moment that Commanders Freeman and Sterev arrived, through the door from level two just below us. We filled them in. Both were fully suited, and decided to do a space walk to determine the status of the bridge. They showed us that our comm badges would work if we rebooted them; it was the subspace disturbance that had thrown them off, and the batteries were fine. Meanwhile, I sent the tranquilized commander down to sick bay with one of the ensigns and my remaining medtech, with orders to keep him under until I got there, and to get everyone else's comm badges back online. They appeared glad to leave.
The space walk didn't take long. Within five minutes, Freeman had reported - on a closed channel to myself and Commander Selak - that the bridge had completely depressurized, most of the people who had been there were dead (I shuddered, knowing exactly what that kind of death would look like) and the bridge had sealed itself off at 10% atmosphere and pressure just a brief second too late. They reported one life sign, faint but present. In a few terse words, we figured out how to momentarily repressurize the bridge, enough to get the Vulcan Science officer out of there and back to me. It took an endless three minutes to accomplish. I turned on the oxygen on my own tank because it was more powerful and bigger than the little first-aid ones; then I found a panel he could be strapped to, to make moving him easier. The chances of saving his life were slim. He'd experienced severe oxygen deprivation for long enough that a human would have been brain-dead, not to mention all the effects of decompression. But nobody said any of that out loud. There was no need.
I was on the comm to sick bay even as we strapped him down and attached the oxygen mask. "We've got a ranking decompression trauma case coming down. I want an OR and two techs scrubbing, stat. We'll be repairing trauma to the eyes as quickly as possible. Lots of oxygen. ETA two minutes." The restorative work that would be necessary to bring him out of his coma was mostly beyond our scope, but it looked like I'd be able to keep him alive long enough to get him to a space station - if we could get the ship moving. The entire command staff were dead, freeze-dried in the Bridge, and without at least one of them conscious, we had no access to the code necessary to take command of the ship.
Fortunately, we had another Vulcan on board. She did a mind-meld, which, while not enough to get the information from my patient, was enough to let us guess it. While I performed surgery, the other three seconds-in-command (minus the one who was still under sedation in sick bay) met to decide on a course of action. It was determined that the ranking tactical officer, Commander Freeman, would make the most logical choice for acting captain.
I have patients to see to. The remainder of this tale, and our part in the dramatic events that changed Federation history, will wait until my duties are done.
Acting Chief Medical Officer, Commander Bell, logging off.
Log date whatever-it-is, Starship Bellerophon, Acting First Medical Officer Kathleen Bell's private log.
I thought for a moment I was concussed when I woke up. Certainly my head hurt enough for that to be the case, and my eyes didn't seem to be working right. Then I realized that, rather than being too bright, it was instead too dim. The floating sensation was not a trick of the bump on my head, but the effects of zero gravity; and the headache, while awful, was not causing any feelings of nausea normally associated with a concussion. This analysis was simultaneously reassuring and very, very worrisome. I pulled myself back to full consciousness by force of will, and looked around.
Sick bay was a shambles. Even as one part of my brain was beginning to react as an officer, planning a reprimand for the cleaning staff, I realized that it couldn't possibly be anyone's fault. The room was a shambles because everything and everyone who hadn't been nailed or tied down was now floating. Those who had been moving at the time of impact - if it had been an impact - had been thrown against bulkheads and beds with the force of their momentum, suddenly in zero gravity. Several other people were rubbing heads and groaning. Only one, Lieutenant Medtech Gorlaev, seemed to be awake. He moved carelessly when he spotted me, and found himself bouncing his head off one of the bunks. To his credit, he didn't swear at it.
"Lieutenant, get these people back in their bunks and secured there, and see to their injuries." Slowly I pushed myself away from the ceiling in the direction of the communication console in the center of the room. I could see the blinking red lights and recognized the air pressure as that of a complete lock-down, but I had to at least attempt to figure out what was up in the rest of the ship. "And get yourself an analgesic for your head," I added, popping a pill myself. I bit back a sigh of relief as the pain receded in waves, then looked at the console.
There was not a single blue or green light anywhere. The life support lights were flashing, the display showing 98% of full power. I did a quick calculation: I had been out less than five minutes, probably, and sick bay had enough auxiliary power to last 36 hours at reduced power, but that wouldn't do us any good if we were the only ones left alive. I clamped down on the runaway thoughts of what, exactly, had happened. There was no point in speculation until I had a better idea what was going on in the rest of the ship. I flicked the switch to contact the bridge, and got nothing, not even a flicker of static. Engineering - nothing. Science - nothing. The console appeared to be completely dead, the only lights those related to the life support systems within sick bay. For all I knew, my one little corner of the ship was floating alone in space.
I tried my comm badge - dead as well. Keeping the panic out of my voice, I looked around for whoever else was awake. Another medtech was making her way towards me, more carefully than had the lieutenant. "Report," I barked.
"The panel readout by the door says that there's pressure and atmosphere on the other side, but I'm not sure how far we can trust it given the extent of the damage," she told me. "All the patients appear to be fine. Most were fastened into their bunks by sheets, and only one got hit with anything. At least two were ready to be discharged when this happened. Sir, what are your orders?"
First things first, I thought. "Detail every mobile person to clean this place up and strap down anything that shouldn't be floating. Check supplies of oxygen masks; we may get a few ox-dep cases down here. Make sure there's at least one operating theater ready to go, and at least two techs ready to scrub on command." I took a deep breath. "I'm going to suit up and try to get to the bridge. Lock the door behind me and open it as little as possible; it wastes life support power to open it too often." The chief medical officer had been on the bridge in a command meeting when this happened, and he and I were the only two fully-qualified doctors on the ship. Gorlaev was an experienced tech, though, and capable of organizing triage care. I raised my voice so he could hear me. "Lieutenant Gorlaev, you're in charge until either myself or Commander Raleigh returns. First-aid care only. No diagnostics unless absolutely necessary, and if it requires power, skip it. We don't have the resources for much beyond that at the moment. I'll see what I can do about necessary surgeries when I return." I realized that I was assuming my commanding officer to be dead. Shying away from the thought, I continued. "Have you checked your comm badges? Your tricorders?" They both did so, and shook their heads. "Fine. Assume catastrophic failure of all ship's functions except life support right here, until you hear otherwise. I'll be back when I can." By this time I had donned an environmental protection suit. Not as good as a fully pressurized space suit, it would nevertheless give me some protection if I happened to open a door with no pressure on the other side - hopefully enough protection to slam the door before getting sucked out of it. And it had an air tank with two oxygen masks. I grabbed a first-aid bag, then put out my free arm to stop my trajectory towards the far wall. Damned zero gravity was a bloody nuisance. I pulled myself hand over hand towards the door. Gorlaev met me there, to slam it behind me and cycle it shut. In moments, I was in the corridor. It had full atmosphere and pressure.
Slowly I made my way along the corridor, knocking on doors and listening for response. There was none - not surprisingly, since most of these doors led to storage rooms for rarely-used or surplus medical equipment. I passed through two more bulkhead doors before encountering anyone. The two junior science officers were pathetically glad to see me, and the medical tech who came up behind them was scarcely less so. They'd been heading to sick bay, assuming that people would be gathering there if they could. I made them dig oxygen tanks and masks out of the first-aid units spaced along the walls. It was a slim protection if ever there was one, because, if we ran into a depressurized zone, the tanks wouldn't protect them from the vacuum. But it made them feel better to be doing something. Then I brought them with me.
We made it to the lift shaft without incident. Carefully, because the lift shaft was the most likely place yet to have been breached, I cracked open the door, ready to slam it shut if I heard even the tiniest hiss. It had to be done manually, since door power was on auxiliary like everything else, but that gave me the semblance of added control.
There was no hiss.
I opened the door all the way, I looked up the shaft towards the bridge on the top level. There were people there, but since they were eight levels up, i couldn't hear what they were saying. In my best parade-ground voice, rarely used as it was, I called, "Lieutenant-Commander Bell, reporting! All personnel report!"
"We're blasting into the Bridge, Commander," came a voice I recognized as belonging to another Lieutenant-Commander, a science officer named _________.
"Are you crazy?" I blurted, and propelled myself upward as fast as I could go. One nice thing about zero gravity is the speed with which this can be accomplished. I even managed to keep from knocking myself out at the top.
While I was on my way up, I realized that the commander was not unopposed. One of the ship's Vulcans, Lt. Com. Selak, was grappling him in an attempt to stop him from melting through the bulkhead door with his phaser. He tried to pistol-whip her, and failed. He wasn't far enough gone to have tried to phase her - a good thing, since his phaser was set to its highest level. Several other people were floating around looking nervous. I addressed myself to one of them with a brisk command to report.
"He was trying to break into the bridge, but we don't know if it's pressurized so the Commander is trying to stop him." He looked uncertainly at me, nonplussed that two second-in-command officers were brawling. I couldn't blame him. I went for my bag, pulled out a hypospray, and sprayed the commander with it. In moments, he was limp, drifting in the shaft. I plucked the phaser out of his hand, and then turned my attention to the door.
It was hissing.
Commander Selak was faster than I; with her own phaser, she welded the door shut. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief.
It was at that moment that Commanders Freeman and Sterev arrived, through the door from level two just below us. We filled them in. Both were fully suited, and decided to do a space walk to determine the status of the bridge. They showed us that our comm badges would work if we rebooted them; it was the subspace disturbance that had thrown them off, and the batteries were fine. Meanwhile, I sent the tranquilized commander down to sick bay with one of the ensigns and my remaining medtech, with orders to keep him under until I got there, and to get everyone else's comm badges back online. They appeared glad to leave.
The space walk didn't take long. Within five minutes, Freeman had reported - on a closed channel to myself and Commander Selak - that the bridge had completely depressurized, most of the people who had been there were dead (I shuddered, knowing exactly what that kind of death would look like) and the bridge had sealed itself off at 10% atmosphere and pressure just a brief second too late. They reported one life sign, faint but present. In a few terse words, we figured out how to momentarily repressurize the bridge, enough to get the Vulcan Science officer out of there and back to me. It took an endless three minutes to accomplish. I turned on the oxygen on my own tank because it was more powerful and bigger than the little first-aid ones; then I found a panel he could be strapped to, to make moving him easier. The chances of saving his life were slim. He'd experienced severe oxygen deprivation for long enough that a human would have been brain-dead, not to mention all the effects of decompression. But nobody said any of that out loud. There was no need.
I was on the comm to sick bay even as we strapped him down and attached the oxygen mask. "We've got a ranking decompression trauma case coming down. I want an OR and two techs scrubbing, stat. We'll be repairing trauma to the eyes as quickly as possible. Lots of oxygen. ETA two minutes." The restorative work that would be necessary to bring him out of his coma was mostly beyond our scope, but it looked like I'd be able to keep him alive long enough to get him to a space station - if we could get the ship moving. The entire command staff were dead, freeze-dried in the Bridge, and without at least one of them conscious, we had no access to the code necessary to take command of the ship.
Fortunately, we had another Vulcan on board. She did a mind-meld, which, while not enough to get the information from my patient, was enough to let us guess it. While I performed surgery, the other three seconds-in-command (minus the one who was still under sedation in sick bay) met to decide on a course of action. It was determined that the ranking tactical officer, Commander Freeman, would make the most logical choice for acting captain.
I have patients to see to. The remainder of this tale, and our part in the dramatic events that changed Federation history, will wait until my duties are done.
Acting Chief Medical Officer, Commander Bell, logging off.
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Date: 2007-03-11 09:12 pm (UTC)???
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