Disoriented on the Flight Deck (Time Zone 2)

Posted on 18 Aug 2018 @ 4:57am by Lieutenant Commander Gemma Alexander & Story Teller

3,197 words; about a 16 minute read

Mission: Fractured
Location: Fighter Bay
Timeline: TZ2 || 0930 hours

Lt. Gemma Alexander picked herself up from the deck where she'd been thrown, "I swear I'm going to start wearing a helmet..." She groused annoyed at yet another head wack, her fellow pilots were going to have a field day with the 'not being quite right in the head' jokes. Emergency lighting kept the bay from being pitch black as she looked around at the shapes around her. She cradled her right wrist close to her body as it throbbed, she'd been climbing out of her craft and down the ladder when it happened.

Seeing no obvious cause she moved carefully through the patches of dark to the areas covered by the emergency lights. And even there she noticed they didn't seem as bright as they should have, some flickering in the big bay as others seemed at partial power. She was near the emergency kit on the wall now and attempted some first aid but the hypo seemed to work slowly and the pain dimmed but did not cut like it was supposed to. She hurried to put on the sling and pulled out the light source swinging the rest over her back on its strap. She turned, trying to turn on the light source only to have to hit it against her leg to get the dim beam to work.

Finally getting to a console she checked it only to discovered it was as she feared and no power was getting to it, she tried comms, nothing. "Damnit." She said with feeling then a bit louder, "Anyone here!" said a little concerned over the sheer silence, this was not normal.

Quinn shook his head, pushing himself up off of the console he had sprawled across, he felt fuzzy like he was half awake, cold and oddly shaky, the mystery voice had woken him. "Over here," He called, standing and wobbling a little, something wet was on his face but he couldn't see well enough to make out what it was.

Gemma picked up the dim light source and made her way to the voice carefully as she looked for others along her route, "Are you hurt?" She asked when she got close enough to see an outline, as she got closer though she quickly shifted the beam to one side so as not to shine it in his face as she saw the bloodied features of one of the maintenance staff.

"I don't think it's serious," Quinn answered. He wasn't sure if it was serious or not, but that seemed like the thing to say. "Lieutenant Winner, Deck Boss." He introduced himself as he placed the voice to a callsign. "You're Archer? Do you have any idea what's going on?"

"I think you hit your head harder than I did Lieutenant." She said gently joking. She didn't have all the crew memorized but was well familiar with those who went near her beloved craft or flew with her. "Grand to meet you. Have a seat, I'll do what I can while I fill you in..." She gestured to a crate and put the emergency kit on another crate, "Though I'll warn you, something seems off in this kit, nothing's working right..." She pulled out the dermal regen device, tried to turn it on but it flickered on and off instead. She was not helped by the fact she had one good hand.

"You might be right about that," Quinn gladly took the seat, his legs were wobbly enough that there was a genuine fear he was going to fall over. "main power seems to be offline, have you any idea why?"

She came over with the on/off again dermal regenator to at least try to stop the bleeding before putting on a bandage, "No there doesn't appear to be any battle damage that I can see in here but I've not been anywhere else yet. Nothings working right, powers off and comms are down..." She spoke as she moved the dermal over the cut on his head, the bleeding slowed but power was so flickering and weak it was not the wound like it should. "And things are looking like they've not been cleaned in awhile." Which she knew was not how Winner and the others kept this bay.

As the pain dulled in his head and his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he got his first proper look around the hangar. The pilot was right, the place looked like it had been abandoned for years, dust and debris littered the floor and the few fighters that were standing sentinel. "We should check to see if any of the fighters have power, we could use their sensors to get some kinda information."

"Good idea, one sec..." She got a bandage from the kit to help with the wound that wouldn't quite close, and then got a hypo. It was to help with the dizziness and related issues it would cut down but not get rid of it. Like the rest of the kit it seemed not to work at top capacity. "Ok let's go." She gestured to her craft which was fortunately nearby. It looked old. Dusty. It actually hurt a little to see in such condition.

Quinn stood, finding that much of his dizziness had faded and while he still didn't feel great, it was lessened enough that he could manage. Casting a critical eye over the fighter, he wished for the first time ever that Griffin was around. The man was short-tempered, over-bearing, loud and obnoxious, but he knew his job. "Aside from the dust, it looks intact enough." He added, not confident in how useful he could be. His job was to manage the flight deck, the intricate dance of machines moving around a limited space, his knowledge of the systems that made the things go was limited at best.

She nodded, "I'm going to give it a try." She climbed carefully up there with the ladder that was still nearby, opened a small panel then pulled the small manual open lever. It stuck so she braced herself and kicked it, it moved and the cockpit unsealed. Musty, dry air whooshed out and she pushed it open. It was just as she left it. Right down to the family photo jammed in one corner of the cockpit. She stared at the faded photo for a few moments caught by the sheer age it appeared. It had been a fresh photo when she'd placed it there, what yesterday?

She recalled Winner was waiting to see how it went and called down, "Ok attempting reboot..." She held her breath muttering, "Come on baby...". It felt reluctant but the craft slowly began it's boot sequence after a few moments of dead and blackened consoles. "That's it boyo, come on now.." She said encouragingly with a somewhat relieved smile. Slowly lights flickered and came on solid. With a cry of triumph Gemma tapped a few keys, somewhat hampered by only having one hand available. "I think we got a live one!" She called down, "You should come up here and see this!" She may also need help depending on what controls she needed to push but they had a functioning craft and odds were good the others may be savable as well.

Winner grinned up at the cockpit as the fighter audibly hummed to life. He climbed up the support frame and popped his head over the open cockpit. "Are sensors operational? We need to get a scan of the ship." He told the pilot.

"Let's give it a try, diagnostics say it should work, though can't say I ever scanned a ship I was in..." She said a little bemusedly then carefully activated the needed function. The results would appear on the HUD that floated in front of Winner and Alexander.

"Whaaat the hell..." Quinn squinted at the scan results, he wasn't entirely sure what he was looking at, not being a scientist, but as far as he could tell the ship had been... "it looks like the ship's been... fractured, or something, into different time periods. Down here it's... five years in the future? Oh boy, what is going on?"

Seriously?" Gemma responded in disbelief even as her eyes scanned the readouts. 110 people, way less than there should be, clustered in certain areas, no enemies in range and so on as other data appeared. Her eyes widened as she saw what he had, the evidence of chroniton particles as well as quantum signatures being out of sync all over the ship. For a moment she didn't speak. When she did it was with great feeling, "I hate this Zone." She said concerned for her crew, her Captain, and her squadmates. She didn't even have an idea where Walsh was in all this. "We..." She gestured to herself and Winner, "Don't even match this bay..."

The CAG frowned at the display again. This was the side of Starfleet he had never wanted to experience. Action, adventure, exploration, sure. Disasters and insane science stuff, not so much. Not at all, in fact. "We," he ventured, "should probably try to find some other people, ideally some science-type people. This stuff is way above my pay grade. If we can get this data to someone who can use it, it might actually help."

Gemma nodded, "You just heard the limit of what I know..." She said by way of agreement, "If you have or can find a working PADD or tricorder so we can copy these I could see if we can't get anyone on coms. If not we'll make our way." She said thoughtfully her eyes flicked from him back to the sensor readouts.

"Sounds like a plan, I'll see what I can find." Winner replied, even as an idea was forming in his mind. "About comms... I think we can assume the main computer is down, but if we could..." he paused, the idea taking shape as he was talking, "... could use the fighter's computer core as... as... I dunno, some kinda comm relay, we might be able to make contact with other people out there."

Gemma thought about it then nodded, "I can help with that, I've had some extension courses so I think I could assist without blasting my fingers off or some such. Let's get this data copied first before something happens I'd rather have the data portable then we see about getting some help. If we can't get it set up toot sweet we can just make for one of the clusters..." She suggested pointing at the still floating HUD.

"Right," Quinn climbed down from the edge of the fighter's cockpit and went in search of a working device that could store data, a tricorder or a PADD. It didn't take him long to locate several examples of both, but all were non-functional or intermittent, just as the dermal regenerator had been. It took several minutes of rummaging through engineering kits to find a PADD that was working with reasonable reliability.

"Got it," he said as he climbed back up to the fighter brandishing the device.

"The Mighty Hunter returns!" She said with a smile as he came back, climbing up. It took a few minutes but they were able to transfer the data needed, "Great now make sure nothing happens to that, we don't know if that data is elsewhere." Then she looked at the coms, "Now shall we reach out and touch someone?" She joked, trying not to think about the members of their squadron missing or dead, from a barely remembered story from one of her grandmothers, something about a communications company motto.

Winner smiled, taking the PADD and tucking it in one of the utility pockets on his uniform pants for safe-keeping. "Let's give it a try... uh," he paused, trying hard to remember his remedial engineering courses, "if we boost power to the fighter's communications array by taking power from the weapons systems and route the EM signal through the deflector array, it should produce a signal strong enough to reach everyone. We'll also have to reprogram the array to act as a relay rather than a bidirectional circuit." He grinned ruefully at Gemma, "The problem is, I have no idea how to do any of that."

Alexander frowned, she had engineering extension courses but wasn't entirely sure she could route a circuit. This was going to be more complicated than she thought especially if Winner was in a similar boat as she was. She revised the plan a bit with this information. "You know what before we try that or more likely just walk to the nearest group let's just see if any of the smarty pants elsewhere got something doing." It made sense if they were trying to make contact so would one of the other 110 they saw on the sensors might be. And hopefully, please, one of them was an engineering or something. Alexander tapped a few keys to open her ships com, "Fighter bay to bridge, fighter bay to anyone respond please." She shrugged over at Winner as if to say, "Ok gave it a shot."

Winner frowned silently in response, then leaned behind her chair to get access to the comm system. He first popped the access panel, it was two push-release latches and the panel slid away. He was met with an array of isolinear chips all labeled with odd names, like "ISD-322K" that could, really, have been anything. "Hmm..."

He thought for a moment, tongue sticking out of one corner of his mouth as his eyes followed the pathways the circuits took, and then experimentally pulled one chip and slid it into another slot. The pathway changed as power was rerouted... somewhere.

It took another five minutes of quiet "hmms" and "ohs" and the occasional "tsk" before he had, he thought, rerouted the signal to the deflector array. "Can you shut down your weapons systems?" He asked Gemma, "and try to transfer the power to the comm system?"

Alexander watched with quiet apprehension as Winner moved things about, she had hoped it wouldn't have been needed but the comm attempt was a long shot and she knew it. She tried to follow what he was doing and thought it should work as advertised but she wasn't a 100% on that. "If you've fried my baby, we're going to have words..." She said more in concern than anger evident in her voice as she carefully shut down the weapons systems into their secure mode.

She then trickled power to the comm system but only the barest amount to test connections as she waited to see if the modifications had harmed it or not. She would have demanded tests first normally, not wanting to harm her precious but this was an emergency situation and there was nothing normal about it.

"If we fry this thing Chief Griffin will have both our hides," Quinn replied, looking up from his work and giving Gemma a quick grin. "I think it's holding, give it some more juice and then give it a try."

"And rightly so..." she replied, "here goes nothing...." Then to the craft she muttered, "Sorry.." before carefully routing more power to comms at a steady rate up to full levels, she took a breath when it looked like it was actually going to hold. She grinned at Winner relieved before attempting comms again.

"She's holding, I think." Winner frowned down at the comm unit. "We better do this fast, just in case it doesn't last."


Gemma nodded and moved to open the channel when it suddenly came to life,

"Lieutenant JG Espersen to fighter bay. Respond please," came a crackled reply over the fighter's speakers. "Come in please, fighter bay."

"Yes!" Quinn exclaimed, slapping the skin of the fighter lightly, "good little ship!" He tapped his comm badge to respond, "Bridge, this is Lieutenant Winner and Lieutenant Alexander in the fighter bay, can you read us?"

"Espersen here," came the exasperated reply. "What's your status down there?"

Alexander responded, after taking a moment to order her thoughts, "We seem to have the fighters on storage stand by, working well enough, regular coms were down with the main computer, no one else is around that we have seen, we have scans breaking the ship into multiple levels of chronoton particle concentrations and quantum fluctuations, we both have minor injuries and its five years from now down here, how are you?"

"Five years?" demanded the voice on the other line. "What the hell does that mean? Forget it. What I'd like to know is what happened to the command crew. Can you extend your comm range throughout the ship? See if we can't rally the crew?"

"We're pushing the comm system on the fighter pretty hard as it is," Winner frowned down at the fighter's comm system again, "but I think if we can reach you all the way up there on the bridge, the signal should be spread through most of the ship already."

"How about this, Winner can you help me overlay the comm range with ship schematic confirm if the range is covering all the clusters? And monitor the connection?" She pointed to a area of keys to one side of her panel opposite her good hand. The fighter craft was like a piano, it could be hen pecked but it flowed much better with two hands, "While I attempt a mass message, the others may not have realized we have some comms up."

Personally she was very concerned that the man answering on the bridge was not a senior officer and she longed to asked just what happened to the command crew but her priority was set on making sure those remaining were safe then they could do all the digging they needed, and dig they would. Alexander refused to accept that 400 plus crew were just gone especially on the little information she currently had.

"All right, hold on." Winner said, he shifted position to get better access to the panel and the keys, then brought up a schematic of an Akira class vessel from the fighter's target recognition database. "There's the schematic," he told Gemma, "can you overlay the sensor readings?"

"I think so..." She tapped rapidly with her one hand and shift to lean to tap a few more. After she'd done so the sensor readings covered one large section of the map. "Well we can at least get some of the crew, let's give this a go."

Finally it was time to attempt to see what they could do with their makeshift coms, so it was with a deep, calming breath Gemma glanced at Winner to make sure he was standing by then tapped the key she needed to open their version of a ship wide comm channel, "Attention, Attention, Attention..." She began using out of habit pilot radio protocols, "Fighter Bay to any available personnel: This is Lieutenant Alexander, please identify and report status." She glanced over at Winner and shrugged, it was done now they waited.



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