On the Quay

Posted on Thu 15th Mar, 2018 @ 6:09pm by

433 words; about a 2 minute read

Mission: Brushfires
Location: Starbase 109, Inner Harbor
Timeline: MD 1, 16:15

Everyone knew something unusual was going on. Deck 205 had been cleared of all non-essential personnel, and a veritable army of Corpsmen, Nurses, and Doctors had appeared as if by magic, centering on Auxiliary Sickbay 5. Civilians on decks above and below began gravitating to the windows which looked out on the inner harbor as yard tugs moved ships to clear a path to the emergent docking ports central to 205.

Doctor Chlamydia Addams, dressed in her favorite colors of black and blue, took a last look around the controlled chaos at the dockside, and nodded. They were as ready as they were going to be, she decided. Fussing at anyone now would only ratchet up the tension without useful result.

"Look!" one of the Corpsmen said, probably unnecessarily. All eyes were turned to the main doors as the atmosphere containment field indicators lit up and the cyclopean doors ground slowly open. Half a dozen YTBs zipped out. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of people watched. And then... a collective gasp ran through the crowd.

She had been a ship, once. A Sovereign class starship, pride of the fleet, sent out beyond the borders of the known to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilizations. Now, she was a smouldering wreck. Though the letters of her registration were still legibly USS Samurai, a torn furrow lanced several decks deep on her primary hull. Her port nacelle was missing entirely, and the remaining pylon looked as though it had been chewed by a creature of unimaginable proportion. Something sparked intermittently within the wreckage. A chasm yawned in the secondary hull, a pit where a lance had pierced all the way through the magnificent vessel and blown out the Starboard side.

"Mon dieux," Addams murmured to herself. She had seen worse damage to ships, but not ships still moving under their own power. "They risked warp travel in that?!" She cleared her mind of memories of USS Hood's devastation, and turned to look at her people. "Alright, everyone! As you can see, this is not a drill. Triage nurses to the front, gurney teams stand-by."

The unnecessary reminder of the protocol reminded the medical staff what their purpose was, and they shook off the visual impact of the damage to the ship. The damage to the crew, they knew, was going to be worse. Much worse; for all that Starfleet personnel tended to anthropomorphize ships and believe in their souls, at the end of the day a ship didn't bleed, or weep, or mourn. That dubious honor was the privilege of the survivors.

 

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