Did You See the Rabbit?
Posted on 27 Aug 2016 @ 8:49am by Ensign Kelly Khan & Lieutenant Commander Joey Geisler & Ensign Katniss Sutherland
4,674 words; about a 23 minute read
Mission:
Click Three Times
Location: USS Chimera
Timeline: MD 6 || 1345 - 2345 Hours
Kelly in Wonderland, how do you get to Wonderland?
Over the hill or underland, or just behind the tree?
When clouds go rolling by, they roll away and leave the sky.
Where is the land beyond the eye, that people can not see, where can it be?
Where do stars go, where is the crescent moon?
They must be somewhere in the sunny afternoon.
Kelly in Wonderland, where is the path to Wonderland?
Over the hill or here or there, I wonder where.
Cadet Kelly Khan groaned and wondered why she tasted something that no one had ever tasted, or at least she hoped no one had ever tasted. It tasted like...didn't know, but it wasn't something she wanted to taste again. Ever. She pushed herself off the deck and discovered the bridge of the Chimera was illuminated in a flashing red light from the red alert and that a white rabbit in a red waistcoat with a ridiculously large old fashioned time running for the turbolift.
"I’m late, I’m late, for a very important date! No time to say hello, goodbye! I’m late, I’m late, I’m late!" the rabbit declared before the doors of the turbolift opened and it jumped in.
"Hm? Did somebody say somethin'?" Over near the science station, Ensign Bill Andre rolled onto his side and pushed himself up. "Doc?" he questioned the dark form in front of him. He had thought that the Doctor and Cadet had done something to them all at first, but there lay the doctor right next to him, still out cold. "Hey, the Doc's still out," he said, voice full of confusion. "Why's the doc still out?"
Still trying to get the taste out of her mouth and why a talking rabbit with a clock had jumped into the turbolift shaft, Kelly turned to where the Ensign was babbling away. "Do I look like a doctor?" She asked him. "Do I?" Without waiting for an answer, Kelly stomped over to a medkit that had been tossed from its cubby hole and opened it. She rummaged through it until she pulled out a few vials and peered at them, then picked up the medical tricorder and scanned the vials one at a time. Finally, she nodded and loaded one into the hypospray called Tricordrazine and set it for five CC's and pressed it to the doctor's neck to activate it. "This should revive a Klingon after a hard night of drinking bloodwine," she said.
With a start, Abbey awoke and sat bolt upright. Her heart was racing and she could hear blood pounding in her ears. "What did you do?" she asked, blinking furiously. She took the hypospray from the Cadet and checked the contents and the dosage, then quickly swapped the phial out for a different one and pressed it to her neck. Almost immediately, her heart rate slowed. After a few moments, she swiped the sweat from her forehead and glared at Khan. "You need to repeat the medic extension courses," she muttered.
When the Doctor grabbed the hypospray from her, Kelly drew back a hand with the intent of slapping the woman's tastebuds to another quadrant, but she restrained herself and put it in her hair instead. She growled inwardly and narrowed her eyes. "Lieutenant, I'm a Command Cadet. I'm a Flight Cadet. I'm an Engineer Cadet, but I am not a medical Cadet. I have so much stuffed in my brain that I'm lucky I can remember my name at times. None of that is important and you are awake and alive and I need you to help these other people so I can figure out what is going on with this ship, where we are, where the Black Hawk is, why we don't have power and a hundred other things. Can you do that for me while I act like I'm in control?"
Abbey very nearly told the Cadet off, but stopped herself. She took a deep breath and reminded herself that she was supposed to be learning how to be in charge. Abbey would do her a disservice if she tried to pull rank on her. "Sorry," she said. "It's all right. No harm done. I'll see if I can't revive the others."
Andre watched the Doctor in wonder. He'd never seen a Lieutenant submit to a Cadet in his life. It was unusual to say the least. Also, the fact that the doctor hadn't been awake when he'd woken up convinced him that this last even had not, in fact, been either of the Black Hawk women. He still reserved judgement on whether or not they were the enemy, but for now, he opted to act as if they were on the same side. "We should see what's working and what's not," he suggested. He tapped his com-badge, but there was no chirp indicating it was working. "I think coms are down," he said.
Kelly felt bad for a brief moment before she shook her head. She turned her attention to the Ensign at the Science station. "Send ...go down to Engineering by the Jeffries tubes, Ensign," she said. "We need communications and we need power. I'm going to see what can be done here." She sighed and went over to the helm where that officer was down as well and gently laid him on the floor. "If we can get external lights on, we can send messages to the other ships via Morse Code."
"All the way to engineering," complained Andre, opening a nearby access hatch. "Boy, am I glad this ship isn't any bigger." With that, he was gone.
Elsewhere
Katniss's eyelids slowly began to twitch as they opened, she was face first on the floor and it was wet. She'd been drooling in her unconscious state. Her eyes began to open further and further, she was seeing double and she couldn't remember where she was, what was she even doing here. She lay their for a moment but something was wrong, she couldn't feel her legs. In fact she couldn't feel her arms either, she felt nothing. She tried to focus, but it was dark and she couldn't see any other movement, panic began to set it, your okay.....your okay, then she paused, she tried to focus but she couldn't even remember her own name, she began to hyper ventilate and panic consumed her until she passed out.
After a couple of minutes her eyes opened again, she still felt nothing, not even any pain. She lay their as her eyes began to adjust to the darkness, she couldn't even reach her com badge. There was only one thing for it, she took in a deep breath and screamed with all her might "Help.........Please someone help me...Anybody...help me."
"Mff?" grunted Paula Fierri. bringing a hand to her forehead and attempting- and exactly failing- to roll over."Wha's a matter?" she muttered. "You okay, nurse... ah... can't remember your name. Sorry."
"I'm.......I'm..." she closed her eyes and tried to focus, the voice had said I was nurse, she tried to recall something, anything, but her mind was blank. "I'm sorry...I'm trapped, I can't....I can't move or feel anything." she yelled back.
"You what?" asked Fierri, finally succeeding in turning herself onto her side. She pushed herself up and turned towards the sound of the nurse's voice. "You're on the Chimera. Remember? You and your friends came over and stormed our ship. You had just revived me and I was accusing you of being Consortium- I'm still not convinced you aren't- and there was some sort of... well, something. And we were thrown around. And then this," she added, waving her hand around at the darkness.
Katniss could make something out in the darkness, it was faint but she could still see it and who were these Consortium people she was on about and the Chimera, that didn't sound right. She tired to recall something, anything but the only thing she could picture when she closed her eyes was bright red hair.
Fierri finally made her way over to the girl, but she was not a doctor, so she couldn't do much. "How are you feeling, honey?" she asked.
"Surprisingly well, I cant feel anything; not even any pain." she replied as her face was still laying in her drool. "Are my arms and legs actually still their?" she enquired but then thought about it, they must be or she would be in agony or dead due to blood loss and then she would be nothing more than just a stain on the carpet. However she didn't fear death, when it was your time is was your time. In fact she had sometimes longed for death to take her from this miserable existence.
Engineering
Down in Engineering, Lieutenant JG Wright worked as well as he could with the meager amount of power that he could. He knew the bridge would be wanting power and he just hoped that he wasn't working for the wrong people. He briefly considered using the manual releases to eject the warp core so they couldn't use the Chimera against legitimate, loyal Starfleet personnel, but he wanted to live. He thought of his wife and two year old daughter as he worked and sweat beaded on his brow.
He grunted as he managed to bring some EPS conduits online and bypassed them to the emergency generators and held his breath as he waited for the power to accumulate. If it worked, he would have the impulse engines online and then start up other critical systems. He barked orders at the other personnel in Engineering and sent them to reroute every bit of power that they could from everything they could except life support and gravity.
Bridge
On the bridge, Kelly suddenly got an idea and only hoped there would be someone on the Black Hawk to see and understand it. She went to the flight terminal and checked it, then nodded. It could be done. She began to activate and deactivate the running lights in long and short bursts as she send the following message from the port and starboard of the Chimera: Khan to Black Hawk. Working on power restoration. End report.
She set the message to repeat and went to the Engineering terminal in the hopes of seeing even a flicker of power and shook her head. Nothing yet, but now she had to look out for any return messages from other ships that she couldn't see in the darkness of space.
Abbey, meanwhile, was busy checking someone over. She had no idea who it was, but it sort of looked like the young man who had been at tactical before. "Got anything?" she asked Khan as she pressed a hypospray to the man's neck and checked her tricorder again.
"No weapons, no shields, no power other than emergency," Kelly responded. "I'm trying Morse Code to raise the Black Hawk but if we had to evacuate everyone from the outer hull because of the radiation, odds are they did, too. No one is going to see the lights, but I have the message on repeat. Any luck on your side of things, Lieutenant?"
"Clever," Abbey allowed as the man began to stir. "I think everyone's got varying degrees of shock. "This one's pretty bad. He's gonna need an hour or so before he'll be any good to anyone. Wanna help me move him out of the way so we don't step on him?"
Kelly moved over and took the man by the shoulders. "Get his feet and on the count to three, we can move him by the turbolift."
Abbey moved to grab hold of the man's ankles. "Alright, ready when you are," she said, trying not to think of whether or not her husband was in a similar position back on the Black Hawk. Her mind outright rejected the idea of someone putting her son off to the side. She just could not accept that.
"One...two...three!" The young cadet strained and lifted the unconscious man a few feet up and began to move towards the turbolift. "Why...do unconscious...people weight...more?" she grunted.
"Because... they can't... help... you to... carry them," Abbey replied as they half dragged, half carried the man out of the way. "There!" she declared as they reached the lift and she dropped his legs. "Sorry," she told the man, but he didn't hear, of course.
Kelly said the man's upper torso down a bit more gently and stood up again. "I think that covers the bridge. I hope that engineering can get the power up again. Did you want to see if you can revive more medical staff to help?"
"Probably not a bad idea," Abbey replied. "Which would mean I have to leave the bridge. You gonna be okay here on your own?"
Kelly retrieved the phaser from the unconscious Security man and checked the setting. "I will be now," she said. "You should probably get one, too. There's still people on the ship who think we're Consortium."
"On the other hand, it might be easier to convince them I'm not if I'm not packing," Abbey replied, gathering up her medical supplies and inspecting them quickly. "Be careful, eh?" she added, heading towards the same hatch Andre had gone through earlier.
"You be careful, too," Kelly said before she went back to the Engineering section before she got an idea and turned to the Operations officer. "You have the bridge. If Doctor Road returns, turn it over to her. I'm going to take a shuttle to the Black Hawk."
"Yes, Sir," the Ops officer said. This was one of the strangest assignments he'd ever been on, but he followed orders, even if they were from a cadet.
With that, the young cadet made for the nearest access patch and began climbing down to the shuttlebay on deck ten.
Fifteen minutes later, Kelly took a shuttle and departed for the Black Hawk.
Elsewhere, which, as it turns out, is Deck 2
Abbey made her way down a single a deck and decided this crawling through maintenance ways was for Engineers, not Doctors. She justified stopping by telling herself that she was going to check every deck for medical personnel. Immediately upon standing, though, she heard voices. "Hello!" she called. "Who's there?" Without waiting for an answer, she headed cautiously towards the voices.
Katniss was still mumbling to the lady that was trying to comfort her when she heard someone shouting in the distance.
"Hello." Katniss shouted back "Can you help...I'm trapped, I can't feel my arms and legs...please help me." again shouting to try and guide whomever it was to her location. "Hurry I don't want to drool on the carpet much longer." she joked trying to keep herself calm. After all there was no point in panicking again.
"Katniss?" Abbey called, recognizing the voice. She turned towards it and started in that direction. "Katniss is that you?" In only five steps, she rounded a corner and spotted the young nurse lying on the floor, an older woman with short hair sitting next to her.
"She's not trapped under anything," The other woman said, bewildered. "I don't know what to make of it. I'm Paula Fierri, by the way," she added.
"Abbey Road," answered Abbey, pulling the tricorder out of her kit and scanning Katniss. "Shock," she said. "I'm surprised she's awake. How are you feeling, Katniss?" she asked, taking a hypospray out and attempting to read the labels on various phials in the low light.
"What the hell have you people done to me? Who are you? Where I am?" she shouted trying with all her might to move, but she couldn't. Katniss had lost all motor function she wasn't even in pain. "Stay away..." she shouted again.
"Relax," Abbey instructed gently. "I'm a doctor. Just lie still while I find the right medicine. Don't suppose you've got a palm light, have you, Fierri?"
"I don't, sorry," Fierri said. "But... Hang on," she said, pulling one of the panels out of the wall and reaching up inside it. A moment later, the flashing red dimmed and Fierri pulled out a short length of optic wiring, still flashing red, but much brighter.
"Oh, that helps," said Abbey, who quickly found the right medicine and dialed in the dosage. She pressed the hypo spray to Katniss's neck. "It's gonna take awhile," she told the nurse. "But your memory should start to come back in a bit. Piece by piece, not all at once. You should regain feeling in your legs and arms, too. Again, slowly. Until then, just try to breathe, okay? Nice deep breaths."
Katniss for once did as she was told, she didn't resist as Abbey placed the hypo spray into her neck, with that her eyes began to get heavy as she struggled to keep them open, then she lost consciousness.
Security
Ensign Mitchell felt like her entire body was ablaze from pain. She found herself mentally begging whoever would listen to make it stop, but she wasn't that lucky. The last thing she remembered was assisting some of the Chimera's Security personnel, and now she was on the floor... what was that? She pushed her upper body off of the floor and cried out, collapsing back down when her body protested. One of the other officers was still lying across her, a young man. She remembered him, standing next to her while they were talking about... that she couldn't remember. With a grunt, she tried to roll over only to quickly realize that wasn't going to be a possibility. What was going on?
She looked around the dimly lit area only to realize there wasn't anyone really moving around. Gritting her teeth, the young Ensign squeezed her eyes shut and with a cry of pure agony, pulled herself from beneath the man who, she quickly realized, was dead. It didn't take a doctor to determine that sad fact. His head was split open, and his skull was fractured with not good things oozing from it onto the floor.
A female Petty Officer in a teal uniform staggered into Security and saw the woman in gold laying beside a man with his head split open and went over to her. "Don't try to move," the woman said as she grabbed a medkit that lay nearby and pulled a medical tricorder from it and began to scan her. "What...what happened?" she asked, determined not to look at the dead man who was beyond her help.
Shay opened her eyes and looked the woman who seemed to appear out of nowhere. Or, perhaps, it was just her since she was still so out of it. "I... I don't know... hurts," she replied, trying to stay with it, but the pain was getting to be too much to handle. This was unlike anything she'd ever felt in her life.
"I'm Petty Officer O'Daryl," the woman said as she looked at the scan on the tricorder before she pulled out a hypospray and loaded an ampule with the label Morphenolog on it. She adjusted it to two CC's and pressed it to the woman's neck. "You have a pinched nerve caused by a compressed disk and I'm afraid that I can't treat you here, but the pain should ease shortly. What is your name?"
"Shay... Mitchell," she answered, closing her eyes and waiting for the pain to dissipate a bit. "I.. was helping organize personnel, then... woke up..." Shay tried to make sense of everything, but she couldn't. Opening her eyes, she looked toward the Petty Officer. "Do you... do you know what happened?"
"No," O'Daryl said. "I was in Medical treating someone that was hurt during the fight with that Consortium ship and then everything went black. I woke up about ten minutes ago and have been treating everyone I can find."
"Wha... what Consortium ship?" Shay asked as the pain medication started to kick in, easing a bit of the pain she felt.
"I don't know the name of it," O'Daryl admitted. "But it chased the Cochrane and Chimera all the way from Unity, then someone boarded and the ship was being attacked by fighters and then there was a deafening noise.." She shook her head and ran the tricorder over the woman again. "I'll see if I can find someone else and come back with a board to get you out of here."
"You... don't know that?" the Security officer asked, shaking her head, grateful the pain was subsiding a bit more. "I... I'm from that ship. We aren't the bad guys. You were working for the enemy."
O'Daryl's eyes went wide and she backed up, shaking her head. "Our Commander told us that your ship was...and you're saying that we were?" She looked like she didn't know who to believe and wanted to stay loyal.
"That's... what I'm saying," the Ensign said, turning her gaze toward the Medical officer. She wanted to close her eyes and wait for the medication to kick in completely, but sadly, Shay didn't trust the other woman not to try to hurt her in some way. "Most of your crew was unknowingly working for the enemy. We were sent here to stop them."
O'Daryl shook her head. "Whether you are or aren't Consortium," she said as she made up her mind. "You still need treatment and I'm still a medic. If I can trust you, can you trust me?"
Shay nodded. "I don't really have much of a choice. I can barely move."
"Then let's see what we can do," O'Daryl said. "Let's try to get you a bit more comfortable first." She went into a side room and came out a few minutes later with some couch cushions and set them up beside of Shay, then pulled the dead man back to the room and manually closed the door. She found a couple wrist lights and turned them on for more illumination, then went back to the woman. "Okay. Can you help me move you to these cushions?"
"I can try," the young woman said, pushing herself up to a sitting position. Oh, that didn't feel good even with the medication. Shay closed her eyes and pulled herself toward the cushions, then settled herself down on them. Right now, the only thing that sounded good was being as still as she possibly could be. "Please... don't ask me to move again. I don't want to." She closed her eyes and finally let the Morphenolog do what it was supposed to.
Engineering
The team of Engineers swarmed the engine room of the Chimera make sure there was no leaks in the coolant tank, resetting the constrictors and injectors, cleared obstructions in the power transfer conduits, reset the dilithium matrix, and flushed out residual antimatter and matter. They went over every inch of the systems and brought in people from other departments, a steady stream of runners going to and from the bridge and other areas.
Finally, the acting Chief Engineer wiped a spot of grease off his face as the last system was checked. "Prepare to start the warp core in three minutes," the Engineer called out as he made the last connection. "This is either going to start or we're all going to die." He muttered as he began a manual diagnostic with a tricorder.
When it started, they checked the warp core and stabilized life support while Operations personnel brought the computer online and operational as well as the sensors and everything else that was required to bring a starship to life.
Deck 10
In the several hours since the power had gone out, Abbey had picked her way through several decks with the help of a nurse she had found on deck 3 and a security officer she'd found on deck 4. They had managed to revive most of the crew and set aside the bodies of those who did not make it.
They had also found some food in the stasis chambers in the lounge and distributed rations to everyone who was awake. She chewed on a piece of real beef jerky as the odd trio headed down the corridor. She stopped in her tracks when a hum started up, deep in the ship. "What's that?" she asked.
There was a pause. "Power coming on?" guessed nurse Malika Azad.
As if in response to her guess, the lights started to come on. "Well, it's about time," grumbled Lt. Yin Chow. "We could've used that a few hours ago."
"Relax," Abbey told him. "It takes time to restore power. Once the lifts are back up and running, we can start moving the bodies to the morgue. For now, let's keep doing what we're doing."
"I'm eating a triple fudge sundae when this is all over," said Yin, rubbing his stomach in hunger. "And a cheeseburger. In that order."
Abbey laughed as they all started off down the corridor again.
After Kelly had came back to the ship, she asked around and eventually tracked Doctor Road down on Deck Ten. "Excuse me, Doctor Road!" She called out when she saw the diminutive woman walking down a corridor.
Abbey turned to see the Cadet hurrying towards her. "What's up?" She asked, thinking that perhaps someone needed medical attention.
"No," Kelly said as she caught up to her. "I mean yes, but that's not why I tracked you down. I just got back from Black Hawk for a briefing the Captain called. Doctor Kij wanted me to tell you that your husband and son are okay."
Relief spread across Abbey's face. She hadn't realized that she was so desperately worried about them. "Thank you," she said, feeling a weight lift from her shoulders. "Thank you so much."
"You're welcome," Kelly said. "I'm sorry I snapped at you on the bridge earlier, too. I was panicked and worried."
"It's all right, I understand," said Abbey, then she grinned. "It's why I didn't tell you off."
"Maybe you could give me some medical help when things settle down?" Kelly asked her. "I wouldn't want to overdose someone by accident in an emergency."
Abbey grinned again. "Sure," she said. "Until then, stick to flight and command, eh?"
"That sounds like a plan," Kelly said and with that, the Cadet turned and headed for the nearest Jeffries Tube and vanished from sight.
Bridge
A runner in gold came out of the access patch on the bridge and found himself looking at the business end of a phaser held by a young woman in red with the tabs of a cadet. "Woah...easy Cadet. I'm not going to hurt you. Engineering reports they're ready to restart the warp core."
Kelly slowly backed up, but kept the phaser on the engineer. "Take the Engineering terminal," she told him before she looked at the groggy Helmsman. "Get ready."
A slow vibration began deep in the heart of the Chimera and slowly, power began to trickle through the ship. The Ops officer began to allocate it as quickly as it came in and looked at the Cadet. "It's back online," he reported.
"Thank you," Kelly said as she sat back down in the Command chair. Soon, she thought as she kept her eyes on the Engineer. Soon we'll be home.
"The main computer is online," the Ops officer read. "Sensors are online. Life support is stable. All systems are operational."
"Now for the rest," Kelly said and turned her attention to the other ninety-nine problems.
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