Okay, Who Brought the Dog? Part 3

Posted on 20 Oct 2020 @ 3:04am by Commander Terry Walsh & Kelinor Voseh & Lieutenant Commander Joey Geisler & Lieutenant Commander Camila Di Pasquale & Lieutenant Dijaat Parker & Lieutenant Jennin Rhula & Lieutenant Zayna Ryler & Story Teller

6,594 words; about a 33 minute read

Mission: Ghosts
Location: USS Shran
Timeline: MD 4 || 1340 hours

Previously in "Okay, Who Brought the Dog?"...

***Engineering Team***
"Copy that. Walsh out." He turned to the others, wondering if any of them had any kind of security or protection-type training. An Engineer, a scientist, and a doctor...he chuckled to himself as it almost sounded like the start of a joke. "Okay, whatever that was, or is, let's not provoke it. Rhula, Ryler, you two give Parker some more light to work from and help where you can. I'll take up a defensive posture over there and wait for Security." Terry moved into a position behind a standing console where he could keep an eye on the office and the flying green light.

"Understood," Ryler said with a shaky breath before going over to give Parker more light. She was extremely curious about what the light was, but the commander was right in this case. Don't poke the beast.

Standing there, directing his wrist-mounted light, Rhula wondered how his career had brought him to this. I'm a trained scientist and physician. But, sure, I can hold a flashlight. The one thing that made it more acceptable was that it was to assist Lieutenant Parker. When the Chief Engineer had come into Sickbay for his onboarding physical, the Bajoran doctor had actually enjoyed interacting with Parker.

Dijaat had been working on trying to get the power back to the emergency lights at least and hadn't really been paying much attention to his surroundings when he heard some commotion coming from where Commander Walsh was located. He closed the engineering kit and headed out from underneath the console where he'd been working, "Is everything all..." He didn't finish his sentence and immediately went quiet.

***Armory Team***

"C'mon, Joey. Danger calls." With that, she gave Joey a look and entered the hatch, then pulled herself upwards at a fast pace in the null gravity.

Joey wondered briefly what kind of situation they could possibly have on a ship that had no power, or life aside from theirs, on board. She slipped through the hatch and began to make her way back up.

With a sign and a grunt, Camila headed up the way they had came.

====

And now, the conclusion...

***Main Engineering***
Terry tried to keep an eye on the others and the office and the doors for Camila and Joey. It was daunting task amid the bodies that were floating around. And the occasional body part... That's what really unnerved the big guy. In a shaft or a tube, that might be understandable, but out in the open was a different story. His gaze darted back to the office when the green light stopped moving and settled on a wall. It shined through some of the nebula gasses in Engineering and gave it an eerie quality. He didn't like any of this, not one bit. "Damn ghost ship," he muttered to himself.

"If we weren't surrounded by floating bodies and creepy nebula gasses...along with that green light, Commander," Ryler stated as she looked over at it again, "I'd say you were crazy for saying it is a ghost ship. But, given the circumstances..."

"It is fascinating, isn't it?" Rhula asked. "It's rare to see this many corpses in this condition after this much time. But there is no such thing as ghosts, Commander. Certain spiritual and religious expressions have differing views on 'souls', but ghosts are decidedly not real."

Fascinating was hardly the word that Dijaat would use, but he did admire Rhula for the scientific interest in the situation. "So Commander, the power couplings on the ship are completely shot. Most likely due to exposure to the nebula gases. I can only get emergency lighting to this deck and maybe one other, but it'll take a little bit more time."

Without turning around, Terry answered them. "Welcome to the crew of the USS Black Hawk, where crazy and impossible are sometimes just around the corner. Man, can I tell you stories...." He trailed off when he heard Camila's voice. "It's a start, Lieutenant. Get the lighting up; even if it's dim, it's better than nothing. As far as time, that depends on what happens next."

Joey made her way into Engineering where she and Camila were supposed to meet the rest of the away team. The Intel Chief was still quite curious what kind of situation they had aside from floating bodies and body parts. If this didn't give her some kind of nightmares, she'd be surprised.

Camila came in beside of her and brushed a body part aside, wondering why no one hadn't rounded up all the pieces and parts to put in a bag or something. "You wanted to see us, Commander?"

"You bet I did," Terry answered the Security Chief. "We're working on getting some minimal power to Engineering. But the reason I wanted you two down here is that." He pointed his wrist light towards the office and then pulled it back down to the floor. The green light that had rested on the wall darted back inside and was reflected around the room and through the fogginess. "That," he said, "is not right. We're supposed to be the only living things on this ship."

The Security Chief looked to where he shown his light, then blinked when she saw the green light moving. "I...some type of cosmozoan that our sensors didn't pick up?" she hazarded the guess. "Has it attempted to interact with anyone?"

"I suppose it could be," he said. "The gasses have apparently messed with lots of things. But no, it hasn't tried to interact yet. Maybe it's more scared of us, that we are of it...as they say."

"Has it been scanned?" Camila asked. Then she stopped. "Before I forget, all the Type III Phaser rifles are missing from the Armory as well as the power cells."

"And the isolinear chips containing Security and ship protocols are also missing," Joey stated as her gaze moved to the green light.

"Wait, things are missing, plus that thing?" Zayna would have rubbed her forehead had it not been for the suit. "Haven't had time to scan it, but my tricorder has been on scan the whole time. It might have picked something up." The fact that there were phaser rifles and isolinear chips missing put her on edge..

"Neither of those things are good to have gone missing," replied Terry. "Sounds like sabotage or someone trying to cover their tracks." He paused for a second and looked toward the other group where Ryler had spoken. "There's the answer. What are we looking at?"

"it's rather strange to me that both of those things would be missing," Dijaat said quickly while looking in the direction of whatever was with them. "Somehow I don't think that is what's responsible though," He said and then looked at the Commander. "I do have a theory though," He said quickly, "That could be a lifeform from the nebula that has taken up residence on the ship."

Camila turned from the others and used her wrist light to head to where the glowing greenish thing went without a word to the others.

"Interesting theory, Mister Parker," said Terry. "Why don't we find out for sure. Miss Ryler, what do your scans show?" Commander Walsh hadn't noticed Camila leave as his attention had been on Lieutenant Parker and the team.

It didn't appear that anyone else noticed Camila walking in the same direction the green light had gone, but Joey did. Scans were only going to reveal so much. Some kind of interaction would reveal a lot more. It took all the willpower she had not to say anything to the others, and would waste what could be precious time if whatever that thing was turned out to be hostile. Not to mention, she'd had Camila's back during countless missions, and vice versa. There was no reason this time had to be any different. With that in mind, the Intel Chief followed the Security Chief, keeping her eyes and ears open.

Pulling her tricorder from where it was pocketed on her suit, Zay checked over the scans. She then double-checked the scans before reporting. "Um, sir? I'm showing humanoid lifesigns, besides those of the away team. I even made sure it wasn't someone on the crew and it was reading strange because of the nebula. There is someone else..."

"Thanks, Lieutenant," said Terry as he turned to where he'd left Camila and Joey. "Commander Di...." But when he shined his light over there, they were gone. "What the?" He took a shot in the dark, quite literally, and fired his wrist light towards the Chief Engineer's office. Sure enough, there was Camila and Joey. Not wanting to startle the person in the office, he activated his communicator. "Commanders Di Pasquale and Geisler, next time you venture off, notify your mission team leader first. Especially in the dark. As it stands, scans reveal a humanoid life sign in the office. Considering that he or she hasn't shown hostility, let alone come out of the office, don't provoke them."

He turned his attention back to the other part of the team. "Rhula, be ready for a medical situation if someone starts firing. Parker, how much longer till we have emergency lighting? And don't give me a buffer time, Lieutenant."

Shaking her head at the fact that two of the others had walked off, Zayna kept scanning until she heard the comms go off again.

Dijaat had set off to work again as he had an idea to at least get power to the engineering compartment. He heard the question from underneath the console, "Everything is..." There was a strange noise, "Ouch dammit to..." He muttered loud enough to cause an echo throughout engineering. "Five..." Another noise that almost sounded like something crashing and an electrical spark.

"This... Ow..." Dijaat cried out, "Five minutes Commander," And without another word the lights throughout engineering came on. They were quite dim and it was clear that the repair wasn't perfect. He came out from underneath the console with a cut on his head, "It didn't want to play nice Commander." He responded.

"It doesn't sound like it," said Terry. "And thanks. Dim lights are better than no lights. Doc, see what you can do for our Chief Engineer here. After that, see about rounding up the corpses and the body parts in here as best you can. We should try to account for as many of the crewmembers as we can."

So many delightful bodies, Rhula thought, checking his tricorder. He had set it to run persistent scans of the bio-matter they encountered. In theory, he would be able to cross-reference his scans with Starfleet medical records of the Shran's crew.

Camila started to respond before her light hit a tall humanoid male that seemed to be alive. She pulled her Type II phaser on him. "Identify yourself!" she demanded, her combadge channel open.

Kelinor had gathered his few things in a bag and slung it over his shoulder when the white light lit him up. He could see someone pointing what supposed was a weapon at him. The white light made it hard to discern until his eyes adjusted from his green one. But he knew who it was. "Whoa there Starfleet," he said at the woman's command. "I'm unarmed...no weapons." He held up the palms of his hands to show the woman. "Name's Kelinor. What's yours?"

Well... this certainly got interesting. Joey kept her hand just above her phaser in case she needed to pull it quickly. "Lieutenant Commander Joelle Geisler, Chief of Intelligence aboard the Starfleet vessel USS Black Hawk," the woman next to Camila stated. "Are you aware you're trespassing aboard this vessel? State your purpose here.

"That's a fairly long name you have there," Kelinor said to the other woman. "Why don't we stay with Joelle. Joelle, kinda rolls off the tongue like a sweet melodic sonnet. I bet it matches you pretty good."

""Lieutenant Commander I Have A Phaser Pointed At You And Ask The Questions," The ombre haired woman responded. "How did you get aboard this ship?"

"You," he said, shaking a gloved finger at Camila, "you remind me of another Starfleet officer from years ago. Man liked to shoot first and ask questions later. Always pointing a phaser at someone. We'll shorten your name to J.T."

"The name is Lieutenant Commander Di Pasquale," Camila said. "Chief of Security for the USS Black Hawk-A and the person currently holding a phaser on you because you are not a member of that ship or this ship and I want to know why you're here, how you got here, and why you're stealing things from this ship."

Having made her way to the door, but not into the room, Ryler watched. "Sounds like someone trying to pick the bones off the dead..almost literally," she said quietly.

"Stealing accusations? I see that Starfleet has lowered it's standards for Academy acceptance since I was there," he said, purposely tossing out that little nugget. "Anyway, I'd be careful around here if I were you two. Old girl's pretty banged up. But when she was fresh off the line, she was top-notch. Sad, really, what she's come to. But, back to careful. There's unsteady floor panels and you never know when a wall is going to fall. Take this one, for instance." Kelinor kicked a lower panel on the wall where he'd been working earlier. The panel fell off and triggered a safety measure he'd put in place. One could never be too careful.

A forcefield flickered into existence in front of the desk and between him and the Starfleet officers. And their phasers. He grinned wryly at the two women. "I bid you, au revoir." He put his arm at his stomach and bowed deeply, activating the emergency transport unit at his suit's waist. Kelinor Voseh disappeared in a shimmering light.

Wanting to say something to the comment, Zayna never had the chance. Watching the transport, she swore under her breath. "Do we have any way to track the transport? He can't have gone too far."

"Report," Terry called over the comms. "What happened in there?"

"There was an intruder and he beamed out," Camila reported as she ran a scan over the panel he had kicked off. "He also put up a forcefield."

"We have a name to go off of. Well, part of one," Joey stated. "Kelinor, and from some of the things he said, I think he could either be former Starfleet, or has known Starfleet officers in the past."

With the lights now on, albeit dimly, Terry wasn't completely reliant on the wrist lights. He could at least see Camila, Joey, and Zayna now. "That's something to go on. But I expect a little more when I read the official report. Continue to investigate the office and see if you three can find what he was up to."

"He also seems to have a personal transporter on his suit," Camila said and went on to describe him for the others. "And as Commander Geisler said, he seemed familiar with Starfleet and called me J.T. based on a man he knew who shot first and asked questions later."

Joey didn't feel it necessary to comment on what he'd had to say about her name. It wasn't important, and if she was being completely honest with herself, a bit creepy. "Of course, Commander."

"Understood, Commander. And I'll try to match up the bio signs once we're back on board the ship to anyone in the systems incase he gave a false name." Ryler continued to make her way around the room to check for anything else.

"Okay, sounds good," Terry said. "Keep on with the search and let me know if you discover anything important. Or telling." He pondered what he had so far and wondered what kind of person they were dealing with. He had every confidence in his team to come up with some answers, but he wished he didn't have to wait until they were back on the Black Hawk. Which gave him another idea.

Walsh turned to Parker. "Okay, miracle-worker, can we get one console up and running? I want to give Commander Geisler a place to research our new friend."

"Course I can sir," Parker had said in response while still rubbing the side of his hand that had received the shock from earlier. He popped open one of the console hatches open that was nearest to where the power supply was and crawled inside. The relays were somewhat burnt out, but he could get the console back online that wasn't his concern.

Parker's concern was that the computer core wouldn't come online with such limited power. In under five minutes he'd managed to get the console functional though the screen was dim and it flashed every few seconds or so and he came out from underneath. Dijaat then moved to the computer core knowing this was going to be the tricky part and set to work inside the casing beneath it.

After a very short amount of work the computer core came online, the nearby console that was flashing sparked, and the lights throughout engineering went completely black. "Well then..." Dijaat said before standing up, grabbing his engineering kit, and wandering back over to the auxiliary battery casings.

Terry left the Medical Chief and the Engineering Chief to the their duties and went to check on the ladies in the engineering office. As he did so, he activated his com, "Commander Walsh to Black Hawk."

There was no response.

That was odd. He tried a couple more times and got the same response. Nothing. "Well ladies," he said as he walked into the office, "I was going to ask if you'd found anything, but we have a bigger problem. Communications with the Black Hawk are gone; they're not responding. So not only do we have to figure out what happened to this ship and crew and what that guy was doing in here, but we're now stuck here."

Glancing to Walsh, Zayna frowned. "Comms down? Is it just this spot of overall I wonder." She didn't like this, at all. Random guy, dead crew, strange nebula, and now they couldn't reach the ship. What was next? She did not want the answer to that.

Why didn't any of what she just heard surprise her? In fact, Joey expected something to happen, and since they seemed to be stuck on the Shran for the time being, she found herself hoping she wouldn't encounter anymore severed hands, heads or anything else that was supposed to be attached to another person... dead or alive. "Given the shape the two bodies we saw in the armory, one with a huge hole through the chest and the other without a head, someone killed them. And, that's only one of the many pieces to the puzzle we need to put together," she said. "That being said, we're going to need to figure out how to get off of here, too. Our EVA suits are only going to keep us alive for so long before we end up like those around us."

Camila was in agreement with Joey. "Our suits are capable of EVA and I'm trained in zero Gee and spaceborne operations," she said. "It's also my job to protect everyone. I'll get back to the ship with your permission, Commander and let them know what's going on."

"As much as I hate zero-G, you aren't going alone if you're given permission, Commander. This shouldn't be a one person job." Ryler looked over at Camila. "Though, given everything going on, I don't know if Commander Walsh will let us split up at this point."

The Security Chief glanced at the Assistant Chief of Science. "I don't recall you being Security or being invited to what I need to do, Lieutenant," she said.

"I was just offering help. That's all, Commander. Meant no disrespect." Zayna frowned but went about what she was doing.

"I'm not sure if the comms are down just because we're over here or if there's issues over there, Lieutenant" said Terry. "But we have a mission. One that has yet to be fully completed. When we go, we all go. Not just one. Not just two. I'm not risking the off chance that the only way off this ship works for just one or two of this team, leaving the rest to die. I'm responsible for all of you. That said, the discussion is over Commander and Lieutenant. Stow the attitude and the Departmental line-drawing." Before Terry could get any further, he saw Parker enter the room.

A sweaty and rather irritated half Romulan engineer came to the office a short while later, "Commander I've managed to get the auxiliary power back online, however, I'm afraid that the computer core draws too much power to keep it active. Most of the systems on this ship have been exposed to spatial elements simply too long to be functional. The console and lights are back online, however, we're going to have to do an uplink to the Black Hawk in order to access any sort of functional computer system."

"I'm not sure if we'll be able to get the uplink," Terry said. "Communications are down. But could we link our tricorders to the console to get as much information as we can about this ship? Logs, internal and external sensor readings, damage reports, security activities...things like that? And the Commanders can continue their investigation in here. Complete the mission. And over the next few minutes, we all talk-out how to get off this ship. I really don't want to rely on these suits for an extended period of time."

"Aye sir that should work," He said, "But, it may draw all the power out of our tricorders so I recommend that I attempt to power the console back up with my tricorder and then using whatever power is left to try and get the computer core online." Dijaat then departed in order to set to work on the project.

Camila looked at the Executive Officer with a look of confusion behind her suits face plate. "What do you mean, leave the rest of you to die?" she asked. "I was planning on getting help and returning. However, since you know my job better than I do, feel free to come up with a plan while I try to figure out the stranger and what he wanted. With your permission, Commander."

The Black Hawk had problems. The Shran was having problems. Death everywhere. Someone on the ship that shouldn't have been. Pissing contests on away missions. And the snark. The irritating, non-helpful snark. Why the hell did he accept the Executive Officer position anyway? To make a difference? To further his career? Maybe it was getting close to the "R" word...

"Then perhaps you should have made your intent to return more clear than 'I'm going to let them know what's going on,' Lieutenant Commander. By all means, feel free to take your unhelpful sarcasm and go for a space walk. If you're lucky enough to make it back with help, that's terrific. Dismissed, Miss Di Pasquale...with my permission."

Terry turned to the others. "If anyone else would like to join the Security Chief, go ahead. But you too will be assigned mandatory counseling sessions to help with your attitude and remind you how to work together with other crew members. This is an away team, not an away me. Now let's finish this mission and get out of this place. Geisler, you're in charge of the investigation."

Joey blinked. This had all certainly escalated quickly. Tensions were running high, that much was clear, but things needed to get back in track. "If we can get a console working, I should be able to bypass most authorization codes and gain access to the readings and logs we need to figure out what happened here," she stated, removing her amped up Intelligence tricorder from the belt around her waist. "How long that takes depends on how long it was from the point the ship disappeared until the last member of the crew died, and we won't know that until the information is downloaded."

"Permission to speak to you privately, Commander," Camila requested in a neutral voice. Her face showed nothing, but her blood was boiling and she was more confused now than she was before at his tantrum.

"Not a bad idea, Commander Geisler. Parker has a console up for the time being. You and him work to see what you can link up and get us, whether through the tricorders or some link back to the ship. Lieutenant Ryler might be able to help narrow things down for what we need from the sensors." He turned to Camila. "We'll have a private discussion once we're all safely back on the Black Hawk. That said, anyone have any idea if this class carried any kind of a shuttle?"

"Then, I suppose we should get started," Joey said as she made her way over to the console that Parker got up and running.

Zayna decided now to not go with Camila. Although she could have, she didn't feel like dealing with it. She knew how to space walk, rather well. She'd done it on her own, the request for training on it, passing the training. But, Camila seemed against it, as did Walsh. So, she'd stay there and try to get things going here best that they could.

"Commander, a word," Rhula said firmly. He'd watched the exchange between Walsh and the Security Chief and he had concerns. Especially given knowledge he possessed about Di Pasquale. Information that the Executive Officer didn't have. Though the Bajoran wasn't fond of having to treat patients, the current situation being a prime example of why, he still believed and adhered to professional medical ethics. That included the notion of doing no harm, which could be applied to this very situation.

Why was it that people wanted to speak to him privately all of a sudden? In the middle of an investigation on a dead ship, very limited power, a stranger that could beam out on a whim, and limited use of the EVA suits. What else could go wrong? "Doctor, once we're all safely back on the..." Terry was interrupted by a very slow sounding alert klaxon. Apparently the low auxiliary power was affecting everything.

"Six minutes until decompression of all decks," announced the computer in a slow, drawn out statement.

Stopping in her tracks, Ryler looked over at Walsh. "Did we trigger something?"

Joey arched a brow and looked to where the others were standing. She needed to start the transfer, but now the computer decided to be cute. "Commander, I think the computer is repeating one of the last messages spoken. The ship has already decompressed, and has been exposed to nebula gases thanks to multiple hull breaches. Otherwise, we wouldn't be wearing these." She gestured to her EVA suit, then to theirs.

Terry looked at Ryler. "I don't think we triggered anything. All we did was turn the power back on. Albeit, minuscule." He turned to put both the Assisstant Science Chief and the Intel Chief in his field of vision. "Though she might be on to something," he said, gesturing towards Joey. "That could be the last thing it was saying before the computer lost all power. Fact is, that message reminds us that we don't have hours in these suits. Let's finish our tasks, get whatever we can get, and head to the shuttlebay. Maybe we'll get lucky."

Dijaat was able to get his work done quickly enough, but given the amount of rewiring that had to be completed he wasn't confident in the repair. When he managed to power it on Dijaat didn't know how long it would hold out, "Commander I've got power to the console and the computer core, but I don't know how long it'll hold."

"Excellent, thanks Lieutenant," said Terry. "Just get whatever information we can before it goes out. Maybe once things settle down on the ship, we can create a link from there."

In the meantime, Camila stayed in the back of the group silently fuming at the Commander, but kept herself occupied with her tricorder taking every scan she could get.

Joey began the transfer after synchronizing her tricorder to the console. There was no time to choose what was downloaded, so it was a matter of getting as much information as possible in the amount of time she had.

Nodding to Walsh, Zayna went back to work.

Why would you promote me to Chief Medical Officer and then refuse to let me do my job? Rhula thought as he returned his attention to his tricorder. See who I save first when shit goes sideways.

---

USS Shran shuttlebay

The place was a mess. Everywhere Terry shined his light, he saw corpses, body parts, tools, equipment, and crates floating around. There didn't appear to be any hull breaches or nebula gases. Just no gravity. And more decay. 

"Okay, let's see if we can find a shuttle or runabout that isn't damaged. And don't forget to look up."

Wishing Walsh hadn't said anything about looking up, Zayna did just that, shining her light up to see if there was anything above them. "Working shuttle in this mess..."

"It could be worse. There could be floating body parts. And there still might be," Joey stated, moving away from the group to start looking. And there were, but considering what she'd gone through in the Jeffries tube, she planned to avoid said body parts as best she could.

Terry nodded, shining his light around the high ceiling. "I wouldn't rule it out."

"It shouldn't be hard," the Security Chief said. "It's not like a runabout or shuttle can hide behind a container or body." She shone her light around and illuminated something which looked like what they were seeking, but only a small area of it was illuminated.

"A humanoid body that large would be fascinating though," Jennin said, energized by the thought. "I wonder if we'd be able to make room on Black Hawk for such a thing. I could occupy myself for months."

"I don't think I'd want to see a humanoid body that large honestly, though it would be interesting." Ryler moved a bit so her light could shine into a different area. "We do find one, hopefully it is still working."

Rhula cast a scathing glare at the science officer. "No sense of scientific adventure or curiosity. Hmm." He moved away from the science officer and resumed looking at the cornucopia of humanoid flesh hovering around the space.

"You're right, Commander. A runabout or shuttle would be nearly impossible to miss in here. Unless, of course, they were sucked out in space," the Intelligence Chief stated, hoping that wouldn't be the case. Still, it was dark inside the shuttlebay save for their lights. Joey wasn't close enough to Camila to help illuminate the object she fixed her light on, but with any luck one of the other members of the team would be able to offer some kind of assistance.

"Can I get some more illumination over here?" Camila called over the open channel as she shined her light towards the thing she suspected was a shuttle.

Glancing to Rhula's comment, Zayna shook her head, "I didn't say I wasn't curious. Just...not a fan of dead bodies. The nebula gases and such? I'd love to be able to sit and study all of it in a more secure environment." Hearing Camila ask for more light, she moved over and shone her own light where it was indicated.

Terry walked over and added his light to the others. "Nice work, Commander," he said to Camila. "Looks like we've found our way out of here. Let's get inside everyone and see what we've got. Power source is separate from the ship, so there shouldn't be any issues with that."

Ignoring Ryler's response, Rhula followed the beams of light to where the came to rest on a standard shuttlecraft. Being surrounded by all of these dead bodies was exciting, but the idea of returning to Black Hawk so he wasn't stuck with these killjoys was appealing too.

Joey made her way over to the rest of the team. "For the record, Lieutenant," she said, looking toward the Chief Medical Officer. "A humanoid body that large wouldn't bother me, but that's because there are far worse things out in space." With that, she made her way over to the door of the shuttle and opened it, then gestured for everyone to follow her inside.

Camila pushed a floating body gently out of her way before she made her way into the shuttle and shined her light around. "Looks like it hasn't been used back here."

"Good sign," said Terry, as he stepped in. "Maybe the rest hasn't been used either. Di Pasquale, Tactical. Parker, Engineering. Geisler, you're my co-pilot," he said taking a seat behind the conn. "Well, unless you or anyone else would like to fly us out of here?"

Rhula watched everyone take their places. He looked around and saw a seat in the rear of the craft. Sitting there, he swiveled the chair to face the small display built into the bulkhead. "I can check life support when you get this thing powered up," he offered.

"If we can get sensors up and running, I'll hopefully be able to find us a safe path back to the ship." Zayna stated as she found a place to try to boot up anything science she could.

Camila moved to the Tactical station in the cramped shuttle and waited for the pilot to get the shuttle powered up and hoped it worked.

At the mention of being the co-pilot, Joey settled into the empty seat next to Terry. "As long as we get out of here, it doesn't matter who does the flying," she said, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly before she made the attempt to power up the shuttle.

"Hold on a bloody second," Dijaat said from somewhere in the back of the shuttle where he was working vigorously to get power restored. It took a moment, but he eventually was able to get power into the auxiliary batteries. "There..." He muttered.

"Sounds good to me." Terry input the commands to power up the shuttle only to have it do nothing. The second time, though, worked...despite the lights being very dim. He brought up navigation and began to plot a course. "Okay, let's see if we can make this as easy as...." He was cut off by the shuttle powering down. It was almost as if he'd tried to turn on too many things at once with only a small amount of power. He sighed and tried again. "Third time's the charm. But it looks like we'll have to use minimal operations of only the basic systems we need to get out of here...life support, maneuvering thrusters, base sensors, low deflector shields, that sort of thing. And manual piloting." He crossed his fingers as he hoped that they would make it back in one piece.

"I can work with the base sensors. Do we need life support since we're in suits anyways?" Zayna worked on turning on just the very basic sensors, enough to make sure they wouldn't hit anything.

Dijaat came to the front, "All right by some miracle I got it to work. But, the super glue and duct tape required means that only minimal power is available. Sorry if you wanted jelly filled doughnuts Commander, but the replicator on board along with several other insignificant systems are still offline. This includes such features as life support and the anti-gravity net so if we start to float around in here try not to bump into each other."

Terry sighed. "Well I guess that answers your question, Lieutenant," he said to Ryler. There was a slight pause as he was receiving a flash message from the Captain. "And it might be a good thing, too. Just got a flash message from the Captain. We're going to need all the power we can get for the thrusters. Secure yourselves." He brought the shuttle around towards the bay doors. "Dammit! Closed! Options, people."

"Blow it open," the ombre haired Security Chief said. "It's our only option."

"Do it," Terry replied.

Camila armed the phasers since a torpedo, even a micro one, would do more damage to the interior and shuttle than it would the door. "Firing," she said and gave it a full pulse at the hangar doors until they succumbed to the sustained phaser fire and turned into frozen slag.

Watching out the viewport, Zayna saw the hangar door 'open', though with the limited sensors, it didn't help give her any additional range at all. "That's one way to open a door."

Joey grit her teeth and watched as Camila blew the doors. "The only way, as Commander Di Pasquale pointed out. Now with that obstacle out of the way, can we get the hell out of here?"

Terry launched the shuttle at full thruster speed. Not having life support seemed to help. At least his mind told him it did. Once they exited, he didn't see any signs of what the Captain said was happening in space. He then received, and acknowledged, the message to report directly to the Captain once aboard. He piloted the shuttle into the Black Hawk's bay and noticed that is was dark. Always something. "Check in with your departments," said the Executive Officer as he powered down the shuttle. "Find out what exactly has been happening around here since we left." He got up from the seat and headed for the door, intent on finding Captain Geisler right away.

Never a dull moment, Joey thought as she took note of the power being out. She'd find out what went on, but there were other things that needed to be done as well. Namely, going through the countless hours of information she'd gotten from the Shran, as well as contacting Starfleet Intelligence to see if there was any Intelligence on Kelinor.

With a nod, Camila got up and headed off to send some messages to Security to double their patrols and launch all the drones.

Nodding, Zayna headed off towards science, wondering what in the world was happening.

"I don't even know if I want to find out what's been happening in engineering during my absence," Dijaat answered before heading down through the door and out towards engineering. If he had to guess it was probably a disaster zone and the Captain was somewhere chewing at the bit to get something accomplished.

Rhula exited the shuttlebay and started down the corridor. "Maybe I should volunteer for more away missions," he said aloud, despite being the only person there. He decided to include that recommendation in his post-mission report. But, for now, I have some specimens to examine, he thought, excited.

 

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