Pilots Aftermath

Posted on 23 Nov 2020 @ 5:14pm by Lieutenant Commander Gemma Alexander & Lieutenant Dijaat Parker & Ensign K’riss & Ensign Aurilia Moretti & Story Teller

2,691 words; about a 13 minute read

Mission: Ghosts
Location: Flight Deck
Timeline: MD 4 || 1330 hours

Alexander was fairly annoyed and was in the mood to look for a head to roll. They could have been killed because something triggered a diagnostic during flight. Fortunately Bravo Flight was able to bring them safely in, Alexander was the last one. She climbed out of her fighter as the ground crew swarmed it. She glanced around as other pilots were doing the same. At least that was working, she pulled off her helmet. "Report!" she called to a nearby officer.

The officer of the deck came running up and filled in the Squadron Commander.

Aurilia stood off to one side once she had stripped out of her pilot's uniform and checked and rechecked her flight log on the small pilot's PADD they used while in the Gryphon's. It didn't make sense for them to lose power and warp at the same time.

Clark came out his fighter shaking his head. Never before had so many things gone wrong on a regular patrol. At least the one's he'd been on. He wondered if maybe the Black Hawk's previous name hadn't been the Black Beard. Or some other cursed pirate title from the eons. He put his helmet under his arm and began a post-flight inspection to check for any external damage that might have screwed with things.

Ensign Baro aka Galahad from Bravo Flight conducted his post landing check with a standard thoroughness. So far the Bravo section of the squadron had not gotten hit with whatever ghost in the machine had affected Alpha Flight. They were still grounded however, unless there was an emergency since it they couldn't be sure it wouldn't happen again and this time with loss of life.

Archer glanced over at the group of damage control specialists who were huddled around an officer with a PADD in the area near the hub as the officer of the deck continued his brief report, showing her a PADD with details.

"What have we got, Commander?" Aurilia asked, eager to know what happened.

Alexander glanced over, "One sec." She turned to the officer of the deck, "I want everything triple checked, no flights unless there's an emergency. Let the techies know I'll be over shortly. And schedule a debrief for the pilots as soon as possible. Can I keep this?" She gestured at the PADD and the officer nodded, handing it over before jogging off. She turned to Aurilia, "We'll do a full debrief later but looks like the computer decided, on it's own, that taking systems offline during flight needed to happen." She summarized, annoyed at just how this could even occur.

Clark walked up at the last statement. "So what do we do until then?" he asked.

Before anyone could respond any further, the lights to the flight deck instantly went out. Emergency lighting kicked on a moment later, casting eerie red glows across the walls, save for small strips of red light coming from the floor.

Chief Nadia Bouw had managed to pull herself away from the console in main engineering and head to the flight deck. The first thing she heard was the question regarding actions and the next thing she knew the lights were off. She looked at the person for a moment, "Well we need to figure out what just caused the power to go out," She muttered under her breath.

Nadia pointed at the nearby bulkhead, "The power supply switch and the port are located behind that removal panel. I will go check it out and see what may be the problem. In the meantime try to get auxiliary power online."

When the power had gone out Alexander gave a mental sigh then listened to the Engineer, "Sounds like a plan to me." as petty officer Rook took off toward the aux power console. Alexander turned to Aurilia and Clark still standing nearby, "Let's get a light source and, anyone not involved with the repairs should work on securing the deck in case this goes on."

Before anyone could react, a whiff of air brushed past both Aurilia and Clark. The whiff lasted briefly, as if something had just ran past them, all too brief to be considered a hull breach.

Clark shivered. "Um, what was that?"

Aurilia turned and frown when she didn't see anyone. "IS there a leak somewhere?" the redhead asked.

"Seriously?" Alexander muttered old, childhood ghost stories floating through her mind. She pushed that away, as she looked around then turned to her pilots, "Maybe, maybe not but we better evac just to be safe." She said recalling what the deck officer had reported about the Hub and the other stories going around about other issues. She tapped her commbadge to call the flight deck.

Galahad had finished his check before the lights went out and was talking to a ground crew member as Jolan stood on the small ladder next to his craft. "Well that can't be good." He looked around for the cause. "I better help with that..." replied the techie before she hurried off, turning on a night vision friendly hand lamp she'd taken from her belt.

There was another rush of wind, this time dashing by Alexander and Galahad. It was then followed by a solid, bright light coming from the Flight Ops Control Center in the rear of the launch bay.

Alexander had just finished ordering a safety evac of the flight deck as she was then blinded by the light as she happened to have been looking right at it when it went off, she covered her eyes with an arm as she tried to blink past it. It didn't feel or sound like an explosion but definitely was not normal.

Jolan slipped off the ladder he'd been climbing down and twisted his knee as he landed badly, cursing in Bajoran.

So a brush of wind, an evac, and a sudden bright light. Clark was wondering if the name Black Hawk wasn't under some ancient curse. When the light blinded him, he fell backwards a little. He reached out and tried to grab something near him to steady himself. His hand latched on to a uniform. "Oh, uh, oops," he said after a few seconds of realization. By that time, he'd caught himself and managed to put his arm over his eyes.

"Well, that's not good. Commander?"

The speakers came to life throughout the room, letting loose a brief, but sinister laugh. The laugh had no gender hints at all, but had an unusually low pitch that allowed it to reverberate throughout the expansive flight deck for several seconds. During the series of echoes, all of the decks' exits were sealed with forcefields.

Nadia had been trying for a few minutes to get the auxiliary power to switch back on without any luck and so returned. Everyone was in a panic about something, but she couldn't really quite determine what was causing that. "The auxiliary power won't switch back on to this deck I cannot determine what's causing it."

"Well, shit," Aurilia said before she tapped her combadge. "Moretti to anyone outside of the flight deck. Respond."

"Please hold," came the computer's voice over the combadge. And if that wasn't enough, it began playing a piano instrumental of a rather old Earth song, As Time Goes By.

"Well that's not creepy at all," said Clark. "Something must be wrong with the computer or the communications system."

"I think it might be a good idea to get back in our fighters," Aurilia said. "In case the doors decide to open again or something else bad happens. We have our own independent support systems in them."

Alexander had started to move toward the Bajoran cursing, mentally sighed as the chaos continued, and paused.

Alexander heard a yell, "I'm ok, don't mind me." from Jolan who had tried to stand only to find it wasn't happening. "I'mma just going to sit here a minute. I found a piece of latinum down here. Lucky day. oooh gum...." He tried to joke ignoring the pain in his knee.

A couple off officers jogged off to help the downed pilot.

She turned to Aurilia, "Worth a go..." At least while the craft were working, it was risky but everything was now, their lives relied upon the technology around them. "You and Clark get on that. Shepherd people." She pointed to the deck officer who had come back when he couldn't get people out. "Help them, pass out breathers for anyone without and get them somewhere secure." The officer nodded. Alexander turned to talk to Nadia, they had to do something.

Clark immediately jumped on the Commander's orders and started guiding random people to the backseats of the fighters. He figured regular old pilots could sit in the front like always. But at least some of the people would be safe.

Alexander glanced around nothing seemed to be exploding again quite yet, and everyone was being secured as they could be. She took the pause while she could. "Chief" She said to Nadia, ", I think others can handle the rest of this..." She gestured at the current chaos. "Let's go check out the shiny maybe not doom." she jerked her thumb toward the light still coming from the control room.

Aurilia turned instead and frowned as she saw the light. "What is that?" she asked as she headed that way.

"Wait up..." Alexander directed this to Aurilia, "Rest of you stay back, except you Chief." She said to Nadia as she turned and headed in the direction of the light, toward Aurilia.

"Sure, sure," Nadia answered. She swallowed hard and prepared herself for whatever was creating the light and followed behind Aurilia, "I'm not a tactical officer." She muttered under her breath and attempted to pretend like her scientific curiosity was stronger than the fear she was feeling.

She caught up and stepped in front as she got closer to the light source, trying to figure out what she was looking at.

A hollow form stood in the middle of the room with ghostlike entrails protruding from itself to each of the consoles. Monitors and controls flashed as data quickly scrolled across them, as if someone were attempting to download and review data at inhuman speed.

"That's new" Alexander thought, her eyes flickering around as she took in the sight. She was unable to determine from that if it could see or hear them and options flittered through her mind. She wasn't sure if the engineers could cut power or access to these consoles but she knew it would take time to find out. So she stepped forward and away from anyone else, just in case as she tried to get it's attention, "Can I help you?" she said conversationally but carryingly in a polite tone used in her hometown of London when one wasn't sure if someone was being intentionally rude or merely didn't know any better.

K'Riss knew that when the important-sounding lady - he didn't quite know everybody's names or jobs yet - told people to stay back, that included him. They didn't have to ask him twice. The ensign watched in silence from a distance, both curious about this all going on (wondering if it was normal), and slightly terrified. He was never one for loud noises or spooky occurances, and a part of him wished that he weren't Caitian right then. It would be a lot easier to try to act cool and hide his fear if he didn't have a puffed out tail practically advertising his mood to everyone around. To be fair, it wasn't his job to deal with semi-corporeal entities hooking themselves into the computer; he was mostly brought along to hand the more competant engineers their tools and maybe learn a thing or two in the process. So he didn't expect or envy anything more than being told to stand back and watch.

The genderless golem in the middle of the room made no movement to acknowledge Alexander's arrival, at least not in friendly senses. A new tentacle protruded from its form and pushed back on Alexander, forcing her from the room. Instantly, the door closed and a forcefield was erected around it.

"Huh. That's new." Alexander said, "Well confirmed some energy being that at least it doesn't want us dead yet. Good to know." She turned to Nadia, "Right we need an in or at least cut power to that room, I'm thinking."

"How about locking out computer control, Commander?? Aurilia suggested after seeing Gemma get pushed out of the control booth.

Alexander considered Tango's comment for a moment "With the way it was accessing the computers it seemed a more unusual process than a normal interface." She replied and quickly considered options, "Quick enough to find out if it's going to work though, we can try that first." She nodded at Aurilia, "We should keep the rest as a ready backup in case it can bypass or the lockout doesn't hold. It just seems that sort of day...". She glanced at the group.

"Are you stupid?" the Ensign pilot shot back loud enough to be heard. "That thing, whatever the hell it is, just shoved you out of the control booth and locked the freaking door! Lock it out!"

Alexander raised one eyebrow briefly, this was not typical of the Ensign. "Decaf Ensign, it's actually not the weirdest thing to happen to me on this ship." She tried to be comforting. "We need to make sure the engineers have another plan if that fails. We'll talk later." She turned to Nadia, "No time like the present. Consider your backup plan as this may not work." She said moving a nearby console to attempt a lockout.

"Maybe - maybe this thingy-majiggy just wants a friend?" K'Riss said with a shrug, too quiet for most anyone to hear. Even as he spoke, he wasn't sure he meant it. Sure, he wanted everyone to like him, even if that meant some strange evil light person tentacle being or whatever, but he also didn't want the others to think of him as weird. Deeper down in his mind, with what engineering experience he did have, he wondered about shutting the being out. Perhaps if a lockout failed, physically disconnecting the data flow would work... of course he didn't mention that idea out loud. Not only was he not a good engineer and didn't want to disrupt the thought process of the real engineers, he hesitated, almost superstitiously, to mention that within... earshot?... of their strange new enemy.

"What if..." Nadia said suddenly, "What if... Lieutenant Parker was having some problems with that HASA thing... What if this is somehow related?" She asked everyone in the room, "We should just turn the computer off completely from the core room."

"I still have access!" Alexander called somewhat surprised. "I'm locking access to those computers and shutting them down remotely." Speaking as she typed quickly but carefully.

"Oh!" K'Riss said excitedly when he heard Nadia mention the core room. "I know where that is actually!" Considering the short time that K'Riss had been there, he was still learning the layout of the ship and still got excited when he successfully found his way around. He didn't know what she meant about the HASA thing or whatever, but if one idea had stuck in his brain it was that he should go to the computer core. Without a further word, the Caitian scampered off towards the core. He wasn't being of much help here, after all.

"Alright." Alexander said noting the excited engineers taking off, hoping they had some permanent plan. After a few moments of swift typing, "Computer consoles in the Hub are locked in shut down mode. There shouldn't be any way for the entity to gain access. Quick let's solve the next crisis while the dice are hot!" She calls with a smile as her mind reached for the next highest priority on her 'get my world back in order' to do list. Engineers continued to work on restoring full power as Alexander turned back to the console.


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