Getting out

Posted on 09 Jun 2024 @ 2:45pm by Lieutenant Ranul Frex

1,168 words; about a 6 minute read

Mission: Shattered Unity
Location: Starbase Unity
Timeline: June 19, 2390--0300

[ON:]

Ranul was working down in Engineering at one of the various stations that Starbase Unity's Engineering department had when he heard the Red Alert Klaxon come through, as well as the Commanding Officer's voice come across the comm system. They told everyone to get to battle stations and prepare to defend the Starbase, but also to evacuate the families that were onboard. Since Ranul wasn't an official member of the Starbase engineering crew, he wasn't sure what he should be doing or how he could help out.

Ranul was only on the Starbase because he was waiting to meet up with his new ship and crew, the USS Black Hawk. He thought that he heard that they were on a salvage mission to get a starship that wasn't able to get back to the Starbase on its own. But, the Black Hawk was coming back and should have been back anytime soon.

Ranul decided that he would help out the engineering crews out to make sure that they could defend against whatever was coming to attack the Starbase, especially since he was a theoretical engineer. Ranul had a few tricks up his sleeve to make sure that the weapons or defensive systems could work better, even on the scale of a Starbase.

Going to the main station in Main Engineering where the Chief Engineer was, Ranul asked what he could do to help out and explained who he was. The Chief Engineer looked at him for a moment before replying, "Well, we could use some help making sure that the shields stay in place. Those things have been giving us a headache for quite some time now and I'm sure that you could make some magic out of it somehow. Go down to the shield generator in the bowls of the Starbase and assist my Assistant Chief Engineer with it, okay?"

Ranul nodded and quickly made his way out of Main Engineering towards the nearest turbolift, ordering it to take him down to the shield generator on whatever level that it was on. When the turbolift started going, the entire Starbase was rocked with what Ranul could only assume was weapons fire from an enemy ship or a natural phenomena that was interfering with normal operation.

Before the turbolift even made it to the shield generator, Ranul felt the Starbase get hit several more times. When he finally made it to the shield generator, Ranul found the Assistant Chief Engineer working with an Operations Officer on keeping the shields up and making sure they didn't collapse around them or in any certain areas of the Starbase. Running up to the man, Ranul said, "I'm here to help! What can I do to help out?"

The Bolian officer looked back to see Ranul standing there and said, "You must be that officer from the Black Hawk, aren't you? The Chief told me that you were coming down here to help me out and that you were a theoretical engineer. We could definitely use some thoughts about how to keep the shields going because whatever is hitting us is causing some major damage to our shields."

From across the room, the shields were hit again and sparks flew from some of the consoles, as well as throwing an officer clear across the room. The ops officer ran over to try and help the young officer that was thrown across the room and take him to sickbay for the burn they sustained. Ranul and the Assistant Chief ran over to the station the officer was standing at to make sure everything was good.

Ranul punched in a few commands and realized how bad that it truly was. The shields were at 15% and they were going down faster and faster with each passing moment. The Starbase was older than dirt and hadn't been upgraded with some of the newer tech for shields, such as regenerative abilities that the Prometheus-Class Starships had.

Thinking about it for a moment, Ranul thought about what made the Prometheus-Class' shields be able to regenerate without having to be worked on by an engineering or operations crew. He wanted to see if he could implement some of the ideas into the Starbase's shielding, even if it only helped out a little bit. It would help keep the shields up long enough for the Starbase to evac some of the families and the crew if it came to that.

Looking over at the Assistant Chief, Ranul said, "I'm going to need your help for a crazy plan and it might not even work. But, if it does, it can help make sure the shields don't go out on us. At least, not yet anyways." The Assistant Chief gave Ranul a weird look, but he agreed to help him with whatever crazy plan that he had. The plan involved activating the secondary shield generator with the primary, shunting some extra energy towards both, and layering the shielding from the primary and secondary generators, so that when one goes down, the other generator would take its place and hopefully stay up long enough for them to work on getting the one back up to more strength than it was beforehand.

Why Ranul needed the Assistant Chief was one person needed to keep an eye and repair the primary generator while the other person was watching the secondary generator and working on it in unison. They quickly implemented their plan and it worked for a little bit, but again, the age and the type of shielding that the Starbase had didn't allow for their plan to work for long. Before too long, the shields went down and the commanding officer was calling for a general evacuation of the Starbase.

The good thing was that the shield generators were in a low enough part of the Starbase that there was a maintenance shuttlebay near to their location. The Assistant Chief and Ranul went running towards it and crawled up a few Jeffries Tubes to get there. The good news was that there were a few shuttles that hadn't been damaged or destroyed beyond usability. Ranul and the Assistant Chief hopped into a type-2 shuttle and got a few members of the maintenance crews onto it that were unconscious before taking off.

The shuttle was barely out of the Starbase doors and at a decent distance before the Starbase finally exploded behind them. The shockwave sent ripples of debris throughout local space and caused damage to the various shuttles and escape pods that were nearby. It knocked the primary power of Ranul's shuttle offline and threw Ranul himself up against a bulkhead, knocking him out cold. The good thing was that he thought about before being thrown up against the bulkhead was that he sent out a general SOS to any friendly species that were close by.

So, here was to hoping that someone would come to the rescue sooner rather than later...

[OFF:]

Lieutenant Ranul Frex
Chief Engineering Officer
USS Black Hawk-B

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