Damage Control

Posted on 21 Dec 2025 @ 1:28pm by Lieutenant JG Kemm & Lieutenant Ranul Frex & Lieutenant T’Mari Rael & Lieutenant JG Shay Mitchell & Master Chief Petty Officer Mila Rasputin

2,445 words; about a 12 minute read

Mission: Imposters Among Us
Location: USS Black Hawk
Timeline: July 8, 2390 || 1400 hours

With the holographically generated damage and emergencies now offline, the crew of the Black Hawk was now free to evaluate and resolve the true damage to the ship. Reports in engineering announced that antimatter containment was still falling, though no longer to the degree it was earlier. As engineering teams from the Endurance began to materialize in Engineering, it was clear that the mission to save the Black Hawk had only begun.

Frex had run into Main Engineering, followed by Shay and T'Mari. He wasn't totally cleared yet, but he knew that he had to get down to Main Engineering to make sure that the ship didn't blow before Frex could get his named cleared. Frex saw that there were people beaming in, probably from the Endurance or somewhere else. So, Frex quickly jumped into action and started pointing people into different directions, having them working on getting the core stabilized before something happened.

Once he got people organized, Frex walked back over to Shay and T'Mari before saying, "I know that I still haven't been fully cleared yet. But, I hope that you don't mind me working on organizing a few people and making sure the ship doesn't go boom sometime soon."

Shay shook her head. "Do what you need to, Lieutenant. I'm not going anywhere."

“I’ll hang around and lend a hand too” T’Mari offered. “You’ll need all the help you can get.”

"Good cause from what I'm seeing, it might be a minute. Kemm, what's the status of everything?" Frex asked as Kemm walked by with several PADDs.

Kemm had just come down from Auxiliary Control as he was assigned to be Commander Reynolds' eyes and ears amongst the repairs. "Which part, sir?" asked the Kelpien. "The part where the antimatter is losing containment, or the part where there's two Commodore Geislers aboard?"

"Well, lets get working on the warp core first. We're no good dead on figuring out the whole thing with the two Commodores. So, lets work on stabilizing that and you can tell me what you know as we work," Frex said as he got to the main controls for the warp core and pointed to the second console nearby for Kemm.

Kemm joined Frex at the workstations. "Stabilizing the core, aye." He tapped a few buttons to call up the gauges for injector and containment integrity. "Looks like there was a small explosion near the antimatter injector which damaged one of the antimatter storage pods."

Frex input a few commands and overrode some things with the warp core. He wanted to be able to divert and reroute some of the matter and anti-matter ports in a hurry, in case they needed it. Looking over at Kemm, Frex said, "Lets start diverting some of the matter and antimatter injectors away from the damaged antimatter pods. I don't want those things mixing all willy nilly."

"Willy nilly?" Kemm repeated, unfamiliar with the phrase. He began to tap a few fingers on the console to issue the Chief's commands. "I'll dispatch a repair team to redirect the injectors. But we may need to consider ejecting the damaged pod. If just one loses containment, it'll start a chain reaction that we may not be able to recover from."

“Wait a minute!” T’Mari walked over to Kemm. “Did you say two Commodore Geislers?” She gave him a concerned look.

Kemm nodded to the Counselor, but kept his eyes focused on the task assigned to him. "Captain Holmes of the Endurance brought one with him, and claimed he was the real Commodore. Supposedly, there's a second version of the Intelligence Chief as well."

Shay blinked. This was a hell of a way to find out about something as serious as this. Still, Frex had yet to be cleared, so she couldn't actually leave him to go find out what was going on. Her gaze shifted to the Counselor. "You never picked up on anything abnormal?"

T’Mari shook her head. “Nothing concrete, there were odd emotions that didn’t seem entirely right, but nothing that couldn’t have been explained by the stresses of the situation were under. I have to admit that scares me, the fact duplicates could be onboard and fool us so easily.”

"That would explain why it was easy to implant stuff to maybe point fingers at people like Camila and myself. Joey had been working on the devices with us and could have easily put some code in there to mess them up. Then, maybe made it look like it was all me or Camila. The puzzle pieces are starting to come together," Frex said as he worked with Kemm on getting those pods ejected. He looked at Kemm and said, "I'm going to need your codes to allow us to jettison the pods, if you don't mind Kemm."

Kemm nodded to the Chief Engineer, though the nod was hesitant due to the wealth of information he'd just learned about saboteurs. Why did all of the unusual things have to happen with little ships named Black Hawk?. "Aye, sir," he said with a sigh. "Computer, jettison antimatter pod one, authorization Kemm three-six-nine-alpha-tango."

The entire ship shook as pod one was ejected into space. Frex kept an eye on it as it floated away and the rest of the system started to normalize. Taking the sleeve of his uniform, Frex wiped away the little bit of sweat that had formed on the bridge of his eyebrow. "That was definitely a close one. Now, how are the rest of the systems looking? Especially the holographic systems because we had to blow them out to stop the saboteurs from using them anymore."

"Holographics are offline," Kemm responded quickly, thanks to the indicators on his screen. "It appears the system needs a full reset. Warp drive itself appears to be stable, but we should run a diagnostic as soon as possible. Most other systems are operating above eighty-five percent, but thanks to the sabotage there is significant fire damage in the engineering sections."

"How about the fire suppression system? Is it online and functioning enough to take out the fires?" Frex asked as he looked over at Kemm, while looking at the console that Kemm was working on too.

Kemm tapped a couple of buttons, then turned and nodded to his superior officer. "Aye, sir. Activating them now."

"Where are some of the worst fires throughout the ship?" Frex asked, wanting to make sure they didn't use the entire ship's store of fire suppression material all on one fire or another.

Shay remained nearby in case she was needed, and given the current circumstances, she planned to officially let Frex go. If there was any backlash, she would deal with it, but he was clearly not the responsible party. That role went to someone else entirely.

"The decks above and below us," Kemm answered, "all near the critical areas. Most of them have been evacuated because of the fires."

"Are any of the fires in the secondary hull near the warp core or anything? Or near the remainder of the matter or antimatter pods?" Frex asked, wanting to make sure that they didn't have to blow out anymore of the containers and keep the Black Hawk going.

Kemm took a moment to review the readouts. The internal sensors were still a mess, but there were reports from the damage control teams coming in. "The antimatter pods and injector assembly is secure and out of danger. The closest fire to the warp core is forward of the reaction chamber and outside of engineering. It seems the suppression system is offline in that section."

"Are the secondary backup suppression systems online? If not, help me get the main system back online. I don't want the fire getting anywhere near Main Engineering or the reaction chamber. That could cause a warp core breach and that would be a bad day for all of us," Frex said, trying to add some levity to the whole situation. His hands started to move across the control panel in front of him, figuring out where some of the issues were with that sections' fire suppression system.

Kemm shook his head. "All secondary systems have been disrupted," he responded. "The forcefield generators are still online. If we can evacuate the surrounding areas, we might be able to seal off entire sections and vent them into space."

"Start the evacuations of the affected areas. How are the environmental controls in the affected areas? Are they still functional at least?" Frex asked as he started to help with the evacuation plans throughout the ship.

A quick command tap gave Kemm the answer his supervisor was looking for. "No errors or alerts on environmental controls, sir. Sending evacuation orders now."

"Okay, once those sections are fully cleared out, let me know because I've got an idea. It's something that I think you said about venting the sections. Maybe we could bring up forcefields where there are fires and vent the oxygen out of them. Make it where they fires don't have anything to feed off of," Frex said as he started to look which sections had the largest fires and how badly things were damaged in those sections.

It took a couple of minutes before the sections were entirely cleared. As soon as they were, Kemm declared, "Evacuation complete. I'll erect the forcefields so you can proceed with your idea, sir." His Kelpian fingers tapped along the console as he activated the various forcefields.

"Okay, I'll start out slow, so that it doesn't cause harm to the structural integreity within the ship. I don't want to blow out a section of the ship by mistake. Then, I'll increase it until all the oxygen has been sucked out of those sections. Starting with the worst parts of the ship with fires," Frex said as he started to work on the removal of air throughout the affected sections.

As they worked together, Frex asked Kemm, "How are we looking?"

Kemm reported, "All forcefields are online with the exception of Deck 14, Section 12. There might be an obstruction blocking the field from properly going up. I'm checking other field generators in that area to see if we can seal off an expanded area."

"Yeah, see if you can widen the area and if so, just let me know which sections. That way, I can make sure to suck the air of those sections instead of the smaller area," Frex replied, checking on the status of the other areas. "Looks like we're slowly, but surely getting there. It's taxing the environmental systems a little bit, but nothing too far out of normal, thankfully."

The Kelpien nodded before checking the sensors to see if anyone was in the surrounding areas. A damage control team was already hard at work in Section 11, and it didn't look like the fires were extending in that direction. "I'll extend out to Section 13," Kemm soon confirmed. His long fingers tapped away and almost instantly a forcefield appeared at full strength exactly where it needed to be.

Frex watched as the forcefields were put into place and he asked Kemm, "Think those forcefields would hold and allow our damage control teams to continue to work in section 11? I don't want to accidentally suck all of the air out of that space or anything."

"Yes, sir," Kemm replied, running another level five diagnostic just to be sure. "Field integrity is holding strong at 98 percent. All of the air will be vented within the next ten seconds and it'll be safe to drop the fields at that point."

"Okay, after the fires are put out, have some of those damage control teams start working on those affected areas. I want to make sure that we don't have anymore fires sprout or anything to harm the crew. Then, we can truly see how bad it is and start a deep dive cleanup," Frex said as he waited for all of the fires to be expunged. It took about 10 seconds or so that Kemm had said and he looked over at Kemm to say, "Alright, lets get those forcefields down and get the teams in there. I want a full damage report as soon as possible, please."

Following a nod, Kelpian fingers danced once again atop the control panel. "All fields are down, and teams have been dispatched." The tall figure rose from his chair and he nodded to Frex. "I'll head down for a visual inspection. As soon as I have a report, you'll have it."

"Thank you for all of your help, Kemm. It helped make sure that we didn't go down. So, just let me know when we figure everything out," Frex offered up with a smile and a curt nod.


***

In Administration, Mila worked furious to get the ship's systems back up and running. She gave orders to other Yeoman and assistants who ran back and forth. Damage reports kept coming in and then disappearing every few minutes and she was tempted to simply draw upon a backup of the tasks from the computer core, but feared that whatever had caused this would infect it as well. Beside of her, Chow sat on her desk and ate a yogurt covered raisin.

Mila’s fingers flew across the console, manually rerouting data streams through auxiliary processors in an attempt to stabilize the administrative interface. The mainframe was glitching—corrupted by whatever malicious code had piggybacked on the sabotage—and she could feel the tension in her jaw as she barked out another command to Yeoman Tarris: “Prioritize deck seven’s life support diagnostics. I am not caring if logs vanish again—You are to be giving me me a snapshot and send it to my secure channel.”

Chow, unfazed by the chaos, tilted his head and watched her with curious eyes. He popped another raisin into his mouth, then leapt from the desk to a nearby shelf with effortless grace. Mila barely registered the movement, but the assistants did—ducking instinctively as the Capuchin vaulted over their heads and landed on a bulkhead-mounted terminal. He tapped it with his tiny fingers, mimicking Mila’s gestures, and chirped triumphantly when the screen flickered back to life.

“Good boy,” Mila muttered, half-smiling despite herself. She tapped her comm badge. “Rasputin to Commodore Geisler, Administration is stabilizing."

No response came from the comm system, an indication that the computer was unable to complete the transmission, or that no one was willing to answer the call.

With that, the Yeoman headed back and began working once more.

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