Broken and Bruised

Posted on 20 Aug 2016 @ 4:17am by Commander Terry Walsh & Lieutenant Jonathan Kilmartin & Lieutenant JG Samantha Lopez & Lieutenant Commander Gemma Alexander & Ensign Aurilia Moretti
Edited on on 20 Aug 2016 @ 4:21am

2,430 words; about a 12 minute read

Mission: Click Three Times
Location: Flight Deck
Timeline: MD 6 || 1405

Terry started opening his eyes slowly. His head was pounding and his side ached. He tried to roll over but found himself against an overturned sled. "And that's why my side hurts," he said. "Probably my head, too." He shifted himself and pushed up to a sitting position. The lights on the Deck were dim. He tapped his commbadge, but there was no beep. He tried it one more time to no avail. The last thing he remembered was getting out of his fighter and walking across the Deck to find the Flight Deck Commander and then blackness. He had no idea what happened or if they were even successful. Still sitting, he turned and tried to look around for anyone or anything else that would explain. All he saw was a mess...a huge, broken mess.

Aurilia groaned as she felt a heavy something pinning her to the flight deck or wherever she was at the moment. She wondered if she had been hit by one of the Valkyries that had been coming in hot and landing wherever there was available space or if something else had happened. She had been looking out of the opening when everything went white and then she remembered nothing. Some type of fluid touched her face and she tried to brush it aside before realizing that her right arm was trapped as well. "Help!" she called out weakly. "I'm over here!"

Gale opened his eyes, sitting up slowly. He felt extremely groggy. He wondered what had happened. He looked around the landing deck. There were fighters and equipment all over the deck. Then he heard someone shouting. He wondered what they were shouting. They were shouting for help! "I'm coming! Where are you?" He shouted, struggling to hear the shouting.

Sunbeam had not even made it out of his Valkyrie once it had landed. He'd opened the canopy on his craft but as he stood to get out the ship had shook and he had cracked his head, knocking himself unconscious. And that was where he remained, unconscious in the cockpit of his craft, blood streaming down his head.

"Over here!" Aurilia called out again and waved one hand from her position half under a antigrav cart. "I'm trapped!"

Gale saw the hand sticking out from under the cart and dashed over. "Hmmmmmmm....this could get interesting." Gale said quietly to himself. "I wonder if the grav generators still working..." Gale trailed off, activating the machines grav lift. The machine slowly whirred into life and began to rise. "Think you can squeeze out yet?" He asked, not knowing how long the grav generators would last.

Aurilia took a needed breath and rolled over and out from under the cart with a groan of pain as it lifted off of her and coughed. "What...what happened?"

"Not sure...how you feeling?" Gale asked, looking around the rest of the flight deck.

"With my hands," Aurilia muttered. "I feel like a few hundred pounds landed on me."

"Well that's probably because you did have a few hundred pounds landing on you...how much pain?" He asked, spotting a medkit a short distance away and grabbing it.

"Enough to strangle you if you don't keep asking stupid questions and give me something for the pain," Aurilia grunted. "Now."

"Well because you asked so nicely..." Gale said sarcastically, opening the medkit and pulling out a hypospray of morphenolog. "This should do the trick!" He said, pressing the hypospray against the pilots neck and administering it. "Better?" He asked.

"Thank you," the redheaded pilot said grudgingly as she wiped whatever liquid was on her face off and then wiped her hand on her maintenance coveralls. "Now to get this wreck of a deck cleaned up."

Whatever it was that had happened, the ride had been rough. Slammed repeatedly up and down between his magnetically held Valkyrie and the deck, even Dzhossen's flight helmet hadn't saved him from another concussion. Groaning, he rolled his head from side to side as he fought through what was becoming an all too common circumstance. Looking out from under the bird, he could see that the deck was a mess again, several birds seemed to be crunched, or "parked creatively" as he'd once told his flight instructor. There were some weapon caddies tipped over but thankfully, he couldn't see any loose torpedo's rolling around this time.

Striker had hit the deck hard, having been climbing out of her bird when the ship had been knocked about. She now lay unconscious on the floor by her bird, not moving, blood coming from somewhere.

"Discord to Rocco, situation?" He asked, but there was no chirp when he touched his commbadge. He tried again, "Discord to Galahad, reply?" With tender motion, he moved his arms and legs, determining that nothing was broken.

Galahad, still dazed from the almost crash, stumbled...or more accurately fell out of his craft. He pulled off his helmet and blinked rapidly trying to get his jumbled brain functioning. It wasn't helped by the fact that what met his eyes was some nightmarish scene. There was the smell of blood, sight of debris everywhere and the constant pulsing of the red emergency lighting, which did nothing to help his head. Then he caught sight of the his lead and stumbled over, "Hey Discord, are you ok?" He said, a rather sizable bruise on his head.

Cursing, Discord rolled out from under the Valkyrie, bringing a slew of wrenches with him. "Yeah, but I need to find Tabby. We need lighting over here to finish this strut. The stupid thing should be able to to take more pressure than that."

"Seemed like alot of pressure" Galahad replied with a shrug, his mind finally setting itself to rights. "Maybe we should grab a couple of med kits see if who survived.." He said grimly, his head throbbing like a warp core.

Dzhossen scowled at Galahad. "Don't act like that strut's important. I can still take off and fight without it. Landing on the other hand... Well I know a Bajoran who'd done a few imaginative ones. I'll have to imitate him as best I can."

"My landings rock with sprinkles, other craft are jealous...." Galahad quipped as he knelt to help a fellow pilot with a what looked to be a leg wound.

Petty Officer Maxwell, one of the more experienced Knuckledraggers on the flight deck spotted the downed Lieutenant Lopez and rushed over with a companion of his, a medkit in hand. He used a hypospray to bring the Lieutenant back to consciousness and then began treating the wound on her head.

Archer had actually managed a decent landing, not for nothing was she the Squadron CO's wingman but that parking job was ruined like much of the rest of the bay. She managed to get clear of her cockpit, fortunately she'd been still strapped in the safety restraints when the whatever it was hit. She'd been knocked out like everyone but was forcing her mind to when all it seemed to want to do was be everywhere at once. She looked around at the chaos and caught sight of a pilot, she couldn't see who from here, hanging out of his cockpit. She, relatively unhurt, grabbed her Valkyries medkit and ran over to try to help. When she got closer she saw it was Sunbeam, she did a quick tricorder scan to make sure it was safe to move him then pushed him back into his cockpit, it was easier than trying to lug him across the deck, she wasn't too steady on her own feet, and grabbed a dermal regenerator to try to heal the wound.

The pilot began to stir, his eyes eventually opening as he found himself staring into the gorgeous blue eyes of the woman who was rendering medical assistance. "Are you an angel?" he asked with a smile and a wink.

Archer rolled her eyes and replied, "Yes of Death but the Angel of Healing had an emergency at home so they called me for the day." She joked right back, glad he seemed to be ok. "You see only one of me?" She asked leaning back to gauge his visual acuity.

"The galaxy isn't big enough for two of you, Gem," Sunbeam smirked as he struggled to sit up, his hand quickly rubbing his temple as a headache began to surface.

"Darn Skippy..." She quipped automatically as she helped him sit up and pulled a hypo spray from the emergency kit, "This should help a little bit with the headache and dizziness..." She paused so if he didn't want it or wanted to do it himself. She then injected him with the hypo and waited a moment. "You ok? You want to be careful with that, its where most of us keep our best stuff..." She said lightly gesturing to his head, though her eyes were concerned head injuries were no joke.

When Archer was sure Sunbeam could be left on his own she took her med kit and went in search of more injured.

Aurilia saw a red haired Vulcan working on a fighter and made her way through the mess while towing an antigrav cart which was quickly being stacked with tools and other items as she collected them. "You. What are you doing?" she asked him. "This is no time to work on fighters. We need this mess cleaned up."

Picking up one of the sprawled maintenance men from Tabayoyung's crew and dusting him off, Dzhossen ordered the man to immediately finish repairs and rearmament.

"Ma'am, no ma'am," Dzhossen said with barely a quick glance towards Aurilia as he scanned the mess for Tabayoyung. Seeing another one of the crew pinned beneath a tool chest, Discord grunted as he lifted the box to allow the crewman to slide free. "Something obviously clobbered the Black Hawk. For all we know the Valadore is out there at this moment trying to power up her weapons. The first one to be able to mount an attack wins. Right now, the whole deck is in triage and being able to mount an attack saves the most lives. So until Rocco or Sunbeam tells me otherwise, respectfully, ma'am, no ma'am."

Galahad, who was bending from picking up a loose med kit paused next to his lead and like a good wingman even if he didn't completely understand what was going on he stepped next to and just behind Discord.

Terry had started looking around as best he could in the dim lighting. There seemed to be a few injuries here and there, but at least the Valkyries were safe. Despite the first-year-cadet landings he saw. That was something he absolutely was going to address when the time was right. Kilmartin had trained them all just days before. Anyway, they were down several fighters already due to the battle and couldn't afford to lose any more to mistakes.

Communication was down, so he couldn't contact anyone. Terry would have to rely on the old fashioned way. Finding an overturned container, he climbed up on it and practically yelled. "Alright everyone! If you can hear me, we two priorities! Number one, find anyone severely injured and treat them as best you can with our medkits! Number two, get this Flight Deck cleaned up! We won't be able to do anything if we can't get around! Those are your orders!"

Terry stepped down and made his way around a bunch of parts piled on the floor. It looked like someone had already started clearing the Deck before they came in hot. He nodded his head and made a mental note find out who that was later. For now, there was work to be done. The Squadron Commander left that pile where it was and made his way a few fighters down and a couple overturned torpedo stands to the left. There he found an anti-grav sled that would make this a lot easier.

He had moved one load over to the wall and unloaded it. Terry expected that the Deck crews would be able to sort through it later, when they had lighting. He then remembered that he had other people to check on in Flight Operations and other places. Terry took a quick look around and determined that things were well in hand. He had already given his loudly spoken, or screamed, orders and everyone that was within range knew what to do. They would spread the word. And Kilmartin could take it from there. Terry nodded and gingerly made his way through the dimly lit Flight Deck, to maintenance hatch that a crewman showed him, down a short area, and out to the corridor though another maintenance hatch.

Galahad and Archer were moving about checking people and Archer was organizing work parties to clear the debris, get the craft squared away as she could while focusing on getting people back on their feet. Even as she wondered she wondered what universe had dropped on their heads to hit them this hard. The crafts in the nebula weren't supposed to be this powerful, she could only assume it was something to do with the Rommie weapon and hoped that the fact they were still alive meant it misfired. Then she had no more time for wondering as she moved about the bay.

With his headache in full swing, the Squadron XO could no longer sit by and watch as his colleagues got to work. He'd heard the orders of the Commander and had clambered out of his Valkyrie. "Striker, Discord. Front and centre," the Lieutenant called out in the direction of the two pilots.

Dropping a recovered tool pouch into it's appropriate caddy, Dzhossen's head snapped around when he heard Sunbeam call out. Trotting over, he naturally fell into a parade rest in front of the XO. "Sir?"

Sam jogged over to the Squadron XO and leant against a crate. "You called?" She asked.

"Galahad and Archer are currently doing the medical rounds so I want each of you to put a three man team together and take over the clean up duties. Unglamorous but someone needs to do it. When you're done, we need to prioritise systems and craft for repair," Kilmartin spoke as he rubbed his temples again.

Sam nodded, turning to three maintenance crew and walking away to start on the opposite end of the flight deck. "Ensign, you start this side, i'll start that side, we'll meet in the middle somewhere!" She shouted across to Dzhossen.

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