Darkness Rising

Posted on Sun Jul 28th, 2013 @ 2:16pm by Captain Alexander Gunning & Captain Liarra Von & Lieutenant Commander Nilani Prax
Edited on on Sun Jul 28th, 2013 @ 2:19pm

Mission: Reindeer Games
Location: Starbase 332
Timeline: During "In the Heat of Battle"

Alex knew it was getting late, but he still had some feelings of apprehension. Perhaps it was a captain's intuition, but for some reason he didn't feel like going to his quarters. His thoughts were on his friend and protege, Liarra, and her mission to play terrorist. The exercises were important, he reckoned, but he still didn't like so many of his senior officers being gone. The whole situation had him on edge, even if he didn't want to admit it. As these thoughts ran through his head, he took a stroll through part of the Promenade. Some of the upper decks had a number of viewing areas that showed the planet and stars below. He stopped at one of the viewports when he caught a familiar voice.

"Can't sleep?" Nilani asked, walking casually up behind him, with her hands clasped loosely behind her back. She was still in her uniform - as she was most of the time when walking around the station unless on a date or going to the holodecks - but it was clearly a fresh one, rather than the one that she'd been wearing for the majority of the day.

Gunning turned to greet his science officer and old friend. "Not really. It doesn't look like you could either."

"Torin was a bit of an insomniac," Nilani explained with a shrug. "Every now and then that part of him resurfaces and I just need to take a stroll. It's probably something that he developed while hiding out of Earth, but at the time he joined Starfleet, there were still very few ships with counselors aboard. What's your excuse?"

Gunning laughed and shook his head. "Nothing that good. I just felt like I needed a walk, clear my head, tour the station. That sort of thing. Sometimes I wish I was back behind a tactical console, you know?"

"As I seem to recall, you had a tendency to fall on your ass every time the inertial dampeners failed when you were behind that console," Prax teased with a wry grin. "Your office beginning to seem just a little too big for you?"

"I told you that in complete confidence. You promised that you'd never mention it." The captain got in a good laugh at his early days. "I don't know, Nilani. I wouldn't give this up for anything. Maybe I'm just a little jealous of Liarra. Proud of her, certainly, but a little jealous just the same."

"In other words, you wish that it was you out there playing cat and mouse with the Jackal instead of her?" the Trill shook her head. "You always were an adrenaline junkie."

"I'd have no problem letting her chase me in the Jackal, but yeah, part of me does wish it was me out there." Gunning looked over at his Trill companion. "Don't give me that look. I can't change my nature."

"I'd never want to, Alex," she responded with a smile. "Hell, it was hard enough just to get into Omar's good books, let alone become his protégé. Don't you change for anyone."

"Don't you change for anyone either, Nilani. It doesn't matter how many hosts Prax has had, always be you. Melissa was right to pick you."

"Speaking of Omar and Melissa," Nilani said, steering the conversation in a new direction. "I was hoping that I could talk to you a bit more about my zhian'tara. I've been giving some thought to who I'd like to give each personality to, but I obviously would rather not cause problems for your duty rosters." She smirked at that last bit. She knew as well as most of the senior staff that Alex made Liarra do most of the actual rosters - he just approved them.

"Oh, I wouldn't worry too much about the duty rosters. I'm sure they'll get done somehow," Alex replied with a wink. "If you're still willing to have me, I'd like to..." Gunning's voice was interrupted by loud rumblings throughout the station. At first it sounded distant, but quickly grew louder. Alex looked quickly around them and them and pointed to a nearby corridor. "Nilani, go!"

Nilani didn't need telling twice, and began running as fast as she could towards the corridor, and the relative safety that it provided with its automatically seal-able bulkheads and the forcefields every few meters - including at its entrance.

They had only started running when EPS conduits ruptured behind them. They exploded sequentially, blowing out large sections of the hull. Just reaching the corridor, the bulk head ripped open behind them, venting atmosphere into space. Alex grabbed the nearest bulkhead for dear life, only just holding on before the emergency force fields could energize. Falling to the ground, he looked up to survey the damage. The end of the corridor was mangled. Access panels had been blown open, exposing conduits. Cables hung down from over head as sparks and coolant sprayed down. But beyond the edge of the corridor was where most of the damage lied. It seemed an entire side of the station was missing, from just below the internal docks to nearly the bottom of the structure. Alex stood in silence, gazing through the buzzing forcefield that was keeping them alive.

Nilani had been able to make it just around the corner of the corridor before the bulkhead blew, and was able to brace herself against it to keep from flying out into space while the forcefields compensated under commands from the central computer processor. As soon as the rushing sound stopped, she stepped back out to look at the damage herself, panting at the shock and the exertion of the sudden run.

Gunning tapped his commbadge, "Gunning to Ops!" His badge did not offer the usual chirp, instead providing a tone to indicate that the internal comm system was down. He turned back at Nilani, not really sure what to say. "Are you alright?"

Nilani took a moment to swallow and hold her breath for a second in order to try and calm herself down and focus her thoughts. She nodded at Alex. "Yeah, I'm fine." Looking around for the nearest operational data console, she stepped aside to bring up the station's status reports. "There's an unstable power surge running through all of the EPS conduits throughout this section," she reported, reverting to her training. "Alex, we have to get everyone out of here - now!"

"Agreed. Start checking rooms on that side," he said gesturing to his right. "I'll check the others." Alex hurried along the corridor, overriding door controls with his command codes. The first two rooms were empty, but the third had someone crying out for help, trapped under debris. "Hold on, I'm coming to get you." He carefully climbed over the wreckage. The far back wall of the room was gone. In its place was another gaping hole out into space, this one showing the concavity of the damage. A structural beam had the crewmember pinned by his leg. "Hang on. We'll get you out of here." Alex put his hand under the beam and lifted with all of his strength. He didn't budge it much, but he got it high enough for the crewman to free his leg. Gunning dropped the beam and helped him to his feet, leading him to the safety of the corridor. "I found one," he said to Nilani, who was finishing her own search.

Nilani withheld her reply as she focused all her energy on keeping the two sides of the door she was currently standing in the middle of apart. The servos had locked and wouldn't accept her override codes, and so she'd had to pry it open and was now trying to stop it from shutting on her whist the room's occupants dashed out into the corridor underneath her arms. Once they were out, she rolled quickly to the side, getting free just as the doors slammed together. "That's everyone on this side!" she called out. "We need to get to ops! Find out what happened."

"Agreed. I have a feeling that the turbolifts are out, at least on this side of the station. It doesn't look..." Gunning's voice trailed off for a moment. He grew silent as a high pitched buzzing grew in volume. He was no engineer, but he knew what that sound meant. The plasma conduits in the EPS grid were about to lose containment. Panels started blowing out down the corridor, quickly heading towards them. They didn't have time to run. The small explosions were approaching to fast. He only had time to turn back to Nilani. "Run!" he shouted as he shoved her out of the way.

Propelled by the captain's forceful shove, and expecting him to be right behind her, Nilani ran as fast as her adrenaline-filled body would allow, hearing as much as feeling her heart pumping in her chest, and the symbiont in her abdomen curl its tail up in an automatic response to the apprehension and fear she felt right at this moment. She could hear the roar of the oncoming fire racing after her, and had just managed to reach the junction of the corridor she was aiming for when the force of it slammed into her back light a tonne of bricks, propelling her forward and smacking her hard against the bulkhead in front of her, before almost tossing her aside into the side passage of the corridor - away from the plume of heat, but with serious burns and a head injury that left blood seeping from a point on her scalp.

As blackness began to envelop her vision and she lay on the floor motionless, her last thought before the bliss of unconsciousness took her was where is Alex?

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Captain Alexander Gunning [P: Von]
Commanding Officer
Starbase 332

Lt. Commander Nilani Prax
Chief Science Officer
Starbase 332