The Day After Leaving Sigma Iota II

[Melissa Richards]

Commander Mary Wells
Executive Officer

Wells had never felt so dizzy in her life. She'd heard Gary scream his orders and several shouts. Her head had felt like it was going to explode as they clearly had cleared some kind of 'barrier' and slipped into the anomaly and through it. The attempt to shear away had failed, and now they were in it. From far away, she could hear more yells, and something about a medical emergency on the bridge.

"All departments.." she finally got out.."Need your operational...status." Mary felt herself falling and grabbed the railing at the back of the bridge to steady herself before she did. "What the hell happened?" she whispered. Her vision was clouded, and the feeling of nausea was so great, she wanted to puke! The XO found a chair and collapsed into it holding her head. It screamed like the roar of an ocean, and she forced herself to look at the viewscreen and what was on it.

"Dear god.." she whispered realizing her zeal for science had put them in this position.."What have I done?"

tags

[Sjet]

Dr Arkady Sjet
Ships Doctor
USS Horizon
(Lower hull maintenance area, damaged.)

What to do, what to do...huum...

Life had given Arkady a number of opportunities over the years, from the kindly patronage of a New Kiev gangster looking for someone to take over his reign of benevolent terror in the mines of Mars, to the war with romulus that had turned him from criminal into war hero. That had been a very useful title to throw around, turning every accusation in the post war years into a tarnishing brush against the deaths had bought the war to a blood end. And so, right now, he stood in a bowl shaped compartment at the bottom of the habitation sphere with another opportunity before him.

Whatever had just happened was not important in and of itself, what was important was the effect it had had on the ships hull. Micro stresses had suddenly yawned open, allowing precious atmosphere to rush out into the void of space. Hull supports had, in some cases, began to buckle and snap like tooth picks. In the Russians opinion the ship was lucky the lower half of the hab sphere hadn't simply been crushed like a soda can. But that was not the opportunity for repair work that Arkady was thinking of.

That opportunity rested in the acrid foam caked lower half of the curved floor of the room. The foam was a special blend of chemical nightmare, curing into a hard rock like substance that would take a diamond tipped drill to crack. It was designed to be sprayed into a hull breach and seal it, and most crew member in The War had been trained in its use. Get it on your skin and you'd be loosing that skin, and God help you if you got any in your mouth or lungs. Floating in zero geee, the gravity for this compartment having burned out during the event, Arkady hovered over the meter deep covering of sealant foam...

And looked at the blackened, rictus like claw of a hand reaching out from it.

He had been down here in the bowels of the ship with one of the idiot engineers who had attacked the young yeoman. Then something had happened, the hull had been warped and a finer wide gap in the hull are yawned open below them. Arkady had used his faster reflexes to grab a hand hold, whilst the idiot gunsel had grabbed the doctors leg. Air had began to rush past them, threatening to pull them both down into the widening gap. So Arkady had kicked him in the face, as hard as he could, and killed two birds with one stone: no longer would he have to deal with his idiocy anymore, and it also sealed up the gap with a screaming body for a precious few seconds as he grabbed the sealant gun from its wall mounting.

Alarm klaxons did a good job of covering up screams and begs for mercy, and the foam didn't give one much time to scream as it burned and bubbled down throats and into lungs. But now Akrady had an opportunity, properly framed and acted of course, to paint this now dead departed soul as...what? A victim of the captains stupidity? As a man who had bravely threw himself at the hull breach to give the doctor the time he needed to seal it, spending his life so others might live? That had possibilities.

And if it was one thing that a good Russian orthodox boy knew, it was how to play a martyr into a winning hand.

Arkady began to smile a wide, hungry smile. Today wasn't shaping up to badly all things considered.

[Amanda Rose]

[Melissa Richards]

[Amanda Rose]

[Sjet]

Doctor Arkady Sjet
Chief Physician

The lift door at the back of the bridge opened, and the acrid scent of burning plastics and the ozone stench of sealant foam rushed out from it. The hours since the beginnings of the troubles had not been pleasant for the doctor and his small team of nurses and first responders. A ship designed to explore out beyond the reaches of civilised space should have been staffed with a full hospital of personnel and equipment. Instead they had the one general expert and some nurses, with anything beyond his purview resulting in a trip to the small cryonics’ deck/morgue: freeze the problem until they can be revived back home in a proper medical centre.

It was cheaper than building to spec, but Arkady looked to have been paying a high price for the last two hours of that oversight. His uniform was smeared with black soot and drying smear of a dark brown substance that was glossy red where it was fresh. He looked tired from the work, and the way his hand remained spotless and clean right up until his wrists turned stained and blooded told a story of the gloves he’d had to wear. And the only reason anyone would notice the doctors hands was for the medical case in one, and the identification badges he had in the other.

Three badges taken from three bodies.

He seemed to stagger across the bridge, dropping the medical case on Gary’s chair before walking over to the man himself. He pushed the badges against Gary’s chest, holding them there until his free hand could grab Gary’s and bring up there to take them.

“Crewman Cutter, Ensign Vaskez and…and…I removed her appendix four months ago, I forget her name. Quick healer as I recall.” Arkady said a little distractedly, frowning as he remembered the procedure better than the person. He looked up at Gary and locked eyes with him “Those are the dead we have now. Two were quick, one was lingering pain I made short lived. Wounded are many, and I am not sure of two more: one is blood loss, we are having blood drive with walking wounded so that one I s 40/60 canted towards her living. Other is traumatic brain injury: fell from cat walk in engineering, hit pipes on way down. That one I do not think will make recovery fully: the brain is damaged by fall. And that’s if he wakes at all.”

He let out a harsh little bark of laugh.

“But what do I know. Maybe is best he not wake up, yes? What has happened kip’tin? What has cost the crew so dearly?” he said coolly, speaking loud enough for all to hear “What have they bought with their lives?”

Tag-Bridge.

[Melissa Richards]

[Melissa Richards]

[Sjet]

[Amanda Rose]