From tgladsto@sewanee.edu Sat Jun 27 19:55:21 1998 Date: Sat, 13 Jun 1998 17:25:39 -0600 From: tgladsto@sewanee.edu To: Dante Expeditionary Force List Serve Subject: [DANTEXF] USS Yorktown: Aftermath DANTE Expeditionary Force Official E-mail BEGIN TRANSMISSION FMD 5.1550 Retal shook his head, surveying the Engine room. Techs crisscrossed the vast, domed expanse, ducking in and out of Jeffries tubes and emergency turbolifts, carefully avoiding the sparks from bare wires and disintegrating, shattered keypanels. Coupled with the strain of battle, the final barrage of missiles had been almost fatal, the shields straining to their absolute limit. Even with the navigational deflectors patched in through the defense system, the x-ray missiles had very nearly penetrated into the warp core, where they would have ignited a chain reaction. Within minutes, the core would have gone critical, and the Yorktown would have blossomed into a miniature supernova, a firey grave amongst the stars. He took a deep breath, focusing himself back to reality. "Talk to me, people. What've we got?" Chief Kalverts turned with a start, his wide eyes resting momentarially on Retal before he turned back to the console. "Very little, sir. The subspace field inducers have been polarized, so we're on impulse power only. Weapons are still relatively intact, but the shield systems are about to give way. Navigational shields are fading, and without them we'll get a hull breach as soon as we start moving. Primary hull has some scarring, but it's mainly cosmetic." He swallowed. "The main problem, though, comes from the computers. The x-ray blast wiped a portion of the storage chips, which means we'll be on manual for a while." For a long moment, Retal stared at the schematic. He had just barely managed to get the York back together again, and now she was falling apart. Hopefully, there would be time to get new equipment from SB Alighieri before fighting resurfaced. With luck, there would be time to get the ship completely in shape. It was time to face the worst. "How many casualties?" "Five confirmed kills from-" "In this department, Chief." "Ah, yes, well..." His thin, almost forked tongue flicked out, running over thin lips in a nervous gesture. "We lost Joxa." Retal swore. Before long, he swore, he would find one of the Dalraidians and rip their heart out through their throats. Joxa had been young, enlisted in the fleet as soon as he was able. No children, no spouse, but he had a sweetheart on Alpha Centauri, and two parents at home. One more death to chalk up for the Dalraidia. "Injuries?" "We were surprisinly lucky there, sir. The worst anyone suffered was a broken bone or two. Most will be back to work in a few hours." "Thank the Ancients for small favours, then. First priority for us is shields, navigational deflectors first, then defensive. Even if the Dalraidia are truely backing off, we're still in the middle of a war zone. Warp next, and I want a twenty-four hour shift working on replacing those chips. I don't care if we have to program new code ourselves, we need-" Behind him, one of the broken panels erupted in a shower of sparks, lightning twisting out from the exposed circuitry, seeking for a suitable conduit and finding one, lightly touching an unseen body. Turning, Retal saw a uniformed body fly through the air, convulsions racking its limbs. Slamming into a wall, the form crumpled to the floor, collapsing like a sack of wet grain, arms and legs still convulsing. A group of uniformed techs clustered around the body, one of them sliding open a medkit and removing a streamlined medical tricorder. One of the techs shouted in a deep voice that carried smoothly though the bustle of the room. "Tamera's down!" Retal had not even waited to see who had been hit. In the split second between the beginning of the scan and the yell, he had crossed the intervening space, moving so quickly that he appeared nothimg more than a gold and black blur. Coming to a stop next to the tech with the tricorder, he looked town at Tamera's unconscious body. Her chest still rose and fell slightly, and the convulsions had nearly ceased, but her hard face was contorted into a grimace of pain. "How is she?" The startled tech glanced up at Retal, standing above him in the gold and black of an engineer, a gleam of concern mixed with anger in his eyes, and stammered for a second, taking a deep breath before answering. "Uh- she- she's fading, sir. There's not much we can do." For the second time in five minutes, Retal swore, not noticing the expression on the tech's face blanch as the subconscious wave of meaning that surpassed words passed momentarially through his mind. Smoothly, Retal kneeled by Tamera, looking down at her body. He could tell that her vital signs were rapidly fading, overloaded by a rush of energy, synapses and muscles all firing at once. She was strong, or else she would have been dead before she hit the ground, nerves fused, her muscles clenched so tightly they would shatter her bones to jagged rubble. Not giving anyone else time to move, he reached out, placing his hand a few inches above her head, and let the Lake fill him. It's ancient power, familiar as a lover's embrace, washed over him, pure subquantum energy suffusing his body until he felt he would explode. Rapidly, he redirected the energy, weaving its flows in a form he had used over and over again, and letting it flow out from his hand, into Tamera's body. He did not need to open his eyes to note the tech's astonishment, or to see the effect of his weave. His hand had begun to glow faintly, the light cascading down from his palm onto Tamera's head like a waterfall of pure energy. It washed through her body, interlacing her atoms and molocules with something infinitely more miniscule, and more powerful, an energy from underneath the skin of reality, where time, space, thought, and energy had no difference from each other. Miniscule strands of power coursed through her body for a second, interweaving through each cell, bolstering it back to health, life. Silently, he hoped that her body would respond. She would continue to live like this, but it would not be a true life, merely a sustained twilight. She needed to come back on her own. Retal had to fight a laugh when he felt her body respond, silently echoing the patterns formed by the Lake, beginning to slowly repair the damage. Her breaths deepend, becoming slower and more measured, and nural activity skyrocketed as she returned to consciousness. With a relieved sigh, Retal opened his eyes, letting the Lake receed into the miniscule recesses of his mind, his link with it all but gone. Tamera's eyes were open, and she was fighting to sit up. "What happened?" "You were hit by a plasma discharge from one of the panels. You're all right, but wounded. I'm relieving you of duty until you're fully checked out by the doctor." "But I feel fine, sir." "Believe me, I know you want to get up, and I need all the help you can get, but first I need to be sure you won't collapse on me. Orders. Got it?" "Yes, sir." She sounded slightly resigned, but healthy. Turning to the tech with the medkit, Retal spoke again. "Get her down to sick bay. Tell the doctor what happened, and make sure he sees to her. I want both of you back as soon as Tamera has a clean bill of health, got it?" "Ah.... Y-yes sir." Taking in a quick breath, Retal stood and turned from the man, spotting one of the tech groups, Alvinson's, he thought, standing at the far end of the chamber. As he changed course to head straight for them, he heard and felt the whine of the transporters as Tamera and the young tech were taken to sickbay. He winced. Engineering was now down three for the next few hours, and they were going to need all they could get to keep the ship in one piece until they reached spacedock. It was Alvinson's team, he noted as he reached the small cluster of men and women, the Lieutenant at their head. "Alvinson. Do your techs have anything better to do than stand around?" "We were waiting for your orders, sir." Retal cracked a wry grin. "Good. Then come with me, and bring your kits. Make sure you've got micromanipulators." "Got 'em, sir." "Good for you, Lieutenant. Follow me." Without waiting to see if they followed his instructions or not, Retal turned and headed for the nearest access corridoor. Pausing for a moment to wait at the entrance, he punched a rapid sequence of numbers in through the keypad, watching the door cycle slowly open to reveal the entrance to a long tunnel shaft. Mentally, he let the idea of going to the Ariel lounge and getting something to drink go, and ducked into the tube, beginning the slow crawl down to the Computer Interchange Center. The ridged floor of the tunnel dug into his hands as he progressed forwards, a string of red lights clearly pointing out the way to the Interchange. Several minutes later, he pulled himself out of the tunnel, and into the dim light of a computer circuit room. It was plain, unassuming, simply a small room with fake wooden panelling, each of the panels engraved with the name of one of the computer-administrated systems. Some of the panels were outlined in green by the status stystem, while others glimmered ruby red. With a relieved smile, Retal noted that the forward wall, which controlled most of life support and warp interchange, was barely touched by the red. On the other hand, the sensor interchanges glimmered red, while some of the damage warnings had crept into the weapons targeting systems. As soon as the entrance was clear, Alvinson popped through, rapidly moving to permit his next team member passage. Sensing the movement, the computer brought up the lights in the chamber, raising their level to the same as the rest of the ship. "Alvinson, toss me a micro kit so I can show you people what to do here." Nodding, the big Lieutenant removed the long, thin carpace of a micromanipulator from his kit and tossed it to Retal, who smoothly plucked it out of midair. By this time, the entire tech team was through, and nearly twenty-five eyes rested upon him. The CEO began slowly. "The last missile salvo from the Dalraidian starships managed to polarize some of the chips in this comptuer array. As long as these are out of order, we can't take the York past seventy-five percent efficiency, and I have a hunch that, with the Dalraidia nearly out of the system, the pirates will make a comeback. What that pretty much boils down to is that we need these chips replaced." Turning, he walked up to one of the red-outlined panels on the sensor wall and slid his hand to the corner. Feeling around for a second, he pressed the miniscule catch, grasping the psuedowood panel as it slid out of the recess, revealing the bank of isolinear chips that made up this interchange station. "Each one of these chips is integral to the function of the whole. If one is polarized, the purpose of the entire structure is compromized. What you need to do here is find which chips are polarized and remove them from the whole." In a single, smooth motion, Retal unholstered his tricorder and flipped it open, running a quick scan of the chip bank. A miniature diagram shimmered on his tricorder, with the intact isolinear chips registered in green, while the polarized ones shimmered the colour of blood. Locating the first chip, Retal inserted the micromanipulator and triggered it. The two sides of the manipulator clamped shut on the thin sliver of the chip's edge, he slid it out smoothly. As soon as the chip was removed, the ruby light around the panel shimmered and died. "Once the chain of chips is incomplete, the computer reroutes the instructions through a different subprocessor, which gives us time to refabricate new chips. Understood?" Around the room, twenty-three heads nodded slowly in agreement. "Good. Take care of all the defective chips, and then contact me." As he ducked back into the tube, Retal heard Alvinson's voice echoing through the Interchange Center. "You heard him, people! Get moving!" Paying no heed to the red guidance lines, he continued down, following the almost undetectable slope back down to engineering, where the hatch cycled open before him. Taking a deep breath, he straightened, regarding Engineering again, searching for Kalverts. *Working a little hard, aren't we?* Retal grinned slightly. *Just trying to keep this ship up and running, Watcher. You don't like vacuum any more than I do.* *As long as we don't have to mess with the Warp Core any more this time. Messing with something that could blow us both to component atoms if we make a wrong step just makes me sorta nervous, is all.* *No warp core trouble, thankfully. The shields are down, and the computers are a mess, but no trouble with the core.* *Great. So all I've got to worry about is being annihilated by the first asteroid we come across. You've really got ways for making a guy feel safe, boss.* *I'm so glad you respect my abilites in that area, Watcher. If you're so worried about it, why don't you help me fix it?* *More of that, boss?* *Yes.* Without pausing to hear Tankle's response, Retal let the mental bonds that held his human form in place fade. He grinned openly as the change took him. His skin began to glow, at first a soft, white light barely noticable under the glare of the ship's lighting, and then brighter and brighter, until it hurt to look at him, until his form ceased to be human at all, and was a single spark of energy brighter than the center of a sun. Moving faster than the eye could follow, he rose, his form of energy reaching the cieling of Main Engineering and passing through it. He let out a mental gasp as the matter of the ship's interior gave way to the intricate patterns of energy that kept her alive. From his vantage point, he could feel the coursing lines of power that ran through the ship, feel where the intricate patterns wrapped around each other, interlinked as much by energy as matter. Any interuptions or tangles in the patterns could be easily sensed and dealt with from here, the inner mechanics of the Yorktown molding itself around his weaving. Around him, the energy ebbed and flowed, erupting in blasts of power. Before he had made a conscious decision, Retal had immersed himself in the Lake and lashed out with his mind, feeling the energy melt away from his mental grasp. With a silent sigh of relief, he soothed the knot of energy into a flowing, continuous stream. Sighing, he felt more of the disturbances in the line of power, as much as a hundred, unless he missed his count. *It's going to be a long night, boss.* *You've got it, Tankle. Let's get working.* ******************************************************************************** "Don't worry, I'll have it all figured out by the time we reach the Frontier." BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP "What's that?" "The Frontier." --The Last Starfighter ******************************************************************************** All: I'm leaving town for the next month, so unfortunately I will not be able to post for a little while. Just don't write anything and expect me to write back, unless you've got a lot of time to wait on your hands. Yoni: Repairs are under way. We'll need access to SB Alighieri supplies before we're able to go back out into the asteroid field. All (2): See ya all at the end of July! Lt.Cm. Retal Ne'telkmar CEO, USS Yorktown NCC-1717-E Indigo Fleet Hey, almost forgot! 5.1550 Retal gets status report [Tom] 5.1600 Tamera hit by plasma discharge [Tom] 5.1605 Tamera taken to Sickbay [Tom] 5.1610 Retal talks with Alvinson [Tom] 5.1620 Explanation of Interface Board [Tom] 5.1635 Retal begins to talk with Tankle [Tom] 5.1640 Retal begins repair of power conduits [Tom] See ya, all! 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