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Episode 02: Cosmic Imperative / Re: EP2 BTS | D03 | 0003 hrs] Flammis Acribus Addictis
Last post by joshs1000 -Tavik, I really am lost, Zakar grumbled silently to himself, and I thought Agaros was a maze, this alien ship is massive.
The Arosan Marine had been one of those attached to a Starfleet security team responding to some sort of enemy presence on this deck, but the group was ambushed along the way and in the chaotic attempt to break it, Zakar got separated and lost his rifle in the process. Getting separated was one thing, but losing his weapon, hardly a good look for a Master Marine in his 122nd year, 102 of those having faithfully served his people, though he always liked to think in spirit he had been born to be a Marine. Either way he could expect a ceremonial chewing out from Commander al-Zaheer, the two had been friends for years, having met when Hassar was but a gunnery cadet and Zakar a specialist.
With only his side arm and a daggar, Zakar carefully made his way through the similar corridors, his only real indicator that he was making progress was that the numbers on the doors were different. How do these people live like this? It’s like living in a hospital, so sterile. His thoughts were jarred by the sound of an energy weapon discharge and the familiar chaotic noises of a scuffle. He picked up the pace until he reached a junction of the corridor and peered around the corridor just in time to see a blue alien, he had no idea what any of these aliens were called yet, kneeling with a weapon pointed at his head. These enemies, Romulans, if he remembered the briefing correctly, seemed to be very savage attackers and the likelihood that this blue Starfleet alien would survive the next few minutes were low. He had to act quickly.
There were five enemies that he could see, one, probably the leader, with the weapon pointed at the alien, two were on the ground but slowly getting to their feet, the other two were behind the first three with weapons raised, most importantly though they were all facing away. Zakar left cover and, with years of practice, darted silently up behind the closest enemy, dagger in his left hand, pistol in his right, and in one swift motion stabbed the large blade directly into the man’s neck then pushed forward out through the throat. The brutal attack was quick and the Romulan would not be able to shout. He started to make his move on the next enemy.
“You will lead us to the Fighter Bay. Any attempt to disrupt or delay us will result in your instant death, do you understand?”
The blue alien was on his feet now with hands raised, he said something that Zakar could not hear, but either he did not notice the attack that the Marine had just made or was intentionally not giving away what was happening. The point was moot however when one of the enemies that was getting to his feet saw Zakar and shouted. Zakar had been about to repeat his similar attack on the next Romulan but as the combatant started to turn around in surprise from the shout, he simply swung his blade diagonally across the man’s back, slashing through the armor and flesh, but most importantly part of the spine, like it was nothing. The Romulan screamed in pain as he fell to the floor.
What happened next all happened in the span of a few seconds. The leader turned around in surprise and confusion, Zakar raised his pistol and fired, the bullet struck the Romulan in the heart, but it also continued on through his body and grazed the blue alien’s side. Before the Romulan leader had even hit the ground, Zakar turned his weapon on the next closest combatant, one of the ones that had been in the process of standing up, and fired two times, striking the man in the chest and neck. He again turned his weapon to the final combatant, but unlike the others, this one had enough time to fire back, the green bolt struck him in the armored bit of his left upper arm, though he felt no pain for the moment due to the adrenaline. In response he fired two shots, one missed and hit the deck behind the Romulan with a loud ping but the second found its mark between the Romulan’s eyes and he went down.
Zakar panted as he looked down the trembling sights of his gun and for the first time realized his hand was shaking, in fact his whole body was shaking, such was the intensity of the moment. He had been in combat before, but never alone. He caught his breath to regain his composure, though as he did so he became acutely aware of the painful burning sensation on his left arm.
He approached the blue alien, “You alright, Starfleet?”
Before the blue alien could answer that he further added, “Also do you know how to get to the Fighter Bay?”
OOC:
-Tavik is a curse word that generally is considered the lewd slang for sex and can thus be most closely translated to “fuck” but is often used in various contexts as a harsher form of profanity than the word frak which itself has no direct translation.
[CPO Avandar Lok | Flight Deck | Fighter Bay | Deck 16 | Vector 02 | USS Theurgy] [Show/Hide]
The two crewmen darted across the flight deck to the waiting cannon. Lok threw off the dust cover, a stray disruptor bolt caught the nylon fabric, leaving a neat smoldering hole. Be careful, idiot.
“Begam, I need a number five auto-spanner, an extra tricorder, some opti-cable, and find a flexi-conduitt with Type 9-C connectors!” Lok shouted over the din as the battle began to pick up on the Fighter Bay.
The Romulans had been hot on the heels of the retreating defenders, no sooner had they taken cover behind the final barrier did the boarders burst through the starboard side access doors. The attackers were prepared, as they entered they tossed what appeared to be black metal hockey pucks onto the floor that immediately formed barrier force fields to prove cover in the open space. The fields, a deep translucent orange color, quickly showed they could withstand a good deal of punishment as the defending Starfleet personnel opened fire on the Romulan intruders. Some Romulans, not able to get behind their barriers in time were gunned down but many were able to get into cover and fight back. The flight deck was now a battlefield as phaser blasts and disruptor bolts crisscrossed through the air.
Another disruptor bolt whizzed past Lok and hit the transparent aluminum wall with a thud and sizzling sound, but the kzinti was too busy to worry about it. He needed to be able to aim and fire the cannon so once he got one of the panels open he immediately jammed lengths of opti-cable into the control ports that would normally link the cannon with a Valkyrie’s systems then attached the other ends of the cable into diagnostic slots in the tricorder. Next, Lok, using the diagnostic program as a base which registered the cannon in its system, wrote a quick and dirty program to allow him to use certain diagnostic functions as controls, really all he needed was to see the power levels, use the basic in-built cannon targeting system, and of course fire the weapon. Begam, meanwhile, was hooking the flexi-conduit into the cannon’s power slot then running it back to an open access panel on the floor to plug it directly into the ship’s EPS conduits. Normally this would be done to power the large plasma cutters they occasionally needed for cutting extra large pieces of duranium, but in this case it was a perfect power source in lieu of a Valkyrie reactor.
Within minutes the program was ready and indicating the weapon was powered, though on the verge of overload, the ship’s power systems were a bit more potent than that of a Valkyrie, but perhaps they could deal with the overload problem by just firing the damn thing. “Ok I think that’s got it, you pay that cable out and keep low, I’ll move the cannon to the barricade!”
Lok reached down and activated the anti-gravity sled that the cannon was sitting on and stood up to start pushing. Suddenly he felt an intense pain like somebody had hit the right side of his back with a sledgehammer. He struggled to breath as he slumped against the cannon and slid down to his knees. What the hell was that, he wondered, seemingly not understanding or not wanting to understand that he had just been shot. He struggled for breath and after a few coughs finally sucked in air, but it felt like a struggle, at least he could breathe again though.
“Are you alright Chief!” Begam shouted in concern.
“Yeah…I just got the wind knocked out of me…is all…help me push”, Lok responded with labored breaths.
Staying a bit lower this time, Lok got into a good spot on the gun and started to push it across the deck towards the barricade. The Romulans seemed to figure out what he and Begam were up to a large amount of disruptor bolts started to head their way, with several hitting the body of the cannon itself, but luckily only scorching its robust exterior. Finally the two got the gun up to the barricade, much to the excitement of several deck crew and security officers there. Lok, however, felt quite weak and collapsed against the barricade, nearly ripping out the opti-cables as he stumbled.
“Chief, you’ve been hit!” Somebody shouted.
“I’ll be fine”, he responded with a dismissive wave.
“I need two people to get on the back and aim this”, he instructed the handed the tricorder to one of the security officers, “there’s your targeting reticle, that’s how you fire, and that tells you if you are going to overload it.”
The security officer took the tricorder. Lok felt exhausted, his eyes were having trouble focusing, and the din of battle sounded miles away. Everything started to get dim as any sound at all was replaced with an excruciating ringing noise. A strained, “shit”, was all Lok could muster before losing consciousness.
Of course while he was going through all of that, his comrades had noticed how badly he had been hit and were already trying to get him taken care of with the primary issue being that he was over two meters tall and weighed 167 kilos.
“Holy shit, he weighs a ton”, one of the crewmen grunted as she and another crewman pushed the large unconscious cat onto his side enough to get a look at his wound. A rather large disruptor burn on the right side of his back that had gone pretty deep exposing muscle tissue; but more worrying was the fact that Lok was bleeding, A LOT, either the disruptor had an anti-coagulative property to it, similar to Jem’Hadar weapons, or something to do with kzinti anatomy meant that his blood would not coagulate. A large puddle of deep crimson had already formed under the Chief and the back of his coveralls were badly stained. Someone ran over with a medpack and immediately applied a bandage over the wound but it quickly became saturated with blood.
“We need to get him to Sickbay or he’s going to bleed out!” Begam shouted to the group who were not medics and seemed to have no idea what to do. “Are the emergency medical transporters working?”
“I don’t know, comms have been screwy for us”, the nearby security officer responded.
“Hopefully they work”, Begam murmured and tapped his combadge, [Emergency medical transport, lock on my badge.]
For a moment it seemed like nothing would happen but then the familiar shimmer surrounded Begam and Lok as they faded away.
This left Petty Officer Hussein in charge for the moment, but the defense was holding. As for the cannon, it took a few tries to get it working. While the drama with Lok’s injury was occurring several other deck crew messed with the weapon’s setting until finally it came to life. The Starfleet personnel turned it on the Romulan attackers and fired the first shot, which missed and struck the starboard side fighter operations room, shattering the glass and destroying some equipment inside. Even this near miss, though, gave the Romulans a moment of pause. Adjusting their aim, the crew fired again, this time hitting one of the portable barricades and taking out a handful of Romulans, but the impromptu piece of artillery proved finicky outside its natural habitat and immediately stopped working. The skilled deck hands went to work to get it operational again.
[Sickbay | Deck 11 | Vector 02 | USS Theurgy]
The duo shimmered into existence in the packed receiving area. Lok’s bandage was already too soaked in blood to be useful as he started to bleed out on the floor of the Sickbay.
“He needs help!” Begam shouted to anyone in the vicinity.
Nurse Kitty was there within moments as she pushed Begam out of the way, “I’m gonna need strong hands here, this is a big one!”
Several unwounded crew and nurses rushed over to assist her in lifting Lok onto an anti-gravity stretcher. Once he was on, face down so his back could be properly examined, Kitty removed the bandage to expose the wound, rather gnarly, it depth had exposed muscle tissue and scans with a tricorder indicated the burns extended to his lung tissue as well, but what was a bigger concern to her was the bleeding that did not seem to stop. He would need surgery most likely, but in the meantime there were some things she could do to slow the process.
“Get me a hypospray of Sangualoft and another of Cuastaline”, she ordered.
The drugs came quickly. First she injected the Sangualoft, a drug to stimulate blood production until proper transfusions could be given; next came the Cuastaline, a simple drug to help blood coagulate properly; hopefully both would slow the rate of blood loss until Arven could stop it all together and heal the injury. Before they moved the large cat, she suddenly remembered this patient from the other day, he tried to beam Arven in the head with a PADD, but in the notes Arven left there was mention that kzinti needed to be injected in multiple places in order for drugs to take proper effect. Diligently she made two more injections of each drug.
“Ok, let’s get him into surgery.”
The stretcher was pushed past the throngs of wounded and into one of the unoccupied surgery suites. With as gentle a heave as they could, the nurse and her assistants dragged the big cat onto the surgery bed and started to cut away his coveralls, apparently Lok’s only clothes, to prep him for surgery. The fur on his back, normally a healthy glossy black, was saturated with blood and matted down where much of it had dried. It actually proved rather difficult to remove some of the shredded coveralls without ripping out any of the fur but the nurses attending to it were quick but gentle. Kitty left to find Arven, V-Nine was already busy in the other suite so was not available for the moment. She rushed back out into the corridor and found the good Doctor in a conversation with someone over comms but did not catch what was happening due tot he commotion of the ward.
“Doctor, you are needed in Surgery 2, kzinti, dorsal wound, heavy bleeding, no coagulation.”
OOC:
-Beyond interactions with Arven and the medical staff, Lok is out of the action for the moment.
