Star Trek: Theurgy

Day 04 [1000 hrs.] Serpentine Atmospherics

July 20, 2019, 05:21:43 AM

STARDATE 30017.37
MARCH 14, 2381
1000 hrs.

[ Lt. Tyreke Okafor | Airlocks | Deck 16 | USS Theurgy ] @fiendfall
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An enormous bug ran along Okafor in the corridor on deck 16. Chitinous limbs, mandibles, antennae, all magnified many, many times more than the insect life that he was used to. Yet this was a friendly bug. “Well crewman, I don’t know if kaferians are usually seen this far, it might be difficult to blend in with the rest of the people on Aldea.” Okafor said, as he thought about the insectoid’s question. “Tau Ceti is rather far from here, and you’re one of the few who tends to leave the hives, so I don’t know.”

Crewman Rel clicked her mandibles in an annoyed fashion as she scuttled alongside Okafor. Rel did wish that she could feel the sun on her carapace again, and now she had her chance and yet she would stick out like a sore thumb. Or so this human told her. Rel gave a final click of defeat and then hoisted a wrapped package between her spindly limbs. A series of clicks issued forth, as she said, “Take this at least, it will help you blend in.” Okafor nodded and accepted the parcel in his hands.

As Rel scuttled away down the corridor Okafor glanced down at the parcel in his hands. Some kind of wrapped package of some sort, likely one which contained a disguise of some kind, maybe civilian clothing. A cloak? Perhaps. He tucked it beneath his arm and continued to walk down the corridor towards the airlock, as the metallic shipyards sprawled outside the viewport with the amber tapestry of Aldea spanning making for an impressive backdrop. The encounter with Rel was strange to be sure, but after the near-miss with Sera’s D’deridex-class-sized libido, he and Rel had gotten to know each other a bit beyond “that one bug engineer”.

At last however, the airlock approached. Okafor glanced down and checked his garments, he had the simplest Aldean dress he could replicate, something akin to what Radue had worn when the Enterprise made contact with them all those years ago. Okafor screwed up his face briefly, in the intense hope that this would work, and strode into the airlock docked to the Klingon station.

Re: Day 04 [1000 hrs.] Serpentine Atmospherics

Reply #1 – July 30, 2019, 05:29:47 PM

[ CPO Morgan Song | Airlock | Docking Arm | Deck 16 | USS Theurgy ] Attn: @Hastata-Nerada

It had been a day of mishaps for Morgan Song. Not that this in itself was particularly unusual -- he’d kind of just come to accept that his life was basically a long litany of stuff that went inexplicably and extravagantly wrong -- but since becoming Maintenance Chief he’d discovered just how many things could break aboard a starship. He’d known the Theurgy had been in remarkably poor repair (a really kind way of saying she’d had the snot kicked out of her by various enemies, who each on their own should’ve destroyed her let alone all of them in quick succession), but even with that knowledge he hadn’t really been prepared for the sheer number of things that would just spontaneously fall apart.

Right now it was the sealing mechanism in the airlock on the Deck 16 docking arm, something that was pretty important considering they were, in fact, currently docked. Obviously a lot of people were just beaming on and off the ship but with power at a premium there was no real reason not to just walk from A to B -- except, of course, if the airlock was broken, as it now was.

So here was Morgan, sat cross-legged in front of a lower maintenance hatch, fiddling with the wiring of the control panel inside the airlock. Something was stopping the locks from engaging properly, meaning the doors were just sliding open and closed randomly whenever someone tried to use the airlock for its actual purpose -- you know, locking. With so many issues cropping up it was often impossible to tell what was caused by damage, whether directly or indirectly, and what was just general wear and tear after flying through an aperture in space created by the Borg. There just weren’t handbooks for this kind of stuff.

He’d managed to narrow down the cause to one of faulty wiring, although that in itself was less helpful than it sounded considering the control panel wires were something of a rat’s nest, if the rat in question was extremely drunk, and also hated Morgan personally. Focused on his work, hunched over in the corner, he muttered angrily in his head as he attempted to untangle the Gordian knot he was faced with. In his frustration he’d managed to yank a whole fistful of cables out of their sockets by accident, and for a moment he fumbled around trying to find the right place to plug them back into.

There -- that was it. As he pushed the final wire back into the socket, and the airlock doors slid closed with a sharp snap. Closed, and stayed closed. Had he… fixed it? Was it that simple?

He looked around, surprised with his own success, and only then did he notice the man standing by the airlock controls on the other side, hand still half-raised to the command panel. What spectacular timing.

‘Uh, sorry sir,’ he said, standing and dusting off his knees as best he could. Without the pips at the man’s lapel, Morgan was having to guess at rank, but it was usually fairly safe to assume everyone outranked him.  ‘This airlock’s undergoing maintenance. You might want to try a different one.’

Re: Day 04 [1000 hrs.] Serpentine Atmospherics

Reply #2 – August 08, 2019, 12:34:49 AM

[ Lt. Tyreke Okafor | Airlock | Deck 16 | USS Theurgy ] @fiendfall
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Okafor opened his eyes as a voice was heard. Hello? Ah, one of many long-suffering engineers was in the airlock. Who was also barring his passage. “Uh…” was all Okafor managed to say as he began to weigh his options. “Is it? What’s wrong with it?”

Okafor stepped inside the airlock and glanced around. Clearly some kind of work was being done, and part of him didn’t want to chance fate at all. Yet he was still curious to see what exactly was going on in the airlock. “I see.” Okafor finally said, as the door he entered through automatically sealed behind him.

“Well, I would hate to get in your way mister…” Okafor recognized this engineer, he had seen this man before on the Theurgy, he was sure of it. And was he promoted recently? Right! One of the new maintenance chiefs for vector two. “...Mister Song. I shall try a different airlock, or at least look for one connected to the dock.”

With that exchange out of the way, Okafor bowed his head briefly and turned to walk away. As his footsteps approached the hatch back into the ship, it… didn’t open. He kept walking towards it, hoping that this was a mere maintenance delay, and it remained shut. At last Okafor decided that maybe something was wrong when his nose collided with the airlock door in front of him.

After stumbling back a few feet, Okafor blinked in surprise at the door. Well… it was under maintenance after all. He raised his hand and tried to key the door release, but it remained unresponsive. No matter then, at least the manual release was still- the manual release was in fact no longer connected to the wall due to a nasty-looking fracture. A result of recent ordeals no doubt.

“Well…” Okafor remarked, observing the predicament before him. He tried to think of something profound to say, with his hand in a ponderous pose on his chin, but all he managed to say was,

“Hm.”

Re: Day 04 [1000 hrs.] Serpentine Atmospherics

Reply #3 – August 08, 2019, 04:45:39 PM

[ CPO Morgan Song | Airlock | Docking Arm | Deck 16 | USS Theurgy ] Attn: @Hastata-Nerada

Morgan did a bit of a double take as the man called him by name -- goodness, that meant they’d met, or at least seen each other around, so who… ? If he squinted, he could almost imagine the man in teal...

Oh! ‘Lieutenant Okafor! Sorry, I didn’t recognise you out of uniform,’ he said, sheepish. These days the number of people he actually knew on the ship had dwindled so he could almost count them on his fingers, he had no excuse for forgetting a face. ‘Sorry,’ he said again, ‘I think this airlock’s almost done but I’d like to run some checks before anyone uses it.’

Okafor was good-natured enough to accept Morgan’s explanation without argument, and left almost as quickly as he’d come in, as if the real problem with the airlock was that someone had installed a revolving door instead of the standard-issue sliding ones. Or at least, Okafor  would’ve left, if the door had opened to let him. Instead he ended up reeling backwards when his nose lost the game of chicken he was playing with the airlock entrance.

Of course it had been too simple, Morgan should’ve known. ‘Oh no,’ he said to himself, turning back to the mess of wires he’d left dangling out of the maintenance hatch when he noticed Okafor in the airlock. One of them was causing this, but honest to goodness he had absolutely no clue which one it was. And unless Okafor wanted to stand around watching Morgan play cat’s cradle for the next half hour, they were going to need another way to open the door.

The manual release would’ve been a good option, if Morgan didn’t remember seeing the handle snapped and broken on the floor. It’d been on his to-do list to fix it, but considering the doors had been refusing to close he’d not thought it all that important to get to first. Silly, really -- he should’ve known something like this would happen. He seemed to attract mishap.

Okafor was regarding the door as if he could pry it open by philosophising at it enough, which would honestly be more entertaining than any of the actual fixes Morgan could try. But there was nothing else for it; they were stuck, and it was up to Morgan to get them out, and that meant either diving back into a pile of cables as big as his head or trying to strong-arm the manual release without a handle.

He really hated the cables.

‘Let me take a look,’ he said, crossing past Okafor in the small space to reach the bit of wall the manual release was supposed to be housed in. There was a long crack running from the ceiling to about three quarters of the way down the wall, splitting the socket for the emergency door release squarely down the middle. The handle of the release had broken off -- how that had happened, Morgan had no idea -- but most of the mechanism was intact inside its housing. The handle was kind of a key part, though, which made life more difficult.

‘Damn it,’ he muttered. ‘Uh, this might take a bit. You don’t need to be anywhere urgently, do you?’

Re: Day 04 [1000 hrs.] Serpentine Atmospherics

Reply #4 – August 11, 2019, 12:37:05 AM

[ Lt. Tyreke Okafor | Airlock | Deck 16 | USS Theurgy ] @fiendfall
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Urgency was a funny thing. Sometimes something seemed urgent but then circumstances dictated otherwise. Circumstances such as those which plagued the two at that moment. “Well…” Okafor began, as he stepped back to allow Morgan passage. “I was planning on visiting the surface, but it doesn’t seem like there’s much of a choice here.”

Okafor looked around at the interior. In hindsight this probably could have been avoided if he’d just let Morgan run the checks he mentioned. Mistakes, as the saying went, were made. “I apologize if I interrupted anything, I didn’t realize that the damage was this bad.” he said. Then, he looked down for a second. “Is there something I can perhaps help with? I have… basic knowledge of some electronics, or- okay, not exactly, but I have worked with prosthetics for a while. Actually, never mind, I don’t know what I’m saying.”

A cursory glance around the cramped chamber revealed a corner that wasn’t quite as busy as the others, and it was to that one that Okafor moved to. Best to be out of the way if nothing else.

“Well… I should probably call someone then? Or do you have this more or less covered?”

Though as Okafor thought about the situation it occurred to him that Morgan probably knew what he was doing. The fact that the engineer moved towards the manual rel- rather, where the manual release used to be, implied that he had some way of navigating out of the situation that Okafor did not know about. Hardly a feat though, considering he had just embarrassed himself saying something about a skill he realized he did not have only after he had said it. The egg on his face might as well have belonged to an ostritch.

Re: Day 04 [1000 hrs.] Serpentine Atmospherics

Reply #5 – August 12, 2019, 05:52:19 PM

[ CPO Morgan Song | Airlock | Docking Arm | Deck 16 | USS Theurgy ] Attn: @Hastata-Nerada

Morgan shot the lieutenant a sheepish smile at the man’s comment. ‘Sorry, I’ll have you out of here soon as I can.’ At least he was just due shore leave, and wasn’t going to be late to some super-important crucially desperate meeting or something. Not that Morgan wanted to eat into the man’s holiday time, either, but of the two he knew which he’d prefer.

Okafor began apologising, and Morgan scrambled to correct him. ‘No, no, this is all my fault, I should’ve put a sign on the door or something. I didn’t expect to take so long working on it.’

The man’s offer to help was almost cute -- he was right, knowledge of prosthetics probably wouldn’t come in handy unless Morgan managed to amputate something in his attempts to get them out, but the thought was appreciated. And even a small understanding of electronics was better than nothing, he supposed.

‘I’ll keep that in mind,’ he said slightly absently as he felt around the inside of the housing for manual release. Somewhere around here there was the engineering equivalent of an eject button… There. He pressed the tiny button, and moved to catch the hunk of metal tubing and joints as it came unattached from the rest of the system. With that safely out the way and placed on the floor, Morgan could take a good look at the inner workings of the release system. It was like looking into the corpse of an enormous creature, all exposed bones and sinews, the empty joint socket yawning where it was previously attached to the metal he’d just removed.

Alright. Hmm.

He glanced across at Okafor, aware of the other man’s presence even if he wasn’t watching and judging like Morgan’s paranoid brain said he was. Right, Morgan, do something good.

‘What work did you do with prosthetics?’ he asked for the sake of distraction, squinting at the insides of the door release mechanism. The joint socket was kind of the same size as his hyperspanner… He wondered…

Worth a try. He unclipped the hyperspanner from his belt and tried wedging it in the empty socket. It wasn’t a perfect fit by any means but it might just do. Now he just had to push it up...

Heavens above, that was heavy! He cast Okafor another sheepish look. ‘Uh… Would you mind… Sorry.’ Maybe with the both of them pushing together they’d get it done.

Re: Day 04 [1000 hrs.] Serpentine Atmospherics

Reply #6 – August 14, 2019, 06:32:37 AM

[ Lt. Tyreke Okafor | Airlock | Deck 16 | USS Theurgy ] @fiendfall
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Why, why, why had Okafor said the things he had. One of the few remaining members of the original crew, and Okafor had embarrassed himself in front of him. A question was asked though, thank heavens. Perhaps this could deliver him from this situation.

“Ah, my work in prosthetics. Well, I am working on… synthetic biology. That is the best name I have for it. I am attempting to create artificial systems that act like living systems. Imagine a biosynthetic heart which does not need to be removed for maintenance. A replacement limb which heals rather than needs to be fixed.” Okafor proudly relayed to the engineer his work. “I uh…” he looked down. “I admit much of this came from what I learned from Dr. Toby Russel and her research in genetronic replication. But it helped later in life when I was assigned to Bajor, many Bajorans had not replaced lost limbs or damages after the occupation…”

Okafor’s foot tapped the floor of the airlock briefly. “It was not as exciting as it probably sounds.” he said, somewhat ironically.

However, some help was needed with the airlock controls, and Okafor was quick to oblige. “Oh, yes, sorry.” As Okafor bent down to help with Morgan’s leverage, he saw himself as one of the many nanites he tried to engineer. Only instead of a human body, it was… Thea’s body. They were maintaining Thea’s systems in her vast spaceframe, like a cell would maintain and repair human systems in a human body. Or other species.

With a heave, Okafor tried to lift the spanner but whatever it was wedged on was surprisingly heavy. Could Thea feel this? Never mind.

“Another few hoists should do it, I think?”

There was some give in the mechanism but it could just as well have been Okafor’s imagination. Only one thing left to do: keep trying.

Re: Day 04 [1000 hrs.] Serpentine Atmospherics

Reply #7 – August 20, 2019, 05:44:38 PM

[ CPO Morgan Song | Airlock | Docking Arm | Deck 16 | USS Theurgy ] Attn: @Hastata-Nerada

Morgan had only really asked the scientist about his work so he wouldn’t feel so much like he was being watched, but as Okafor talked he found himself genuinely interested in the man’s area of expertise. Hard not to be, when his entire respiratory system was synthetic. He’d spent some time researching all the implications of that, and though he hadn’t understood a lot of it, he’d still needed to just sit still and breathe for a second afterwards, feeling the push and pull of body parts no longer his own as they moved inside him.

He flashed a smile to Okafor. ’Sounds pretty exciting to me. Helping people, doing good work.’ He meant it: he liked his own work, and he knew it was important, but there had to be few things as immediately necessary as caring for someone physically, giving them back their health, their body, their life. He’d always admired people in or adjacent to the medical fields, and that’d only gotten stronger with his own recent need for their help.

Okafor was blessedly good-natured in coming to join him at the wall, but even together they couldn’t shift the mechanism inside. Morgan peered inside, squinting; was it caught on something? Had their crazy journey through space, richocheting through a Borg aperture, dislodged something inside that’d gotten jammed? He wouldn’t be surprised, honestly.

Worth checking. He pulled out the hyperspanner and shone a light into the space left behind, squinting inside to see if there was anything in the way.

’What’s Bajor like?’ he asked as he worked. ’I saw some different planets on my last assignment, but we never went near the Bajor sector.’

He enjoyed listening to Okafor speak; travelling had always been Morgan’s main reason for enlisting, and it was a shame that he’d ended up mostly just seeing the inside of a few starships. The planets he had seen had mostly been through a viewfinder; he’d actually not really set foot on very many places outside of Luna, Earth, and the unspoken third.

There! He’d spotted the bugger: a frankly embarrassingly small sliver of metal that’d managed to get caught in the workings of the release mechanism. He reached his arm into the socket, feeling around until his fingers brushed the sharp metal. Ow. Alright, now to just play ‘Operation’ with the inside of a starship…

’Got it!’ he said triumphantly as his hand came free, pesky metal slice clasped in slippery fingers. ’That should make life easier.’ It was only when he placed the sliver on the floor that he realised he’d managed to tear open his palm on the thing. ’Damn it, sorry, one second.’

Re: Day 04 [1000 hrs.] Serpentine Atmospherics

Reply #8 – August 23, 2019, 05:53:29 AM

[ Lt. Tyreke Okafor | Trapped Airlock | Deck 16 | USS Theurgy ] @fiendfall
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Okafor’s back hurt as he strained to peer into the hole in the airlock wall. “Ah… Bajor… Well, to tell the truth, the cardassians had made a mess of the place. I helped there on some level but there were many who I saw who I could not help with.”

He sat up, and placed a hand on his back to try and take the strain out of his back and ignore the sensation of his knees being pressed into the deck. “A bajoran came in once having nearly died of malnourished, because the land she lived on was too acidic from mining and the crops died. Another was infested by an invasive species of cardassian parasite, and more…”

A solemn nod followed while he reflected on his experiences. “I remember though, the bajoran spirit was… powerful. I tried to help a man once who was injured by a cardassian crackdown on a village they thought was hiding rebels. He lost a leg, he lost an arm, and he had not replaced them. I had the prostheses to do it of course, but he refused them. He said that he would keep his scars to defy the cardassians until they died. Even after they had gone.”

Okafor coughed and rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, anyway, it was an… an experience, I am sorry I do not have better words.”

It was no secret that Okafor was one of the more insular sorts of officers, not particularly interested in rising in ranks either. He was… trying to break that tendency of late, embrace life after his had nearly ended. Yet the awkwardness, oh the painfulness of this attempt remained and plagued him. But for some reason Morgan seemed like a calming presence to him. In fact, Okafor wasn’t sure what to think of the engineer, but Morgan felt safe-shaped.

What… what does that even- anyway. Morgan found something at least, that was good- Morgan sliced open his hand good lord why.

“Oh- oh no!” Okafor dropped to examine Morgan’s hand. “Are you okay? Is the airlock open? We should go to sickbay immediately.”

Re: Day 04 [1000 hrs.] Serpentine Atmospherics

Reply #9 – August 30, 2019, 03:44:33 PM

[ CPO Morgan Song | Airlock | Docking Arm | Deck 16 | USS Theurgy ] Attn: @Hastata-Nerada

It wasn’t a deep cut; he waved away the scientist’s concern. ‘No no, my own fault, wasn’t paying attention. It’s fine, really. Just gross, sorry.’

He fumbled around for something to patch it up, rifling through the engineering kit he’d brought and finding the small medical package kept underneath all the junk. He couldn’t have done better even if he’d wanted to; they still needed to give the manual door release the old heave-ho before they could get out, but at least with the debris jamming the mechanism out of the way it wouldn’t be too much of an issue now. They were on the home stretch.

As he applied a makeshift bandage, he thought back to what Okafor had said about Bajor. Morgan may have been focused on his work, but he’d still heard the undertone to Okafor’s words. He could only imagine what Bajor had been like for the man. He’d heard the stories, although only in snippets, bits and pieces filtering through to him second- and third-hand. There was no shortage of people who’s been involved in the conflict, of course; but few of them spoke of it. The wounds were still too fresh.

He had heard about that Bajoran spirit, though. To be able to survive such horrors was testament enough to their strength, but to come out with their determination, their defiance, their pride still intact spoke to another level of strength altogether. Morgan had experienced only a tiny slice of what many Bajorans had been through, and some days it was all he could do to put one foot in front of the other. Some days he couldn’t even do that. Reminders of his hurt made him frightened, not defiant; he hadn’t stood up to anyone since his Academy days.

Sometimes it was true that suffering and horror bred strength and community. Other times, pain was just pain. He was glad the Bajorans had turned theirs into power. One day maybe he could do the same.

‘I don’t think there really are words for that kind of thing,’ he said gently as Okafor trailed off. There were many I could not help with, the man had said. Morgan didn’t need to know the stories behind those words to know they must weigh heavily on the scientist. Watching people suffer when you couldn’t do anything to ease their pain… It could get easier, was the horrible thing. You could numb yourself to it. Still feeling something, even though it hurt, was a good sign, backwards as it sounded. Backwards as it felt when you woke with someone else’s nightmare behind your eyes. Still. A good sign.

‘A little bit of good goes a long way,’ he said, offering Okafor a smile. He fumbled with the bandage — doing it one-handed was kind of difficult — and ended up looking guiltily at the other man.  ‘Er, could you… ? Sorry.’

Re: Day 04 [1000 hrs.] Serpentine Atmospherics

Reply #10 – September 04, 2019, 05:39:07 PM

[ Lt. Tyreke Okafor | Airlock | Deck 16 | USS Theurgy ] @fiendfall
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As Okafor took Morgan’s hand in his, he couldn’t help but study it closely. Seemed tougher than most of the ones he saw somehow? Must be his imagination. Now for the bandage, which was… not Okafor’s specialty, but given the perilous journey out of Federation territory, first aid was an alarmingly relevant skill. It was far from a proper bandage given its improvised nature, but alas one couldn’t be choosy. A proper bandage would have at least had clotting agents to help stop the bleeding, but this would have to do.

“Hang on, let me know if anything stings.” Okafor said as he wrapped Morgan’s hand. It was still something he wasn’t quite that good at, and as Okafor had found out after graduating the academy, even though he knew the tech behind modern bandage kits, knowing how to actually apply one was a whole different matter.

“Yes, a little bit of good does go a long way…” He fumbled tying the knot as he spoke. “It is hard to remember that though. Sometimes I wonder if our voyage is useless.” Okafor redoubled his efforts and tugged the ends taut. “Ah, sorry, anyway there you go.”

Okafor stood again and cast a worried glance over his shoulder. At least the Theurgy was in dock, so the other side was pressurized. “We could keep trying to get the airlock back into Thea open, or we could try our luck with the shipyard systems, what ah… what do you think?”

His gaze swept over the interior of the airlock, at the tools and broken pieces of machinery. “I ah, do not know much about starship mechanics, so you’re the expert here.” To be fair, they could probably still heave the hach open, but circumstances were beginning to mount...

Re: Day 04 [1000 hrs.] Serpentine Atmospherics

Reply #11 – September 12, 2019, 05:57:54 PM

[ CPO Morgan Song | Airlock | Docking Arm | Deck 16 | USS Theurgy ] Attn: @Hastata-Nerada

Okafor was good enough to help Morgan out with the bandage, wrapping his hand gently. He’d get himself properly seen to later; there were other things to worry about right now. The cut wasn’t that deep, anyway — it probably looked way worse than it really was. Still, the man made him promise to speak up if anything hurt.

‘I will,’ he said as Okafor got to work. The man continued to speak quietly as he patched Morgan up, and Morgan was surprised to hear the defeatist note in his voice. Well. Maybe not surprised. Morgan might not have been awake for it, but he knew the crew had been through a lot. He was still… Well. This whole voyage was still new enough to him that he hadn’t had chance to fall into despair over it. Maybe if he’d been awake for the months of running and fighting and dying and fleeing, of kidnappings and mutinies and betrayals, of narrow escapes and senseless murder…

Yeah. He shouldn’t be surprised.

‘I know,’ he said gently — and he might not have been here for the Theurgy’s troubles, but he knew what it felt like to struggle so much for so long that you forget why you even bothered in the first place. It was like freezing to death: eventually, you just drift, you stop feeling the cold, and you’re happy to lie down and die. ‘But what we’re doing is important. I know it doesn’t always feel like that.’ He shrugged with one shoulder, not wanting to disturb Okafor’s ministrations. ‘I guess you’ve just got to take it a day at a time. Or a crisis at a time.’

Speaking of… 'Thanks, that's perfect,' he said as Okafor finished tying off Morgan's bandage, putting that particular crisis to bed for now. It’d taken the scientist a couple of tries, but he’d still managed it with more grace than Morgan would’ve one-handed. As field bandages went, it was pretty good -- decently tight, but without constricting anything important. His range of movement was pretty impaired but that went with the territory. Thankfully all the fiddly bits were over; now all he had to do was fix the original issue.

‘Don’t worry, we should be able to get it open now,’ he said, fitting his hyperspanner back into the mechanism in the wall. ‘That bit of metal was stuck in there, gumming it all up. Now it’s gone, a few good pulls should do it.’

They resumed their earlier position and hefted the makeshift lever. Whatever that shrapnel was, it’d been responsible for a lot — now with them both pushing the mechanism moved easily, and with a laboured screeching, the airlock doors slid open.

‘Thank heavens,’ Morgan said with a slightly breathy laugh. ‘Er, I guess you can go enjoy that shore leave now. I’m sorry about…’ he gestured vaguely, ‘all this.’

Re: Day 04 [1000 hrs.] Serpentine Atmospherics

Reply #12 – September 18, 2019, 08:00:44 PM

[ Lt. Tyreke Okafor | Airlock | Deck 16 | USS Theurgy ] @fiendfall
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The doors groaned open at last with the sound of three-hundred klingon operas being sung at once. Okafor sighed a sigh of relief, as the hatch into the infernal airtight coffin parted to allow their escape. He picked himself up and brushed off his uniform, there was admittedly no reason to do so but it was a habit nonetheless. Morgan’s apology reached his ears, and immediately shifted Okafor’s face into one of confusion.

“You are apologizing for battle damage?” Okafor asked, and glanced down at the damage in the wall. “Borg weapons, debris, even a hijacked klingon disruptor cannon could have done this. But you were the one who helped get me out, don’t apologize, you’re fine.”

He smiled in a (hopefully) reassuring manner. “If anything, I should be thank you! And besides, after this maybe shore leave can wait.” Okafor said, and glanced at Morgan’s bandaged hand. “Besides, you should get to sickbay and get that checked out. Nic-”

Okafor fell silent. Nicander was infested with one of those monsters. “I mean… whoever is the new CMO can ah- can patch you up, probably.” he coughed and looked down at the floor. “I’m still not used to some of the shocking changes around here. Nicander is a parasite, Heather Mcmillan is blonde and also literally glows like a rainbow now, we’ve gone through an alarming number of chief engineers, and so on…”

He glanced up. “Sorry. Should we go to sickbay?” Okafor still wasn’t quite sure how to deal with everything. He had been shot and then put in stasis and then thrust into a wild scenario with the borg and klingons. So many people were gone, so many new faces, new tragedies. Part of him wanted to just give up, but… They had done some good so far. The borg invasion and the parasite plans were stopped there… the chancellor of the Klingon Empire itself knew of the threat now… there was hope at least.

Re: Day 04 [1000 hrs.] Serpentine Atmospherics

Reply #13 – September 30, 2019, 08:40:56 PM

[ CPO Morgan Song | Airlock | Docking Arm | Deck 16 | USS Theurgy ] Attn: @Hastata-Nerada

Morgan huffed something of a laugh at Okafor's response. 'I guess I am. Sorry -- old habits.' Objectively, the man was right: Morgan was hardly the one who'd caused the damage to the airlock. But still. He felt kind of responsible for trapping the poor scientist in there with him while he fiddled around. It was nice to hear Okafor didn't see it that way, though. Morgan would hate to annoy the man.

He bent to collect up his equipment, but even distracted as he was, he still heard the catch in Okafor's voice when he mentioned sickbay. Nicander, of course. That was still… raw. Morgan hadn't known the man well, but… He'd known him, and that could be said of fewer and fewer people aboard these days.

Though, of course, it wasn't like he was dead. Just… Something else.

'Yeah,' Morgan said, straightening back up, rubbing his neck with his uninjured hand. 'Me neither. It… It's strange to wake up to, all this. I'm not sure if I'll ever get used to it all. The new faces alone…' He trailed off, before shrugging. 'Still, I suppose it's got to be weirder for people joining us. At least we were there, at the beginning.' He offered Okafor a smile. 'And not everything's changed. Some of us are still knocking around.'

He'd fully intended to stay and finish up in the airlock, until Okafor prompted him to go to Sickbay. He hated leaving work for other people to finish, but he supposed he wouldn't have to be long getting patched up; he could just program the airlock console to warn anyone else not to try to use it.

'That's probably not a bad call,' he said, somewhat sheepishly. He hadn't expected Okafor to come along — the man had surely earned his shore leave! — but still, it was… nice, to have the company. He found he liked Okafor, and he certainly didn't mind the chance to keep talking to the man. More than a familiar face, Okafor was kind and thoughtful, and Morgan couldn't help recognising himself in the man, superior officer or not. It was good, to find someone like that, and so as they headed to Sickbay Morgan realised he didn't really mind the disruption, all in all.

There'd be more crises facing him later, no doubt — facing all of them, for that matter. But they'd take them as they came; for now, it was enough to be free of the airlock, and walking the corridors with someone nice. Everything else they'd deal with later.

—FIN