Reunited yet Divided

Posted on Tue Mar 31, 2015 @ 9:57am by Fleet Captain Rhea Kennit & Lieutenant Commander Miguel Torres & Lieutenant Penelope Naroot & Lieutenant AJ Taggart & Lieutenant Cassandra Kennings & Lieutenant Nicole Anderson & Lieutenant AJ Taggart
Edited on on Tue Mar 31, 2015 @ 8:53pm

2,712 words; about a 14 minute read

Mission: All this has happened before...
Location: USS Victory
Timeline: 63296.713 {Sat, 07 Sep 2385 19:14:19 GMT}

[Victory Sickbay]

As soon as Nicole materialized, she was snapping her fingers and stripping off her suit. "Alpha and Beta teams: triage! I want anyone not conscious through decon and on biobeds in five minutes!"

As the teams scrambled to split up between the Evans, Taggart and Blackburn, trying to be discreet about removing their suits and uniforms, Nicole stripped hers off quickly and tossed it to a medtech in a bio-hazard suit of his own. "Penny are you good?"

"Yes, Doctor," Penny said, nurse mode kicking in out of habit.

"Get Mejia, Hunter and Yarin through decon and onto biobeds. If Yarin puts up a fight, knock him out," Nicole snarled. "I don't have time to screw around with his 'quest for experience.'"

Internally, Penny smiled, trying to imagine Nicole dressing him down for that. She threaded her way through the staff that were trying to haul the unconscious patients to a decon section for wash down and grabbed the men. "This way," she said, taking Commander Hunter by the arm and gesturing to Aidan and Yarin, directing them to the showers. "Scrub head to toe, if you require help we'll send someone...within reason." She smiled at them and stepped aside.

Hunter knew enough about radiation poisoning and how serious it was if not treated immediately. He also knew, based on the CMO's tone, that this was a serious matter. and this wasn't the time to offer any resistance or snappy comebacks; regardless, he felt he didn't have it in him right now, maybe later when he was feeling better. For now he stepped into the shower and commenced scrubbing himself clean, literally from head to toe. As he finished and dried off, throwing the towel into the contaminated materials bin, he dressed in a medical smock/gown and was shown to biobed 4, which he immediately crawled onto.

Yarin, meanwhile, blinked his six eyes at Nicole in confusion then looked at Penny as she escorted him into a shower. "I would not do anything to interfere with the recovery of the crew," he said. "I can study the effects of the radiation later."

"She'll be very relieved to hear that," Penny said, shoving him into the shower and drawing the curtain.

****************

Nicole ran behind a privacy curtain and shucked off her uniform and clothes with efficiency. The female medtech who was hurrying to catch up had barely a moment before Nicole was diving into a shower stall, grabbing a brush and scrubbing herself from the head down.

"Doctor, if you would let me--"

"Get my bag, get it to biobed one and stop slowing me down," Nicole said, by that point already to her knees. "Check for open wounds and begin administering hyronalin and fluids to everyone. Sickbay is on quarantine until further notice and get Engineering to shut down the sections around us until I say otherwise!"

"Yes Doctor," Nicole's handler said, stepping back out of the shower area and returning to Sickbay.

Nicole stepped out of the hot water, briefly wishing she could stay in a moment longer, and grabbed the towel and fresh clothes her handler had left behind. She dressed almost as quickly as she'd undressed, throwing on a radiation suit and running back into Sickbay only minutes after they'd arrived.

"Tricorder!" she shouted, holding out a hand. Someone slapped a tricorder into it as she passed by, not breaking her stride. She walked up to biobed one, looking Nina over. Her eyes briefly strayed to the next bed where another doctor was attending to AJ and she felt a brief twinge, but she stuffed it down and returned her attention to the patient at hand. "Saline, get it going," she said, scanning quickly.

She handed the tricorder to a nurse and stepped away, tapping her combadge. "Anderson to bridge: we're all out and all alive so far. Lieutenants Blackburn, Taggart and Evans are unconscious due to radiation poisoning, but they're responding to treatment. We've begun decontamination, but as a precaution, until we can do a full sweep, I've put Sickbay on lockdown and have instructed Engineering to shut down the sections around us to help prevent the ship's bio-neural gel packs from being affected past this area. I'll have more information shortly. Anderson out."

She closed the channel and bent back over Nina, scanning her for any trace amounts and bracing herself for what was going to be a long night.

Chris Evans came to, and the world was spinning. He moaned softly and called for the person he had become close with. "Aidan..." He was in pain and couldn't focus. Before he knew it, he was vomiting off of the side of the bio bed he had been placed on, and before anyone on the medical team could get to him he rolled off the bio bed and fell on the floor with a hard thud, only to start convulsing.

"Bollocks," Nicole swore, coming around towards bed three. "Why the hell didn't you catch him," she snapped at a nurse who was attempting to roll Evans out of his own sick.

"He was vomiting, I was dodging," she said.

"You stand there and take it and hold him in position," Nicole barked. She grabbed his legs as the nurse grabbed his shoulders and they hauled him back onto the bed, the front of his medical smock now stained. "Get him a clean smock and get some screens for privacy." She held out her hand for another hypospray and injected him quickly. She glanced at the biobed sensors and sighed. "Watch him. If his temperature doesn't drop in the next ten minutes, call me."

[Victory Bridge]

Miguel changed the configuration on the console so he could monitor the request from the CMO. His people had already erected the containment fields and had cut off air circulation in Sickbay from the main ship feeds. They were now on their own, independent feed. He turned to the Captain. "Sickbay is physically isolated from the rest of the ship, Captain." He paused for a moment before he spoke again. "We may want to prepare to separate the ship just in case our safety measures prove to be in effective. It might be to late for the secondary module, but could save the other two sections."

Hating it even as she said it, the Captain gave a nod of her head. "Agreed. In fact...we should separate now. If whatever this is can infect the gel-packs, we don't have a choice."

Miguel tapped the comm. panel. "Attention all hands, this is the Second Officer. Prepare for separation." He then watched on the engineering screen for all stations to check in. Normally, he'd be in engineering for a separation, but since he was on the bridge, and thus the saucer, it was best that he consider himself part of the extended quarantine. "All stations report green Captain," he said a few moments later.

Tom stepped out onto the bridge, having been relieved at the Transporter Room. With the crisis on board, he knew he had little to do at his station other than study the patterns and discern the differences that the biofilters couldn't. Unfortunately, his console wasn't nearly powerful enough to run those checks, but he knew he could easily employ the bridge's science station. His ears picked up on the starship separation procedures, but he didn't let that faze him as he sat down and called up the records on all eight recent transports.

With a nod of her head, the Captain said, "All hands, this is the Captain. Initiate Blue Alert. Prepare for separation in 60 seconds."

Miguel knew that once the decoupling sequence began it would only take about 10 seconds to begin the rest of the separation. It had been a long while since he had been part of a separation, not since he was a young officer on the prototype, in fact. When he remembered back to those days, he could help but feel a wave of guilt. The other officers that had been part of that initial test group had died, he had only survived because of that damn flu that kept him in bed in his quarters at Utopia Plantia. His friends on that ship were all killed when the Romulans stole the ship. It was that incident that made way to his promotion to Lt. Commander and he became the second Chief Engineer of the Prometheus, a position he gave up not long after it's shakedown cruise.

The alarm began to sound, at the same time throughout the Victory's hull, pressurization doors began to close, sealing off each separate section of the ship's hull to maintain atmospheric integrity when the ship separated. The Captain hated doing this, never liked separating her ship for any reason, but to separate off leaving those exposed to whatever it was on the Bethesda in order to protect the others in her crew...

It left a bad feeling coursing through her veins.

"Initiating decoupling sequence." came the automated voice of the ship's computer over the loud speaker. "Auto separation in 10 seconds."

"9..."

"8..."

"7..."

"6..."

"5..."

"4..."

"3..."

"2..."

"1..."

"Separation sequence in progress."

Tom could almost hear the decoupling of the clamps many decks below. He knew there'd be a lot of questions coming his way from the senior enlisted, but as long as everyone focused on the situation at hand, there'd be nothing for him to deal with for now. Instead, he focused on beginning looking through the transporter data.

Miguel was monitoring the whole process from the bridge station. Everything was going exactly as it should, when it was all said and done there were now three separate ships. "Separation was successful Captain. The other sections have entered formation behind us." he informed her.

The Captain gave a short nod, her dislike of separating her ship well known. "Keep a close eye on everyone. All sections to maintain yellow alert." she added. Outwardly she was all business and calm. Inside, she was screaming with frustration and worry. Worry for her crew, worry for Alec. There wasn't much she could do at the moment and oh did she hate it..


[Corridor]

Having made it to the secondary module just in time, Cassandra ran out of the turbolift at full speed and straight into Sickbay. At least, that was her intention. The Sickbay doors, however, had other ideas, and refused to open, causing her to run face-first into them. She rebounded hard, landing on her backside and crying out, rubbing her nose with one hand and slapping her combadge with the other. "Sanders to Anderson, what's your status?"

[Sickbay]

"His temperature's still not down, his readings are all over the place and he just started expelling with traces of blood," the nurse said quietly into Nicole's ear.

Nicole glanced over at Evans. She'd been fussing over Nina, who seemed to have taken a massive dosage of radiation. "And Taggart?" she said.

"Better condition, but readings still below normal."

Nicole took a breath and made her decision. "All right, prep Evans for surgery and get AJ and Nina in the deep tissue scanner. If I have to work on all three, I want to be ready."

"Yes, Doctor." Her nurse hurried away to make arrangements and Nicole put down her tricorder. Everyone was clean of the radiation so far. Once Engineering did a diagnostic on the gel packs surrounding Sickbay, they'd be able to determine if they could reattach the ship. It had been a tense several minutes since then, and Nicole was eager to get things settled.

"Sanders to Anderson, what's your status?" her combadge chirped. She headed for the surgical bay, tapping it as she walked.

"I'm about to step into surgery, Cass, what's wrong?"

"Nothing past a busted nose and bruised pride," Cass grumbled. "I should have realized you'd seal Sickbay. I came to offer assistance."

"Appreciated, but we've got it under control for now," Nicole said, staking off her uniform jacket, boots and pants and pulling out a sterile suit. She was starting to feel sluggish and her eyes burned. She reached for her flask, and patted around a moment before realizing she'd left it in her quarters, since she was unable to use it on the away mission. She swallowed and said. "You might want to stop by my quarters though. I could use a drink."

There was a pause then, "understood," and the channel closed. Nicole pulled her suit on quickly, sealed it and tucked her hair under the hood. She closed the doors behind her and stepped up to the surgical bed. She glanced at the readings, making sure he was under completely, then held out her hand, repressing a slight tremor. "Laser scalpel," she said.


*****************

Once her three charges were in the showers, Penny rushed to her own. With privacy assured, she worked at full speed to cleanse herself, then bolted out, dried quickly and put on a clean medical uniform. She exited back into Sickbay, grabbing her wand from where she'd dropped it and scanning herself quickly, then moving towards her three patients, scanning Commander Hunter first. "How do you feel?"

Alec had been lying on the biobed with his eyes closed when Penny spoke to him. Opening his eyes, he turned to look at her. "Just peachy. Don't I look it?" He offered giving her a wan smile. He continued on, "Warm. Mind feels like it's going at warp speed." He tried to raise his head but couldn't, "How are the others?"

"I haven't scanned everyone yet," she said idly. "Your body's not showing any further traces, which is good. There doesn't look to be internal damage that I can see. I'd say you got lucky." She looked at her wand's blinking lights again quickly then at the biobed. "Excuse me, Commander. Try to get some rest."

He listened as she gave him a report. He nodded when she finished. "Please keep me posted." He said softly, his eyes closing for a moment. When he opened them he tried to smile .... and failed miserably. "As for resting, sage advice."

She moved on to Aidan next. "How do you feel?" she said.

Aidan, having been treated, at least to some extent on the Bethesda, wasn't feeling quite as bad as the others. After he had showered, he sat on the edge of the bed. Though doing better than some of the others, he was still exhausted and it showed in his face. But there was also another emotion etched there: Concern. "Can I sit by Chris?" he asked.

Penny's ears had picked up on everything being said so far, but for show she paused in scanning him and glanced over at Evans' bed. "I don't think we can right now," she said. "He's going to need surgery and rest. Maybe later."

"Surgery? Is he going to be okay? How bad is it?"

Penny patted his hand. "I'm sure he will. I know you're worried, and I know how you feel. Just lie back and rest, he's got the best surgeon in two quadrants working on him."

Aidan reluctantly lay back down on the bed. He hadn't known Chris that long and he couldn't say that he loved him. Not yet anyway, but he was concerned about him. "Just tell me when you know more," he asked.

Penny smiled and nodded at him and walked over to Yarin, scanning him quickly. "Any problems?"

"None so far," Yarin said. He had tested the strength of his muscles, one limb at a time and checked his vision in each eye while he was lying on his biobed. "I do, however, think that I might be of use analyzing the radiation readings you're taking."

"Unfortunately, until you're cleared you've been ordered bed rest," Penny said. "You'll have to stay here."

Yarin would have frowned if his muscles allowed it comfortably. "Very well," he said. "If you can set up a terminal by my bed, that would suffice too."

"I'll see what I can do," Penny said, finishing her scan. "I'll be back shortly." She stepped away and found a corner to stand in, scanning herself with her wand. She read the readouts and nodded in satisfaction, then headed to supervise their scans of Taggart and Blackburn.

TBC

 

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