From: V. Rahul Chandra (vrccan_at_gmail.com)
Date: Tue Jan 08 2008 - 19:17:17 PST
============ “Wounded” Con’t from Naomi/Kim’s “Nightmare” =========== Location: GS-2 Stardate: 2423 [2.8] 0108.1817 Scene: Promenade Daniel looked over Catherine's injuries with a trained eye and a handy tricorder, not saying anything for a few minutes. Finally, he shook his head and chuckled ruefully as he dug into his medkit for an instrument. A few more minutes of silenced passed between them as Daniel worked on Catherine's more serious injuries, sealing them up as best as he could. "Well," he said, as he put one instrument down and reached for another. "You're going to feel stiff all over once the adrenaline wears off, but I think you've avoided anything too serious in terms of injuries." Catherine smiled and finally allowed herself to relax. He was safe. It was a source of worry that she could now remove from her mind. And he was in a good mood, softly talking with her as he healed up the worst of the wounds. She opened her eyes and studied him for a few moments while his concentration was focused on her hands. He was a good man, with a heart of gold. Strong and loving when he needed to be, and also a capable marine. She reached out with her fingers and caressed his face, he paused in what he was doing and looked at her. "You're a right mess, you know that?" Daniel chided her softly, but his warm smile filled her with delight. "You're not much better." She pointed out. Daniel grinned. Sweat, and dirt and blood clung to his face and clothes just as much as hers. He had been heavily involved in fighting, and it slowed. Underneath the smiles and his gentle treatments, he was fatigued and battered. But he was ignoring that to tend to his patients. Catherine's eye contract with him broke when she saw Maverick approaching them quickly. "Clarkson, we need you on the double. Kenta's trapped on the Bridge and is in serious condition." Daniel nodded and rose onto his feet, quickly helping Catherine up. "We're ready." As the three of them quickly made their way through the Promenade, Maverick brought them up to speed on the situation. "Kenta tried to blow up GATEWAY?" Daniel asked, skeptical at the information he'd just been given. "It appears that way Major," Maverick replied, his expression and voice not giving away anything one way or another. They stopped once they got to one of the areas that had been designated beforehand for transport. "We won't be able to beam you directly to the bridge because there isn't much left of it that we could safely get you on." Mav continued. "The closest area that still is reasonably intact is five decks below the bridge. We'll beam the two of you and a medical relief team to that area. I'll be shocked if turbolifts are still functional on the ship, so you two and the team will have to spread out and try to find as many survivors as you can as quickly as you can. Do I make myself clear?" "Yes sir," Catherine replied, Daniel echoing the sentiment. "Your first priority is to reach Kenta on the Bridge and stabilize him for transport," Mav said. "Let the relief team deal with everything else." Without waiting for a reply, he tapped his comm badge and indicated to a technician standing by that he was to transport the two of them to the PATRIOT. ========== Location: USS PATRIOT Scene: Corridor -> Turbolift -> Turbolift Shaft -> Bridge Daniel materialised and reached out to Catherine as he looked around what had once been their beautiful home with a mixture of sadness and a little pride. The newly refitted Patriot, once full of gleaming metal and sparkling decks looked like a guttered version of herself. Smoke, acrid and biting drove deep into his lungs, the air quality was bad prompting them to both start coughing. The air was filled with ozone that burned. Yet, there was a little pride in the sadness. The Patriot took one hell of a beating and survived. Like her crew, she had mostly survived. As much as he would have liked to linger and contemplate this, they had bigger things on their mind. Already clearing crews and medical crews crawled around on the ship, protected from cold, hard space only by thin forcefields around the hull and a power generator that had miraculously continued to function. "You okay?" He asked Catherine. The woman nodded, and he left it at that. "Hey, Major!" One of the medic teams arrived and spotted the two officers and made their way over to them. "We have to get to the Bridge, any lifts still got power?" Daniel asked as he strapped his medical kit across his back. If they had to climb, they would need their hands free. "Lift three will get you up one and a half decks, that's it. You'll have to navigate on your own from there. We've attempted several times, but keep coming across debris. Maybe you'll have better luck." The medic gave them a schematic padd with all of the barred points of egress. "No Jem'Hadar remaining on the upper decks, so at least you'll be safe." "Thanks." The two entered the turbolift, verbally prompting it to start. It went up for a split second, before jarring to a stop suddenly. The stop was so unexpected that both of them were knocked off their feet and to the ground as the dim lights in the turbolift vanished completely. A few seconds later, the beam of a Starfleet flashlight pierced the darkness within the lift, as Daniel managed to activate the one attached to his marine assault rifle. "Cath?" he called uncertainly as he tentatively started panning the light around the room. "Alright, *that* hurt." She grimaced and sat up. Adrenaline was wearing off and she was beginning to feel pain. "Whose brilliant idea was this?" She grumbled as Daniel helped her onto her feet. Daniel didn't answer her directly. At the very least the lift ride saved them a climb of two decks. He used his phaser rifle to push open the lift's trap door. The door didn't budge, stuck solidly. Clarkson frowned, either the frame was warped, or there was something lying on top of the lift car. "Cover your eyes." He warned the Intel agent as he set the rifle to maximum power. They didn't have time to muck around. Catherine did as she was bidden and turned into a corner of the turbolift and used her good arm to protect her eyes from the intense blast. The car jerked as the phaser blast shattered the top of it, raining down debris onto the two people below. Sterling felt Daniel using his body to shield hers until everything settled down again. "Chivalry isn't dead." "Not yet." Daniel grimly replied and glanced up, shining his light through the new access hole. He could see the access ladder, but half way up the shaft, there was something blocking it. It looked like a wall. The marine figured out his options. "We'll have to climb up to the obstruction and either get through it, or find another way around it." He slung his weapon away and jumped up catching the top of the car with his fingers and hauling himself up. He reached down and grabbed Catherine's wrist of her good arm and hauled her up after him. "Can you climb?" He asked her. With a broken clavicle, and badly lacerated hands he wasn't sure if she could do it. "Yep." She said and gestured for him to continue. He would have to take point, but she could follow. Daniel gave her a last look before he began to climb up the shaft. Catherine slowly followed. Their progress was slow, as Daniel looked below him every few seconds to make sure that Catherine was still there. "Just one more deck," he called down after they had passed one of the two remaining decks. Catherine didn't reply, as she was concentrating on getting herself up the ladder that one more deck. As she pulled herself up one more rung, a very faint sound drew her attention, causing her to snap her head up in alarm. She looked above her at Daniel, who was still climbing. Evidently, he had not heard the same sound that she had. "Did you hear that?" she asked after a moment, causing Daniel to stop in mid-climb and look down at her. "Hear what?" he asked, stopping and listening. "There it is again!" Catherine said after a few moments. "It was a metallic clang, sounded like it was coming from the Bridge." "I didn't hear anything," Daniel admitted. "But if it was a metallic clang coming from the Bridge, chances are someone's trapped under something." He resumed his climbing. "We'll be there soon enough." They kept pushing their way up the ladder until they came up to the wall that had been blown into the turbolift shaft. Daniel was shining his light methodically over the surface, trying to find a way in or past the obstruction. On further investigation, Clarkson figured out what had happened. The walls of the turbolift shaft had been blasted open when the wall of a room on deck two was blown out, so essentially they had two walls to get around. They were folded and crumpled together like an accordion. He couldn't shoot it because they had so where to hide for cover. So he spent several minutes poking and prodding the mass, pushing it with his foot, trying to find away through. It was solidly stuck, and he suspected that it wasn’t going to budge without heavy excavation equipment. "I'm not sure we can get through this." Even as he said it, he saw the beam of light find an opening. He wasn't sure if he could fit through the hole, it was quite small, but maybe, just maybe he could do it. "Check that." Daniel swung himself onto the obstruction and lowered himself onto his stomach, being careful not to slice himself open on the razor sharp metal. He peered through the opening and decided that he was unlikely to get a better opportunity any time soon. Very gently, with his rifle as his guide, Daniel pushed small pieces out of the way and enlarged the opening bit by bit. It was slow going as he was constantly afraid of dislodging too much. A full ten minutes later, he stepped back from his work and noticed Catherine standing behind him, peering into the hole that he'd just created. "What do you think?" he asked, looking up at her from his crouching position. She studied the hole for a moment. "Looks stable enough. Just watch out for that piece of shrapnel, it'll be easy to get caught up on it." As to whether Daniel would be able to squeeze through was another question, it would be borderline. She couldn't judge it, and the only way they'll find out was to try it. "Regardless, we don't have a lot of time, and this is probably the best bet." Catherine offered her opinion. Daniel sighed and laid down on his stomach, pushing his rifle through the hole as far as he could. "Let's give it a try." He slowly eased himself into the tight opening, his head fit through with room, but his shoulders couldn't pass through. He wriggled around, and tried different positions, feeding his arm through and then his head, trying to oblique his shoulders. His feet slid against the metal as he tried for purchase. "I'm not stuck, I'm not stuck." He growled under his breath as his foot caught a wall and he used it to propel himself through the hole. The metal caught and scrapped at him, tearing at his uniform and slicing open some skin. It was with a sigh of relief that his shoulders finally squeezed through the opening. It was pitch dark in there, with his body blocking the light from the shaft. Clarkson felt around by hand and found a void big enough and edged towards it. His hips also got wedged against the opening, but he forced himself through. Metal creaked and groaned around him as it resettled under his weight. "Okay." He called out and found the light sliding across the floor towards him. He picked it up and began to investigate his next steps. After a moment, the doctor grinned. "Come through, I can see the Observation Room." They had made it to the Bridge. As he waited for Catherine to make her way through, he trained the rifle's light all around the area he was immediately in. All around him were remnants of what used to be a place he knew very well. He shook his head slightly at all of the damage, but noted that there were no people around him from either Starfleet or the Dominion. "Looks like everyone was out on the Main Bridge," Daniel commented, as he reached down to help Catherine to her feet. Being smaller than Daniel, she'd had a much easier time navigating her way through the hole. Working together, they forced their way into the Bridge of the Patriot. It was dark and silent, a tomb for those bodies scattered around her decks. Silently, Catherine and Daniel separated and swept over the Bridge, picking their way over metal covers, and conduit tubing, and broken glass and conductors and quickly located the still bodies, checking for signs of life. Daniel pressed his fingers into the carotid artery of Martin Soldat and quickly checking for the absence of a pulse before moved on. He paused when he heard a tap and groan, and with a burst of speed, ran over to the helm. "Commander?" Clarkson could barely identify Kenta under the soot and debris. He had a heartbeat. Barely. Catherine was right behind Daniel in his discovery of their commanding officer, and at his direction, they carefully lifted him from the console, taking great care not to shift any of the impaled fragments in his back, before laying him out on the ground on his side. Sterling braced Ben's body so it stayed stable while Daniel quickly checked the list of injuries. "Here. Press down hard." The marine medic grabbed her hand and pressed it around a large shard of metal. A constant stream of blood was welling from the wound, and her hand helped to stem it. "Is he okay?" She felt Kenta moan softly while unconscious. He must have been in a lot of pain to feel the pressure and respond to it. "I don't know." Daniel frowned as he loaded vial after vial into his hypospray and used it. Coagulants, plasma, vasoconstrictors, immune stimulators...he was using everything in his arsenal to keep the Commander alive. "Got the transporter tag?" He asked. Catherine gave her husband the small locator beacon. Daniel tapped open his com. badge. "Clarkson to Maverick." He grabbed his bag and yanked out some more equipment. He didn't dare try to remove any of the metal pieces that were embedded in Kenta's back. It would have to wait till surgery. [[Go ahead.]] The marine commander replied. Clarkson thumbed the beacon active as he used slipped a small oxy mask over Kenta's face. "Locator beacon is activated, get us out of here." He said. [[Any other survivors?]] Maverick asked. They exchanged a glance and Catherine shook her head. "No, sir. None." Daniel reported grimly. =========== This has been a joint post by… Naomi Bortolin Lieutenant Catherine Sterling-Jade ILO USS PATRIOT & Rahul Chandra Major Daniel Clarkson, MD MXO USS PATRIOT No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.516 / Virus Database: 269.17.13/1214 - Release Date: 08/01/2008 1:38 PM From HyperNews_at_youth.net
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