Furlough
Posted on Tue Aug 24th, 2010 @ 10:34pm by Commander Curtiss Drake
1,167 words; about a 6 minute read
Mission:
Stealth
Location: Starbase
Timeline: Current
{Seven minutes after The Final Leg]
The bulkhead was cold and hard against the back of his head, but it might as well have been a soft feather pillow - he was simply that exhausted and glad to have a moment to rest. Of course it wasn't the most ideal place to stop and have a rest, but he doubted that he'd be noticed here, and being unnoticed was the thing that he wanted most of all at the moment. He couldn't afford to be found - at least not yet.
He was in a most unlikely place at the moment, and had done so on purpose. With the holographic crew on the alert for one intruder, it was best that he took his rest in a place few would venture, holographic or otherwise. That place happened to be the Deflector array access. It was a place that was rarely accessed for anything more than a major repair or annual inspection so the likelihood of being found was minimal. Which was a great thing.
Curtiss was tired, his energy drained by the physical and mental exertions of the mission so far but he was pushing on. He had been trained to work on little to no sleep, to operate in the darkness both literally and metaphorically. And while he thrived on that kind of working environment, that didn't mean that there wasn't a toll on him. He had simply learned to push past it. But, for now, he was content to let the exhaustion take him a little bit - it was the best way to recharge, if only for a few minutes.
With his head against the bulkhead, humming a favorite tune with his eyes closed, it was as close to bliss as Curtiss was going to find. But it was rudely interrupted by an incessant chirping from the deflector control access console to his right. He immediately snapped his eyes open and swiveled his head towards it. Not good.
Drake immediately moved into action and shuffled over to the console, accessing it quickly to see what was going on. The terminal came alive at his request and he brought up the stations systems. With the exception of the Deflector dish, everything looked just fine at first glance... but as he watched the display, his face began to fall.
Whatever was hitting the deflector dish was sending other systems into action one at a time, and they were building up something that was starting to get channeled back through the stations systems into the Deflector. Curious, Curtiss tried to ascertain what it was that was building up but all that he could see were particles of varying types of radiation building in the reserve buffers. Far from being an Engineer, Drake had little idea what they were doing but as they began to build up in significant quantities the math began to come together in his head. This build-up was setting up to be shot back out of the deflector in a configuration that was a type concentrated energy - a remote power source for something big.
Narrowing his brow in concentration, Curtiss diverted his terminal through more systems to see if he could find the point in question and found faster than he would thought possible. Apparently these holographic crew weren't as fastidious about their security as they should have been. Even a non-pro like Drake easily penetrated their security field - of course that could have been a trap on its own. Disregarding whatever safety concerns there might be, he found what he was looking for and nearly cried out in shock.
The power being accumulated and prepared to send back out was trained on a vessel in the Nebula and judging by the schematics he could see, the energy was meant to fuel what could only be described as a weapon of mass chaos that was currently trained on the Nebula. The Nebula that the Ranger was currently hiding in. With the yield he was calculating with his limited Engineering skill, it was going to be enough to detonate the Nebula... and everything in it.
Curtiss had never moved his fingers so fast, manipulating the system as if his own life depended on it, trying every trick he could think of to stop the build-up, cancel the projection of the energy and shut the project down. Half of it he knew he was doing right, the other half was pure guessing and in the end he cheered to himself and slapped the console. He'd done it. Heaving a deep sigh of relief, he smiled at the console.
Then the lights went out.
A low humming began to emanate from the deflector dish above him, slowing thrumming louder and louder until it began to reach a fever pitch. The terminal before him was now dead and the only light in the room was starting to come from the deflector dish. First as a feint glow, and then turning into a steadily growing light that was growing with equal intensity. Drake looked upwards in disbelief and then tried to access the terminal again... but it was locked out now. The dish was alive and channelling the energy it had built up. His Captain, he crew and his ship were lost now... within seven minutes, the energy would power the weapon and destroy the nebula and there wasn't a damned thing he could do about it. So he watched it. He watched it send its energy to the weapon until the deflector shut off and slowly thrummed into silence.
Hanging his head over the terminal, hodling himself up with shaking arms, Curtiss brooded. He wondered if they were gone now, or if they had another few moments of life left before the weapon snuffed them out of existance. He thought about the Captain he'd barely begun to know and all the lives aboard who would never get the chance to have see their lives completed. It made his blood boil and made his temper rise. Squeezing the edge of the termainl all he could think about was the lives lost, the end of days for his crew and the fact that he and those aboard the station were all that was left of the crew of the USS Ranger.
God help these bastards, he muttered through clenched teeth, his eyes red with fury.
With a calm that would have silenced a raging bull, Curtiss turned away from the terminal and secured his gear. He checked the weapon on his back, adjusted his sidearm and pulled his sleeves up as he approached the long ladder up the station.
Now it was his turn to be the bearer of doom. God help these bastards, he said again as he began the long climb up to Operations.
Curtiss Drake
Executive Officer
USS Ranger
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