The engine room was bustling with people, each of them rushing like ants to their individual stations.
The deep thrum of the warp reactor pulsed at a faster tempo than normal, as if to complement the quick pulses and hurrying feet of the crew manning it. At least, Trip liked to think so.
On a normal day, he often pictured Enterprise as a living thing, caring for them and shielding them like a benevolent mother. But today was not a normal day. The mother was baring its claws, its heart pumping.
Enterprise was under attack.
Commands came in sharp and fast from the bridge. Trip had to lean over crewmen's heads, inputting commands, plugging leaks, adjusting the plasma injectors, you name it. If a regular crewman was busy, then the chief engineer was positively everywhere at once.
An explosion rocked the ship, causing him to stumble. His shoulder collided with something, probably someone. It was a crewman, nondescript and brown-haired. "Sorry," he said, extending a hand to help her up.
She looked at him worriedly, almost like she was frightened. Quickly, she scrambled to her feet and took off in the opposite direction. Trip frowned, but he had bigger things to worry about than a squirrelly crewman.
He made his way over to the main plasma control panel, shouting, "Report!" over the noise. Another explosion sent them all swaying.
An ensign manning the panel shouted back, "Sir, we've taken hits to plasma control junctions Delta-One, Gamma-Three, and Epsilon-Seven! Something's gonna blow soon, I just know it."
The commander started to thread his way past the crowd, shouting back, "Keep your shirt on, ensign, we'll see what we can do." He crouched down to get at the central interface, and pulled off the panel. A cloud of fumes from melted shielding mixed with heated Xenon floated up, and he shielded his face and coughed at the burning sensation. He retracted his hand into his flight suit and waved the gas away.
Once it was sufficiently not-burning, he peered in, only to see that the entire assembly for section Epsilon was fused. With the urgency of a man who doesn't want part of his ship to explode, he whipped a coil decoupler out of one of the numerous pockets in his flight suit, and started unfusing the fibers, swearing under his breath.
The sickly green light cast shadows below the planes of his face, making him look unhealthy and drawn. The fact that he was running on gallons of adrenaline and coffee, and only a few minutes of sleep, didn't help.
He wiped the sweat off his brow, running a hand through his honey-shaded hair. The coils were almost unfused, but one stubborn little relay wasn't cooperating.
Trip gripped the decoupler between his teeth and pulled a pair of non-conductive pliers from his toolbox. The rubber tips of the pliers held the casing fast, but it wasn't budging. He gritted his teeth, muscles straining, and wrenched the relay casing off, falling back on his knees.
Immediately, he could tell he did something wrong. Sparks were showering from the relay, and the lights were flickering.
He looked across the room, slowly, as if half in awe, half in denial. "Oh, no, no no..."
The engine room plunged into darkness, for one still, silent moment.
Then, all of a sudden, everything was too bright and too hot and too loud.