Chapter 10 USS Dallas Part 3 (Bridge Deck)
The team filed out of the turbolift and cleared the corridor. Once it was secured, Munro took some time to reorganize his team.
"Chief, take Franklin and Chell and head to the bridge, I'll take Jurot and check out the transporter room. New designations are Blue and Red teams." He said
At that the team split as they headed in opposite directions. Unfortunately Franklin didn't make it. A larger alien creature broke through the ceiling and pulled him up. At the same time the Chief and Chell were ambushed by more of the smaller creatures. But they took out the creatures fairly quick and moved on. "Blue leader to Red leader, we lost Blue two."
A pause then "Acknowledged. Proceed to objective." Replied Munro
The Chief and Chell quickly moved to an alternate route and continued to the bridge eliminating a few small creatures along the way. They entered the bridge to find it dark, airless with no bodies other than the one in the Captain's chair. Chell helped Cortana access the Captain's logs the Chief scanned the Captain's body and found he died from asphyxiation assumingly when the Dallas lost life support. The Captain's logs came online and played.
Captain's log stardate 565535.1 we're responding to a distress call from an Attrexian station just outside Federation space….The attack crippled us! I've sent most of my crew to the space station. I hope they can protect the Attrexians. I've kept a small skeleton crew led by my security chief. We're gonna try to salvage the ship by getting it away from the station…There are too many of them! We're losing the battle to keep up minimal life support, we can't last more than a few hours….I've authorized my chief engineer to try an experimental procedure. She's encoding our remaining crew into the transporter pattern buffter. It's risky. The signals might degrade beyond recovery…but if it works. It might be our best chance for survival…. The log ended.
"Telsia…" Chell whispered
"Blue leader to Red leader."
"Red leader here."
"The Captain is dead sir, he suffocated. Apparently the ship responded to a distress call from an alien space station. Once they arrived they were attacked by the aliens we encountered and took heavy damage. They beamed most of the crew over to the space station and kept a skeleton crew aboard to try and salvage her. In a last effort to survive the chief engineer encoded the remaining crew into the pattern buffer. You've got to get down there and get them out before the signals degrade too far." Said the Chief
"Understood we're almost there." Replied Munro
A moment later Munro and Jurot entered the transporter room. Munro quickly approached the console and initiated the materialization sequence.
"Their patterns are very weak, they're fading fast." Said Jurot
"Chell, Cortana more power down here." Said Munro
Three humans materialized on the pad.
"They've been in the pattern buffer for awhile. They're dehydrated and probably a bit disoriented but they should be fine." Said Jurot
One of them was familiar. "Alex? You're late Munro." She said
"I think they're back to normal already." Said Munro
"Thanks for the save." She said
"I'm Catodina Scott, the chief engineer of the Dallas."
"This was your plan?" Munro asked
"My great-grandfathers plan actually, Captain Montgomery Scott. He developed a procedure for staying alive inside the transporter pattern buffer, alive with no signal degradation." She replied
"Very clever." Said Munro
"Blue leader to Red Leader." Came the comm. call.
"Go ahead."
"The security sub-systems are a little chaotic but I think we can get through them…uh sir we've got chewing sounds outside the bridge…." A door was heard swishing open through the channel. "Red Leader this is Blue leader, I've engaged multiple hostiles requesting backup!"
"On my way Chief. Jurot stay here and treat them. I'm gonna go help the Chief and Chell." Said Munro
Munro immediately moved out into the corridor and came under attack by several of the smaller creatures. He was hit a few times by what could only be acid, but his shields protected him. The creatures also had a ramming attack which drained even more energy than the acid. Munro killed the things with short controlled bursts. Then moved on, he went through several rooms and crawled through a few holes, killed more of the small creatures then followed the corridor all the way around until he saw dozens of the small things attacking the Chief. Munro quickly tossed a grenade among them and several of them died. Munro switched to the MA5B version and simply sprayed the aliens with bullets. Quickly eliminating the rest, Munro approached the Chief.
"Thanks Munro my shields were nearly gone."
"No problem Chief. Chell, Cortana, Status report." Ordered Munro
"We've deactivated the Dallas' shields, we can beam out now." Replied Chell
"Munro to Enterprise, we're ready to beam out." He said
"Understood. Sickbay is standing by to receive the Dallas crewmembers. I'm sending a security team and an engineering team to clear the ship and begin repairs, Picard out." Replied Picard
With that the away team and three remaining crew disappeared from the stricken ship and ten people beamed aboard. Five on the bridge and five in engineering, all of them were wearing the new armor. The ones on the bridge began a deck by deck search for the remaining aliens and the ones in engineering began initial repairs.
