Ensign Connie Laraque awoke to the smell of death and darkness.
A profound feeling of disorientation overrode all her physical senses: her eyes were squeezed shut, she could hear nothing but silence, and the only thing her nose could tell her was that it was under an assault by the stink of dead flesh. Experimentally, she opened her eyes. Nothing. Have I gone blind? Blink, blink, and still the blackness was all she could see. She waved a hand in front of her face. Well, blindness or not, she was still alive. For now, that was all that mattered. Now, all she had to do was find a way out of here.
But where was here? Without her eyes, she had no idea where she was. Connie hauled herself up onto hands and knees and slowly started shuffling forward, just like she had in survival training at the Academy. It took a few seconds for her to get her bearings; eventually, though, she traced a perimeter around the space she was in. It was small, certainly, but definitely not equipment locker-sized. So…what was bigger than an equipment locker, yet smaller than, say, a hallway? She thought about that for a moment. Shuttlecraft? Wait a second, we don't carry any shuttles. Maybe a runabout? Certainly not a turbolift carriage. Perhaps somebody's quarters? The possibilities spun around and around in her head. Finally, she gave up trying to decide and went back to the vision concern. She knew that both eyes were intact (always a good sign, she thought). Shakily, Ensign Laraque managed to stand up, extending her palms to the nearest wall so she could feel her way along. There's got to be a light switch around here somewhere, dammit. Her questing fingers brushed over a small curve of transparent aluminium, and with a slight squeak of joy, realised that she had not gone blind after all — it was just that the lights were off. The panel flicked on after a moment's resistance. Yes! Now all she had to do was find the controls for the room lights…with an audible pop, a glowtube sputtered to life.
The room looked very much like a shuttlecraft cabin. Each bulkhead was arched inwards to give the ceiling a domed feel, and the hard metal and transparent aluminium walls were broken up with soft cushion-like pads and strips of carpet. Yes, this place was pre-war, without a doubt. Connie's engineering training was already picking up on specific technological features of the room. Banks of seating arranged tightly in two sections, each one equipped with a gravitic harness. She walked to the door at the front of the cabin, and even though it refused to open for her, it was obvious that some kind of cockpit lay beyond it. So, Connie, what do you know? Crash couches, a sealed cockpit, and a small space…this is an escape ship. It made perfect sense. And as she tried to flush the environmental reserves to get some fresh air, she wondered why she was inside an escape ship in the first place.
Memory resurfaced like a drowning man coming up for air. There had been an attack. Not a long, drawn-out battle, but a skirmish. It hadn't taken too long for the evacuation call, then…what? Reason dictated that she had tried to save as many lives as she could, then run to an escape pod and tried to get free. Then she turned, and saw the source of the smell: a man, lean to the point of gaunt and clutching a hypospray, was sprawled on the floor. Connie didn't need a medical kit to know that he was dead. The large crater of melted flesh on his back told her that straight off. He was an ensign as well, judging by the pips on his collar. She shook her head sadly and gingerly removed the man's jacket. Starfleet escape pods didn't come with sheets and morgues, but it would do.
Trying to be optimistic, though, Ensign Connie Laraque knew that every Starfleet escape pod had two hatches: one for standard ingress and egress, and an emergency door in case the lifeboat landed awkwardly. She didn't know if one or both were malfunctioning, but she had to find a way to escape from her two-bit prison.
