Chapter Ten – Rescue p2
The holographic helmsman glanced at the velocity indicator on the helm. It read warp factor 9.999. In engineering, the dual warp cores were at maximum output, pushing the ship as hard as they could, the opposite direction of danger. On the bridge, Admiral Janeway and the Doctor were clinging to the rail behind the captain's chair. Captain Marcus was standing next to his helmsman watching the main view screen.
"How did you evade it last time?" He turned around and asked Janeway.
"We forced it into subspace by firing torpedos at it." She replied, still watching the main viewer. The massive cloud of gas was right behind them, and closing. Janeway stared at it, and felt it almost call her name. "Its sentient." She blurted out. The Doctor turned and looked at her. "I mean think about it," she started, "on the original Voyager, it destroyed itself by breaking several hypospray containers, yet all the damage to the ship was repaired – and the Doctor and myself were the only ones that remembered it. Our transporter room was obliterated, and it was never explained. When I boarded Voyager-A..." She stopped in thought. Suddenly, the four holographic commandos materialized on the bridge. Janeway and the Doctor gasped when they saw them, for they were all drenched in blood. The Alpha leader stepped foreword, towards Captain Marcus.
"Sir, we have a serious problem on deck nine." He said, as he dropped his gun down on the floor.
"What?" Janeway butted in. Alpha leader glanced at her, then turned back to Marcus. Marcus nodded, signaling it was ok to talk in front of Janeway.
"The entire organic crew...they are all... dissected, mutilated. Except for Tracy, we couldn't find him." Janeway choked.
"Tracy is part of it!" She blurted, then she wondered what 'it' was.
"What?" The Alpha commando and Marcus questioned at the same time.
"The gas! I have always had an uneasy feeling about Captain Tracy, and I even thought I saw some of the gas at his feet the first time we saw him…" A computer panel at ops started to beep behind her, as the holographic ops officer acknowledged it.
"Sir, transporter room five is powering up." He said with concern.
"What?" Marcus said, surprised.
"Sir… a transport is being initiated!"
"Lock whoever it is out!" The ops officer madly ran his fingers over his panel, only for it to emit a rejecting beep.
"I can't sir, the controls have been fused…" He said with defeat.
"Captain…" The helms officer said, as he was looking at the viewscreen. Everyone turned and directed their attention to the viewer. The green gas swirled away into the blue shimmer of a Starfleet transporter beam.
--
Captain Tom Paris, his first officer Jackson, his tactical officer, and two field medics swirled into existence on the bridge of the Terra Nova. Tom felt cold immediately after the transport was completed, then noticed the blue sparkling light. The entire ceiling of the bridge was ripped away, and emergency forcefields were in place holding the atmosphere in the room.
"Look, its our ship." Jackson muttered as he looked up. The spectacular view from inside the bridge revealed the underside of the Prometheus, for it was holding position right above the Terra Nova.
"Looks like the controls are fried here, everything appears to have been blown out when atmosphere was lost in this room."
"Well someone has to still be alive, or these forcefields wouldn't have been activated." Jackson noted, as he looked around.
"Well, we didn't detect any dead bodies floating around in space, so whoever was in here must have gotten out before this happened." Tom said, as he shined his light around the dark room. "Lets get off this deck, I don't want that forcefield going out while we are in here."
"You got that right." Jackson agreed, as the started their way to the turboshaft.
--
A power conduit behind transporter room five ruptured, breaking the flow of energy to the warp cores. Voyager A dropped out of warp, and rocked violently from a massive explosion on deck five. On the bridge, everyone was thrown off of their feet, crashing onto the floor.
-Warning, matter/antimatter interlock integrity field has been compromised. The computer announced.
"Engineering to Bridge, we have big problems down here!" The comm system fired up, as everyone on the bridge was getting back on their feet. Captain Marcus gripped his chair, and hauled himself up.
"What kinds of problems, and how big?" He yelled into the comm system, and then he turned to the commandos. "Get your entire team down to the transporter room. Computer, establish high-definition forcefields around deck five!"
-Acknowledged. The computer responded.
"Sir, that explosion sent a feedback surge through the core, I am having a hard time keeping main power stable, as well as keeping the matter/antimatter containment interlocks online… I'm going to have to eject the cores if we cant stabilize this... oh God!" The holographic chief engineer stopped talking to the comm system, and to another engineer.
"What's going on?" Marcus yelled to the system.
"I'm getting a huge feedback pulse from deck five… it's overloading all of the systems…" Suddenly the lights on the bridge started to flicker in and out. Janeway looked at the Doctor, a helpless look on her face. He returned it.
"Keep the holoemitters online!" Marcus screamed over the commotion, making sure engineering heard him. He turned to tactical.
"Send a covariant distress call to any federation ship in range, maximum signal gain." He said, as he sat down in his chair.
In engineering, six EPS taps overloaded, and exploded. A large blot on energy released from the EPS network, and struck the core, sending a feedback pulse into the EPS distribution grid, burning out relays as it went. The feedback struck the main computer, completely disabling it and the entire holographic database with it. The warp cores went offline, as well as impulse reactors. Emergency battery packs overloaded from the power surge, and were rendered useless. Voyager A went completely dark.
--
"Captain, my tricorder is picking up life signs." Commander Jackson said to Tom, as his tricorder started beeping. A moment later, Toms started to beep, picking up sixty-one lifesignes up ahead. Tom wasn't very familiar with the layout of the Sovereign class ships, but the last time he was on this ship he was visiting Harry on his promotion. Now, the ship was completely ruined. His tricorder beeped again, indicating a large room ahead. The team of five walked foreword, and stopped at a door. "Cargo Bay Five." Jackson read from the LCARS panel to the left of the door. The door sensor recognized there were people wanting to come in, so it opened. Tom stepped foreward, and his hard skipped for joy. Captain Harry Kim, and Captain Tuvok stood up from sitting on the floor when they saw their rescuer.
"Harry, Tuvok!" Tom said, as he rushed foreword and hugged his friends.
"Prometheus to Paris." Toms comm badge chirped
"Tom here," he said to badge, "we found the survivors. Harry and Tuvok are OK."
"That's good. We will send transport enhances to your coordinates so we can beam them back. Sir, we picked up a distress call from a federation vessel. It was brief too, it only lasted a few minutes."
Tom looked at Harry for a moment, then crossed his arms.
"Where is the ship?" he said to his badge.
"About an hour away at maximum warp."
"Ok, beam the transport enhancers to my coordinates, then when we get everyone evacuated from here we'll go assist them. Have the coordinates inputted into helm, and be ready to depart as soon as you have us."
"Yes sir, Prometheus out." Tom gazed off into space for a moment, thinking that something didn't seem right.
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Ok, I liked this one better. I know, there are probably errors in it but I don't have time to mess with correcting it… im in college ya know.
Tell me what ya think. – Oh, and my next story is going to be back in the Delta Quadrant featuring life in Engineering.