The smoke that filled the bridge was as acrid and as eye-burningly intense as it had been on the Seeker when they'd encountered the I.K.S. bah'Sargh at Morska. Batting it away did little but swirl it around in the air uselessly, and breathing was almost entirely out of the question. Each breath took in another lungful of smoke, searing them with the same heat that now burned from the electrical fire that was… Somewhere else. For the moment, the only thing informing Dash Reinarr where he was were the firm arms of the captain's chair.
Frankly, he briefly considered, he was lucky to have activated the crash webbing in time to stop him from flying free when that last shot crippled them.
Now, unluckily, he was tangled in it and could hardly see or feel where it ended and he began. Calling out, he heard no reply from his shipmates, and while he very much knew better, a tiny part of his mind still feared the worst. To lose everything he had relied on to get to the captain's chair in such a quick instant would doom him and the Meridian, that much he knew for sure.
A shower of sparks cascaded down from the ceiling, singing his skin as it fell, and he cursed silently while continuing to fumble through the controls in an attempt to find the one he needed. Mercifully, he finally found the retrieval system switch that removed the harnessing from him and allowed him to move around more freely.
Ripping apart his sleeve, Dash bound his eyes and allowed them to, briefly, gain their bearings in a cleaner environment. He'd need them if he was going to clear the bridge and find a way out of this mess, and the brief respite he was giving them now would allow him to find what he needed that much quicker.
Quickly, he removed the binder and searched the arm of the chair for what he needed, desperately trying to remember which colour, and in which position, the knob was. He couldn't start flicking and pushing at random, not knowing which controls, in the event that their original consoles had been destroyed, had automatically diverted themselves to the captain's chair and which hadn't. One blessing after another, however, and he managed to activate the bridge emergency ventilation system.
As the smoke quickly cleared, and with a few more dabs at his eyes with a fresh sleevemade rag, Dash was able to make out just how bad that last hit had really been. The entire exchange, short as it had been, was rough enough, but seeing the state of the bridge was something else. Perhaps because it was always hard to see his ship, or any ship, being manhandled by the gods like a child's plaything, or perhaps because it showed just how close he had come to the edge. Regardless of the reason, the bridge of the U.S.S. Meridian was currently a very sore sight.
What had been, just a day earlier, the pristine and polished image of Starfleet diplomacy with the rough edges of Andorian practicality, was now a burned out husk littered with ceiling panels, wiring, and a fire or two.
Slumped over one console just ahead of him was Lieutenant Maksim Grigori. The console was noticeably overloaded and now entirely nonfunctioning, and Dash hoped that the Lieutenant hadn't joined it.
Tossed from one end of the bridge, and now slumped and curled up on the floor near the turbolift, was the young Ensign Mason Marlowe, and things looked far grimmer for him. Between the fact that he'd made a dent in the wall at the point of impact and the fact that there was ghastly scarring on the one side of his face that was actually visible, Dash was sickened to his stomach. Somebody who was only a few years his juniour, possibly, no, very likely, ripped from the world in such a quick instant that it was unlikely he had even known what was happening.
Deciding between the two, Dash stumbled down from his chair and made for the Lieutenant.
He hacked up what must've been at least half a lung and his knees buckled just in time to send him lurching forward into what remained of Ensign Marlowe's seat before he made the few feet distance. The smoke may have been clearing, but his lungs and senses were going to take some more time, it seemed.
Reaching out a hand, Dash gently shook the burly Russian on the shoulder to see if he could rouse him. To his relief, a low groan rumbled out and his tactical officer slowly pushed himself up from the board, looking over at Dash bleary eyed.
"Captain," Was all he managed out before the concussion overtook him and he buried his head in his hands, attempting to massage the pain away. Wordlessly, Dash forced himself up and patted the Lieutenant on the shoulder as he made his way to the rear of the bridge, searching for the only person with actual medical experience aboard. Unfortunately, his troubles were only beginning.
Without warning, the Meridian went silent.
The lighting was gone, leaving the bridge, and the rest of the little ship, to plunge itself into complete and total darkness. There was no longer even the gentle hum of electronics or the engine silently whirring in the background. No beeps, no clicks, no gently flashing schematics on the walls, not even the echolocating sound of the passive sensors. The Meridian was not only silent, she was dead.
Dead in the water, and she was bleeding fast. If the Nyos remained functional in any form, and for a sizeable warship like that there was little reason to believe it didn't, the Meridian would soon fall victim as helpless prey to the bigger fish.
Even the luminous gold of his uniform was almost invisible in the darkness, meaning that Dash would have to search through the rest of the bridge by hand, unless, by some luck, the engineers managed to bring the backup power generators online. Given what he'd last seen of the damage readouts, however, that hope was glim at best.
Tripping over a support beam, Dash fell face first into the remains of what he guessed was the console he had assigned T'Vrias to. It certainly hurt enough to pass for it, jagged edges and all. He couldn't see it to be sure, but Dash was certain he was now bleeding from multiple areas, and they weren't light flows either.
Blast it, where is that ruddy Eksokaisen? I should've never let her stay at that post. Routing all ship power functions through it might've gotten her killed.
Rolling away from the console, he dragged himself forward- as much to see if he could find the doctor's body by hand as for lack of something to pull himself back up. Sweeping aside charred bits of ceiling and scrap warranted him nothing but more scrapes and an ever rising sense of panic.
For a moment, surprising even himself, he found his heart seizing when he could not find T'Vrias, or even a loose feather. In the moment, he told himself it was only because he needed a competent doctor to help him and the Lieutenant get their bearings back. Yet, in a truth he couldn't yet admit to himself then, he knew the reason was far more than that.
Take a phaser and shove it up, He thought to himself before letting out a brief shout of anger and forcing himself to stand up in the darkness.
Why did I have to let her stay at the console? Shield modulation could've gone somewhere else! Ordering people to their deaths is the job of an actual captain, blast it, not someone like me. Why didn't I tell her to move?
The short, last gasp of dislodged wiring briefly illuminated the bridge, allowing Dash to get a better view of the room. On the opposite side, he thought, it appeared as though there was something pink near the wall. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness again, he changed course and attempted to head in that direction.
Why didn't she see it? T'Vrias is smarter than that, why didn't she say something?
He paused, briefly, and quieted those thoughts. Was that breathing he heard, or was that his own? Perhaps the Lieutenant's? He listened again, attempting to drown out the drumming of his heartbeat.
The seconds ticked by.
There! Ragged, hoarse, but it's practically dead ahead.
With arms outstretched, Dash felt his way forward again, bumped into the security railing, bypassed it, and continued. Finally, his boot connected with something that felt far too soft to be a chair or more debris. It also helped that the something began smacking at his leg to let him know he had, in fact, stepped on it. He pulled the doctor back up and did his best to brush her off despite his impaired visibility.
"I can hardly breathe as it is," A shallow voice said in front of him, "I don't need your weight adding to that, Terran."
Even if she couldn't see him, he smiled.
"Good to see you too, Doc, I got worried there for a bit."
"Don't stop worrying yet, Captain," She coughed, sending flecks of blood onto him, "Something hit me, I'm not sure what but I can tell you that it's just a step or two below the pain that comes along with hatchlings."
Dash's heart briefly seized again as the anxiety spiked another adrenaline rush, and he forced himself to steel his nerves against the response. T'Vrias needed a clear head, and currently he was somehow the only one between them. So, he carefully packed his doubts, his anxiety, and the involuntary biological responses to stress into a box, bucked it down the stairs, and put an extra lock on the mental door that held them back.
"Alright, alright," He said with a breath, "I need you to be my eyes for a few minutes, though. I can't see a thing in here."
"Yes, I surmised as much," She replied, steadying herself with a claw on his shoulder, "Watching you fall into the remnants of my station certainly confirmed it, at least."
Carefully threading his arm behind T'Vrias, taking note to hold firmly onto her back so he didn't accidentally loop underneath her wings, he allowed her to shift her weight onto him, slightly picking her up in the process. Slowly, gently, they began to move, T'Vrias acting as the eyes for both of them as they made their way through the shadows.
"We're looking for an emergency toolkit and then, after that, we'll need to find a way to get below into the secondary crew deck to reactivate power to the bridge. Assuming that there's any power left to bring back, that is."
"You're certainly a bastion of optimism, Captain," T'Vrias said as they continued to limp their way forward.
"I'm certain there is, the Soyuz-Class is supposed to take after the early Justice-Class ships, but in terms of power generation they specifically cited the Varrius as their point of inspiration," He cursed briefly as his foot twisted in a scrap heap, then continued forward, "That thing had three shield generators alone, so if they really did look to that one, then we should be fine."
"Oh joy, we're relying on the legacy of a ship that last saw action during my second cycle to see us through, I'm very hopeful now," She quipped sarcastically before making one of the worst hacking sounds Dash had ever heard.
All because somebody looked the other way, and here's where it got me, Dash thought to himself as they reached the opposite wall, T'Vrias guiding his hands towards the toolkit, Beyond out of my league and at the captaincy about twenty years too early. If only… His hand wrapped around the handle and he pulled back, practically yanking it from its fasteners embedded in the wall. With the tools he needed in hand, the truly difficult part of fumbling about in the dark could begin in earnest. Gently, Dash lowered the doctor to the ground and carefully leaned her against the wall. Then, pulling out the emergency hypospray from the kit, he felt along the Eksokaisen's frail and burnt feathering to find the best spot to use it.
A silent hiss broke the relative silence of the room briefly, quickly replaced by Dash rummaging in the toolkit again to find the flashlight. Once he had found it, he turned and began to inspect T'Vrias to see just how bad the damage was. To his chagrin, it was worse than he imagined. Even the usually non-plussed doctor paled when she looked down.
"Well, I'll be," She said hoarsely, "Looks like I might just get my wish."
"Hush now, Doc, you're not lucky enough to reach the end of your last life cycle just yet," Dash replied, inspecting the wound, and regretting just how many of the medical classes he skimped on. After all, a durasteel girder through the side wasn't exactly something taken lightly, even by a seasoned professional.
"Though, just in case I get this wrong, I don't suppose there's ever been a record of an Eksokaisen doing their whole phoenix from the ashes routine a fourth time that you've neglected to tell me about?"
"Despite our appearance, we're rather grounded in everything from our mythologies to our sciences. No luck, Captain," She said with a pained smile.
Feeling along the edges of the entry wound, each push eliciting a grunt or a hiss of air from T'Vrias, Dash tried to get a better idea of just how bad the damage was. Unfortunately, for all her years in medicine, T'Vrias wasn't much help when it came to advising on how to remove the offending shrapnel from her own body. She was much better at telling him which of her ribs were broken and which lung had been punctured, and in how many places, though.
"Now who's the bastion of optimism?" He said grimly as he reached for the numbing generator, hoping that his brute force idea wouldn't end up killing the good doctor, "Lieutenant!" He called out, "I need a hand over here."
Lieutenant Grigori, who had been able to push off the worst of his concussion for the moment, came over to them and knelt down next to them. Hastily, at Dash's command, he removed his red top and bundled it up, ready to halt the flow of blood that was sure to come with the impromptu surgery. His brain was still thumping against the confines of his skull from the concussion, but the bearded Russian was certain he could run on autopilot long enough.
"I don't have to remind you, Captain, that the second this thing is removed I am very likely to bleed out within five minutes at best. So please, gentlemen," She said, still looking away but sparing an eye back to them, "Work fast, because I guarantee you, at my age, I can die much faster."