Emergency Survival Protocols Active

Posted on Fri Aug 14th, 2026 @ 5:34pm by Commander Rosa Coy

2,994 words; about a 15 minute read

Mission: Pirates!
Location: USS Sunfire - Shuttlebay
Timeline: Current

Rosa released the harness. For several seconds she remained where she was, seated in the sideways cockpit with one hand braced against the console and the other hanging uselessly at her side. Her body had not yet accepted that the movement had stopped. Somewhere beyond the fractured hull, something continued to groan beneath the strain, a long metallic complaint that rose and fell through the ruined shuttle bay. Smoke drifted past the cockpit windows in slow, uncertain ribbons. Emergency lighting flickered through the haze, painting the wreckage in alternating pulses of red and darkness.

She drew a breath and pain answered. It came from her shoulder first, then her ribs, then a hot line along her forehead where blood had dried against her temple. Her left knee protested when she shifted her weight. None of it mattered enough to keep her seated. She had survived, that was what mattered now, though it brought little comfort.

Rosa pushed herself free of the pilot's seat and caught the edge of the console when the deck tilted beneath her. The artificial gravity had returned, but it had returned unevenly. Every few seconds the floor seemed to hesitate beneath her boots before deciding which direction was down. She waited for it to settle, then climbed through the side of the cockpit and lowered herself onto what had once been the deck.

Her boots touched metal, and she stood upright. The shuttle bay opened around her like the inside of a broken machine. For a moment she could not understand what she was seeing.

The great bay, that had always seemed impossibly large, was now a maze of twisted structures and fractured deck plating. Several shuttles had vanished completely, leaving open sections where their berths had been. Others had been thrown sideways and driven into one another with such force that their hulls had folded together. A shuttle had struck the blast doors hard enough to bury its nose beneath the reinforced frame. Another rested upside down against a support structure, its landing struts still extended as though it had simply been parked there by someone who had forgotten which way was up.

Fire burned in three places. A ruptured conduit spat sparks across the deck. A section of an EPS manifold had caught fire near the overhead maintenance gantry, and somewhere deeper in the bay an engine compartment continued to burn with a low blue-white flame. The smoke carried the smell of scorched circuitry, burned wiring, coolant, and something else Rosa recognized before she allowed herself to name it. Blood.

Her training took over before grief could. “Computer,” she called. The response returned broken and distorted through the damaged speakers.

“Primary computer functions unavailable. Emergency survival protocols active.”

Rosa closed her eyes for half a second. That was enough. “Report.”

“Shuttle bay pressure eighty-three percent stabilized. Atmospheric containment compromised in sectors four through seven. Emergency forcefields active. Structural integrity compromised. Fire suppression operating at thirty-eight percent. Life-support capacity reduced.”

"Survivors?”

There was a pause. “Unable to determine.”

Rosa opened her eyes. The answer frightened her more than a number would have. She stepped forward only a few steps. Her first few strides were uncertain. Pain pulled at her with every movement, but her body gradually remembered how to function. She kept one hand against the nearest bulkhead whenever the deck shifted and began moving through the wreckage.

“Anyone who can hear me, respond.” Her voice carried strangely through the ruined bay. Nothing answered. She passed the first shuttle. Its canopy had shattered inward. The cockpit was empty. “Anyone?”

Still nothing. She moved toward the next. A hand protruded from beneath a section of collapsed equipment. Rosa dropped to one knee. “Hey. Hey, can you hear me?” The fingers moved. Relief struck so sharply that it almost became another kind of pain. “I've got you.”

The crewman beneath the debris tried to speak, but only a wet cough came out. Rosa looked at the wreckage above him and immediately understood that she could not lift it herself.

“Computer. Medical emergency. One survivor, trapped beneath structural debris. I need a site assessment.”

“Unable to assess.”

“Of course you are.” She looked around.  The emergency protocols were already running in the back of her mind. Establish command. Assess hazards. Preserve life. Find shelter. Establish communications. Identify viable evacuation routes. She had taught versions of those procedures to cadets. Now the ship was teaching them back to her.

“Stay with me,” she told the trapped crewman. “I'm going to find  help.” She stood and looked deeper into the bay.

Rosa paused, listening again through the static and collapsing noise of the bay. At first there was nothing, only the ship’s dying systems and the distant groan of stressed metal. Then, faintly, a reply cut through, a weak emergency ping on a tricorder channel, followed by a second. She keyed into the frequency, forcing the damaged relay to amplify her own signal. “This is Commander Rosa Coy. If you can hear me, please respond.”

The silence broke. One voice answered, then another, fragmented, overlapping, uncertain. The ship’s internal network, though damaged, was still partially routing distress signals to her tricorder. As Rosa moved, she began to pick up more responses, each one giving her an approximate location, a fragment of survival. What had been silence became a scattered chorus of life, and she started marking positions, directing those who could move toward her signal.

“Everyone who can walk, I need you to move toward the eastern bulkhead. Stay clear of damaged craft and exposed conduits. If you find someone alive, bring them with you. If you cannot move them, mark their location.” Her voice was stronger now.

People began answering. At first it was only one voice. Then another. A mechanic emerged from beneath an overturned equipment cart with blood running down one side of his face. Two flight technicians stumbled out from behind a collapsed shuttle. A young officer crawled from beneath a console, one arm held tightly against her chest.

They looked toward Rosa. Not because she had announced herself as their leader. Because someone had to be one. “Keep moving,” she told them. “Get to the eastern bulkhead. We will regroup there.”

One of the mechanics stopped beside her. “Commander, the main bay doors are gone.”

Rosa looked toward the far end of the chamber. The blast doors had not merely failed. They had been torn apart, leaving a twisted opening into darkness.

“That's not our exit,” she said.

The mechanic swallowed. “No.”

Rosa looked upward. The bay's emergency systems had isolated sections of the ship, but the damage had created a patchwork of forcefields and sealed compartments. The obvious routes were gone. The ones remaining were likely dangerous.

Azri's presence stirred quietly within her. Do not follow the path that appears easiest. Rosa looked toward the eastern bulkhead. Look for the path that still holds structure.

Hendrixi's voice came next, stripped of its usual melody. And listen.

Rosa frowned. “What?”

Stop looking, and listen.

She stood very still. The bay groaned around her. Fire crackled. A damaged power conduit hissed. Somewhere beneath the wreckage, something dripped. Then she heard it. A faint mechanical hum. Almost lost beneath the noise. Rosa turned toward the sound. Her eyes moved across the bay until they found a section of wall that appeared intact.

“Maintenance access hatch,” she said.

The mechanic beside her looked at the wall. “That conduit?”

“No. Behind it.” She crossed the bay as quickly as her injuries allowed. A manual access panel had been partially buried beneath debris. Rosa dropped beside it and tore away the damaged cover. Behind it was a narrow emergency passage. The corridor beyond was dark. But it was intact. “That's our way out.”

The mechanic stared into the opening. “Where does it lead?”

Rosa checked the damaged schematic on her tricorder. “Secondary maintenance spine. It should connect to the auxiliary operations deck.”

“Should?”

Rosa looked at him. “Right now, I'm going to accept should.”

They began moving. One survivor became three. Three became seven. Then eleven. Rosa kept counting. She counted heads whenever they crossed another section of wreckage. She counted again whenever someone disappeared from view. She counted whenever someone stumbled and needed assistance. Twelve.

She stopped. “That's everyone?”

A young flight technician looked back toward the ruined bay. “There were more. There has to be more.”

Rosa knew. She could feel the weight of every empty berth behind her. Every missing voice. Every person who had been standing beside a shuttle moments before the ship came apart. She looked toward the wreckage and for one terrible second she considered going back.

Coy's voice was quiet. You cannot save everyone by dying with them.

Rosa's jaw tightened. “I know.”

Coy answered from somewhere deeper. Then survive.

She turned toward the passage. The group followed.  They moved through the narrow maintenance corridor in silence, stepping over ruptured conduits and crawling beneath twisted support braces. Rosa went first. She tested every section of flooring before trusting it with her weight. When the corridor narrowed, she helped the injured through. When someone froze, she stopped and waited. When the ship shuddered around them, she placed herself between the younger crew members and the exposed machinery without thinking about it.

The Starfleet survival protocols continued to unfold inside her mind. 

Move.
Assess.
Adapt.
Survive.

The corridor eventually opened into a small auxiliary access chamber. The door on the far side had survived. Rosa approached it and pressed the control. Nothing happened. She tried again. Still nothing. “Manual release.” The panel opened. Inside was a mechanical override.

Rosa wrapped both hands around the lever and pulled. Pain exploded through her injured shoulder. She gritted her teeth and pulled harder. The door released with a violent metallic snap. Cool air rushed through the opening.

The survivors stared as they looked beyond the door into another section of the ship. It was damaged, and dark, yet still alive. Rosa stepped through first and then stopped as she crossed onto the auxiliary deck, where, beyond a fractured viewport, she could see the remains of the shuttle operations area, most of it gone.

But one berth remained. One shuttle sat inside it, untouched. Its hull was intact. Its canopy was whole. Its landing struts were locked into place. Emergency lights reflected faintly across its polished surface.

Rosa stared at it. She recognized that silhouette. The red markings along the hull seemed almost impossible against the wreckage surrounding it. the “Redbird.” The word left her mouth as barely more than a breath. The shuttle waited exactly where she had left it. The universe had taken almost everything else. Somehow, impossibly, it had left her a way to fly.

Rosa turned toward the survivors. “Twelve of us,” she said. The mechanic looked at the shuttle, then back at her. “Can it carry that many?”

Rosa looked at the Redbird again. Her hand found the blood drying at her temple. “Today it will.” She walked toward the shuttle. Behind her, the damaged Sunfire groaned through the darkness, still breaking, still burning, still refusing to die.

Rosa placed her hand against the Redbird's hull. She allowed herself to breathe. Then she looked toward the cockpit. “Come on,” she whispered.

The Redbird waited. Salvation waited beyond.

---

Rosa opened the shuttle hatch and climbed inside. The familiar interior of the Redbird felt almost unreal beneath her hands. The consoles were dark. The pilot's seat was exactly where she had left it. A small collection of personal items still rested in the recessed compartment beside the navigation display, untouched by the violence that had torn apart everything around it.

For a moment she simply stood there. Then training took over again. “Get them aboard,” she called. The survivors began filing through the hatch. The injured came first. Rosa helped one flight technician into the rear compartment, then another, carefully guiding them into the available seats and securing the restraints. The mechanic with blood running down his face climbed aboard next, followed by the others, each person carrying some combination of pain, shock, and disbelief.

There was no room for ceremony. There was only room for survival. Rosa climbed into the cockpit and lowered herself into the pilot's seat. Pain flaring through her shoulder as she settled into the restraints, but she ignored it and placed both hands on the controls.

Her fingers moved across the console, activating the startup commands. The shuttle woke beneath her touch. One system after another came online. Displays illuminated. Environmental controls stabilized. The familiar quiet vibration of the impulse engines coarsed beneath her feet. The navigation computer initialized with a soft chime that seemed almost absurdly normal in the middle of the wreckage.

Rosa closed her eyes for half a second, then engaged the engines. The Redbird lifted from its berth. Slowly. There was no room for the confident acceleration she normally favored. The shuttle rose only a few meters above the deck, hovering while Rosa brought the damaged bay into view through the cockpit canopy.

The shuttle bay continued to collapse around them. A section of overhead structure gave way somewhere behind the Redbird, crashing onto the deck with enough force to send a tremor through the shuttle. Several of the survivors cried out. Rosa tightened her grip on the controls and held the craft steady.

“Easy,” she murmured. The Redbird moved forward. A burning shuttle blocked part of the path. Rosa angled around it, keeping the clearance painfully close. Sparks fell from above and scattered across the canopy. A damaged support beam shifted as they passed beneath it, and Rosa waited until it settled before continuing.

The bay had become something unrecognizable. Where there had once been ordered rows of shuttles, there were now fires, twisted hulls, ruptured conduits, and gaps where sections of the ship simply no longer existed. The deck dropped away ahead of them, revealing darkness beyond the remaining structure.

Rosa kept the Redbird low.

The shuttle's landing lights swept across the wreckage as she moved toward the surviving forward section of the bay. The access aperture ahead was narrow, but it remained open. She reduced power further. The Redbird slipped through the tight space.

For several seconds there was nothing beneath them but the blackness of space. Then Rosa eased the nose upward. The shuttle cleared the hull. The survivors behind her fell silent. Rosa did not speak. She simply flew. The Redbird drifted away from the Sunfire until the damaged starship filled the canopy.

Her breath caught in the spall space in the back of her throat. She had seen the wreckage from inside. She had felt the ship come apart beneath her. But seeing it from the outside was something else entirely.

The Sunfire tumbled slowly through space, her once-clean silhouette broken by enormous sections of missing armor and exposed internal structure. One nacelle was gone. The remaining nacelle hung at an ugly angle against its damaged pylon. Fires burned in scattered compartments where atmosphere still remained, tiny points of orange and white against the black.

Hull breaches opened into darkness. Sections of the ship that had always seemed permanent were simply absent. Rosa brought the Redbird around the bow. The movement was slow enough that the survivors could see it too. No one spoke.

Rosa's eyes moved over the wreckage, searching automatically for anything that might indicate additional survivors. Escape pods. Shuttles. Emergency beacons. Anything.

Her instruments began filling with contacts. One. Then another. Then several more. Rosa adjusted the sensor display and frowned. Four ships had moved into position around the crippled Sunfire.

The Defiant was holding station off the port side, its weapons systems quiet but ready. The *Bristol had taken position farther aft, its tractor systems already extending toward the damaged vessel. Two other ships had spread themselves around the wreck, creating a protective perimeter.

She brought the Redbird around the forward quarter and the bridge came into view. For a moment she did not understand what she was seeing. The main viewscreen was gone. Not just damaged. Gone.

The forward section of the bridge had been opened directly to space, held together only by emergency forcefields that shimmered faintly across the enormous breach. The interior beyond them was dark, scattered with emergency lighting and the occasional spark from a damaged console.

Rosa reduced thrust until the Redbird was barely moving. She brought the shuttle closer. Twenty meters. Ten. Five. She stopped with the nose of the Redbird less than a meter from the damaged bridge.

“Holding position,” she said quietly. The shuttle's maneuvering thrusters whispered. Rosa switched on the forward illumination. Powerful beams washed across the bridge. The light moved through the ruined interior.

She saw consoles. She saw debris. She saw people. Alive. Her breath stopped. The bridge crew had turned toward the light.

For several seconds Rosa simply stared at them through the canopy. Then she saw Jenna. Alive. Her heart jumped so violently that the pain in her chest almost made her gasp.

Jenna was standing among the wreckage, one hand braced against a damaged console. Her hair was disheveled. There was blood somewhere along her face. She looked exhausted and furious and completely, impossibly alive. Rosa's fingers tightened around the flight controls.

Behind her, someone whispered, “Commander?”

Rosa did not answer immediately. She reached for her comm badge and pressed her fingers against it. “Commander Coy to Sunfire.”

Her voice carried through the shuttle, steady despite everything still moving inside her. She looked directly at Jenna through the open bridge. “This is the Flyer Redbird.” She took in a breath, “We stand ready to assist.”

TBC

 

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