Search and rescue

Posted on Sun Feb 18th, 2024 @ 9:07am by Lieutenant Commander Thriss Kla'ren & Lieutenant Commander Aurora Vali & Lieutenant Sarah Wilson & Senior Chief Petty Officer Ronson Mitchell
Edited on on Mon Feb 19th, 2024 @ 1:34pm

Mission: Character Development
Location: Quarks bar

Dr Sarah Wilson wiped the sweat from her brow as she bent over one of the injured Bajorans from the explosions. Events such as this stretched everyone and their skills to the limit, including her own medical skills. Meanwhile smoke continued to billow from where Quarks used to stand proud on the promenade.

Aurora had been helping the walking wounded, she’d given it as long as she could handle before letting Savar know that she needed to take a break. Sitting further along the promenade with a glass of water in her hand she could only watch as the clean up operation continued.

[Right Hand Jefferies Tube next to Quark’s]

Kit’s world was a mixture of steaking, dirty pink and swirling black smoke. Her head amp barely cutting the smoke. She made out one of the cut off valves and felt the panel, no warmth, good she thought. She pried open the panel. It was a jumble of conduits and wiring, a chaotic mixture of standard Starfleet and what ever in hell the Cardassian engineer’s used to move fluids and energy throughout the station. She saw a valve handle and cranked it counterclockwise, a green light flashed then it turned to a flashing yellow. She looked back to see how the other members of her team were doing. The two on the hose were struggling a little but seamed to be managing in at least keeping the flames at bay. The other three were working on opening the vent panels, smoke moving at them like spectral beings and being sucked out the vents. Good she thought moving forward.
A garbled message came across her commbadge =/\=…Jefferies…loss of…rerouting…be…electrical and…=/\=.

Ronson meanwhile was trying to focus on calming his breathing against the rising panic. The flames were drawing closer and began licking at the timber chair that lay in prices next to him.

[Right Hand Jefferies Tube next to Quark’s]

Kit hit her commbadge =/\=Chief Petty Officer Serrano go back and get us some damn repeaters to boost signal. Place one every ten meters as we go.=/\= she ordered =/\=Aye, aye sir.=/\= replied Serrano as he began to move back towards the Jefferies tune opening. He just made it to the entrance when he heard Ensign Thenis =/\=Down and brace, electro plasma discharge!=/\= He saw an officer just a few feet away drinking some water; he leapt at her covering her with his body. A gout of greenish white and blue electrical ball blew out of the Jefferies tube.

More Klaxon's began to sound =/\=Attention, Attention loss of gravity and electrical power plants in sectors Papa Alpha through Papa Echo. Attention, Attention loss of gravity and electrical power plants in sectors Papa Alpha through Papa Echo.=/\=

Out on the promenade the lights flickered and dimmed for a moment before returning in a dull red tone. "I need better light here!" Dr Wilson shouted over the din as she attempted to save a patron who'd been impaled by a bottle of kanar.

“Coming right up” Aurora grabbed a torch from nearby bringing it over to Sarah, shining it where she needed it. “This is going from bad to worse, we don’t need power problems amongst everything else.”

"You got that right" Sarah grumbled as she resumed her efforts to save the patron. The bottle was lodged firmly in the man's chest and he was at risk of bleeding out. It was touch and go for a few moments before they turned the tide.

As it turned out, there wasn't much damage assessment Thriss could do just yet with the amount of flames there was. The Chief of Security's words about who was missing rang in his head. His first job was to save anyone he could and control the damage. The damage assessment could wait until people were safe.

Currently, Thriss was covering a tight Jefferies tube situated underneath the deck where Quark's was located. It was a little bit tough, given he had a heavy fire extinguisher in one hand and his lamp and tricorder in the other and with both hands being occupied, it didn't make crawling easy.

Suddenly, the Sunfire's Chief Engineer heard a beep from his tricorder. Uncomfortably, he turned to look at the device, which showed a faint life sign just above him. He looked ahead and noticed an access hatch above to access the bar from the Jefferies tube. Thriss began slowly moving towards the hatch.

Arriving at the access point, he pulled the level and pushed it upward, which was proving to be difficult. Quickly scanning to make sure no-one was directly on the hatch, he turned the fire extinguisher so the bottom was facing up and hit it hard twice against the hatch to force it open. It worked. The hatch swung open with haste.

Before moving upwards onto the deck of the Bar, he called loudly. "Commander Kla'ren of the Sunfire, call out if you can hear my voice!"

"Thriss? That you?" Ronson called as he heard the familiar voice and breathed a sigh of relief. He looked around and tried to find the origin of the voice. Thick smoke still filled the space, causing him to cough.

Recognizing the voice, he knew it was Ronson. He also knew he needed to act fast. He set the fire extinguisher, tricorder, and lamp on the deck above him and climbed up the short ladder and emerged in the thick of the flames in Quarks. He stood up and picked up the tools. Checking the tricorder, he located Ronson's life sign dead ahead of him.

"Ronson, it's me" he called out as he began to move towards the Chief, while making a path through the cackling flames with his fire extinguisher.

"Chief...I thought I was gonna be toast. Not good toast, burnt toast without the butter or the jam" Ronson retorted as he tried yet again to free himself "I'm stuck, my legs are pinned" he looked at Thriss with hope. "Tell me you've got a laser cutter in that bag of tricks of yours?"

Thriss felt his pockets and cursed. All he had on him was his badge and all of the gear he was using for damage control. None of it included a laser cutter. "I don't Chief, but I will find a way to get you out of here" he said as he began looking for a way to get Ronson unstuck.

Ronson's smile faded a little as he realised that this may not be a simple 5 minute miracle rescue. He looked around fervently, trying to find something they could use as a lever. "Chief, there's the handrail..could you use it to lever up the staircase just a few centimetres?" He pointed to the long slightly curved piece of metal that had broken free.

Thriss looked at the handrail which was laying on the floor. "I could. Are you able to move yourself out?" He asked while picking up the heavy piece of metal. He leveraged the rail to slid under the staircase until it was more or less locked in place.

"If the choice is between that and toast, I'll wriggle any day of the week" Ronson braces himself and tried to begin to lever himself backwards, stopping only when the pressure on his legs was too much. "Just a little more Chief"

Thriss nodded and pushed more of his weight to push down on the handrail. Struggling, he slowing leveraged the staircase.

Ronson winced as he pulled backwards with all of his might, ignoring the pain the movement caused as the staircase shifted just enough for him to release his legs.

"Got it Chief" he shouted as he was finally free, eager to get out of the smoke filled bar.

Chief Petty Officer Serrano picked himself up from the floor, his once shiny and reflective fire suit was smeared in black and pink. Hitting his commbadge he tried to raise any member of the fireteam he was with, nothing but static. Crap. he thought as he looked about for a senior officer, seeing two women working on an individual he staggered over to them. “Sorry to interrupt sirs, but do your commbadges work, it would appear the fire team I was with in Jefferies tube seventy-one has lost all communications….” and then he fell backwards, foam rising from his mouth and micro seizure activity flexing his face.

“Shit!!” Aurora quickly moved across to the Chief, doing her best to roll him on his side to stop him from choking. “Sarah what do you want me to do!?”

Sarah shoved a medical tricorder into Aurora's hands she closed the arterial bleed she had been working on. "Read me the key indicators" She said swiftly as she worked as fast as she could to move onto the new patient.

Aurora nodded, running a scan as quickly as she could. “Blood pressure is through the roof, readings indicate exposure to a toxin of some sort, that and severe smoke inhalation. We ideally need to know what he’s been exposed to!”

"Run a toxicity scan" Sarah indicates as she looked over from her own patient. "Inject him with 20cc of trioxin, it'll help with the swelling in the throat and the smoke inhalation." She was infinitely grateful for Aurora's assistance.

"Toxicity scan, right" Aurora nodded grabbing a hypo first and injecting the 20cc of trioxin. "Trioxin is in, scan says..." she paused to take a reading. "Moderately high levels of a toxin, but fortunately not enough to be a leathal dose."

"Good, means he's not gonna die on us right away. Make a record of what the toxin was and keep monitoring him, the trioxin should have helped his breathing and be stabilising his vitals" Sarah called as she finally handed her own patient over to a waiting gurney.

Aurora nodded. “Understood Sarah” she kept a close eye on the readouts.

"You're doing a great job Aurora" Sarah soothed as she moved on to her next patient. "If he's stable, move on to the next one"

Aurora nodded. Moving on she wondered just how something like this could have happened. It was a scary thought given that the Sunfire crew could have been in the bar at the time, herself and Savar included. It made a chill run down her spine at the thought of anything happening to her family

[Jefferies Tube 71, AKA Right Hand Jefferies Tube next to Quark’s]

Just as Chief Petty Officer Serrano was making it out of the Jefferies tube Kit saw through the black smoke the huge greenish white and blue electro plasma discharge. It’s electrical arms extending from the center; tracing and licking along the Jefferies tubes walls, floor and ceiling. Kit had only a few moments before it reached her and the fire fighting team. She issued her command, knowing it most likely would be a failure =/\=Down and brace, electro plasma discharge!=/\= Ensign Kitiuas Thenis could feel the electro plasma as it burned tiny holes into her protective suit. Her whole body arched and twitched. She could taste copper and chlorophyll as her mouth became flood with blood from her biting her tongue and cheeks. Her eyes were a kaleidoscope of color. Her whole world was nothing but extreme pain. She felt a burning sensation where her commbadge used to be. Finally the Thousand Gods took pity on her and she faded out to black.

The teammate behind Kit fated slightly better and had a working communicator. "Man down man down, emergency beamout!"

With the power fluctuations it would be a tall ask, but somewhere whatever or whomever was looking over Kit decided enough was enough. Few moments later the Orion materialized on front of Sarah and her waiting medical team.

Sarah and Aurora moved in quickly, stabilizing Kit as best as they could. They used a potent combination of pain killers, antibiotics and neural stabilizers initially, before beginning to heal the worst of the burns.

TBC