Team DS9 pt4

Posted on Wed Sep 24th, 2025 @ 11:28pm by Commander Jennifer Baldric & Commander Dean House & Ensign Kitiuas Thenis ie-Jia'anKahr & Lieutenant Commander Bonnie "Bon-Bon" Durnell

1,907 words; about a 10 minute read

Mission: For Bajor!
Location: DS9

In the middle of the confusion, Commander House had ended up finding the Mirror Coy after making sure Baldric was alive. In one way, it would have been a spectical of a fight between the two. The movements only have been seen between the sparks that were showering the room. There was no real way to tell who was winning. Which was in itself interesting given Dean's history for head long taking on groups of opponents and even if injured, coming out on top at the end. It shouldn't have taken that long to deal with just one person. After the damage to the room had started to set in there was the loud thud of what had to have been a support beam.

Commander Jennifer Baldric was hot, not in the traditionally considered sense, although Some thought that way of her as well, but in the fact that she was in a small metal room, which was on fire. Flames roared around her, suppressed only by the rudimentary fire suppression system that cascaded a shower flame retardant mixed with water over the entire area. She tried to move but found her limbs heavy, evidence of the concussion she had received earlier. Looking around she saw Dean's shield and tried to locate him in the thick smoke.

In the room there was a loud stream of curses in Orion. Kit finished her stream of curses “Uktas bo urndo. If I get my hands on that Gisjacheh Nausicaan, I will cut off all his fingers and toes and shove them down his ugly mouth.” As she looked about the chaos of the room. She had several cuts and burns on her body from the exploding power relays. She was in an extremely foul and evil mood.

Alarms could be heard outside, and the calamity of a damage control team barrelling towards them was briefly hopeful. Baldric looked around, blinking back the smoke-induced tears that streamed down her face. Air, they needed fresh cool air more than anything. With the fire out a thick, heavy smoke filled the room, making it hard to breathe or see. Jen inched her way forward towards where she had last seen Dean, hearing Kit swearing in the background.

"You okay Kit?" She called as loudly as she could, feeling her way forward.

Kit slammed her fist against one of the emergency access panels and reached in, grabbing a rebreather emergency mask. One benefit of having nosocomephobia was that she was not part of the emergency medical response teams, but the fire fighting control teams; therefore, she was required to know where the emergency rebreathers were, as well as the fire fighting equipment.

Kit heard a voice in the smoke-filled room, in the tin can voice, she responded, "Just bloody peachy. How many injured?"
She made the inquiry as she reached in for more rebreather masks as well as emergency flashlights. She found a personal emergency probe, she slid it over her left hand and fastened it to her wrist. She then activated it, and a bright flashing strobe started. She then flicked on one of the flashlights.

"Don't know" Baldric coughed in the thick smoke. She was still crawling towards Dean's shield and was feeling her way forward. "Can you see anything?" She could see his body on the floor in front of her.

"Dean!"

Kit panned the flashlight around in the smoke filled room, she saw a shadowy figure crawling along the floor. She made her way over to the figure, pain flaring in her back and thighs. In a tin sounding voice she looked down on Commander Baldric “Here Commander, you will need this. To much of this smoke and fire suppressant is bad for the lungs.” Kit held out a rebreather mask. “Also you will find the thermal and infrared abilities help navigate this crap well enough.”

Kit then began searching the room, green blood starting to make her clothing stick to her in a grotesquely sensual way. The light flashing over Commander House. Again in the tin sounding voice, Kit proclaimed "Well crap."

Baldric shoved the rebreather over her mouth a d nose and instantly felt the precious oxygen and nitrogen mix flood into her lungs. She hurried over to Dean, seeing a large bulkhead resting across his body. He wasn't moving, and she couldn't see if he was breathing or not.

The corridor outside the relay center was already choking with smoke, alarms wailing in that sharp, piercing rhythm that always meant time was running out. The emergency team moved fast, gear clattering, boots striking hard against the deck. The glow ahead was unnatural—orange and angry, flickering through the seams of the bulkhead door like some furious beast trapped just beyond. The team leader’s voice cut through the din: “Three inside. We go now.” No hesitation. Just a sharp nod, and the team fell into practiced rhythm.

The doors hissed open and the fire leapt at them, heat slamming into their suits as if the room itself wanted to drive them back. The smoke hit them first, thick and acrid, burning eyes and throats even through the rebreathers. The bulkhead doors fought them, warped by the explosion, but the team forced them open, heat blasting outward like a forge. The relay center was a hellscape—sparks cascading from the shattered conduits, flame crawling across the ceiling like a living thing.

Through the chaos they found them. One medic grabbed Baldric under the arms, another braced Kit, dragging both toward the door, foam spray hissing in arcs to push back the flames. Overhead, a power junction blew with a thundercrack, showering molten sparks. The room groaned, bulkheads straining, as though the station itself was about to fold inward.

And then, Dean. Half-buried under a collapsed support, his uniform scorched, breath rattling shallow as a dying engine. The team leader cursed, dropping to his knees, hands scrabbling at the twisted metal pinning him. Too heavy. Too hot. One rescuer pulled out a cutter, another braced for leverage, sparks flying against firelight. Every second stretched, the inferno closing in, alarms shrieking as if mocking their struggle. Dean’s chest hitched, once, twice—then stilled, and the team screamed at him, refusing to let go, dragging steel and fire aside with raw desperation.

The team, now outside out of harms way, waited on baited breath for the last nail to fall. Bonnie, having felt the blast and still close, had rushed back to the scene. She watched as Baldric and Kit were pulled from the smoke and flames. She knelt down next to Kit, eyes searching her for an answer to the words that wouldn't leave her throat. Her hands fluttered uselessly over Kit’s shoulder, over the blood, over nothing at all—searching for something to do, something to fix. Her throat locked around the questions battering inside her chest, and all she could manage was a choked whisper: “Dean?”

Kit shook her head and managed to whisper “Bulkhead pinned him.” Then she started coughing up greenish froth. She then rasped out “Well crap; that isn’t good.” As she looked at the froth and fell back into sweet oblivion.

Kit’s weight sagged suddenly, her body going limp in Bonnie’s arms. For one wild heartbeat Bonnie thought she’d just fainted, but then the coughing tore through her, wet and bubbling, and a spray of blood flecked Bonnie’s dress. Panic clawed at her throat. She pressed her hand against Kit’s wound, too hard, not hard enough, she didn’t know, her fingers slipping on the heat-slick skin. “Stay with me, c’mon, stay with me, please,” she stammered, voice breaking, eyes darting between Kit’s face and the medics who were too slow, too far away.

Her mind screamed Dean’s still in there, but her body refused to let go of Kit, as though if she just held on tight enough, she could anchor the Orion to life. Every second stretched taut, her own breath ragged in her ears, words tumbling out without thought—apologies, promises, desperate fragments. She could feel the fire’s heat still radiating from the bulkhead, smell the smoke clinging to her skin, but all she saw was Kit slipping away and the knowledge that Dean might already be gone.

Some minutes later Dean was dragged out by the three man rescue team, his uniform scorched and a melted mark across his back where the bulkhead and bith burnt and pinned him. Baldric was able to move and hurried over, dropping to her knees and listening for his breathing. There wasn't any.

"Med team?" It wasn't a question, more a where the hell where they? Old school resus techniques were still proven to be somewhat effective, despite the damage team trying to pull her off. "He's not gone yet!" She shouted back to them, counting the compressions then pinching his nose and opening his airway.

"Don't you dare die on me Dean House" she ordered after she'd forced air into his lungs and was back on the compressions. Tears rolled down her soot streaked face as she did so. "You can't die, I need you"

It seemed so far, she wasn't going to get her order listened to as Dean still laid there, seemingly lifeless. His heart only beating to life with each compression that Baldric gave to his chest. The Medical team had to get her out of the way for them to be able to try and do more than CPR seemed to be doing.

Baldric reluctantly moved to the side when the medical team arrived, allowing them space to work whilst still remaining close. She knelt near his head, hand on his cheek, tears dropping onto his forehead. "Don't you dare die Dean" she whispered, kissing his forehead as the medical team worked.

As the med team lifted Kit onto a hover bed, Bonnie backed up away from the scene and leaned on the wall at a corner junction. She watched as they lifted Dean onto a bed of his own, her hand over her mouth as she tried to hide that she was welling up and flowing free with her tears. She didn't want to believe it, and was in denial, while on her face was simple shock. He, after all, was the strong one, the endurable, indomitable one.

"Oh, shut up. You're pathetic, weak. Crying over a man. Just sad." It was a voice, whispered from behind, familiar, like hearing herself in a mirror. "Keep your eyes front and say nothing."

Keeping her hand over her mouth Bonnie couldn't help herself, "Who are you? What do you want?" She asked in a whisper.

There was a devious chuckle before she answered, "Who do you think could write and install a virus only you could remove so easily? The rest, that's for us to know and you to find out. But ask yourself, who would stand to gain here from what we've done? Then you'll have at least the first piece. And for the sake of your people, pull yourself together. You're a mess."

A moment of silence passed, Bonnie turned and found the hall was empty. She wiped her tears and began to wonder if she had imagined the conversation. The hover beds moved past her on their way to Medical, snapping her out of her own thoughts.

TBC

 

RSS Feed