Of Light and Sound

Posted on Mon Dec 14th, 2015 @ 7:29pm by

Mission: First Strike
Location: USS Manoora, Engineering

Space was supposed to be quiet. In the entire time that Misuu had served aboard vessels, she'd never heard much noise associated with that outside of the ship, just the ships themselves. All of their hums and rattles, clicks and whirs. Docking clamps made this muffled thump that you more felt than heard. Airlocks likewise had a 'feeling' of suction, but not so much of a sound. Space was supposed to be quiet except for the hum of the decks under your feet and the thum-thrum-thum of the engine's heartbeat echoing through engineering. Or the quiet chatter of your shipmates. It should be quiet.. Almost zen..

In that time you knew where you were and what you were supposed to do. Rote and habit and duty rosters led you through your day. The lights were bright and clear. Your crewmates were calm. There was a quiet air of purpose and belonging when it was any other day. Any day but today.

Once the yellow alert had qued up the energy had began to shift. In Misuu's observation there was a noticeable edge to her fellows: a general state of alertness and preparedness that was a much calmer mantra than she'd observed from the marines. Instead of chest thumping and declaring what utter bad asses they were, the engineering crew was putting on their best professional faces. She could imagine the quiet inner reassurances of 'I am competent. I am ready. I can do this' was being said over and over again in a slew of different voices even as they all stood straight and purposeful.

She, herself, had squared her shoulders and given her own inner monologue run worth of jokes to take the tension off and personal back patting. Confident that it would all be alright, she'd taken up her spot at her assigned station and stood at the ready. She'd already played out in her mind how this would run and what it'd be like, but it wasn't. And it didn't.

Come red alert the shrieking klaxons and the floor bathed in angry scarlet light turned engineering into a different place. The loss of the main lights didn't help. The back up lights could hardly cast enough lux to battle the angry red so light became dark and dark became black and anything in between was a battle of suggested shape and shadow. At some point the ship began to shudder and shake and all of those familiar sounds, the hums and thrums and rattles changed. Acrid smoke rolled in from somewhere and panels sparked. Engineering had become an alien place with no discernible flow that made sense. It was just chaos.

Someone had called her name and thrust a toolkit in her hands, yelling for her to haul it to upper engineering and something about about fire control systems but most of it was lost in the shrieking on the klaxons. No- no that was someone screaming as their panels burst in a bloom of sparks an shards of glass to the left. That had been what it was. Not the klaxons. It'd been Jeff. Right. Misuu had been jostled in the rush to grab Jeff and move him to the side- to the side!- then start working on the panel. And the other was back to barking orders at Misuu again. FIRE CONTROL!

Off like a shot, Misuu had started running. She knew that hall, she knew the lift. Neither felt like they were known places, but she made herself believe it as she scurried as fast as she could to upper engineering. Unlike the wide, yawning ceilings of main engineering with the middle devoted entirely to the warp core, upper engineering was almost claustrophobic with all of its cubbies and tables and recessed panels and wall banks. Only the top of the warp core was present there and it was whining eerily. More smoke was rolling there and the smell of something awfully akin to burned flesh. The few engineers rushing here and there said nothing about it: many of them were yelling back and forth as they ran to fix this then that.

Coughing, the tiny woman hurried to the table panel devoted to nothing but fire control systems and found it unmanned and ruined. Shards of transparisteel littered the carpet all around in and the man huddled under the lip of it, hiding. No, dead: no more responsive than the ruined table above him. The shape of his face- outlined in stark relief of red light- was dotted with odd angles too straight and precise to be natural. Too shiny as they glinted in the light.

Shrinking back, Misuu skirted the warp core's catwalk and found another pool table still functioning to commandeer. She wiped some stinging liquid off its surface with her sleeve and started rerouting the systems over one at a time, activating fans and suppressors and extinguishers that had failed with the loss of the master system. Her fingers flew over input screens blue then violet then blue then red then blue then green all awash in angry light that tinted it badly. Code after code spilled out of her as another set of hands joined in her attempt to get the everything back online.

"I've got it.." the man yelled sharply over the klaxons. He glared at her when she didn't immediately move. "I've got it!" When she still didn't stop working, he grabbed at her hand. "Your arm! Go to sickbay! You got it started- I can finish it!"

Stunned, Misuu looked at the sleeve of her uniform- the same that she'd used to mop up the fluid- and found the fabric had withered and hardened where it hadn't been eaten away. Her arm beneath was raw and welted angrily, raw red even against the red lights. She'd hardly felt it, being too busy trying to breathe and do as fast as she could. Now that she noticed it, it was shrieking in pain. Still her gut was torn between staying put and going to sickbay. "Just go!" he yelled again and this time Misuu did. She trundled out of engineering into the foreign seeming hall with all of its shrieking banshee lights and demon shadows dancing along the walls.