Alex stopped stroking her chin when she suddenly realized that her hand was sticky with blood. She beckoned a med kit–carrying petty officer over.
"I'm sorry, ma'am. I didn't know you were in this bad shape," he began as he set his kit on the deck and opened it.
"I'm fine," she rasped out. "There are others who need you more than I do. I just want something to wipe my hands off with." She held out her hands, indicating the gore covering them.
"No problem, ma'am. Me and Jones did what we could for everyone, but we're no corpsmen. We need to get these folks to sick bay, or at the very least get a real corpsman up here to them." He shrugged his shoulders while glancing around, then turned his attention back to Alex. "So, let me get you cleaned up a bit and see about stopping that bleeding."
"Bleeding?" Alex, so covered in blood, did not even realize that some of it was her own.
"Yes, ma'am. You've got a nasty cut above your right eye, but I won't know about anything else until I get some of that blood cleaned up." He applied saline to some gauze, then reached out to Alex's hands and began wiping them off. "Okay. Now, I'm sorry, ma'am, but this is going to hurt." He replaced the soiled gauze with a clean piece and moved his hand toward her face, but stopped short, hesitant.
"That's okay, Sebastian." She could see his surprise that she knew his first name. "Just go ahead and do it. I think this face can take a bit more abuse." She tried to smile, but grimaced instead as he began his ministrations. As he cleared the blood clotting her nostrils, the smell of burning plastic and charred flesh assaulted her. She nearly gagged at the stench, which caused the petty officer to jerk his hand back.
"Sorry, ma'am. I'm trying my best, but I really don't know what I'm doing. Last first-aid class I had was boot camp." He gave her a wan, apologetic smile.
"You're doing fine—just a momentary shock. Please, continue." He followed her orders, finished cleaning the soot and blood from her face, put a pair of butterfly bandages across the gash above her right eye, and stepped back.
"There you go, ma'am. Best I can do with what we've got." He bent to gather up his kit. As he stood again, he nodded to Alex and then withdrew back to his station.
Alex felt a little better, but was still in pain and exhausted. She surveyed her command deck, and her spirits fell at what she saw. Too many of her command crew were dead or wounded, still seated at their stations or sprawled across the deck. She knew that this scene was being repeated throughout the ship. Alex continued to check the status of her ship from what she could pull from her panels. Lost in thought as a litany of destruction scrolled by on her screens, she did not notice the person coming up on her blind side.
"Ma'am?" a soft Hispanic-accented voice said in her right ear, causing Alex to jump, then gasp in pain. Alex turned her head to face the speaker and saw Chief Mendez standing beside her command chair.
"Yes, Chief, what have you got for me?" she said wearily as the pain subsided. Mendez looked up from the data pad she was carrying and saw her captain's face wincing as she took stock of the damage.
"The battle nets are a total write-off, but I've got partial internal comms back on line. Nothing fancy—only one channel at a time." The small dark-skinned woman looked down shamefacedly. "Sorry, ma'am. It's the best I can do with what I've got up here. Most of the comm station is just gone." Her head came up, and Alex could see the tears forming in her soft brown eyes.
"Good job, Chief." Alex tried to put a soothing tone in her voice, but her smoke-seared throat turned it into a harsh rasp. "Best news I've heard all day. Now, I know it's asking the impossible, but see what you can do about external comms." She gave the weary chief a small smile and nodded her approval as Mendez smiled back before heading back to her station.
Now that she had limited communications, she punched up a connection to her chief engineer. "Heron?" Alex half whispered into her mike, afraid she would not get an answer from her oldest friend. Static hissed on the channel a moment before a raw voice came over the earpiece.
"Alex, is that you?"
"Yeah, it's me." The relief in her voice was evident. "How are things down there?"
"Well, ma'am, it ain't pretty. Reactor three is out of commission—mag bottle is fused shut. Reactor one went critical just before we jumped, but the emergency ejection system kicked it out before total containment loss. Took most of the reactor room's staff with it as well." Heron's cool litany changed with her last statement, and Alex could hear the bitterness in her voice. "Reactor two's in emergency shutdown, but we're trying to restart now. Hull integrity is not good, but I think she'll hold together long enough for a relief ship to get to us. Weapons are pretty much gone, but I'm guessing we're home, so we won't need them at the moment. Environmental is in bad shape, but backups are working. We have fires throughout the ship, but I've got teams chasing them down now. Also, the galley that Dr. Swartz commandeered for additional space is cut off. It's still airtight, but the passageway is open to space. Two teams are there now, trying to get emergency patches in place. The flight deck is open to vacuum, and I have not been able to get anyone to it to check for survivors or assess the damage. There's just too much damage in the bow that's blocking our way, but we're working on that. That's all I have now. My teams are still reporting in, but it's hell having to communicate with runners."
"Very well, Commander." Thank God she had agreed to the doctor's request for emergency generators for the galley, or everyone in there would be dead right now. "Get that passageway sealed, and get the reactor back on line—we're going like a bat out of hell, and we need to slow down to make lunar orbit. Also, the lift to the command deck is out of commission, and the entrance to the service passage is buried in debris. So I need the lift repaired ASAP. We've got wounded up here, and we need to get them some help." She began to rub her chin again as she continued to issue orders. "Next, I want you to personally find a lifeboat with a working transmitter. I know they are normally just used for automated beacons, but those transmitters are powerful, so I want you to swap out the standard beacon and send a transmission on a continual loop, but do not launch the lifeboat." Alex began to copy and encrypt Admiral Stevens' assessment of what happened at Groombridge 34 while she continued to speak. "See what you can do about external comms and sensors—we're flying blind up here. We only have the one channel for internal comms right now, so I am handing it over to you for damage-control coordination, and I've just sent you the message I want transmitted. Any questions?"
"No, ma'am. I'll take care of it and keep you updated as I can. Engineering out." The line cut back to static as Alex ran the damage assessment over again in her mind, seeing not only the present but also another time and place. Feeling fatigue and the ghosts of her past pulling at her, she ignored them both. The Fenris and her crew were hurt, and hurt bad, with all of the damage not even known yet. She was surprised that any of them had even survived to make it to the wall. She yearned to know the status of her wounded, but knew that this was not the time to disturb the medical staff. Her battle might be over, but theirs would continue for hours to come.
* * *
The lift hatch groaned open and two blood-spattered corpsmen rushed onto the command deck, immediately setting to work attending to the wounded. Following them out of the lift, a slower-moving Commander Denton stepped onto the command deck. The chief engineer looked around wearily, taking in the chaos and destruction surrounding her before stepping down toward the captain. Her torn and scorched hazard suit hung open, the hood thrown back. Even while wearing the suit, she had managed to singe her hair and smudge streaks of soot across her face. But as bad as she knew she looked, she thought that Alex looked worse, her face pale and sweating, twisted into an ugly grimace. Heron knew from that quick glance that her friend was in extreme pain. As she stepped up beside the command chair, her gaze fell on the blackened figure of Commander Higgins lying on the deck, a corpsman bent over him, hands frantically trying to save his life. Breath catching in her throat, she turned her
sorrowful gaze back to her captain. Greg Higgins was a friend of hers, but he was nowhere near as close a friend to her as he was to the captain. Now that Heron stood beside her friend, she could see that the pain disfiguring Alex's face was not entirely caused by her physical injuries. Heron set a comforting hand on her friend's shoulder, speaking softly.
"Captain?"
"What?" Alex said distractedly, seemingly startled by both the voice and physical contact, and turned her head. "Oh, Heron, how'd you get up here?" Heron watched Alex's one good eye staring at her owlishly, wide and uncomprehending.
"I've got some of the lifts working again, and brought a med team with me on the way up here, ma'am," she explained patiently, gesturing toward the corpsman kneeling beside Commander Higgins. Alex was definitely not tracking at the moment, and Heron couldn't tell if it was from the shock and pain of her injuries, if she was stunned by their current situation, or if she was lost in thought, trying to figure out what they were going to do next. She hoped it was the latter. But regardless of the reason, having the captain sitting in the middle of this kind of situation and looking to the world as if she had spaced out, well, that fell under the heading of "a very bad thing." She shook Alex lightly, hoping to snap her back to the here and now.
* * *
Alex, feeling herself being shaken, wondered if the Fenris had fallen under attack yet again. Adrenaline spiked in her system at that thought, and she bolted straight up in her command chair. The sudden action elicited a hiss of pain from her lips. As reality came crashing back down on her, Alex's unfocused gaze sharpened, and she finally saw the engineer standing in front of her.
"Heron!" She half shouted, startling Commander Denton back a step. "Oh, thank God you're here—that means the lifts are working again. We need to get the wounded down to sick bay, now. Some of them are in a bad way. Including Greg."
"I saw, ma'am." Heron nodded, a flash of relief flowing across her face as Alex came back to the land of the living. "There are corpsmen here now, and litter bearers are on the way up here to start transferring the wounded down to sick bay."
"Good. What's our status? Did you get reactor two up and running? Do we have any power, besides emergency batteries?"
"Yes, ma'am. Reactor two is up and running, but only at twenty percent, and that's pushing it. The mag bottle has microfractures running along the surface, and the stability is iffy at best." Sliding out of her command chair at that report, Alex began limping her way over to the navigation console with Heron in tow, listening to the engineer's report. Raising her hand to cut the engineer off when she got to the blood-soaked chair of the navigation station, she stood staring down at it for a handful of heartbeats. Even though she could vaguely remember sitting at this very station, updating jump calculations for their escape with her hands covered in Lieutenant Commander Samuels' blood, she could not force herself into that seat again. Shivering once, she leaned forward past the chair, laying her hands on the sticky console. Setting the P-Drive to the best speed possible with her stiffly moving fingers, she ordered the Fenris to begin to slow its mad rush into the heart of the Sol system. Stepping back, absently wiping her hands on her stained uniform jacket, she looked around at what remained of her command deck, searching. Looking over Heron's shoulder, her gaze settled on what she was looking for, and she called out.
"Sebastian."
Reaching for his med kit, the petty officer looked up from the sensor console he was helping Ensign Green attempt to repair. Seeing the captain looking intently at him with her one good eye, he rose wearily to his feet, kit in hand.
"Ma'am?" He looked exhausted, but determined.
"Could you come here for a moment, please? I have a job for you." Alex watched as Sebastian picked his way across the deck, stepping over bits of burnt metal, plastic, and, unfortunately, flesh, to stop in front of her. "I need you to wipe down this station then remain here and keep an eye on our course and speed. We're flying blind, and I need someone to make sure we don't veer off course or overexert the engines. Thanks for volunteering." She managed a weak smile at that.
"Not a problem, ma'am. I'm on it," Sebastian said as he braced to attention, returning her smile. Pulling bottles and gauze from his kit while stepping past both women, he looked down, face blanching. Alex waited until he had settled into his grim task before turning to face Heron.
"Now, Commander, please continue. How are the rest of your efforts going?" she asked, beginning to walk back to her command chair. Standing, even for that short amount of time, was causing her injuries to flare to a new level of pain.
"Well, Captain, it took a bit of work, but we've finally got the passageway to the galley sealed off and repressurized." They stopped their slow trek across the command deck as half a dozen battle-weary ratings burst from the lift, moving toward the injured at the directions of the attending corpsmen. Under their watchful eyes, the ratings lifted the wounded onto their stretchers and began moving back toward the hatch with their precious cargo. With the first of the wounded being evacuated from the carnage pit of the command deck, the exhausted corpsmen shuffled on to new patients. There would be no relaxing for them for quite some time.
"Good, good," Alex said as they finally reached the command chair. She lowered herself into it, feeling a twinge of pain from broken ribs grating together. "What's the status of our air locks? Please tell me we have at least one functioning."
"Well, ma'am, there I can give you some good news," Heron said, her face wearing a slight smile. "We've got two functioning air locks, both starboard side aft, which is good, 'cause that's the only part of the ship I can be sure of structural integrity."
"What about the landing bay? Any chances of landing shuttles there, and, if so, can we reach the hangar deck?"
"We can land maybe one shuttle, but that's all, and it won't do us any good."
"Explain," Alex said while punching information from her chief engineer's report into her panels, building as complete a picture as she could. The information would be vital for the crew of the relief ship. Knowing not only where they could go, and the best routes to get there, but where they would need to concentrate their efforts for search and rescues would be vitally important for recovering any of her people who might be trapped.
"The hangar deck is completely cut off as of right now. We have no communication with anyone that might still be in there. Plus, our remaining Valkyries are still sitting in the landing bay, the lifts are not working, and we have no way to clear them out of the way to land any rescue shuttles." Heron concluded her report while Alex's hands continued to update her information.
"Okay, here is what I need from your DC teams right now," Alex began, looking up directly into Heron's eyes. "First, get to that hangar deck. We need to find out what the situation is there. And once you're there, find some way of getting those Valkyries back inside. Second, I need paths from our working air locks to our wounded cleared and marked. We're going to want to move them as soon as possible, and I want it done as quickly and efficiently as possible. Finally, I need external comms up. I don't care what kind it is, but I need to alert command as to the situation." Finishing, Alex continued to stare into her friend's eyes, waiting for confirmation that her orders were understood.
"Understood. With your permission, Captain, I'll get right on it." Watching her friend standing at attention in front of her, Alex was grateful for her presence on the Fenris. There was no better engineer that she knew of.
"Very good, Commander," Alex said just as formally. "Permission granted. Carry on."
"Carry on, aye, aye, ma'am." A large toothy smile split the engineer's face as she responded, did an about-face, and marched to the comms panel, intent on getting the job done.
Watching the retreating back of her chief engineer, Alex could not discern the reason for the look of relief that had passed over Heron's face at her orders. She watched as Heron murmured orders into her headset while settling into the chair at the communications console and pulling tools
from her suit pockets. Alex snapped back from her reverie at Ensign Green's shout.
"New contact!"
Turning to the ensign, her voice rasped out across the command deck. "Type and status?"
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