[snip]

Caelian groaned as he hauled himself out of the black and into the pulsing red of consciousness. He had to blink a few times before his vision cleared. Sitting up brought a wave of revulsion that pulled from his toes, and he flopped onto his side to quell it. Was the ship rocking? Something damp clung to the back of his head, and probing fingers sent pain crackling along his skull. His palm glistened in the crimson flare of the emergency lights. Every sensation was agony, every thought a struggle. The last he remembered the world leapt forward in an actinic flash, movement without motion, before the world lunged to swallow him.

“Weir to Jackson,” he grunted, slapping his comm badge. It squelched angrily at him in reply. “Weir to Bridge.”

Comm systems must be down, he grumbled, hauling himself to his feet. All around him others were likewise picking themselves up or were being helped to their feet by luckier peers. The chief seemed unharmed; that was good. Dragging himself to a nearby console, he teased the controls to life and squinted at the readout. The Ark Angel appeared derelict but intact, operating at minimal power with every system overwhelmed. He couldn’t tell over the pounding in his ears, but Caelian swore they were no longer moving. That suited his stomach just fine.

They must have been bombarded with more energy than they’d prepared for. Caelian tried to sift through his memories of the sensor readings before they were flung wherever they’d ended up, but it was like sand in his fingers. Though hazed in emergency lights it appeared there was no lasting damage to the ship, no serious damage or compromised systems. That suited him just fine, since it could have gone to hell in the best of his projections. He would never admit it, but it had truly come down to luck in the end. He was just glad that the ship had been designed to handle power loads as it had. If they hadn’t directed the flow as they had or provided a measure of safety…

“L’Nel.”

The thought struck him to his core, sent a chill through his bones. Before he could stop himself, Caelian had scooped up his toolkit and was halfway into a jefferies tube. He shouted something he hoped was intelligible over his shoulder before he hauled the panel shut behind him, then began to crawl. Clanking, cursing, battering, and bleeding he scrambled through the dimly-lit corridors and access panels. He wasn’t even aware of what deck he was on or the junction he just passed. Caelian felt a desperate pull on his heart and he tumbled along after it.

An eternal instant later he was grasping desperately at the door to the mission module where the Vulcan and his team had set up the interlink. The hatch’s bulk protested, hissed a fraction open. He strained, pulled, and it gave another inch. Each breath seared his lungs, and his bones felt brittle enough to snap, but he grit his teeth and roared to the heavens until it gave. Gasping, Caelian wrenched himself through the gap, hoping that his friend was still alive.
—Caelian Weir, Engineer—

Weir entered the general purpose suite 1 to find it awash in flame with the fire suppression system offline, panels sparked and flared in the middle with the Vulcan bloodied but slumped over the console surrounded by high intensity flames. Thankfully like on all major decks emergency manual controls by an extinguisher were on hand.

Once Weir grabbed said extinguisher and got moving he was just in time to blow out the most pressing flame points to save his friend from more than cursory light burns.

GM CockRoach