Posted by Ensign Elemirre Serinde (Engineering Officer) in Main Sim - Bridge

Posted by Vice Admiral CockRoach (GM) in Main Sim - Bridge
[snip]

Naomi listened to the answer over the communications. Her head tilted enough to keep tabs on the hostile still struggling in the net. She had put as much distance between them as possible, not trusting the materials to hold forever. She had already suffered enough head trauma and she didn’t need more.

When the pistol fired, she flinched at the sound. Globs of blood poured from the creature until its death throes finished. Thankfully, she had made sure not to be in the trajectory of the exit wound.

When the gravity came on, she lowered like the rest. Her knees bent and she caught her balance easy enough. Unlike the others, she checked herself over for goop.

“Somehow, I managed to avoid it.” Her eyes widened at the mess left.

“Umm, Captain, should I collect samples of the creature’s blood? I’m not sure it’s helpful now, but it might be later.” Her voice held some hesitation in what she said, but the intentions to be useful were there.

-Lt. Naomi D. Locke, Sci

Marceau, on his way out with the other goop covered officers, nodded. “Yes, Lieutenant. Just in case it ends up being useful.”

With everyone back on their feet NE Guy came over and as Naomi spoke he did too. “..I can get a sample prepped for review later. I too doubt anything is gleaned from it but you never know. having one in deep freeze would help us refine internal sensors if we ever have something like this happen again..” He explained.

Looking at the weapons console, it was quite clear the targeting and firing controls were shot and would require quite some time to fully repair, they would even need to meet up with a cargo ship to get the repair parts or return to Earth directly for repairs. In the meantime any weapon orders to target and fire would have to be done from the armory. Tactical scanners for detecting ships and the like were damaged on the console but parts were on hand to replace those given an hour or two.

GM CockRoach

“Exactly.” Naomi agreed as she grabbed a tube and a spatula, stepping closer to the CO.

She gently scrapped off a dangling glob and plopped it into the tube. Sealing it, she began to help the NE collect other samples to shortly analyze.

Nkosenye stood at the back conferring with the Armory officers. How someone that large had managed to come onto the bridge without being acknowledged before was a mystery, but he was making notes on on a pad and recording who had been exposed and who was clear.

Nkosenye, AC

El got onto the lift with the Lt who was pretty .. gooey. El wrinkled her nose with the smell and wondered how the Lt was taking it. It wasn’t quite as bad (to her) as that Worker Bee smell from a month ago that she still was reminded of now and again if only in effigy by now. “Not your normal shift,” she commented to her, speaking of the day on a new world and now this. She glimpsed Lt Green making a disgusted face as he looked at the console and kept in mind what she was supposed to do before returning to the bridge. By now this was likely news all over the ship; gossip like this traveled faster than data on an opti-cable.

Helena shook her head, “No, not it is not. Even after all my years in the fleet, I can say this is one of the most not normal shifts ever.” Given the amount of destruction and life just one of those things took, Helena thought she might prefer to go head to head with Naussicans again. “Glad you managed to avoid the goo.” Helena breathed shallowly through her mouth. The stink was pretty bad.

“It pays to be small,” she said with a soft smile.

Meanwhile Green was growing more unhappy. How could a creature like that do so much damage with its nails?! On glass and metal! His mother’s cat had a propensity to shred an old chair that she kept patiently upholstering, but that was cloth. He started to have concerns about parts availability in this detail and, while waiting, stopped to make a note that the ship’s inventory should have a replacement set of such sensitive controls. To be taken out so easily with no repair? There should be some jury rigging possible. He’d get the team on that; they were too far out to start going hat in hand because of a big alien bug.
El and Green

Cmdr. Grace - XO/CSO

Marceau followed the others onto the lift. An NE helped Ensign Conlon to get him to Sickbay.

~ Capt Renault

Helena moved all the way to the back of the lift so there was room to move Conlon safely and so he was the first off the lift and into sickbay. He had managed to avoid getting hit and she didn’t want to drip on him.

Laursen, pilot

Once everyone entered the lift, Naomi chuckled. “I’m so glad I didn’t get that stuff on me. It reeks.”

-Lt. Naomi D. Locke, Sci

A few minutes later three NE service techs came onto the bridge with haz mat suits on. Seeing the mess they groaned a bit, “..Urgh that is a horrible stench! What happened?” One asked as they got to work cautiously.

GM CockRoach

El’s first stop was to collect her uniform at the decontamination area and don it. Her beliefs did not set her up in any way as a prude or wilting flower if that was the applicable term. Everything had happened so quickly and once emerging on the bridge with the beast she had felt her fight and flight reflexes powering up along with her adrenaline. She had been ready to fight yet had seen the flash of fear in Lt Green’s eyes as he swung at the creature. That had been the first moment of vulnerability she had seen in the Lt. What had been more startling to her was Helena’s actions in shooting the wounded beast. El’s principles were such that life was sacred. While the creature was deadly and dangerous still it grated that Helena would simply shoot it like that at the slim justification that the Vulcans recommended it. It changed how El looked at the pilot who was capable of such a swift, deadly act.

Changed, El moved to Warrant Office Jackson’s quarters. He answered after a minute, shaving cream smeared over half his face and a cream towel draped over his shoulders. The end of it had SS Whitestar embroidered in blue. Curiously he had a ball cap on that had SS Saratoga on it. At his furrowed brow El said, “Lt Green needs us on the bridge for a fix. A … creature made a mess of the tactical panel.” Tyler Jackson shifted the toothpick that had been on one side of his mouth to the other. “You’re not messing with me, are you Ensign? The only creature I know of is Walters’ dog.” El shook her head. “Stowaway,” she said. “Six legs. Killed two crew. Samuels in decon.” The last came out as a whisper and Jackson’s toothpick stopped moving. “I’ll be right there.”

El took that minute to find a comms and call to Ensign Gagarin to tell him to bring up Rick with him with a Crawler to search the vents. In the remaining seconds, El thought that that duo was the worst to pull up with Sasha’s paranoia and Rick’s own fears. Perhaps this may help them with that. WO Jackson’s quarters was on C Deck. As they wound down to F Deck to collect tools, El explained the damage to him and the creature. “Never known anything like that,” he said in a tone that had a drawl to it. He’d told someone once in the lounge that that was a good Southern accent. Emerson Fawkes, from British ‘upper crust’ as someone had said, thought the accent was ‘provincial’.

They made it to the bridge just ahead of Sasha and Rick, but behind the clean up crew. Making their way around the maintenance crew they came to Lt Green who pulled himself up to his feet. “Board will need replacing as will this console top. Whatever it did, it knocked out the targeting and firing controls. I don’t know if we have parts but that’s for you two to figure out. Scanners are damaged but may be able to be fixed.”

He saw Rick and Sasha coming onto the bridge. “Carry on, then,” he said and Jackson beat El to the reply, her own ‘Aye aye, sir’ being a soft echo. Green moved past them toward the two, noting too that Walters had brought the dog with him. He was going to get himself into trouble if he kept that up, and not only from him.

Meanwhile, Jackson said, “Ensign, I’ll look at the connections and boards underneath. Y’all have the finer fingers so work that control console off and we can birddog what we have to work with.” El glanced over at Lt Green who had turned and looked at them, and her in particular, with a speculating eye. El had done something wrong and she hadn’t even started. Sighing, she pulled out a magnetic driver; with the clear consoles the screws keeping it down were under it, and she took care to not damage it and the membrane under it any more than it was. Still even El could see that one area of damage was right over the targeting and firing controls and they looked blackened around the membrane.

El, WO Jackson, Ens Gagarin, PO Walters ..

Over by the comm’s station NE Paul spoke, “..So do we want to try to look into this comm signal more? Also we got that video processed and scans for this natives below the ground if anyone wants to review those fully too?” he said.

GM CockRoach

As El and Jackson fussed with the tactical console, El found herself splitting her attention between that and what NE Paul was saying. Comms signal? Natives? She had heard of them when she was down there but not seen anything remotely. Only the big cats. She was still perplexed by the drop off of the power and wanted to look at that issue; if they couldn’t sustain power past a certain level in drilling then extracting minerals no matter how rich would be impossible shy of open pit mining - something that was very frowned upon in this day and age. But then even if they could dig, would it not still affect any machinery that descended that far? Maybe.
“Have you reset the board, Ensign?” WO Jackson asked, bringing her back to the present. It was in her hand and he knew it. She snapped back to the now and seated it. The wiring was .. bad. “The board is in,” she said after a minute but the cabling that runs to the console LED is shot. Hang on,” she said, wriggling in farther and shining a light. “No, no good. The creature caused the leads to fry at the console membrane. That whole membrane needs to be changed out if we hope to send commands through to the armory controls.”

Meanwhile, Sasha had the Crawler out and, with a small tablet control pad was running it through a diagnostic. “Camera good, remote response good, sound good, sensors good.” He looked toward Rick and the dog of whom the latter, in Sasha’s estimation was looking at the crawler as something that was inferior to it. Rick was petting the dog in between making small adjustments to the crawler. It looked like something Sasha put together with blocks when he was a child. And as ugly. “Set it up,” he said to Rick who picked up the unit. It was smaller than the dog but it’s six spider like legs went out wider - though they were adjustable. And probably heavier, Sasha thought.

Rick picked it up and looked at Nessa. He thought the dog could do a better job but if there was another of them creatures in there the dog would be toast and they were looking for damage. Reaching up he slipped the Crawler unit into the broken duct and slid it in. “Set, sir,” he said to Sasha who brought up the control screen. Setting it down on an unused console he made room for Rick to be there too. “Take notes on damages,” he said. The unit would log it and record it but having notes would at least give them a starting point. Rick pulled out his own tablet unit and prepared to make notes. “And forward ..” Sasha said as his fingers moved on the control pad and set the Crawler in motion.
- Sasha and Rick

Naomi aided in collecting samples best she could. She pulled out the swabs and ran it down the length, collecting what sample she could. Her hand lowered into the tube before snapping it shut. Satisfied it was secure, she passed it off.

Once she finished her section, she caught the mention of the comm signal. She moved in closer as she listened to the conversation.

Sadly. technology repair wasn’t her best skill.

-Lt. Naomi D. Locke, Sci