Posted by Captain Molly Holloway (Chief Intelligence Officer) in Main Sim: Deck 7
Molly tried to keep her head in the game as she jumped over tree roots, leaves, and other low-lying vegetation. The lush tree canopies of the rainforest towered high above her, allowing only a few stray rays of sunshine to light her path. After her… incident… with her training program Molly had found her access to it reduced, an arrangement she had made with the ship’s counselor. So as she ran through her habitual route among the trees, Holloway tried her best not to grumble in annoyance at her current situation.

It was then that the first jolt came, sending Molly flying forwards onto a tree. With a yelp, she braced herself for impact, but the impact never came. Instead, she found herself momentarily weightless staring at the dull grid of an empty holodeck.

Her zero G experience lasted but a split second, before artificial gravity kicking back to life. With the agility and technique of the expertly trained special ops officer that she was, Molly landed lightly on her hands, before rolling forward in a somersault and landing on her hands and knees.

Red alert sirens filled the air as the room lit up with the eerie red glow of the same warning. Something was wrong. Very very wrong.

As Molly got back to her feet and scrambled to get to the door, a new wave of blasts rocked the ship, sending the Intelligence Officer flying backwards, her body blinking out of consciousness as the back of her head violently hit the deck.

It might have been seconds, or maybe a few minutes before Holloway’s eyes opened once again to the red glowing holodeck. The alarms making her head ring. Inside the holodeck, virtually isolated from the outside world, Molly rubbed the back of her head as the world came slowly into focus. Lightheaded, Molly finally got up, and walked as briskly as she could to the door.

On standard power saving measures, the holodeck doors opened only enough for her fingers to side through them and manually open them, but it was enough for the noise from the corridor to fill Molly’s ears. Screams, cries, orders barked over everything else. Pushing the doors open, Holloway walked into the chaos.

It was a hellish sight. People running, bleeding, hurt… others laying on the floor, lifeless, taken too soon simply by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. “What happened?” Molly stopped a young operations ensign, his shirt tainted with so much blood he could be mistaken by a command officer. “Not sure, Ma’am.” Even in her workout clothes, it was clear to the young man who she was. “Hull breaches on several decks. We were thrown out of warp. Multiple injuries and causalities, as well as multiple explosions and fires across the ship… Ma’am? Are you okay? Do you want me to get you to Sickbay?” Molly blinked trying to get her vision back into focus. For a moment she seemed to get out of her daze. “What? No. I’m fine.” Was this just another nightmare? Taking her fingers to the back of her head once more, Holloway noticed the red liquid smeared on the tips of her fingers. She must have cut herself on the fall. “I should get to the Bridge. Thank you Ensign. Dismissed.”

With a polite nod, the young officer ran off. The fog in her vision seemed to be slowly lifting and Molly adjusted the holster of the faithful old Earth pistol she carried with her at all times. As fast as she could, she started making her way back to the Bridge not daring to think about what she would find before she could reach it.

Capt. Holloway, CIO

Being on deck 8, the area outside the holodeck had been spared the worst of the horror that now occupied the lower 15 decks of the Dresden. Still, the flickering panel lights, the half-open doors on emergency power and the littering of dazed and running officers betrayed the seriousness of their situation. At one intersection, the turbolift doors hung ajar, a plasma fire raging in the shaft, contained only by the emergency forcefields that were themselves flickering. The deck shifted, shuddering from aftershocks even more than twenty decks higher. Artificial gravity fluctuated, sometimes heavier, sometimes lighter as engineering teams desperately tried to reroute power from the destroyed EPS grid in the star drive. For some reason, emergency power didn’t seem to be functioning in quite the way it should. Two bodies lay crumpled in the corridor a little further on, blood pooling from the gaping cavity that had once been the head of a red-shirted lieutenant, his uniform scorched, along with the bulkhead above him, the duranium plating bubbled from extreme heat. Another, a little further along was missing most of his left shoulder, his arm scorched and melted a little further along, again with the bulkhead blistered by a sudden heat, scorching around it.

SGM