Posted by Gamemaster Nosferatu (GM) in Main Sim: The Bridge

Posted by Lieutenant Pawl Batario (Chief Engineer) in Main Sim: The Bridge

Posted by Lieutenant Junior Grade John Forster (Chief Weapons Officer) in Main Sim: The Bridge
Posted by… suppressed (9) by the Post Ghost! 👻
Big Snip
Course is locked, Kastarak had said. And Maddox did not respond. Kastarak stood near the helm, not returning to his seat. He waited, as one waits for the second half of a sentence. But the Captain remained still. Not contemplative, but immobile.

Kastarak turned fully now. The captain’s posture was upright, yet without focus. His eyes were fixed not on the viewscreen, nor on the console readouts, but… nowhere. His respiration remained steady. No visible muscular tremor. But the stillness was unnatural, pathological in a way.

Kastarak examined the possibilities in his mind. Could it be cognitive seizure? A dissociative event? Sudden-onset catatonia? Or something more obscure?

Kastarak stepped forward. He moved with the quiet decisiveness of a doctor in triage. He reached to his hip, withdrew the slim grey shell of his medical tricorder. He carried it always, despite not having worked clinically for over a year and a half. He opened it in silence and began the scan. The results came in quickly: Prefrontal disruption, parietal disorganization, elevated synaptic latency in the basal ganglia, and brainwave desynchronization.

The readings were anomalous. They were not consistent with any known neurological pathology, nor were they indicative of stroke or seizure. There was no evidence of neurotoxin or vascular event. Kastarak needed not make a diagnosis, Sickbay could do those assessments. But what was clear what that Maddox was not a man fit to command.

Kastarak noticed his own heart rate had increased. He allowed the sensation to inform his clarity, not cloud it. The emotion was not fear. It was duty, and the cost of acting without precedent.

He looked at the Captain one final time, then spoke with precision.

“I hereby relieve Captain Rafe Maddox of duty for reasons of medical disability. Computer, enter this event into the ship’s log, effective immediately.”

The computer acknowledged in its neutral tone. The act was now written into the history of the vessel, to be saved into posterity.

Kastarak paused. He stood now not as a subordinate or physician, but once more as acting commanding officer. He weighed the ship’s needs. Pawl – oh Pawl… – was already in Sickbay. Dr Symar and Nurse Sutalo were on duty. Symar was capable, though Kastarak had his misgivings – Symar remained dysregulated, yet he remained a capable chief medical officer, for now.... Sutalo had served with him since his first day on the Chernov four years and three months ago. Sutalo could manage a crisis with limited resources.

Still, this went against Kastarak’s instinct. His place should be at Maddox’s side. The neurophysiological readings required analysis, immediate correlation with Sickbay systems. Kastarak’s fingers itched to calibrate a cortical probe. It could be psychiatric, neuropsychiatric, psychotic, schizophrenic – and Kastarak was the ship expert on these matters–––– Kastarak noticed his racing thoughts. He quietened them. He had already left the post of physician once. His return to it now, while the ship spun toward an anomaly of unknown scale, would constitute a failure. The crew had already lost one commanding officer. Now two, within the hour. The chaos required containment, not multiplication.

The greater ethical priority was containment of that chaos. Emotional contagion spreads faster than subspace interference. The crew needed a locus of order. His discomfort was irrelevant.

He pressed the communicator.

“Bridge to Sickbay. Emergency transport, one patient: Captain Maddox. Initiate neurostabilization protocol on receipt. Tricorder data transmitting now.”

The blue shimmer of the transport beam began to glow, and Maddox disappeared.

Kastarak stood still for one breath. Then he exhaled, turned to face the command chair, and sat down.

The seat was warm. Again.

“Helm, go into warp now.”

He looked down to the armrest. Taggart’s coffee cup remained there, half-drunk. Kastarak decided to keep it. He needed it there.

Kastarak, Lt Cdr
Acting Commanding Officer; First Officer and Navigations Officer

Pawl took an extra minute to refocus his mind after the visit to the medical center to help alleviate people’s concerns about his problems. He calmly walked to the lift as the doors opened for him to enter an empty car. As he grabbed a handle and turned it. “Bridge, please.” Pawl commanded softly. Moments later, the lift started moving to the bridge level. He thought about what had happened to the captain. ~” He was one of the people who understood me, he thought to himself.”~ ( not trying to project his thought, but Kasarak might pick up on it, and others that might be telepathic.) As the lift changed directions as another car came by, and the lift started heading up now. Pawl did not think anything of it; the lift was doing as it should. Moments later, the lift stopped. Pawl sighed hard and shook off the odd thoughts as the doors opened to the bridge. “Captain, I have returned from sickbay. Can I resume my station?” Pawl asked, not realizing the new captain was not there. “My apologies, Sir. I did not realize the new captain was not here now.” Pawl said quickly. Pawl was feeling out of sorts again. ~” Are people appearing and disappearing going to be a regular thing???”~ Pawl was feeling worried.

[[Lt ]] [[Pawl Batario]]
[[Chief_Engineer]] [[Uss_Chernov]]

[[Lt ]] [[Pawl Batario]]
[[Chief_Engineer]] [[Uss_Chernov]]

“Captain..” began Matthew. “If you need to talk or anything, I’ll be right here. I’m going over the data and making sure we have everything for this mission and we’re good so far. I have the devalued dialed in so when we arrive, we should be getting data from them very quickly.”

Lieutenant Matthew Quigley COO

Ever since the arrival of the Narada to this universe, there had been, in Kastarak’s view, an illogical application of the title captain for anyone who was commanding officer. Kastarak agreed that under the rules of Starfleet, he was now the acting commanding officer, but his rank was not captain, it was lieutenant commander. Yet, here on the bridge, both Batario and Quigley had called him that – or had they? Had they perhaps referred to the absence of one?

In any case, Kastarak could not respond to that.

“Thank you, Mr Quigley,” he simply said, looking forward to the incoming data.

At Batario’s confusion, Kastarak decided to speak to the Bridge, and the ship again. He pressed the all-ship communicator button.

“All hands, this is acting commanding officer Kastarak. Once again, in the matter of few hours, I have resumed command of this ship. Captain Maddox is undergoing treatment in Sickbay. The mission continues as ordered.”

He then turned to Pawl.

“How are you, Mr Batario?” There was some glimmer of concern in Kastarak’s eye, betraying the usual neutral tone of his voice.

Kastarak, Lt Cdr
Acting Commanding Officer; First Officer and Navigations Officer

“I am doing fine Captain.” Pawl said to him calmly. “There is just a lot of changes that came very quickly, that’s all.” Pawl said with a small smile.

[[Lt ]] [[Pawl Batario]]
[[Chief_Engineer]] [[Uss_Chernov]]

At the cruising speed of Warp 6 it would take the Chernov 16 days to traverse the 17 light-years to the Veridian Rift. ( I will shorten it, of course:) As the Chernov neared the area of the Rift, they passed both Epislon Hersulls: a bright white sequence star used as a navigational beacon and the deep listening Post of Hekros-6. Then the bright expanse of the Veridian Expanse was before them.

The Rift was not where space should have ended.

It began as a shimmer on long-range sensors, a distortion of light that bent away from its own center. Then the Rift unfolded, like a wound in the fabric of reality, bleeding gravimetric currents into the void. The Chernov drifted closer under impulse, its sensors straining against the interference.

Filaments of energy lashed outward, vanishing into nothingness. Shadows flickered within, never resolving into form. Science logs noted tachyon fluctuations, harmonic distortions, and faint traces of bio-neutrino signatures—the suggestion of life, or something imitating it.

On the Bridge, silence stretched. What lay beyond was not simply space. It was an invitation—or a warning.

Nosferatu
Your Darkest Nightmare

Ooc: so we’ve fast forwarded sixteen days? Just need to get my bearings straight before I work on my post :)

OOC: Yup
Kastarak, Lt Cdr
Acting Commanding Officer; First Officer and Navigations Officer

OOC: hey can the GM message me I will like to ask you a question if that is ok

Lt. John Forster (CWO)

OOC: Will do, John!

Nosferatu
Your Darkest Nightmare

Sixteen days later, the ship had reached its intended destination. It had been sixteen days with Kastarak in command. Things were somewhat quiet on the ship. Not much happened during a continuous warp travel. Kastarak could sense some boredom among the crew, intermixed with the emotions of loss of their two captains. Maddox was still on board, still unresponsive in Sickbay, but seemingly still alive. His status was stable, and the priority of the mission meant that they had no time to transfer Maddox elsewhere. After all, his situation was stable. That being the case, as a physician at heart, Kastarak did not have much hope in any recovery. Madox would likely never be in command again, anywhere. And for now, Kastarak remained in acting command.

He reflected on his career on the Chernov. He began as a newly graduated ensign in Sickbay, specialized later in psychiatry and took on counselling roles before he was ushered in to the position of first officer – all overseen by his pater familias, captain Taggart. At times, he had of course led the ship, a few hours here, a few hours there, as was always the case, but always with Taggart at an arm’s reach. Now, sixteen days had passed since Taggart’s deposal (probably he was now sailing across the Mediterranean as he had always dreamt about) and the one-hour stint of captain Maddox. He had no idea what to do. He had diagnosed himself, somewhat tongue-in-cheek if he weren’t Vulcan, with imposter syndrome (and he wondered if other Vulcans ever suffered from that). He fulfilled his duty as best as he could, but he would find himself longing back to Sickbay, treating patients, meeting them, reviewing their case files… He would check in on Maddox once in a while, reviewing the charts, but he felt alien in Sickbay, wearing the golden shirt of command rather than the blue of science and medical.

Now, on the bridge, they had reached their destination. It was an eerie view. It reminded him of the destruction of Vulcan – how light disappeared into nothingness. He felt in his gut a sudden re-activation of those memories and their firesome emotions, all of which he was forced to suppress.

He looked at the readings on his pad.

“Shields up,” he said, “That is a precautionary measure. We do not know what might appear now.”

Kastarak, Lt Cdr
Acting Commanding Officer; First Officer and Navigations Officer