05-05-2025, 02:34 AM
==Let me preface this by saying I'm sorry for a really long post==
The hallway hissed with dying heat. Smoke clung to the walls, crawling sluggishly over scorched bulkheads and shattered ceiling plates. Leo stepped back from the now spent fire extinguisher in his hands. Its once-weighty form now light, releasing only a few dying puffs of inert gas. A long, high-pitched wheeze signaled its final breath. He looked down at it, then let it fall to the deck with a dull metallic clatter.
The standard orange flames were out. The plasma fire, robbed of the conduit's plasma stream, had weakened, but not died. It still licked at twisted hull supports with hungry green tongues, casting small but still shifting shadows on the corridor walls. Yet it was manageable. Contained. Almost quiet.
A flicker of motion to his left caught Leo’s eye. Cassidy emerged from the thick gloom like a ghost, smoke curling off his shoulders, ash clinging to his face. Leo barely recognized him at first. The man's uniform was half-charred, torn and seared down one side. The skin underneath, what little Leo could see, was darkened and cracked, an angry red and black patchwork.
One single, silent tear trailing from Cassidy’s organic eye. It cut through the soot on his cheek like a scar. His other eye, the cybernetic one, remained cold and impassive, but Leo saw the look behind it. Fury. Helplessness. The brittle restraint of a man who wanted to punch a bulkhead until his knuckles bled just to make something hurt as much as he clearly did.
Leo slowly turned his head to look at Artemis. He hadn't forgotten that she was close, sitting beside the body that she had dragged free of the fire and debris, but his focus kept shifting and second guessing and trying so hard to take in everything, trying to be the best he could be in that moment, but all that split concentration made his brain a mushy pile of uselessness.
He stared at his chief for a moment longer and saw that her expression was drawn, tight with pain and exhaustion. Her face was also streaked with soot, one side blistered from the heat; her uniform too, half-melted into her skin along the upper arm and shoulder. The burns were severe, raw, angry, and blackened in places where the fire had lingered too long. But more than that, she looked... diminished. Not weak, not broken, but momentarily defeated. Like someone who had pushed themselves past the edge and was only now realizing how far they'd gone. To Leo, she didn't just look wounded. She looked spent.
The smell hit him next. Acrid, scorched cloth over something more organic. Something awful.
Burnt skin.
Leo stiffened. His stomach knotted on instinct. He swallowed hard, but the lump in his throat wouldn't move. He didn’t gag, not here, not now. He blinked a few times, pushing the urge down into some locked compartment where it could claw quietly for attention later.
Cassidy walked slowly, supporting d'Tor'an beside him. Her limp frame leaned against him, the pain etched onto her face. Even from here, he could see the streak of melted fabric across her arm and back, the way her boots scuffed as she dragged her feet over the deck.
He'd studied casualty protocols. He knew, academically, that people died. Even in times of peace. But nothing in those reports or training sims prepared him for this. For the sudden, absolute absence of someone who had, maybe minutes ago, been alive.
He didn’t even know their name.
No phaser fire. No battle. Just an explosion. A deck rupture. An accident.
Three weeks aboard the Yeager. That was all. Was this just how it happened sometimes?
A voice cut through the roaring silence in his head like a lifeline:
"I'm not giving up yet. I'll see you in Sickbay."
Leo looked again at the limp body that Beinn was kneeling over and he felt it hit his chest like a flare, a spark of hope. But it flickered uncertainly. False hope could be dangerous. He’d heard instructors say before: “Hope can make you hesitate. It can make you take risks you can’t afford.”
But he held on to it anyway.
He turned his gaze again into the darkness from where Cassidy had emerged, half-expecting another miracle. None came.
Leo exhaled, low and steady, then tapped his combadge.
"Alden to Security. Standard fire is out, plasma fire contained but not fully extinguished. We have one confirmed fatality. One critical evac, two en route to Sickbay. Requesting a security team to assist with site containment and investigation. Is there any chance of getting a couple of Engineers and some lifting equipment too please? I'm heading further in to see… whatever I can see.”
His voice trailed off. Something inside him had dimmed and his words petered out as he finished speaking. He closed the channel, took a slow breath, and stepped toward the fallen crewman that Cassidy had said was against the wall.
Leo looked at the officer pinned to the wall, lifeless. He couldn't make out any facial features, the smoke and fire doing a thorough job of hiding their identity and another feeling struck Leo. It didn't crash over him, it just was. Manifested like a bruise you don't notice until someone touches it. His chest felt hollow through and through but there was no mistaking the weight on the left side of his chest. It felt like a gravity well. Trying to rip his now heavy heart out through the sole of his foot and into the floor. Still not knowing who these officers were. One was definitely dead. The other had about as much chance as Voyager completing its historic journey in under a year, and the why. Why them? Why now? A hundred whys. The why was what bothered him most. But he had a feeling that question might never be answered.
As he stood blankly before the body, his comm badge chirped to life, and luckily for him, drew him from the deep and dark place of never ending questions.
[Alden, I can send a team to assist with containment and investigation but they may take a while to get there” the voice said smoothly. “And engineers may have to wait. Who are you with? What happened? Where's Art?]
That final question was much more than a question. Recognising the voice of Gary, Alpha Shift’s team leader whose surname Leo was still yet to learn, and also recognising that he was somewhat furious about the lack of information given and the whereabouts and possible condition of his friend.
All thoughts of Beinn had left Leo too. Was he going to help that transported crewman or follow him to where he now stood. It didn't matter to Leo too much as for now, the damage was done, and assistance possibly on the way. So he stood motionless and silent a while longer.
He had to know who they were.
He had to try and find out what happened.
Even if he didn't know them, or had never even met them. He owed them that much.
== Tag Beinn ==
= I wasn't sure which way you was planning on heading so have left it open for you =
== Gm Input - Leo's request of assistance is answered by the security complex but A, does the 3 man security team that is sent to assist arrive and if so, how long until they arrive? and B, would an engineer be available to join that 3 man team and Leo to investigate the area further for such things like structural integrity and any thing that could be unsafe.
The hallway hissed with dying heat. Smoke clung to the walls, crawling sluggishly over scorched bulkheads and shattered ceiling plates. Leo stepped back from the now spent fire extinguisher in his hands. Its once-weighty form now light, releasing only a few dying puffs of inert gas. A long, high-pitched wheeze signaled its final breath. He looked down at it, then let it fall to the deck with a dull metallic clatter.
The standard orange flames were out. The plasma fire, robbed of the conduit's plasma stream, had weakened, but not died. It still licked at twisted hull supports with hungry green tongues, casting small but still shifting shadows on the corridor walls. Yet it was manageable. Contained. Almost quiet.
A flicker of motion to his left caught Leo’s eye. Cassidy emerged from the thick gloom like a ghost, smoke curling off his shoulders, ash clinging to his face. Leo barely recognized him at first. The man's uniform was half-charred, torn and seared down one side. The skin underneath, what little Leo could see, was darkened and cracked, an angry red and black patchwork.
One single, silent tear trailing from Cassidy’s organic eye. It cut through the soot on his cheek like a scar. His other eye, the cybernetic one, remained cold and impassive, but Leo saw the look behind it. Fury. Helplessness. The brittle restraint of a man who wanted to punch a bulkhead until his knuckles bled just to make something hurt as much as he clearly did.
Leo slowly turned his head to look at Artemis. He hadn't forgotten that she was close, sitting beside the body that she had dragged free of the fire and debris, but his focus kept shifting and second guessing and trying so hard to take in everything, trying to be the best he could be in that moment, but all that split concentration made his brain a mushy pile of uselessness.
He stared at his chief for a moment longer and saw that her expression was drawn, tight with pain and exhaustion. Her face was also streaked with soot, one side blistered from the heat; her uniform too, half-melted into her skin along the upper arm and shoulder. The burns were severe, raw, angry, and blackened in places where the fire had lingered too long. But more than that, she looked... diminished. Not weak, not broken, but momentarily defeated. Like someone who had pushed themselves past the edge and was only now realizing how far they'd gone. To Leo, she didn't just look wounded. She looked spent.
The smell hit him next. Acrid, scorched cloth over something more organic. Something awful.
Burnt skin.
Leo stiffened. His stomach knotted on instinct. He swallowed hard, but the lump in his throat wouldn't move. He didn’t gag, not here, not now. He blinked a few times, pushing the urge down into some locked compartment where it could claw quietly for attention later.
Cassidy walked slowly, supporting d'Tor'an beside him. Her limp frame leaned against him, the pain etched onto her face. Even from here, he could see the streak of melted fabric across her arm and back, the way her boots scuffed as she dragged her feet over the deck.
He'd studied casualty protocols. He knew, academically, that people died. Even in times of peace. But nothing in those reports or training sims prepared him for this. For the sudden, absolute absence of someone who had, maybe minutes ago, been alive.
He didn’t even know their name.
No phaser fire. No battle. Just an explosion. A deck rupture. An accident.
Three weeks aboard the Yeager. That was all. Was this just how it happened sometimes?
A voice cut through the roaring silence in his head like a lifeline:
"I'm not giving up yet. I'll see you in Sickbay."
Leo looked again at the limp body that Beinn was kneeling over and he felt it hit his chest like a flare, a spark of hope. But it flickered uncertainly. False hope could be dangerous. He’d heard instructors say before: “Hope can make you hesitate. It can make you take risks you can’t afford.”
But he held on to it anyway.
He turned his gaze again into the darkness from where Cassidy had emerged, half-expecting another miracle. None came.
Leo exhaled, low and steady, then tapped his combadge.
"Alden to Security. Standard fire is out, plasma fire contained but not fully extinguished. We have one confirmed fatality. One critical evac, two en route to Sickbay. Requesting a security team to assist with site containment and investigation. Is there any chance of getting a couple of Engineers and some lifting equipment too please? I'm heading further in to see… whatever I can see.”
His voice trailed off. Something inside him had dimmed and his words petered out as he finished speaking. He closed the channel, took a slow breath, and stepped toward the fallen crewman that Cassidy had said was against the wall.
Leo looked at the officer pinned to the wall, lifeless. He couldn't make out any facial features, the smoke and fire doing a thorough job of hiding their identity and another feeling struck Leo. It didn't crash over him, it just was. Manifested like a bruise you don't notice until someone touches it. His chest felt hollow through and through but there was no mistaking the weight on the left side of his chest. It felt like a gravity well. Trying to rip his now heavy heart out through the sole of his foot and into the floor. Still not knowing who these officers were. One was definitely dead. The other had about as much chance as Voyager completing its historic journey in under a year, and the why. Why them? Why now? A hundred whys. The why was what bothered him most. But he had a feeling that question might never be answered.
As he stood blankly before the body, his comm badge chirped to life, and luckily for him, drew him from the deep and dark place of never ending questions.
[Alden, I can send a team to assist with containment and investigation but they may take a while to get there” the voice said smoothly. “And engineers may have to wait. Who are you with? What happened? Where's Art?]
That final question was much more than a question. Recognising the voice of Gary, Alpha Shift’s team leader whose surname Leo was still yet to learn, and also recognising that he was somewhat furious about the lack of information given and the whereabouts and possible condition of his friend.
All thoughts of Beinn had left Leo too. Was he going to help that transported crewman or follow him to where he now stood. It didn't matter to Leo too much as for now, the damage was done, and assistance possibly on the way. So he stood motionless and silent a while longer.
He had to know who they were.
He had to try and find out what happened.
Even if he didn't know them, or had never even met them. He owed them that much.
== Tag Beinn ==
= I wasn't sure which way you was planning on heading so have left it open for you =
== Gm Input - Leo's request of assistance is answered by the security complex but A, does the 3 man security team that is sent to assist arrive and if so, how long until they arrive? and B, would an engineer be available to join that 3 man team and Leo to investigate the area further for such things like structural integrity and any thing that could be unsafe.