Away Two Part 2

Posted on 12 Jul 2020 @ 7:14pm by Lieutenant Cole Dering M.D., M.S. & Commander Kristiana Petrova & Lieutenant Alex Sexton & Lieutenant Rosine Deschamps

1,527 words; about a 8 minute read

Mission: Ab Intra
Location: Planetside
Timeline: MD 01 - 1230 hours

"The door is--" Quinn growled as he whirled away from the console and hurried to the back. He paused to dig into one of the compartments and pull out a rebreather, since if there was something out there, it was gonna come in here as soon as this door opened. He pulled the mask over his face as he went to the door mechanics and checked them. "Something is..." he began, but he stopped when he reached for the manual override. "Door opening!"

Alex came back to his senses and entered the shuttle. He lay there slumped over with labored breathing. “Must...have...passed out!” Was all he managed to say before he was out again.

Cole moved into the shuttle and was at Alex's side in a flash, pulling the peripheral scanner free from his medical tricorder just as quickly. Activating it, he began running it over the unconscious man, a slight frown tightened around his mouth as he looked at its readings. "Commander, there's some unusual chemical readings in his sensory cortex. And his blood oxygen is way too low..." Pulling a hypo out of his pouch, he looked up at her, "He was hallucinating."

"Figures," Kris scowled. "Everyone make sure your filter masks are on proper," she added, considering for a moment. "Quinn, prepare the shuttle for take off, once everyone's onboard. Once we're out of the atmosphere we'll try contacting the ship again. If need be, if comms are damaged we'll take up position outside the bridge and use morse code."

After giving Alex a dose of tri-ox, Cole went right to double-checking that both his and Alex's mask were on right and then starting scanning again. Alex should have been regaining consciousness, but yet he wasn't.

After the initial surprise of everything around her suddenly happening very fast, Rosine hurried to be in the shuttle as well. She obviously wasn't affected by whatever was in the air, not yet at least, but she wasn't a security officer either so her reaction time wasn't as good as could be. She'd barely sat down before the shuttle started moving.

Helm controls were sluggish. Quinn let out a few more curses as he didn't have time to run a diagnostics now. They'd have a pretty soft touch down the first time, at least where shuttle hardware was concerned, so that couldn't have messed up their systems. Taking off through these storms they had come down in, would be tricky at best. With these controls, it didn't bode well. As they didn't really have a choice though, he didn't inform the people in the back as they really didn't have much say in the matter.

The shuttle was struggling to gain altitude. The electrical storms around them had increased in the short time they had been down on the planet.

"Gyro stabilizers offline!" he yelled out loud. His comm system was still active, so anyone who wanted to could hear him, but he was mostly talking to himself. "Atmospheric thrusters offline! Navigation controls offline!" he continued, but eventually forced himself to stop. It was obvious what was going to happen. At least to him.

The shuttle rocked heavily, especially with the stabilizers offline. Whomever hadn't been strapped in the back, would have been thrown around by now. There was no way to correct for the G forces that were slamming the shuttle through the storms. He'd never witnessed anything quite like this, not when the shuttle had been in working order just moments before. Eventually, he forced himself to add: "Everybody, hold on! We're going down!"

Cole groaned against where he'd last hit, having somehow shoved his arm through a metal bar handle to hold on with everything he had. He had just buckled in the security chief as the shuttle took off, scanned him again before making it to his own seat. At Quinn's warning, he had to grab onto something and try to buckle himself in with one hand. It hadn't worked and it was a miracle he hadn't slammed into anyone else.

"Гавно!" Kristiana cursed, firmly grabbing hold of her seat's armrests with both hands. "Everyone brace, brace, brace!" She called out.

Quinn had no idea what was going on in the back, and he didn't have time. With both the stabilizers and the thrusters offline, there was frustratingly little he could do. Instead of gaining altitude, they were quickly losing whatever altitude they'd already gained.

His controls indicated the ground moving up to meet them. Quickly. Or rather, them descending at a breakneck speed. He waited. And waited. And waited for the right moment. To slow them down as much as possible, he directed the landing thrusters down instead of sideways, the shuttle dangerously tipping sideways. There wasn't anything else he could do.

The shuttle crashed down on the ground, its momentum rolling it over a couple of times...

By the time the shuttle stopped, Quinn felt his head slam into the console right as the interior power cut out and the lights went dark...right as everything went dark internally for the pilot as well and he lost consciousness.

Everything was black. Kristiana Petrova didn't know where she was. A voice was heard, Wake up little one, in Russian. ,Wake up. It's not your time yet, her father's voice added. But he'd been dead for years ... Slowly more sounds came. Alerts. The calling out of other people. A loud ringing in her ears. The darkness replaced by blurred light, slowly coming into focus. A splitting headache, like the ringing of a churchbell in the middle of her brain. Sharp pain in her shoulder, her legs, her back. But at least they could still move. Shakily Kristiana sat up, looking around, trying to focus through the racket of real and imaginary sounds, eyes trying to focus on faces, figures, shapes. "Fuck .. Everyone - sound off," she managed.

"AHHhhh!" Cole yelled out as he slowly pulled his arm out from the handle he had stuck it through. Then holding onto his arm and hurting all over, he fell to his knees, although all he could think about was getting to everyone else. At first, his vision was blurry, but then it started clearing up, and he started staggering, feeling his way towards the shuttle's back end.

It didn't take the shuttle rolling over for Rosine to smack hard into the person in front of her. Or rather, with her head against the helmet of the person in front of her. She'd made the mistake of taking off the protective gear as soon as the shuttle doors had sealed because it made her feel claustrophobic and she hadn't been bothered by the airborne stuff in the first place. She didn't have time to consider the stupidity of that action before everything went black.

When things go wrong. They usually go in a big way. Alex was beginning to come around. He tried to set up, but Up was not where it was supposed to be. “Ouch, what the hell?” Yelled Alex “Security report.” He yelled. Noise that he could not discern made it to his ears but it made no sense.

"I said, sound off - that means say your name and whether you're hurt or not!" Kristiana scowled, hoisting herself to her feet, finding her left shoulder not cooperating. "Ow. Motherfucker."

Quinn, being unconscious, didn't have much to say.

“Sexton here. What the hell is going on? Why are there no lights?" he yelled.

“Dering here!” Cole shouted out, his voice a bit rough. And he yanked open a small locker he'd managed to make his way back to. “Everyone stay put, I’ll be making my rounds!” he then ordered, determinedly pulling out a couple of palm beacons. He turned one on and started returning to the others, looking around for everyone with it.

After one of the two security officers replied that they were alright apart from some bruises, Kristiana sat back down with a wince. Her uniform was torn at the shoulder and there was a trickle of blood, and she knew she'd have some bruises too, but for now she remained put as Cole had asked. There were two voices she hadn't heard - Quinn and Rosine. "Doc, Romanov, Lake and DesChamps haven't responded, check on them first. Sexton, once Dering clears you, you and I are heading out to assess the damage and see if we can find out more about the town. Palmer, you stay with the shuttle. Keep them safe and secure."

“Understood.” Replied Sexton as he slowly returned to normal. Whatever that was. He thought to himself.

The security officer nodded. "Ma'am."

Cole had crouched down before Lake and started scanning, getting the confirmation he'd been dreading. There'd been enough death and feeling shook, he closed his eyes. But only for a moment. There just wasn't time and he needed to keep himself together, so he pulled himself away.

"We lost Lake," he said, handing Kristiana one of the palm beacons as he looked around for Rosine and spotting her he went quickly to her, hoping he wouldn't find the same.

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