Sweet Chorus
Posted on July 8th, 2015 by Ilaihr

Engineering was in absolute chaos; it was quiet, but it chaos nonetheless. The warp core lay dormant and dead, critically injured personnel were still being carried out, and the emergency repairs teams from Discovery were struggling to get to grips with the sheer amount of damage. A corner of engineering completely devoid of functional consoles had been reassigned as a work area for medics treating minor injuries; and there were alot. Ilaihr had passed up treatment numerous times already; totally adamant in his ancient stubbornness, nothing was going to stop him getting something working, not even his broken wrist.

Eventually Ilaihr was one of the last of Atlantis’ own engineers still working in engineering, being replaced by emergency teams; everyone either injured or focusing on the multiple hull breaches. Weapons and shields were no longer required; which was good because the deflector dish and phaser arrays would need a complete overhaul and power lines to the torpedo bays were now fused. The sensor array was essentially charcoal, the impulse engines had exploded and even if they had warp power, there wasn’t enough of the nacelles left to establish a field; even an unstable one. The only system that had any promise of working any time soon was the communications array.

Ilaihr was exhausted; his usual amiable disposition had been replaced by blunt and direct orders; not an anecdote in sight. After some tentative work, rerouting and redistributing power around the decks, siphoning any inch of excess; the comms array blinked on and off momentarily. He bit his tongue and looked over to the warp core, the heart of the ship.

"I know you’re hurt my girl… but you need to wake up just a little bit." He rested his hand on the bulkheadd. "We need communications. We can’t even speak to other crew members across the ship, let alone ship-to-ship or ship-to-fleet. Give me something. Life support is off in evacuated decks and sections, only pathways to major repair zones exist beyond the core zones. There must be power hiding somewhere. I need you to speak."

The panel started to light up, the comm array blinking on and off slowly. "Come on my dear, we’re nearly to berth, just a little bit more."

It became more periodic, critical data packets were trickling in, power flowing in short burst. Noises started to come through, coughing out of the console in a garble. They started to become more coherent, the cacophony became voices; many saying hello checking if it was working, a few were attempts at hails and personal message transmissions. The console showing near stable power levels, and even a few green indications. It was still a bit cross connected, so using the newly established connection, he uplinked communications with that of the nearest vessel; slowly the noise began to die down as Discovery’s comm array filtered some of the traffic.

He tapped his commbadge, with a smile. "Ladies and Gentleman; this is engineering, for the most part we have re-established communications. However, it is prudent to note that any personal communications between the fleet that may be sent will experience a delay, due to prioritisation issues; but on board comms should be free of such limitations. Thank you for listening; now Atlantis has her voice back." He ended the comm, thought perhaps it was a bit much, and smiled; resting on the bulkhead. "Thank you Atlantis; you honour me with your strength."

No sooner had he taken a breath of relief, a priority message flashed up on the screen with a medical flag. He answered it; only to be met by a short video message of Hamlet.

"Ilaihr, old friend. I haven’t been able to reach you, so I stored this short message within a fleet communication buffer in the hopes it finds it way to you. I need your help…. it’s Soule… his brother…"