Working from the wreckage
Posted on 25 Mar 2026 @ 5:02am by Lieutenant JG Ryan Collingway & Lieutenant Commander Elias Harlan
Edited on on 25 Mar 2026 @ 4:16pm
1,081 words; about a 5 minute read
Mission: Arawyn’s Itchy Trigger Finger
///Engineering///
Ryan studied the information from the terminal. None of it was any good. No warp. Shields and weapons were drawing from the battery, which wouldn't last long. No coms. No transporters. Even though the warp core was offline, the venting still needed time to complete, and the force field was degrading around the coolant tank. So far the purge was running faster.
But if it lost the race, it wouldn't be a problem he had to worry about for very long.
That's when he heard an explosion at a console. He nodded at Sorenson to check it out. "Priority has to be communications. We need to update the bridge. And I need to find out if something is going to shoot at us again."
Suddenly he heard a horrified 'Commander!'. Ryan's head snapped up, and he hurried over there.
Commander Harlan was laying on the ground, a piece of metal pertruding from his head. His face was pale, and a pool of blood was growing behind his head.
Ryan's heart dropped to his stomach. Incredibly, a Vulcan-Ryan didn't know his name, was already there examining him. The tricorder readings were grim.
"I'm taking him to sickbay," the Vulcan said, in a voice that offered no argument.
They didn't have any transporters or any easy way to move him. Ryan simply nodded and got out of his way. Then his eyes glanced at Nathan, who still seemed frozen. He grabbed the hypospray that the Ensign had used on Harlan, confirmed it had only been used once on the Commander, and injected Caldwell with painkiller and anti-shock medicine. "Get to sickbay yourself, Lieutenant," he ordered, despite the reversal in rank. "You're injured."
Ensign Mike Torres watched as the Vulcan Doctor who had seemingly came out of nowhere picked up Commander Harlan like he weighed nothing and left with Nathan following in his wake. Mike packed up the small medical kit he and Nathan had been using and stood up.
“That puts you in charge.” Mike huffed as he gave Ryan the side eye. “The forcefield around the warp core is holding, and the coolant purge is almost complete.”
Mike moved to the master situation console at the front of the warp core.
“Main power is offline, so no shields, weapons. Secondaries such as turbolifts and transporters are out too.”
Mike looked towards Ryan. “We need a plan.”
"Okay. Yeah, a plan," Ryan echoed, fighting back against his own feelings of anxiety. To quote Commander Batenburg, fear was definitely present in the room. He forced himself to focus. People were counting on him. He studied the blown up console that had significantly burned Caldwell and maybe killed their own CEO. "The EPS power tap. Right now this place is like a live wire. Uneven power is going everywhere. We can't do anything until that's replaced." At least that should be a quick job.
"We also need to reestablish communications with the bridge. I don't care how we do it-even if we have to send them a damn hand-written note. But ideally we need to fix the hard lines which Caldwell was working on. After that, we need to summon every single engineer that's off-duty back to engineering."
"And once we do those two very critical things, we can focus on repairing the major systems," he finished.
“Whoa. Stop.” Mike said as he held up a hand. “Repair the tap? That’s asking for the impossible and the guy that handles impossible was just carried out of here with a piece of duranium in his skull. The whole thing needs to be replaced and the industrial replicators are down.”
Mike stood in front of Ryan and placed both hands on his shoulders. “Breath, Lieutenant. You’ve got the right idea, just bad implementation. Jenson and Harris are already climbing up there, they’re probably going to isolate the tap so it doesn’t hurt us anymore. My recommendation would be to get auxiliary power back online so we can at least see what we’re doing in here. Think back to the basics at the academy. Power first, remember?”
"Right," Ryan said. In his panic he had forgotten the replicators were down. Mike was right. They needed to start from the basics, as the Ensign said.
Mike let go of Ryan’s shoulders and tapped the console.
“The ship’s power distribution system is still intact. It looks like the tap is the only casualty. I’m ramping up the fusion reactors to get us out of grey mode.”
The reactors had been kicked into standby mode the moment the tap had detonated to keep power conduits from overloading all over the ship. Once commanded manually to step up power generation, lights all over the ship started to flicker back on including Main Engineering which now wasn’t as dark as it had a moment ago.
“Turbolifts and transporters just came back online. No damage, they just needed power.” Mike paused, "you said the hard lines to the bridge. I think we should definitely do that next. At least then the bridge can tell us what they need."
Ryan nodded. "Let's get to work."
The two of them worked side-by-side on the hard lines, bypassing damaged circuits and rerouting power as needed. It took ten agonizing minutes to get it back online. "Good job, Ensign," Ryan said. "Computer, emergency notification ship-wide to all off-duty engineering staff. Report to engineering for immediate repair work."
The computer beeped a negative. "Credentials not recognized as Chief Engineering Officer. Please confirm emergency notification."
"Confirmed," Ryan said. With the coms still on the fritz who knows how many people received the notification on their data padds. Hopefully enough. But at least they had restored the hard lines to the bridge. Now came the harder part. He turned on the communicator. "Lieutenant Collingway to the bridge. Commander Harlan has been injured. His condition is critical." He couldn't help but pause for a moment. "It doesn't look good. I....don't think he's going to make it," he added.
He quickly went into the damage. "Engineering also suffered numerous casualties. The warp core's coolant tank took a direct hit. We had to shut it down in order to prevent leakage and a possible breach. We managed to restore power to transporters, some communications, and turbolifts. We are continuing to work on restoring systems. Please advise from here."
Lieutenant Ryan Collingway
Engineering Officer
USS Arawyn
&
Ensign Mike Torres
Ensigneering Officer
USS Arawyn
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