Echoes (Part 1)

Posted on Wed Sep 7th, 2022 @ 5:38am by Lieutenant Anthea "Thea" Mariatis & Senior Chief Petty Officer Thral Skrit

Mission: Scylla and Charybdis
Location: USS Avalon
Timeline: MD03 - 7 Days After Radiation Event
2507 words - 5 OF Standard Post Measure

"Sciences have detected a massive radiation surge."

"Origin?"

"No determining catalyst. Could be naturally occurring, might be some kind of weapons discharge."

"Impact?"

"12 minutes."

"Wait, minutes?"

"Minutes."

"That's not...enough time."

"I know."


Silence could be eerie if you weren't used to it. It had a way of unnerving even the most stoic, a way of permeating the mind's coping mechanisms and slowly unravelling equilibrium. It dug in, a vice's grip, and began its insidious corrosion of patience...rationality...coherence. People didn't like being alone inside their own heads, even those who tended to believe that's how they normally functioned.

Silence was, of course, more than just the absence of aural discernment. That alone could be suffocating but the mind adapted. Hearing was a process for interpreting sound but there was no mutual reliance and the body could still feel vibrations, sonic waves that formed the interconnected network of the thriving, writhing chaos called life. Footsteps, doors closing, the thrum of engines, conversation, respiration... Life throbbed and its pulse pierced through silence like a thunderstorm. It was often a frustrating distinction to try and get across; being deaf didn't mean you had no relationship with noise.

The ship was silent.

She'd only been awake a little over two days. Skrit had rallied first, which meant it was merely a matter of taking the Andorian's word for it that he hadn't been conscious for days longer. Win had been awake a little longer and had no further speculation to add for his wife's tardiness in resurfacing other than a vague sense of concern that left him staring at her when he thought she wouldn't notice. Thea found the attempts endearing; they both knew by now that he'd never caught her unawares yet. By the time she'd opened her eyes, the pair of them had already handled most of the preliminary situation report, which was oddly clinical when rendered into sign language. As a form of communication, it was highly efficient, almost poetic in its interpretation at times, but it didn't possess a lot of nuances for explaining we don't exist anymore.

The squeal of her implants had been a much more palpable proof that something wasn't right.

Now, two days later, and they had botched together several theories, none of which correlated entirely accurately to any previous precedent. The computer refused to acknowledge them, and yet they'd wrestled some semblance of access through the science lab they'd sheltered in. Navigating the ship had become a disorienting mess of invisible walls and stubborn door mechanisms, and a frustrating lack of consistency in being able to establish just how much of them remained connected to Avalon's physical reality. They'd made their way to the Bridge eventually but it had been quite an adventure.

Thea stood, shrouded in absolute silence, and watched the swirl of the nebula beyond the viewport.

"Fahkinell...." Thral exclaimed as he looked out at the nebula. "A'wight, what's next mucka?" he asked the Lieutenant who, really, had managed most of the thought process behind getting them to the bridge. Thral had managed to tinker with bits and pieces here and there, but he had to tip his cap to the lady, they'd still be stuck in Science One if she hadn't worked out firstly how to throw a subspace bubble around the lab in the first place, and secondly how to move it, with them inside, through the ship to the bridge. As they'd made their way through the Avalon, he'd counted nine bodies in states of terrible radiation burns, and the bridge had four, definitely too few for what should be around. Perhaps some had escaped, he wondered, before realising that hadn't been possible.

The Lieutenant, despite her best efforts, hadn't been able to expand the bubble beyond the field generators in the lab. Given more time, they could probably have widened the field generators to access the wider power matrix beyond just that relatively small amount of power allocated for experiment suspension fields. It seemed that the journey had confirmed what they had suspected for days; everyone was dead except for them. Well, possibly not even except for them, the somewhat ghost like nature of their present existence being what it was. Being able to half push through solid walls like they were only thick liquids, not being able to fully interact with the ship's controls, the occasional shimmer of passing invisibility...he sighed, and looked around. The task now, was create some kind of better device which could allow them to work the Avalon, and at the very least send a distress signal.

"Now we're up 'ere, I need to find a betta phase discriminator, sumfin we can atchally use to interact wiv the ship more proppa like." His antenna twitched towards the distinct lack of reaction from 'Thea', and so instead he looked to the husband, 'Win'. "Oh sorry guv, forgot she was a bit Mutt an' Jeff".

In the six months they'd been assigned to work on this project with Thral, Winfield had never been fully sure what the Andorian was talking about half the time. The strange dialect - not a native Andorian one, so he was told - had become a minor hindrance in communication; an inconvenience rather than a serious problem. Some of the idioms were lost on him, despite explanation.

"All the phase discriminators will be in the secondary science labs on deck seven," the engineer explained. "We're stuck to what we have in here with us, which is..." he made an expressive open-palmed shrug. "Mostly useless. There's simply not enough here to effect a repair."

"Nah squire" Thral countered. "Dahn the apples and pears over there-" he pointed down the far side of the bridge module which sloped around on a series of large stairs. "-discriminators in the bridge self-destruct det-packs, safety feature in case a' radiation, energy surges, that kinda thing". Making his own way over to the correct panel he would need to release to access the service space, he muttered to himself "ruddy orrificers....". As he stood pondering how he was going to be able to pull the panel and work with the machinery, he turned around to shout back over his shoulder. "Just 'cos sumfin shouldn't be somewhere, dun mean it ain't".

Extending the subspace bubble had become relatively routine and simple enough for the Lieutenant, they'd been sufficiently practised at it over the past days. As they'd learned, simple extending the bubble into a wall to encompass a console was useless, as the signals sent from the console then largely dissipated when crossing the barrier threshold. For something mechanical however, it would hopefully be simply a case of extending the bubble over the components to be able to work with them. "Just hafta make sure it don't go boom like..." he said under his breath, very much aware that removing the phase discriminator in amongst all this radiation was a risk in itself.

Gaze still fixed at a point well beyond their current situation, Thea contemplated the nebula's turbulence with the same placid stoicism she'd demonstrated almost entirely since recovering her senses. Manipulating subspace had worked to an extent but with her implants damaged in the process and no immediate way to repair them, isolation smothered the Lieutenant with a savage viscosity she'd never experienced before. Ordinarily, even if she'd voluntarily rendered herself deaf for the sake of wilful ignorance, she could tell when others around her were communicating. Now, her thoughts cast towards the fractious movement of gases directly in front of them, she remained blissfully unaware of Skrit's ramblings. Which was possibly for the best; there was virtually no translation for half of what he said.

Narrowing her eyes, Thea leaned forward to peer as far upwards as their current position would allow and frowned. Without making eye contact with her husband, the Lieutenant used a single hand to quickly sign, I think we're still surrounded by it.

"We don't have enough of a connection to ship's systems to escape," he responded, speaking the words while simultaneously signing them back to her. It was followed by a little hesitant pause. "What went wrong?" he asked, looking at her for answers.

We missed it.

It didn't require the succinct fluidity of signing to translate Thea's melancholy consternation over that admission. Years in the making, constant redesigns and restructures just to get them to this point, and somehow the sensors had failed to detect a lethal radiation surge until it was too late to move out of its way. What's more, it had swept right through their shielding and compromised more systems than was possible to document manually. It didn't make sense but the proof of their failure was all around them.

Carefully removing a phase discriminator from one of the bridge detonation packs was easier than Skrit had feared. The issue was that now there was effectively a live bomb with one of it's failsafes removed, albeit extremely unlikely to be a necessary one. "Luvvly jubbly" he said, standing up and facing the other two. He looked over to Win; " 'ere guv, can you err...?" he made an exaggerated motion of waving his hands about to emphasise the human sign language, so that Win would be able to translate.

"I think he wants you to do your thing," Winfield said, motioning to Thea carefully.

Speaking very slowly and loudly, Skrit also emphasised his words with his hands as he spoke. "Wiv' this, reckon we can betta use the ship like. At least use the ole dog n bone to send a distress call awight?".

"The outer hull was totally polarised by the radiation wave. That will scramble any distress call we try to send," Winfield replied. "Unless we can clear that up?" Winfield motioned at Thea again, wondering if she had any ideas on that front.

Thea, her attention finally drawn to the fact that a conversation was taking place, had been momentarily distracted once again by the absurdity of trying to translate the Andorian's attempts at communication. Having worked with Skrit for a while, she knew that he made no more sense when she could actually hear him, but she found his mode of speech fascinating. Certainly she and Winfield had developed quite a game out of inventing new signs for his figures of speech.

With a deep inward breath, she turned her attention to her husband's worried features and dipped her head to one side in hesitant consideration. "We're still in the midst of the storm," she reasoned softly. "We may have settled into a calmer pocket but we're still surrounded. Transmitting outwards will be complicated, even if we are able to mitigate the current damage."

One of the aft consoles caught the Andorian's eye as he spoke, a tactical sensor readout from one of the makeshift additional consoles plugged in to fully attenuate the new sensor array. "Oi oi saveloy...." he said with curiosity, moving past the two officers to squint at the readouts. Two contacts. One definitely Starfleet, one indeterminate. "Guv?" he called, pointing to the display.

"Starfleet?" Winfield was filled with hope and with confusion. "How long overdue are we? This was supposed to be a secret mission."

Moving to peer at the information, Thea frowned, mind whirling as her gaze swung like a pendulum between the two readings. "We need to access communication logs," she murmured eventually. "If the Captain was able to deploy a distress beacon prior to impact, then our location may be compromised by any vessel within range." She glanced upwards to consider both men before adding, "The radiation will shorten that considerably and will also delay any relay of information the beacon transmits back to us." She indicated the panel with a pointed index. "Starfleet's message originates over a week ago; this other one was sent yesterday."

Skrit turned to the science officer, "Nahh can't trust the kettle n hob on those systems, everyfink's knackered innit..." he remembered the poor woman couldn't hear him and turned slightly to the other one instead, "uhhh" he said nodding profusely to the man and banging his hands together a bit to mimic the sign language again; "right guv 'ang abaat; if there's a relay an' a signal can get through, bit of jiggery pokery and the relay can be used to ping us an' get a location, or at least a radius right? Or am I being a bit a bow n arra?".

Thea's brow twitched in partial annoyance. An entire lifetime's experience had tempered her impatience with people who thought her incapable of participating in conversations due to her disability but every now and then, a chink in the armor acted as an irritant. "If you face me when you speak, I'm more than capable of reading your lips," she chastised the Andorian. "Though I offer no guarantee that I'll understand a word of it. We were deploying beacons to triangulate data. A dedicated communications extension would have been required for reporting back to Starfleet. The radiation surge may have affected them but our first priority should be to determine if any are intact."

Taken aback by Thea's outburst, the Andorian hadn't been aware of his indiscretion though in the momentary hindsight wondered if he'd been inadvertently offensive. Usually unaware of his tendency to rub people up the wrong way, he was generally sincerely apologetic when pointed out that he had done so. "Oh er...soz sweet'art, didn't mean nuffin by it...". He looked at Win so Thea couldn't see his face and nodded his head towards her; "bit chicken oriental that one..." he grumbled. Turning his attention back to Thea, he resumed speaking loudly and slowly to help the poor girl out; "' 'ang abaat - you want to send a signal aat there? One of them aint Starfleet, an' there's no tellin' what kinda Barney Rubble you could bring 'ere instead!"

"Rubble-" Winfield started, then stopped again. The minor frustration of language meant it took him longer to process. "Oh. Yes. Well, we either stay here and hope the right people find us, or we send a signal in the hope that friendlies are out there to hear it. That's the general risk."

"I don't know..." Thral replied, "got a bad train to Ealing about this...". He sniffed and walked over to the comms panel on the ops station, and with some difficulty interacting with the panel eventually managed to rig a transponder code signifying distress. "Ken Dodds are fifty fifty I guess..." he muttered, shouting over to the other two he said "awight guv! Reddy Eddy!"

Thea had no idea who Eddie was, nor could she comment on his state of readiness, but she was certainly done waiting for his ghost ship to drift somewhere more hospitable of its own accord. Moving to stand behind the stooped-over Andorian, the scientist watched the erratic stream of information with a fixated stare and ordered, "Activate."