727: The Wait

by Rada Dengar
81229.2355
Concurrent With and After The High Road: Two

-=Main Engineering; USS Serendipity=-

It was a quiet time in the Engineering department.

When two ships are in battle as they were soon scheduled to be, it is normally the busiest time here; with every strike causing damage which needs to be assessed and repaired in an instant or as close a period of time as they could get.

During that time, every thing would move quite rapidly as they ran from place to place to every machine that demanded their attention. Between the people few words could afford to be spoken and those which were, were typically so rushed and technical that it was more a matter of trusting the knowledge of the listener than hoping you were clear enough yourself. It was a time of excitement when the heart, the hands and the mind all fought to their fastest speeds.

Now though, stillness had enveloped the department and each person stood almost frozen in place. Not a word was spoken. Even with the gentle hum of the engines, the melody of beeps from the equipment surrounding them and the seemingly far off sound of the ship reminding them they were to be on alert; they could all hear the silence. Even their own breathing, which should have been heavy with anticipation was just one more sound absorbed by the atmosphere before it could even begin to approach their ears.

There was nothing else they could do. Any other day there were a hundred repairs they could make to take their minds of what was happening but all that had to be suspended now, its welcome distraction, they were told, not welcome here. They couldn’t afford to take a single system off line or even impair its function so all of those tasks had to wait. So they were stuck, standing ready to move the moment they were needed, it felt like it would never come.

As they stood poised at their consoles, ready to jump into action at any second, some small part of their minds could not help but drift to what was going on aboard the Romulan ship; which must have been near as they’d dropped out of warp. They had no real idea of what was going on over there, the life signs on that ship of both Starfleet and Romulan alike could be spiralling ever downward and all their current readouts would look exactly as they did now. All the information of the detailed scans taken from that ship was right here in this computer but they couldn’t allow themselves the luxury of pulling them up, their attention had to be fixed on this ship, here.

The sense of not knowing was a powerful one and the temptation to just take a brief look was almost too much. There was only one thing which allowed them to stop themselves; the thought of what they might see. To see the death of a friend before your eyes was one of the most horrific things imaginable but to see it as a number simply decreased by one; that was truly disgusting.

So instead they had to wait, completely still. Not a trace of adrenalin in their minds but with their hearts pounding so fast that they seemed to be demanding that they simply do something, anything, rather than just stand there and watch as ship’s systems stayed right on going. All these screens were staying exactly the same, all these people were staying exactly the same and internally they were all being driven crazy by the wait. The pressure of the contradiction between the internal and the external, the heart and the mind was too much to keep on going like this.

“I…” Rada started trying to speak to Jamie Halliday who stood with a look of forced fascination staring at the console next to him. Rada really wasn’t sure what he was going to say, just that he had to say something, then he noticed that there was finally a small and very brief change on his screen “I’ve just registered that the phasers have been fired.”

Now there was nothing forced about the fascination Jamie held on the machine before him “Confirmed.”

Now, suddenly the atmosphere was truly electrified anew as energy pulsed through every engineer in the department. There was silence no more as they pounded their consoles and everyone shouted their new reports. It wasn’t long before the phasers were fired again and the Sera began moving. Then for a few minutes there was calm before Jamie Halliday noticed something.

“We’ve got a problem,” he announced.

Rada noticed it, too. “I see it, Jamie,” he quickly said as he scrolled through everything he could find trying to see how this was happening. The problem was on the Romulan vessel.

He tapped his combadge ““Dengar to bridge. There’s no time to explain, but I need you to open a channel to the Romulan vessel and patch it down here.”

Reece gave Tenney the nod and she set about it. Tolleth’s face appeared on the screen in front of Rada. He huffed with frustration that he had to speak with these people again.

[Not that I mind, but why am I now speaking to you instead of the Trill?] the Romulan asked, sounding bitter and very tired. This was a man who knew that things were not going well for him.

“I urgently need to speak with your Chief Engineer.” Rada answered ignoring his question, speaking as quickly as he could while still being understood.

[I am the Chief Engineer. Speak.] Tolleth slowly responded, trying to sound commanding at the start but giving up by the end.

“Our sensors have detected a critical problem with your EPS manifold which you don’t appear to have registered.”

[We recognise the problem, we’ve been having problems with it for a while then the explosion knocked it completely out of alignment. I didn’t think it was worth an alarm,] Tolleth acknowledged apathetically.

“If it’s not corrected then…” Rada tried to explain but Tolleth was already completely aware and cut him off.

[There’ll be plasma back up. I know.]

He didn’t seem to care and Rada didn’t understand. His knowledge of Romulan ships couldn’t be that bad. “If it’s not purged the pressure will force the plasma to ignite and there’ll be a chain reaction,” he objected.

[I know.] Tolleth replied sadly. [It’ll destroy the ship. I knew this already.]

“I can tell you how to fix it,” Rada replied but Tolleth didn’t seem to care.

[I know how to fix it. The button to purge the plasma is right here.] He indicated the panel next to him with a yawn. [I’m simply not going to push it.]

Rada tried to think of an argument, but nothing was coming to him. Jamie seemed to be doing something behind him and then all of a sudden he found himself materialising on the Romulan bridge, right next to Tolleth. The Romulan seemed momentarily startled and drew his disruptor on Rada.

“I’m afraid you’re not going to be pushing it either,” Tolleth said as he swung his chair around to face Rada, who rapidly began searching his pockets. “Go ahead draw your weapon.”

“Why have you brought me here?” Rada said as he managed to locate the packet he’d been looking for.

“It wasn’t me,” Tolleth replied as Rada threw a toffee in his mouth. Tolleth seemed mildly amused.

[It was me!] Jamie yelled over the still active channel. [I didn’t think I had time to waste asking you!]

Accepting this, Rada raised his hands up, his eyes glancing over to where the button was so close, and said with impressive calm, “I don’t actually carry a weapon.”

“That is unfortunate,” Tolleth replied, keeping his weapon fixed on Rada as he deactivated the channel to the Serendipity then removed Rada’s combadge from his chest and placed it behind him.

“Why do you want to blow up the ship?” Rada asked bluntly.

Tolleth shook his head. “I don’t want to, I have to. The Hugreti artifact turned out to be worthless, and our ship has been crippled. I have nothing to offer the Empire for my redemption. I know now that I am not going to escape this and I have no desire to spend the remainder of my life a prisoner. At least if the ship is destroyed, then so will be the knowledge of what we’ve done here.”

“I take it from the fact that you didn’t object to me raising a weapon that you don’t mind if only you die,” Rada said matter-of-factly.

Tolleth agreed. “It’s all the same to me,” and then leant down and removed a small disruptor from his ankle holster. He threw it to Rada who caught it awkwardly against his chest. “Shoot me if you wish. I’ve done the calculations. There’s only about twelve seconds before the plasma reaches critical pressure anyway.”

Rada examined the disruptor in his hand and pointed it at Tolleth but he knew he couldn’t fire it at him. He tried to aim it just at the Romulan’s own disruptor but his finger floated over the trigger and refused to clamp down. His hand was shaking but he couldn’t force it.

“Ten, Nine, Eight,” Tolleth counted.

Rada grabbed hold of his wrist with his left hand and tried to force some type of control over it but he just couldn’t pull that trigger. His hand was aching but would not move.

“Seven, Six, Five.”

Rada could see this was hopeless and threw his hand open allowing the weapon to drop to the ground. His hand was still cramped but he controlled it again. He ran towards Tolleth, trying to push past him, but found himself pushed easily back to where he’d come from by the Romulan’s superior strength.

“Four, Three, Two,”

Rada charged again trying to get around Tolleth but that button was behind him no matter where he came from and Rada was knocked back again.

“One. Bang.” Tolleth leant over and pressed the button himself, releasing the plasma pressure.

He admitted, “You’ve got me. You can’t kill me, but neither can I. I guess it was wishful thinking for me even to try,” he placed his disruptor down on his console then turned back to Rada.

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to kill you either,” he really did think too many good people had died for Taris already, seeing her for who she truly was had quickly worn her charms off him.

“Then what do you intend to do?” Rada asked, not quite sure how he should react to this turn of events.

“I guess now I’ll have to try to escape,” Tolleth replied, he was still very tired. As Rada looked around he realised that Tolleth the only Romulan still left in the room.

“You know my people will try and take this bridge soon enough. They’ll probably be tracking me with their sensors and my being here will surely bring their attention to the fact that you’re the only one left.” Rada said.

“I realise that I must be quick,” Tolleth acknowledged as he looked up at Rada. “Will you try to stop me?”

Rada doubted there was much he could do to stop Tolleth and anyway, part of him didn’t want to “Taking control of the bridge has to be my highest priority so I don’t think I can pursue you until after I contact my ship.”

Tolleth smiled slightly and threw Rada’s combadge to the opposite corner of the bridge. “Go. Contact your ship. I’ll be gone by the time you do,” and true to his word, by the time Rada had reached where it had landed, Tolleth was gone.

Lt. Commander Rada Dengar
Chief Engineering Officer
USS Serendipity NCC-2012