Cmdr. Evan Merlin | Flashback

Posted on Sun May 17th, 2020 @ 9:54pm by Commander Evan Merlin

Mission: Dust Stirring
Location: Cold Station Theta
Timeline: SD242005.17

Things had been fairly quiet of late. The Romulans were quiet, there were no mysterious disappearances or murders on the station, even the people from Engineering didn't seem to have much to complain about these days.

It made the station's commander wonder when the other shoe was going to drop. Things were rarely this quiet here, and those periods of relative peace tended to be followed by something hectic all too soon. And based on past experiences, it seemed that the longer those quiet periods lasted, the harder the backlash was.

Ah well, one could always hope that the future would be better than the past.

"Commander?"

He looked up. Two minutes and hirty-six seconds since he'd entered Central Ops and thus far everything had been quiet, but there was something in the tone of the Ops officer's voice which alerted him to a change.

"What is it, Lieutenant?"

"Picking up a distress signal, sir. Coming from the Expanse."

The commander veered up. He felt his hearts hammering in his throat. "Heading?" He ran a hand through his hair, striving to sound calm, detached.

"It's coming towards us, sir. But it's a small vessel, adrift. Distress signal is an automated beacon."

"Is it in visual range?"

"Hang on… yes." Some furious tapping on the console and the viewscreen sprang to life. It displayed what once had been a lovely, sleek vessel drifting amidst a cloud of debris, the ship itself was mangled and full of holes.

Well, at least it didn't look like his own escape capsule- He shoved the thought away with ruthless efficiency. Later there would be time to ponder the similarities or differences between this new arrival and his own, many years ago.

"Life signs?"

A 'no' wouldn't have surprised him, considering the amount of damage. But to his surprise the Lieutenant said: "One, but very weak. If we wait until we can tow it in, it'll be too late."

"Can we transport?"

The Lieutenant looked up from the console again. "Maybe…" he said slowly. "With a hell of a transport technician and a lot of luck… maybe."

"Let's hope lady Luck is on their side, then." He tapped his comm badge and began to rapidly fire orders, summoning the best transporter tech to Transporter room one, alerting medical to a potential new arrival in extremely poor conditions and directing Flight Control to clear a path for the ship and pull it in when it was close enough. Lastly, he called Lt. Satan from the Science department. "When that ship comes close enough for a scan… scan for chroniton radiation."

And then there was nothing to do but wait, until he heard from either the transporter chief, or from medical, or both.

"We've got her, Commander. I beamed her directly to sickbay. Gotta tell you, though… it didn't look good."

He released the breath he hadn't realised he'd been holding. "Thank you, chief. Let's hope the doctor can work one of her miracles."