SNAFU

Posted on Jun 05, 2014 @ 7:36am by Captain Kassandra Thytos
Edited on on Jun 05, 2014 @ 7:47am

Mission: All Our Yesterdays

"SNAFU"
(cont. Post Mortem)
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Location: USS CENTURY
Stardate 2.14061.1847
Scene: Main Engineering

Zero G low air missions were Kassandra's favorite, and she would normally be enjoying herself, but there was one wrinkle. The engineer she was supposed to babysit would not shut up. Since the moment they had suited up it had been a nonstop stream of consciousness. Kassandra had tried giving her subtle hints that her chatter was annoying but it hadn't succeeded.

[[Good thing she's hot, otherwise I'd be flushing her out the nearest airlock.]] PFC Trebond muttered over the Marines' private com channel. [[Course, later I can think of ways to shut her up real-]]

[[Trebond! Do you kiss your mother with that mouth? Mind your manners.
Eyeball liberty only.]] Kassandra snapped back. [[We have enough trouble with the Space Cadets without you harassing their women.]]

[[Yes Ma'am. Wouldn't want to gain a reputation for Marines being disorderly... and drunk.]]

[[I'll let you have that one for free, PFC because I deserved it, but any more of that lip and you're in charge of equipment cleaning for the next week.]] She turned to glare daggers at him.

[[Heard and received, Captain Coppertop.]] Trebond said cheerfully.
Private Gareth chuckled quietly into the radio, not quite ready to begin ribbing his commander. She rolled her eyes, and tried her utmost to ignore Cindy Rochemonte's stream of witless prattle. You'd have thought the two Marines' stony silence and lack of input into the wholly one sided conversation, but no.

And then the woman began to repeat her inane stories. That was the last straw. Kassandra stopped and turned on her, the fury evident on her face.

"Lieutenant. Shut. The. Fuck. Up. I swear to god, I will take this phaser and shove it down your throat if you don’t be quiet. We are in a tactical environment, and that means I’m in charge. So shut your pretty, little mouth, before I shut it for you. Understand?” Cindy looked for a moment like she was going to cry. Kassandra almost recanted her words and apologized, but then shook her head sharply.
No, the kid needed to learn, and it was clearly going to have to be tough love with her. She almost certainly had been chattering instead of paying attention when she was injured in that explosion on the station. Someone had to get her to pay attention of her surroundings, or her next away mission would surely be her last.

It seemed to work. At least the woman was quiet, and the four of them were left in silence , alone with the sound of their footsteps and their breathing. Their progress was slowed by the engineer. Kassandra had forgotten how bulky and ungainly the Starfleet environmental suits were.

Although the Marine exosuits looked superficially like the environmental suits, much more technology and design was packed into them. Marine Exosuits were much lighter than the environmental suits, despite looking bulkier due to the armor plates. Thermal controls and comfort were sacrificed for speed and mobility, and asides from the armor plated areas, the suit was composed of a rubbery material similar to neoprene with super hardened thermal resistant ceramic tiles embedded in it. Consequentially, the suits tended to be poorly climate controlled- you were either too hot or too cold.

The magnetized plates on their feet worked at half the power, enabling much quicker speeds and footwork, though the lower power made unteathered spacewalks a bit more dangerous. The suits compensated by having accessory magnetic plates at the knees and palms and two auxiliary magnetic grappling hooks, allowing multiple anchor points, preventing weapon loss, and even a method of quick movement in ships.
Movement and speed was augmented further by the addition of a set of propulsion jets dotted around the armored portions that could be used to augment speed.

**Essentially... Really fun toys that we sometimes get to use.** Kassandra thought with amusement as she left the engineer at the engineering console working away, and catapulted herself to the top of the warp core shaft. She began to gather and move the dead bodies to the first floor decking. Engineering was a delicate area, and she didn't want frozen dead guys smashing into vital consoles or ducts.

Below her Trebond began setting up containment fields isolating key components, just in case any areas were damaged enough to catch fire upon starting energy up on the ship. Boring work, in other words. She grinned. Rank hath its privileges. She snagged a second body and pirouetted gracefully in air, using her jets to send her rushing towards the ground level.

[[You're smiling.]] Cindy Rochemonte said suddenly. [[Although it's kind of creepy. You're carrying an armful of dead bodies. And you're smiling.]]

"Eh?" The grin vanished from Kassandra's face, and she looked from arm to arm at the frozen corpses. She felt herself turning red, and said defensively. "Uh. Well it's not because of the dead bodies. I'm not morbid or something."

[[Oh, I didn't think it was that!]] It was Cindy's turn to match Kassandra's blush, and she began to babble a bit. [[You looked like you were having fun retrieving the bodies. Like a fairy or something, so graceful. And you look so pretty when you smile, you should do it more often. You're not as scary smiling.]]

If Cindy had thought she and the Marine were about to have a breakthrough and start a friendship, she'd just ruined it. It was like a sudden impassive, cold shutter came down over Kassandra's face, killing whatever warmth might have been growing there.

"I don't exist to look nice, nor am I under ANY obligation to please you with my appearance." She snapped back. "And you *should* be scared of me. I am not one of the happy fuzzy, safe people that inhabit your world, princess."

[[Ah, pour l'amour de Dieu! You're all noise.]] Cindy muttered as she went back to her engineering. [[I was just trying to be nice.]]

Kassandra turned and laid the two corpses her arms side by side around main deck around the warp core and took scans to identify them. She frowned and hit her tricorder on the bulkheads a couple times, and scanned again. Letting out a stream of invective she turned off the tricorder and started it up again.

[[Why are you abusing that poor tricorder, Captain Crankypants?]] Cindy stopped her work to stare at Kassandra, who sighed.

"Because, the information it's giving me is ridiculous. These guy here was reported as killed in the line of duty, and this one here was given a dishonorable retirement because he was caught stealing and selling weaponry. That's weird enough, but both of them have had major portions of their service files redacted. Gotta be some sort of secret squirrel shit, right?"

She returned to the central chamber, leaping back once more into the darkness to retrieve more bodies. Trebond finished his work and joined her. She floated upwards and propelled the corpses down towards the other Marine who laid them down alongside the others. It was slow going, some of the corpses had become tangled in wires, or gotten stuck and then frozen in weird positions.

Without warning, a loud banging and hissing started, and lights flickered crazily. The two marines on the ground had their guns out in a flash diving for cover. Kassandra was midway in the air when gravity reasserted herself, and she found herself plummeting towards the floor surrounded by several frozen corpses in free fall. Desperately she shot one of the magnetic grappling hooks hoping that she'd break her fall on it. She felt the unmistakable heat of a phaser creasing past her chest as her arm was yanked nearly out of its socket by the grappling hook wire. She tried to yell something as she swung into the hull hard enough to daze. A phaser blast severed the line and she dropped the last ten feet onto the deck. She landed with a loud huff as the air was driven from her lungs.

[[Life support is up and running,]]-" as is gravity!" Cindy Rochemonte's voice was triumphant as she took off her helmet.
Kassandra tried to catch her breath, anger rising in her chest. For someone who was purportedly so smart, the engineer had the common sense of a two year old. If she didn't hurt

PFC Alain Trebond was apparently of the same opinion. He yanked his helmet off, the seal of his helmet hissing as he broke it. He tossed his helmet into a corner and walked over to the engineer, whom he hauled to her feet by the back of her environmental suit.

"WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU." He bellowed into Cindy's face. He stabbed a finger in Kassandra's direction "Why the hell would you not warn us you were turning things on? We could have shot something vital or Captain Thytos, who by the way, is lucky she's such a quick thinker, otherwise we'd probably be scraping her off the deck. Did your parents drop you on your goddamn head when you were a child?"

Kassandra fumbled with her helmet, sucking wind as she rolled over to her knees. She nearly vomited. The smell of burning flesh and hull plating was on the air, mixed with the ionized tang of phaser fire.
The corpses that had fallen to the floor had shattered and were now beginning to warm up as the life support brought the air up to a comfortable ambient temperature, turning into a soggy meaty mess.

" Bouffe ma queue calisse de fag, I told you an hour ago that I was going to have the systems up and running." Cindy said in a shaky voice. "Not my fault if you two are too stupid to count properly. Tu es betes comme tes pieds."

" Je m’en fous, Lieutentant." Kassandra wheezed. " Va te faire foutre.
You know what we call people like you? Fucking buddy killers. Do you think we're your goddamn meat shields? You count yourself lucky that I'm too sore to come and give you the slap you deserve, oxygen waster."

[[Kane to away team, what the hell is going on over there? We just read heavy phaser fire in engineering.]]

"Major Thytos to Bridge. We're fine. We're all fine, thanks very much. How are you?" Kassandra. "We just had a little incident. It's all friendly fire. Lieutenant Rochemonte neglected to warn us she was turning the gravity back on, and well, two dozen corpses come suddenly plummeting from the heavens, my marines get a wee bit trigger happy.
You might need to send someone over quickly to get all the bits of dead guy popsicle into bags before they defrost, and I am probably going to need a visit to the med bay when we transport back."

[[What?]] Kane's voice managed to convey a stony glare of disbelief.

"Don't worry. Just send over some body bags."
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NRPG: Okay... Not really doing much other than giving us gravity and air... Why are there so many officers here that shouldn't be alive or in Starfleet?

Brought to you by:
Alix Fowler, the much kinder gentler alter ego of:
Captain Kassandra Thytos,
Marine CO
USS DISCOVERY