Aftermath

Posted on Aug 29, 2015 @ 1:15pm by Commander Jacob Crichton
Edited on on Aug 29, 2015 @ 1:15pm

Mission: Civil War

= Aftermath =

(cont'd from "Escape From The Shoal")



LOCATION: USS PHOENIX

SCENE: Deflector Control Maintenance Access

STARDATE: [2.15] 0828.1958



When the all-clear came from Jos up on the bridge, Jake let out his breath in a relieved whoosh. He glanced over at Chaucer, flashed a "thumbs up sign" which the Gorn happily returned, then started disconnecting the manual interface with deflector control. It took Jake and Chaucer only ten minutes to get out of maintenance access, and to find their way to a still-functional turbolift. Though the crisis was over, the refugees and the Amaterasu had done a lot of damage to the PHOENIX, and Jake foresaw another run of very long days stretching out ahead of him.



"First things first," Jake said, ostensibly to Chaucer, though his tone was so low that the Gorn might not have heard it if he wasn't such a good listener. "We need to get to sickbay, get treated for all those rads we soaked up in the tubes. Wouldn't want you to come down with flaky scale syndrome or something."



[[Help,]] Chaucer's voicebox squawked.



"Just joking," Jake said. "We'll be fine, Chaucer. Hey, you did good in there."



The Gorn didn't reply, only stared at Jake with unreadable yellow eyes. Jake didn't know if that meant that Chaucer didn't need to be told when he'd done a good job, or if just didn't consider any of the four phrases in his repertoire to be self-deprecating enough to modestly accept the compliment. He decided to go with the latter, if only because it made Chaucer seem a touch more relatable.



The turbolift finally arrived, and Jake and Chaucer stepped aboard. The lift bore them to Deck 8, where Cade Foster had set up shop in the ship's secondary sickbay.



=[/\]=



SCENE: Secondary Sickbay, Deck 8



There was a lot of commotion in sickbay as Jake and Chaucer entered. Foster was busy, hunched over someone lying on a bio-bed. Jake couldn't see who the patient was, but judging at the serious expression on Foster's face, he had a feeling their condition was serious. Jake spotted Eve Dalziel, standing off to the side, outside the treatment area. The counselor was following the action around the bio-bed with rapt attention. She didn't even glance over as Jake approached.



"Glad you're safe," Eve murmured, as Jake came to a stop beside her.



"We came for the radiation treatment," Jake said. "Me and Chaucer were exposed to a lot of radiation in the access tunnels."



"We have the materials standing by," Eve said. "We expect to see a lot of radiation sickness over the next few days."



As she spoke, Eve's eyes never wavered from Foster and Suvek. Jake let the silence hang in the air between them for a moment, then decided that Eve wasn't going to say anything unless he asked.



"Who's the patient?" Jake asked. "Do I want to know?"



"It's Sylvia," Eve said, finally pulling her eyes off Foster to look at Jake. "After the attack in Engineering, Lt. Rochemonte was worried that she'd--"



"Attack in Engineering?" Jake asked. "You mean Savaar?"



"My god," Eve said, staring at Jake with saucer-wide eyes. "You don't know."



Jake stared back, a cold lump forming in the pit of his stomach. "Know what?"



"It's Varn," Eve said. "He's dead."



The words landed well enough, but Jake's mind refused to process them. Thomas Varn couldn't be dead. Thomas Varn had spoken to Jake over the comms only ten minutes ago. Or had it been twenty? Jake couldn't be sure, so much had happened over the last few hours that it was going to be a lot of working just piecing the order of events together. It didn't matter; the important thing was that Thomas Varn had been alive. Alive, and thinking; it was his plan with the deflector that had gotten them out of this mess after all. Someone who was thinking couldn't be dead.



But Eve's expression hadn't changed. The corners of her eyes hadn't softened into a gentle smile, to show that she'd just been teasing him. Jake remembered then that it hadn't been Varn who'd conveyed the details of the plan, had it? It had been Cindy. She'd told him that Varn wasn't available.



Wasn't available?



"Jake?" Eve asked, and Jake realized he must have been staring at her while he was a million miles away. He blinked.



"Varn is..." he started. The final word wouldn't come.



"It was an Amaterasu," Eve said quietly. "There was nothing anyone could do."



Jake's mind flashed back to watching Savaar being cooked alive under the gentle light of the Amaterasu. The way the flesh had puckered, then started to run. The wet sound of Savaar's final screams. Nothing anyone could do was an understatement. Jake suddenly felt queasy, like the deck-plating had started to shift under his feet.



The strong, scaly hand of Chaucer clamped down on Jake's shoulder, steadying him. Eve was at his side a moment later, helping Chaucer to guide Jake over to an unoccupied bio-bed to sit. Jake normally would have protested the help, but his head was too swimmy for him to put up much of a fight. He wondered if it was a side-effect of the radiation.



"It's okay," Eve was saying. "It's exhaustion."



Jake felt the press of a hypospray into his arm. The swimming feeling in his head cleared up some, but the twisting feeling in his stomach wasn't affected. He couldn't get the image of Savaar out of his mind, except now it wasn't Savaar that he saw, but the familiar, friendly face of Thomas Varn. Jake and Varn hadn't ever been the closest of friends, but Jake had known Varn since all the back to his first posting aboard GATEWAY Station. Varn couldn't be dead. Varn was too full of good ideas to be dead.



Jake's stomach lurched. He managed to lean over the side of the bio-bed, emptying the sticky contents of his stomach all over the floor of sickbay. There wasn't much- Jake hadn't had time for a proper meal in... how long had it been? A day? Two?



"Ugh," Jake said, hating the sour taste in his mouth.



"I hope you have some sawdust in that toolkit, monkeywrench."



Jake looked up, saw that Foster had come to stand next to Eve. Behind him, in the operating theater, he could see Sylvia Warren laying on the bio-bed, her eyes closed. Suvek stood nearby, examining a biometrics readout. Jake could see the gentle rise and fall of Sylvia's chest, and decided she must be out of the woods for now.



"I guess someone finally tracked you down," Jake said, sitting up straight again and wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand. His lips were dry and a little sticky.



"Just in time to save the day," Foster said. "Don't change the subject. Who's going to clean my floor?"



"Not now," Eve said, glaring at Foster. "How is she, doctor?"



"She's fine," Foster said, his normal smarmy expression softening into what could almost be mistaken for genuine concern. "We've treated the radiation exposure, and there's no signs of damage to the fetus. She's in shock, but we've given her something. She just needs to rest."



"The father of her baby is dead," Eve said. "She needs more than just rest."



"Not my department," Foster said. "You're the headshrinker, not me."



"Shut up, Foster," Jake said, getting off the bio-bed to stand on wobbly legs. He shrugged off Eve's hand as she tried to stop him. "If you'd been where you were supposed to be, we could have gotten Embry out of the system a lot sooner. Maybe Varn wouldn't be dead!"



"Jake, that's not fair," Eve was saying.



"You think this is *my* fault?" Foster asked, scowling at Jake. "The way I hear it, you were the one throwing a goddamn pity parade for those things. If you'd just agreed to wipe them out from the start--"



"Doctor Foster!" Eve cut-in, but Cade Foster had built up a good head of steam and he wasn't about to let it go.



"Was it worth it, Crichton?" Foster asked. "Varn had to die to protect your warm-and-fuzzy notion that the galaxy is a magical place!"



"We've all been under a great deal of stress lately," Eve said, her voice more forceful.



"You've seen how they kill," Foster continued. "Exactly how 'magical' do you think his final moments were?"



Jake's fist crashed against the bridge of Foster's nose, sending the older man to sprawl backwards against another bio-bed. Chaucer was there in a flash, interjecting his large body between Foster and Jake. There was no need; Jake made no move to press the attack, and Foster's eyes had gone wide with surprise as he stared back at Jake from where he'd landed. The doctor's hands were clamped over his nose, but Jake could see blood creeping out from between Foster's fingers.



"Commander Crichton!" Eve shouted. "That is enough!"



Eve turned, leveling her angry expression on Foster.



"And you," she growled. "Keep your mouth *shut*."



"Sorry, counselor," Jake said. His tone sounded a thousand miles away, and his eyes never left Foster's.



"I understand you're upset, but you can't... we can't..." Eve said, as if she wasn't sure how to finish the sentence. Everything had gotten out of control. It was as if Embry's riot had exposed this whole charade for what is was. They weren't Starfleet. Starfleet was out there, sending warships to come and kill them. Jake had thought they should honor the oaths they had sworn, to protect the idea of Starfleet even as they tried to save it, and now Thomas Varn was dead.



"I need to get to Engineering," Jake said dully. "There's... there's a lot to do."



For a moment, Eve looked like she might argue. Then, she simply shook her head and sighed. Jake turned and headed for the exit.



"There's still the matter of my floor," Foster called after him, but Jake didn't look back.



=[/\]=



Shawn Putnam

a.k.a.

Jake Crichton, Commander

Chief Engineering Officer

USS PHOENIX