Space gopher

Posted on Sat May 6th, 2017 @ 6:46pm by Lieutenant Beowulf "Wulf" Byrnes

Mission: The Space Between
Location: Runabout/asteroid field
Timeline: current/somewhere in-between

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Sitting up and rubbing his sleepy face, Beowulf Byrnes looked around at his surroundings. Same runabout bridge, same carbon scoring and blown out consoles, not to mention particles of burnt material all over the carpet and smoke residue coating certain areas of the bulkheads where consoles had overloaded and caught fire. When the Borg had attacked they had been thorough, their main attack tactic being the base itself. Wulf had been out in a runabout doing house calls to tramp freighters, small repairs that could be completed in little time.

The Borg began to beam drones to all the larger vessels and the facility, with Wulf having to fight his way through a freighter with its crew, in time to get to his ship and retreat to a safe location. The airlock corridor had been a bottleneck and as he went passed the freighter bums several Borg drones beamed in, immediately setting upon the merchants. The Borg had ignored him while he punched in his codes to unlock the airlock and his ship, trying to be speedy to save a few others, the Borg assimilating the crew of this doomed vessel. The door slid open as Byrnes glanced back over his shoulder, seeing two Borg now looking his way. The red laser pointers coming forth from one eye was creepy to say the least, especially when coming through a haze of smoke with the lighting on emergency power. When the door opened he bolted for the runabout's starboard hatch.

And now, here he sat. A ship that had suffered extensive damage to many of its systems while retreating from the combat zone, diving deep into a cavern below the surface of an asteroid. For three weeks he had been Cannabalizing parts from certain low-key systems to repair the systems he truly needed. A week ago he had been forced to survive on Starfleet ration packs for two weeks straight, and when he finally fixed the replicator system, that first night, he had eaten so much it made his gut hurt. Now, a week later, he would give anything for an actual cooked meal. However, survival came first. He had spent the past three nights repairing the hardware between his port warp nacelle and the core, determined to at least be able to limp...wherever, at a low warp speed. Better than decades of travel at impulse.

Wearing his Starfleet trousers and boots, Wulf had his shirt and blouse off, had for weeks, the Federation blue tank top on his torso. It wasn't so blue anymore, with grime and soot turning it almost black, especially on his back where he had spent a great deal of time reaching into power couplings and plasma conduits. The biggest issue was communications. He had none, absolutely zilch. With the extensive damage to his small vessel the chamber's coil was now overriding the comms, and there was nothing to be done for it. Either he could make a call or have warp power, and he chose warp power. Re-checking all his work from last night Wulf patted the floor. "Work with me, girl. We'll get outta this," he said to the ship before rising to his feet and going to the pilot's seat.

Plopping down he began to bring the main power online, the warp core sputtering a few times. He had the energizer bypassed like a damn Christmas tree, so if he suffered too many bumps on the way out of the cavern it could destroy all he had worked so hard to accomplish. But, one thing for sure, Beowulf Byrnes was not going to die in some Hobbit hole on some random asteroid in the Delta Quadrant. Using his anti-grav plates beneath, Byrnes lifted off, using proximity sensors to know where the rock and ice walls were so he could spin the ship around to exit. It took a good fifteen minutes of bumping off of walls carefully to get turned about, and wanting to get out of here that much faster he hit the impulse control, running his finger up to half. The ship whined with power, the power strain becoming even...but, nothing happened.

"What the hell?" Wulf looked back over his shoulder, not that he could see anything engineering related from this vantage point, but it was the natural sentient reaction. Sighing heavily he stood and went in the back, opening the deck in the aft section to look at the impulse fusion reactor. It glowed properly, showing full power, but it wasn't shunting its energy the way it should be. Trying several adjustments, and forgetting the accelerator was still set to half impulse, Wulf had no success. Everything looked to be in place and functioning, but no forward thrust. "Damn thing." He angled his face toward the ceiling. "We really need to work out our issues, girl." Byrnes said this to the ship before looking back down at the reactor, hands on hips as his brain tried to reason out what the problem was. Frustrated, tired, dirty and smelling none-to-pleasant, Wulf had had enough. Taking up the alloy lever for hand cranking the hatches, Byrnes raised an arm and smacked the reactor. Still no thrust. So, he continued to tap here and there with no results. His anger flared and he gripped the lever with both hands, wound up like Babe Ruth, and bashed the reactor several times. He heard a click and a whine, then the plasma conduits beginning to light up as they should.

Byrnes grinned to himself, dropping the lever to the deck. "About time," he said, his voice denoting victory. Turning in the engineering pit to face the front of the runabout he clambered out and closed the floor hatch. Without warning he was thrown backwards through the air, impacting the aft viewport of the runabout, dangling as if held by wires since the life support was minimal. The inertial dampeners were working, but at reduced levels. With no pilot this runabout would shoot out of this asteroid and into a field of them if he couldn't reach the bridge. He fell to hands and knees as the inertial dampeners caught up with the motion of the ship and the gravity within. Scrambling quick as could be, Byrnes made it to the pilot's seat just as the small vessel cleared the cavern entrance. "Woh! Woh! Woh!" He shouted, taking evasive maneuvers to port as a large asteroid loomed in his path. Clearing that planitesimal Byrnes reduced speed and casually meandered between rock and ice, heading towards where 900 had been.

Not knowing if 900 was still there, or even if anyone survived, Wulf was taking a chance. If the Borg were there he did have an advantage. They would see this miniscule ship as a non-threat, according to all the data he had read on them, so if they were still parked there then he could turn and go elsewhere. Now that he was out of the cavern Byrnes looked forward, seeing a very large asteroid. Good. Something to hide behind while he tried once more to affect repairs to the comm. He had his combadge, but that was useless without a receiver. The backup hand comm was in his engineer's vest and if he mucked with it a bit he might be able to get a signal out somehow. It was better than nothing. Parking his ship in station keeping behind the planetoid, activating the particle deflectors, Wulf went to work.

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