DreamLyrics™ Play-by-Post Forums Fun & Games ETD: Escape the Dream Episode II: Last Stand of the USS Rubicon

The last thing you remember is the violent shudder of the Kepler breaking apart, the transporter beam's golden light, and Commander Vance's voice cutting into static.

You don't wake so much as you reassemble. Your atoms scream in protest. You are on the transporter pad of the U.S.S. Rubicon, but the world is silent and dark.

The great warp core hum is gone. In its place is a deep, bone-aching quiet, broken only by the frantic sputter of the transporter console behind you and the dim, rhythmic pulse of red emergency strips along the corridor ceiling. The air is freezing and smells of ozone, scorched metal, and the sickly-sweet tang of a coolant leak.

A calm, synthetic voice echoes from the walls, the ceiling, everywhere at once: "Core Breach Protocol initiated. Containment failure in T-Minus 59 minutes, 30 seconds. All personnel: evacuate immediately."

The console screen tells the story in cold, green text. A system log shows the evacuation order, a massive power surge, and the final line: TRANSPORTER BUFFER FUSION. MATTER REASSEMBLY COMPLETE. You were in the buffer. You were put back together after the ship was abandoned.

A wall-mounted schematic flickers. Most of it is grey and dead. One icon pulses with a stubborn, green hope: an escape pod, in Primary Docking Bay 3. A route is highlighted.

You rush into the corridor. The instant the last of you crosses the threshold, a deafening hydraulic SHUNK roars behind you. You spin. The massive emergency blast doors to the transporter room have slammed shut, their red "SEALED" lights glowing like malevolent eyes. Simultaneously, every red emergency light along your highlighted path ahead winks out, plunging the way forward into an absolute, suffocating black.

The ship's AI, VIKTOR (Virtual Intelligence Kernel for Tactical Operations and Reasoning), politely informs you: "Emergency lock-down engaged. Primary power to Deck 4 terminated. Manual reactivation required. Please proceed to the Engineering Auxiliary Control room. Core Breach in T-Minus 58 minutes, 15 seconds."

The countdown begins.

It is pitch black.

Like the click!

I feel on my person for anything I might have, PADD, phaser, lowlight goggles, torch.

In the dry run, Miales asked something similar:

My reply was:

You pat yourselves down instinctively. Your uniforms are intact. Rank pips. Comm badges, though when you tap them, they chirp once and return nothing but dead air. No ship, no frequency, no one listening.

Beyond that: nothing.

No phasers. No tricorders. No medkits. No palm beacons. Nothing on your belts, nothing in your hands, nothing in your pockets.

And now, standing here in the dark, a detail from that transporter console nags at the back of your mind, lines of green text you maybe didn't fully process in the rush to move:

TRIAGE PROTOCOL: BIOSIGN PRIORITY ONLY
INORGANIC PATTERNS: PURGED TO PREVENT CORRUPTION
EQUIPMENT RECONSTITUTED: NONE

The transporter had just enough power to put you and your standard uniform back together. Your gear didn't make the cut.

You are alive, clothed, and empty-handed on a dying ship in the dark.

VIKTOR's voice echoes from somewhere ahead: "Core breach in T-minus 57 minutes, 40 seconds."