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."

Recall as much of the ship's layout as I can, including Jeffries tubes as conduits beween decks. Recall that marked route to Primary Docking Bay 3. Make a quick plan. Firstly do I need to to restore power to deck 4?

You recall that there are indeed conduits, but the route wasn't really "to scale" and you didn't study it enough before moving into the suddenly-dark corridor.

It seems there's only one direction to go from here, though, and restoring power seems like a good thing to do whenever you find a place to do it.

So the initial plan is to move as quickly as I can to the Engineering Auxiliary Control room. Taking small steps to my left until mu hand reaches a wall, I feel my way along the dark corridor trying to remember the way. Just to lighten the atmosphere, I whistle a little tune.

You take slow, careful steps, one hand sliding along the cold bulkhead, boots scuffing softly against the deck plating as you move through the absolute dark.

The ship is silent in a way that feels wrong. Not peaceful. Not empty. Just, simply absent.

You whistle.

The tune sounds small in the corridor, thin at first, then strangely clear. With no ambient hum of warp systems, no life support drones, no crew chatter, the sound carries farther than it should. It echoes down the passage and comes back a fraction of a second later, distorted by distance and odd acoustics.

Two steps later, your shin collides with something low and solid.

The impact sends a metallic rattle skittering across the deck in several directions, tools sliding, rolling, and clinking into the darkness.

Feeling downward, your hands find the edge of a fallen maintenance tool cart, tipped on its side across the corridor as if abandoned mid-task during the evacuation. Its surface is cold and lightly dusted with something fibrous. Insulation, maybe, or debris shaken loose during the power surge.

Scattered across the floor around it, your fingers brush over loose equipment:
a heavy wrench,
a compact driver,
a smooth plastic cylinder that feels cracked along one side,
and a slim, pen-shaped object with a ribbed grip.

Somewhere further down the corridor, faint and intermittent, you hear the distant fizz-pop of sparking circuitry.