<USS Avalon> Re: "Avalon's Ending"

 
"Avalon's Ending"
Part One
Counselor Cailin Danaan, Ph.D.




She almost couldn't believe it. It had been what, a few weeks? If that.  
But the broadcast to abandon ship had been made. Cailin growled, something 
she  rarely did, and uncurled herself from the couch in her quarters. They had 
been  instructed to bring only necessities and what could be carried, but that 
was not  a problem for her. She didn't have much. Quickly gathering her few 
prized  possessions, she stuffed them into a duffel, along with some off-duty 
clothing.  She picked up the medical kit she always kept with her, and with one 
last look,  left her quarters for the last  time.
Cailin made her way quickly along the corridors. She knew she was assigned to 
 the Lancelot for evac, and she hurried to get there. But as she was  passing 
a turbolift, she heard the strangest noise. The hair on her ears and at  the 
nape of her neck stood on end as she stopped and listened, to make sure she  
hadn't been hearing things. She heard nothing else, but she went over the sound 
 in her mind, and was fairly certain she hadn't imagined  it.
To be absolutely certain, she pulled the tricorder from her medkit and 
scanned  the lift shaft. There was a lift behind it, but it hadn't stopped even 
with 
the  deck--and there were two people inside. One human male, and another, a 
female,  she couldn't identify.*  
Both were unconscious.  
She pressed the control pad next to the door. Nothing happened. She tried 
again,  and still it stayed firmly closed. "Bloody hell," she muttered,  
shoving 
the tricorder back into the medkit and dropping both it and her bag on  the 
floor. There really wasn't time for this--the broadcast had said there were  
only minutes to evacuate, but there was no way she could leave them  behind.
But how to open the lift  door?
It was only seconds before she remembered that a manual device was located  
behind a wall panel to the right of the lift, as there would be by every  
turbolift on every starship in the fleet. She popped the panel open and pulled  
the 
device out, pressing it firmly onto the door. Straining, she pulled with all  
her strength, but it didn't budge. She tried again with the same result, but 
on  her third attempt, she was at last able to open it shoulder  width.
Third time's the charm, she  mused.
Cailin stuck her head inside the lift. The male occupant was a lieutenant 
with  an Engineering mustard yellow shirt underneath his uniform. As for the 
female,  her eyes did no better a job identifying her species than did the 
tricorder she  had used moments before. Cailin groaned again. There was no way 
she 
was going to  be able to get them both to the Lancelot in time. The female she 
could  possibly carry, but not the male--and she wasn't about to leave either 
one of  them.  
Cailin tapped her commbadge. "Counselor Danaan to any member of the crew. 
Please  respond," she said. Her summons was met with silence, which she knew 
meant ship  wide comms was down.  
She tried addressing the computer next. It, too, failed to respond. "Is this  
entire ship dead?" she wondered  aloud.
It was then that she noticed a tool kit on the floor by the engineer's feet, 
and  an idea came to her. Stepping carefully inside, she crouched and opened 
the kit,  a triumphant "Yes!" escaping her when she found a standard tricorder 
inside--it  would work better than the medical scanner in her  medkit.
Working quickly, she reconfigured the tricorder to interface with the ship's  
computer. Avalon was indeed dying--hardly any of the internal systems  were 
functioning anymore, and for a brief moment she allowed herself to feel the  
sadness of the vessel's loss. Clamping down on emotions that suddenly 
threatened 
 to overwhelm her, she shook her head and set back to checking the working  
systems. She'd survived the loss of one ship, she would survive this as  well.
Relief flooded through Cailin when what she was looking for came on the 
screen,  and she saw that the transporter system was still online--for now. She 
worked  the device in her hand and rigged it to initiate a site-to-site 
transport 
on a  thirty-second delay. Stepping quickly out of the lift for her things, 
she  grabbed them up and moved back inside, shoving the engineer's tool kit 
into her  duffel bag. She slung the straps of the duffel and the medkit over 
her 
shoulder,  then lay a hand on each of the unconscious passengers.  
An instant later, the three of them dematerialized, reappearing on the 
shuttle  Lancelot.

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