Problems of the U // Team 9's Feeling Fine!

[tanteiotaku]

The last place he wanted to be when the earth shook like that was underground. But maybe, just maybe, after that first shake that was all they were in for.

It was not to be. As the world came down around them, he ducked and covered his head. Through the dust and falling rocks, he didn't see that fairly sizable stone coming down toward him. He let out a shout of pain when it made impact. He rolled over onto his side and scrambled away from the rock, in case more were coming. Fortunately, it was a glancing blow. A stone that size could have hurt him a lot worse if it had hit him squarely.

He stayed curled up until the shaking stopped, and the last pebbles settled. He patted his vest. It didn't seem like anything critical had been damaged.

Time to see how the others had fared. He called out to the room at large. "Oi--ow!" he wrapped his arm around his chest. Okay, that really hurt. The black of his vest and pants was muted by the settling dust as he pushed himself to his feet. "Everyone alright?"

He had someone else to check on, too. He pulled out the Stag Phone, jabbed a button and put it to his head. He was rewarded with a loud, shrill shriek and he jerked it from his head. Okay, that was weird. He started pushing pseudo memories into it, the flying blue Bat Shot, and the skittering yellow Spider Shock. "Go find anyone else in trouble," he told them.

While he did that, he experimented a bit with breathing in a way that wasn't painful while he looked around the smaller space that had been the large main room. Nothing but rocks. He took a few steps around the rock that had wounded him. "Anyone else out there?"

Comments

[aehallh]

The beam on Dylan's force lance sweeps across the rubble-filled cave, catching Irian in its glow. She coughs a couple more times, experimentally, clearing her throat, before pushing herself a bit gingerly away from the wall. A thin layer of dust coats her clothing, her hair is halfway out of its ponytail, and there's a rivulet of emerald blood running down the left side of her neck, but she looks alert, conscious of her surroundings.

"I'm well," she says, dismissing his concern in the brisk manner of someone unused to, and disliking, showing weakness of any sort in front of strangers. Her voice is raspy, and she tries swallowing to moisten her throat, though it's fruitless at this stage.

"Perhaps I should have anticipated something like this would go wrong."

It's not self-deprecating, not really; she's cursing herself a little for not having had the forethought to bring her tricorder, which would have been immensely helpful in a situation like this one. But her words are more an ironic reflection on the fact that not even a seemingly uneventful tour like this can go by without something disastrous happening.

[dreams_dont_die]

The beam of light from his force lance catches movement, and he takes a couple of steps closer. It's the woman he'd been talking to earlier, Commander t'Aumne. She looks a mess, but he probably looks about the same, smeared in dirt and with a trickle of blood smeared down his cheek from something hitting him in the cave in.

"Yeah. You and me both."

He's the damn captain. It's his job to be ready for things like this. If this had been a mission from the Andromeda, he'd have scanners, video comms devices, maybe even some supplies. Now, he's got the force lance and that's it. And a comms implant that's giving him nothing but squeals.

And no sign of Tyr who was down here and would surely have reported in when he called out, comms or no comms, or Rhade of whom the same could be said (since Rhade is apparently on his crew in the future he's from).

His crew members occasionally like to tell him that the universe hates him and that he should be prepared for that. Usually, he glares at them and points out that attitude doesn't get them anywhere. But he's also usually prepared for things to go to hell in the middle of whatever he's doing.

So much for always having a plan b.

"There anyone else in there with you?"

[aehallh]

Irian, for her part, tends to believe that she should be prepared for any eventuality, whether that be a surprise attack or a crewmember betraying her. The unfortunate reality is that there's no way to have a plan, a fallback, for every situation — so she has simply learned to deal with incidents like this as best she can when they happen.

Earthquakes — it's been a long time, since she's been in or anywhere near one. If she were a more religious woman, she might have said that this sort of thing was a result of the Elements' wrath: Earth itself, turned against them. For what, she doesn't know and doesn't particularly want to think about, and in any case she isn't exactly given to acquiring religion during moments of disaster, like some. She sighs, a brief, slightly frustrated-sounding exhalation, pushing her hair back behind one pointed ear.

"I have seen no one," she replies. She glances off to one side, and her expression goes a little tight. "We are underground; it would not surprise me if many have been injured or killed."

It's a statement of fact, no more and no less than that. Irian's gaze flicks back to Dylan's face, weighing him a moment silently, before she adds, "Perhaps we should search — although I would be cautious in clearing the debris." She doesn't need to tell him why. Her plasma pistol is all but useless here — it would be very simple to trigger another cave-in with an energy weapon, considering the clear seismic instability.

[dreams_dont_die]

"Yeah. Me either. I've worked earthquake relief before," he says, a hint of distaste in his voice. "Something like this? It'd be almost unbelievable if nobody got hurt."

It's not a thought he particularly wants to entertain. He may be a soldier, but that doesn't mean he has anything but regret at deaths, even ones he had no part in. Nobody here deserved to die, or should have died. And that's before he considers that some of those people who have been injured or killed may have been people he knew. People he'd met since he came aboard the Enterprise.

Or, unspeakable as that thought is, people he knew knew before he found himself in this time. His friends. His family, or as close as he has.

"But you're right. We should search. I don't suppose you've got any sort of scanner with you?"

And that shouldn't be a question he has to ask, because he should have brought his. If he'd been anywhere near prepared.

[aehallh]

"Unfortunately not," Irian says, and if she was a less collected woman she would probably look a little shamefaced right now. She doesn't know what she was thinking. If this were an away mission with her own crew, she would have been fully equipped. So why did she think this would be any different, even if it was only meant to be a tour, not a mission?

She hates being caught off guard, and this situation has put her far more out of her depth than she would like.

"Most of the passages have probably been closed off," she says, going over to where the rockfall has dropped a pile of debris in front of one of them, just inside the range of the light produced by Dylan's lance. She picks up a boulder — a bit heavier than a human woman would be able to lift, or at least it appears that way — and puts it out of the way. She isn't even winded afterward.

"I would hope the elevator shafts are clear — else we'll begin to run out of air."

She would truly prefer not to die down here.

[dreams_dont_die]

"Well, that makes two of us."

And two of them who sound particularly unimpressed at that fact. It's little comfort to know someone else was unprepared; in fact, this is exactly what his critics say about him, that he lets optimism get in the way of being well-prepared. He's always said it wasn't the case.

Dylan steps up beside Irian, peering through the dust towards the passageway she'd just begun to clear. He's pretty sure he hasn't been that way previously on the tour, but he can't tell for certain; his sense of direction has always been better with navigational equipment around than without it.

"They'll be clear," he says, though he has no actual evidence to prove that. "We're not going to die down here."

There's an edge in his voice in that moment, just in the last sentence, of the combination of optimism and fierce determination to shape the world into the shape it should take that's driven everything he's done since he found himself being pulled out of a black hole and into a future he could never have imagined.

He's just not going to consider it.

Still, best to get as much cleared as possible; this passage, at least, doesn't look too badly blocked and he's pretty sure some of the others from the group were up ahead. They might well be there.