Searching the Catacombs, Part 2 Transporting Working Units

Posted on Thu Mar 14th, 2024 @ 2:08am by Captain Daniel Jackson PhD & Lieutenant Commander Nash Winters & Civillian Sara Winters

1,792 words; about a 9 minute read

Mission: Artifact or Artifiction
Location: Serenity
Timeline: MD 2, After Part 1

Daniel took a few steps away from the chamber and tapped his communicator, "Dr. Jackson to Commander Johansen. We have an issue down here with the stasis chambers."

=^= Go ahead, =^=

The crew heard the Commander's curt response. Daniel shook it off. "Stasis chambers are being shut down as we speak. We either need to have power reallocated down here, or get the working units off this deck ASAP."

=^= Understood. Lieutenant Janes is in the computer room working on power allocation now. I'll advise him to prioritize the area short term. Once we start getting the units tagged I'll have a medical and engineering team work on moving them up to a deck with power... It will be better to revive them among other survivors. Johansen out. =^=

Daniel turned back to Sara and Nevan. "I'm sure you heard all of that. Let's start moving to tag the people who are still alive quickly. I don't know how much time they have down here."

- - - - - -

Remy was still in the transporter room, having just returned from Serenity when she received the call from Dr. Jackson. She tapped her communicator once more, "Johansen to Commander Winters, are you decent?"

Winters was awake and dressing himself, still beaming from afternoon delight with Sara. He was putting on his boots when Remy chirped his communicator.

“Nash. Go ahead Remy, what can I do for you?”

Remy tapped her communicator again as she walked briskly from the transporter to the Bridge. "There's a power supply issue with the stasis chambers in the lower decks of Serenity. I'm going to see about having ops get some extra power down there, but since most of those chambers contain corpses at the moment, I think the best course of action would be to move the ones that are still working to the upper decks with the others so that their computer doesn't shut any more of the working units off. Can you get over there and coordinate that? You may have to commandeer our medical transporter."

“Of course. Nothing I like more than commandeering transporters. Give me 30 minutes or so. I’ll get my gear together and beam over. Nash out.”

Winters finished getting his uniform on, grabbed a raktajino-to-go from the replicator and briefed his team on deck 36. Carrying his reliable tool kit and extra power modules just in case, Nash beamed over to Serenity to get a handle on the power fluctuations.

Nash materialized on one of the lower decks on Serenity, which is where his wife Sara happened to be.

"Nash!" Daniel called out. "We've got three tagged for transport as soon as you can. The computer is already trying to cut power to one. Maybe if we can start moving some out, we'll buy more time to get through the others.

“What the hell? Already cutting the power? Damn!” exclaimed Nash.

“Sara, transmit the upper deck coordinates to Astrea. Daniel, transport on my mark. I’ll monitor the power levels. Ready? Mark!” Nash ordered as he watched the cryotubes disappear.

Sara nodded once, and tapped at her transdermal communicator. =/\=Astrea, this is Winters-the female one. The coordinates are being sent to you now. =/\= She turned on her PADD and sent the numbers, shutting it off quickly. She watched as the pod bodies disappeared. "Why is everything turning off?" She called out to the men.

“If I had to hazard a guess, and I am guessing. This is technology new to most of us. It’s these damn crystals. Something is inhibiting their normal function. Could be natural interference of some kind. Maybe it’s us….our equipment.” Nash looked to Dr. Jackson. “Daniel?”

"This was Lieutenant Spello's theory this morning, and it's making sense as I figure out the algorithm," Daniel said grimly as he looked around. "This part of the ship hasn't been connected to the power upgrades that Jules and Dani started yesterday, so the Computer is doing what it needs to do to save who it can. As the power supply dwindles, it's making elections on who to save."

"Young, fertile, potential for fertility in the future, doctors, farmers, some engineers, some mechanics. The oldest person in a working stasis unit that we've seen down here is 36," Daniel noted. "We need to get the working units hooked into the ship's primary power supply. If the first revival goes well today, then medical will work on more tomorrow."

Sara listened to the men's banter. A thought occurred to her. "Those are people necessary to repopulate a planet," she said. "You need, obviously, incubators-hence the women and fertile, someone to set up infrastructure-hence the engineers and mechanics. You need a doctor or two for obvious reasons. Farmers can work the land...and so on. Any of those people can assist in defense if that becomes necessary, as well," she said, quietly, but firmly. She looked from her husband to Jackson. "We've stumbled upon a whole society that had reason to believe they'd all die out-or most of them would, anyway."

"We should keep moving," Daniel suggested. "Hopefully there are more people to save."

“It certainly is fascinating. An extraterrestrial Noah’s Ark. Kind of sad, really. They knew their planet was doomed. Rebuild a society from scratch. Extraordinary undertaking. Well, you two know the layout of this place better than I do. Lead on. As Daniel said, let’s save some more lives,” Nash said.

Sara nodded, and took his hand. "Indeed," she said. "It's also a bit brave," she said. "I think," she said, with a smile. "Lead the way!" A bit later, they were next to the second bank of pods, and she went back to serious scientist. "No life signs," she said, after a moment.

Nash found himself with his hands on the glass top of the first stasis chamber he and Sara examined. He addressed the now deceased being inside and whispered, “I’m sorry….,” Nash squeezed Sara’s hand more tightly. “I hope we’re not too late for the rest of these people, Sara. Help me with the power modules. They can be modified to keep the tubes running. I’ll show you how. But we have to work quickly. Daniel can help us, too. Daniel!! We need you!! The power modules I brought can restore function to the stasis chambers! We could use a hand!”

Sara nodded. "Sure. What do you need me to do?" She asked Nash.

Nevan had already made his way far down the row, scanning life signs and tagging pods that were ready for transport when available. Given the current situation, becoming emotionally invested in the people they were trying to rescue was only going to slow him down and he had a job to do, which was to collect as much scan data as he could for his team to review, and check life signs and pod status' to prioritize for the Astrea to beam out. Time was of the essence and he' be meeting and worrying more about these people soon enough. As long as medical was able to revive them.

Daniel returned to Nash as requested. "Wouldn't it be faster to beam them to a functioning part of the ship?" He asked, as he looked at the materials that Nash brought to see what he had in mind.

“That’s my intention. The modules are a time saver. Just to keep the tubes going until transport is complete. Let’s not stand around wasting precious time, Daniel. Let’s move these people out so we can keep them alive.”

"Should I move on to the other consoles?" Sara asked. She might be more helpful assisting Nevan in whatever he was doing.

"Alright, just show me what to do," Daniel responded. He wasn't an engineer, but he was willing to learn about what Nash was trying to do."

Sara placed a hand on Nash's arm to reassure him, just in case he was overwhelmed or something. "One thing at a time," she said, soothingly. "Dr. Jackson, I was just about to ask you..." she said, with a small laugh.

"Ask me?" Jackson questioned.

"What we should do next!" She said. She didn't care about the earlier exchanges; it didn't concern her. "I can prep the labs from here, I think, to receive any empty pods for further study, if that would be helpful?" She asked. "Nash, hurry up, please," she said, a certain tone in her voice that she sometimes gave him when he was exasperating her.

“Yes, yes, Sara. Coming. We have to do this carefully to make sure the pods remain viable….and the people inside don’t die,” said Nash.

"Right now, we just need to move these to the decks that have a more stable power supply. until medical has the proper teams in place to revive everyone. Let's get to work," Daniel responded.

Nevan had made his way back to the pair "I've got everything down the way here scanned and tagged, there were quite a few that didn't make it. I also setup a few tricorders with data links to start downloading any sort of core backups they could find, so maybe we'll be able to pull the backgrounds on some of those that have been lost, once things are translated anyways. I can work in the opposite direction now, you may want to take your sleeve or some other extra material if you have it to cover your nose and mouth, even after all this time there are some interesting smells among some of the pods."

"Roger that," Daniel agreed. "I'll help with tagging. We can get these pods moved up ASAP so we can spend as little time down here as possible."

Nash was proud of the work he and his wife were doing. As hectic as it was, a lot of uncertainty in the beginning, things were progressing well.

“Thank you, gentlemen,” Nash said, referring to Jackson and Nevan. “Are we ready to relocate the pods and move on to the next phase?”

Sara nodded. "I can do that," she said to Nevan, and then turned her attention to Nash. "Just let me know when and what to do," she said. "Is that what you call "beaming them up?" She asked him. "We can do that, if you two want to start moving the other pods," she said to Nevan and Daniel. From her pocket, she extracted a vial of peppermint essential oil. "Try this, a tiny smudge under your nose. We use it in the labs when working with sulfur and waste products," she explained, taking a moment to dab a drop under her nostrils. It smelled strong, but it was better than the alternative.

[End]

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