Counting the Cost

Posted on Thu Dec 29th, 2022 @ 11:01am by Lieutenant Commander Rin

Mission: Season 6 : Episode 1: Circinus
Location: Deck 23 Stardrive section, Battle bridge
Timeline: MD 3 0700
721 words - 1.4 OF Standard Post Measure

Rin's world was data.

When she had first connected with Avalon, it had been like a dive through razor wire, trying to find connections amid all the virtual destruction. And she had seized every bit of useful data she could, because that is what she needed. That is what she did.

Everything was about pulling the ship back together. For Avalon, that meant reconnecting pathways or finding new ones. That often meant sending people out to the broken places and making them not broken. But she needed people for that, and she needed to know where to send them.

She needed data in order to find more data.

And then Miraj had shown up with the communicators and the hope of transporters. People could start reporting in from all over the ship, rather than her getting reports word of mouth from people physically arriving at the battle bridge.

She continued to build up an increasingly complex map inside her head. Where they needed people. Which sections were lost. Which sections were necessary. And as the picture became more complete, she started calculating probabilities: how many people were likely in their quarters, how many of those quarters were vented into space, how many people might be, statistically speaking, in the sections for which they still had no information. And then, of those among the calculated dead, how many were civilians, how many officers, how many enlisted.

In the non civilian areas, casualties were easier to estimate. She just needed to start with the number of people assigned to a particular area. In some sections, it was to count everyone assigned there as dead.

She wouldn't put names to those dead of course. She wasn't counting individuals. She was working probabilities.

Well, all but one individual.

--Ebi. -- Ebi. -- Ebi.--

She sent the signal once every ten minutes. No more, no less.

--Ebi. -- Ebi. -- Ebi.--

The numbers she was calculating, even on the optimistic side, were daunting. At least a fifth of the crew and civilians were dead. At least. Bare minimum. More likely a fourth. Potentially a third.

The ship itself was dying. Like anything else, you break enough things, and the right things, and it can't survive. There were still some big questions, chief among them Engineering. The Marines still hadn't made contact or at least had not gotten back to her if they had.

She was triaging the ship the way medical was triaging people. Ignore the walking wounded. Ignore the sections that cannot be saved. Focus on those who need help to survive.

--Ebi. -- Ebi. -- Ebi.--

Also, pants. Her uniform still hadn't shown up.

She had yet to hear anything that suggested they were not abandoning ship, so she kept sending civilians to the shelters in prep for evacuation. But they had to get the ship out of its spin. They had to figure out where they were and where they were pointed. And they probably would have to maneuver the ship to a location where they could evacuated to something other than open space. Because if they jettisoned lifepods into open space, they'd never be found, and everyone would still be dead.

The Commodore was alive, but injured. Taylor was alive. She had heard nothing of anyone else in the chain of command.

Keep your shit together, Rin.

But she was in her element now. Gather. Collate. Analyse. Operate.

Keep your shit together, One.

She could still hear the sirens. Not the real ones. They had been shut off ages ago. The ones in her head. The memories. The nightmares.

Keep your shit together, Nicola.

There were going to be more survivors this time. She would make sure of that.

Her head hurt. There were a plethora of reasons why she wasn't supposed to connect with the ship systems like this, despite the vastly increased efficiency of it. But what were they going to do, court marital her?

And still, that emptiness in the back of her mind. The place that was always empty when there were no xB around. The place which had, of late, always been home to a welcoming presence.

--Ebi. -- Ebi. -- Ebi.--

Lt. Rin
Chief of Intelligence