More Than Just A Friend

Posted on Thu May 5th, 2011 @ 3:10pm by Lieutenant JG Matthew April

Mission: Renegades
Location: Deck Seven
Timeline: After "Shards of Glass"

The turbolift door opened. The recovery team switched their lights on. Matt lifted his hand to scratch the left side of his face, however his gloved hand simply bounced off the smooth plastic surface of his helmet. This section of the ship had been exposed to space. After he had switched on his his helmet light, he wished he didn't. A mass of pulverized remains were embedded into the bulkhead, there was no telling what is was. It could have been one man, or two men or the whole deck. Matt could not be sure. He was glad that he had been blessed with a fairly strong stomach, the petty officer next to him looked rather green in the gills. Matt shook himself back to the task at hand. "Alright... Johnson, Fredericks and Edwards take the left turn at the fork..." Matt said pointing towards the left side, "Kunstler, Hamilton and I will take right side." He looked around, "Move people." he said, as he walked down the corridor.

The corridor was fairly free of debris thanks to the gaping hole in the hull. Matt shined his light at the starboard bulkhead which was rather mangled, he took a closer look, there were lone thin scratches in the panel cover... Fingernails had done this. "It looks like someone tried to hold onto this." Matt said. They didn't make it... he thought. Matt heard a clanking noise and quickly turned around. A piece of loose metal had fallen from the ceiling, creating a large crash as it impacted with the bare deck plates. The ship was in bad shape, no doubt about it. The team moved further down the corridor. They approached the section of corridor where the lights had failed. "Alright, first order of business, fix the lights," Matt said, "I don't want to risk just using the helmet lights, they don't illuminate the whole area, never know what debris could be lining the corridor." Matt took the tricorder off of his belt and began to scan the exposed panel on the side of the bulkhead. He manipulated a few wires and replaced a chip or two and the lights flickered to life. Matt looked down the corridor, he could tell that they were nearing the hole in the hull as the corridor was becoming more mangled.

"Sir, bridge reports that internal sensors are still offline," Hamilton said, as he received the comm relay. "Well, we don't need internal sensors to find the hole..." Matt said, looking down the corridor, "It's definitely down there." He looked at the members of his team, "alright, move out." he ordered, "Watch for missing floor panels... Watch your step."

Matt led the team further down the torn remains of the corridor. He stepped over a broken floor panel, however he didn't see the hole in the floor behind it. He fell in. "Gagh." he grunted as he fell feet first into an exposed Jefferies tube. "Are you alright sir?" Kunstler asked as he shined his light down the hole. Matt turned around, "yeah," he said. He found himself face to face with a corpse. His cold dead eyes stared up at Matt. Matt stared at the piece of pipe punctured through the dead man's skull. A look of shock came across Matt's face, but he said nothing. He felt the room contract, two arms reached out at him, the dead man's arms. The hands grasped around his neck.

"Sir?" Matt heard a voice say, "Sir, are you alright?" Matt looked up at the face infront of him, it was Hamilton. "Yeah..." Matt responded, his mouth open, "What happened?" Hamilton looked at Kunstler; Kunstler looked at Hamilton. "Sir you fell inside a hole in the deck plate and we pulled you out... You muttered something about death, pole and a shuttle?" Matt looked at him, "Yes... Well..." he trailed off. Matt sighed, "There's a dead officer down there. Poor bastard was impaled through the skull as the tube depressurized... We can get him later. Finding the hole in the hull is of greater importance, then we can get the engineers in here to fix it... Then we can repressurize the deck." he explained, as he motioned for the rest of the team to follow him.

The team ventured deeper into the catacomb like interior of the Arizona. Matt thought how the original Arizona must have looked when they explored her. "Probably looked much the same... Dark, claustrophobic and corpse-ridden..." he thought. No matter how much he tried, Matt could not shake the eery feeling he felt on this deck. He knew they had a job to do, but he wanted to get out of there as fast as possible.

A scream echoed through the corridor. Matt quickly turned around to see what was the matter. He was too late, a large piece of the ceiling had fallen. It sliced right through Kunstler's left shoulder. Matt ran to him and knelt down, medkit in hand. The ensign looked up at him, "It's funny lieutenant, I didn't hear it... All of that metal clanking and I didn't hear it." Matt looked down at his face, "Shut up Kunstler, we're gonna get you through..." But his words were futile. The ensign's dead eyes stared back at Matt, he closed his tricorder. Matt reached out to close the man's eyelids, but remembered that they were both wearing spacesuits. He sighed as he stood up, "Well Hamilton, it's just you and me." Matt said, as he motioned the chief to follow him, "We have to be close now." Hamilton nodded, throwing a disconcerted look at the corpse that had been Ensign Frank Kunstler.

The two of them rounded the corner, another dark area in the maze. "It's gotta be here..." Matt said, as he took a step forward. He landed face first into a force field. "Well... We certainly found it." he said, rubbing his cheek. "Yeah..." Hamilton responded solemly. "It's Kunstler's death isn't it." Matt said, putting his hand on the Chief's brother. "Yeah..." Hamilton said, "He was a good friend... But more than that, he was my brother-in-law and now I have to tell my wife the bad news." Matt nodded solemly, "He served his post to the end..." he said, not knowing how to respond. The chief nodded. Matt slowly tapped his combadge, "April to Johnson" Matt said. After a few seconds a response came through, a little garbled but audible, "Johnson here." "Johnson, we've accomplished the objective, we lost Kunstler... We're returning to the turbolift, meet you there..." Matt said into the comm. "Understood, Johnson out." Johnson said over the comm.

The two men walked back the way they came, they stopped for a brief moment to stand in front of Kunstler's body. There was no way for them to free it and take it with them, the engineer's would have to do that. Kunstler did not have a chance, once his flesh was exposed to the vacuum his blood started to boil with in seconds. The two men returned to the turbolift. They met up with the three other men and stepped into the turbolift. They removed their helmets and stood in silence as the turbolift took them back to the habitable section of the ship, leaving behind more than just a friend.