Chaos

            “Admiral – behind you, he’s behind you!”

            Archer spun around and found Brannigaan unconscious, pinned under a steel beam and twisted, liquefied metal, surrounded by smoke, but at least not flames. He jumped 8 feet in one leap to reach the boy.

            “Branni! Branni!” but there was no response. He grabbed a loose bar of metal, dropped it from the heat, then grabbed some scrap of rubber to use like an oven mitt. Archer picked it up again and shoved one end of it under the beam. He had to climb upon the end to gain enough leverage to lift the girder off the boy’s shoulder. The moment it was stable he grabbed Brannigaan by the other arm, pulling him out of the wreckage.

            The bones didn’t feel broken, but Archer felt he most likely had a concussion. He hoisted the child onto his chest and banged an intercom with his fist.

            “Sick bay, medical emergency in Engineering!” He didn’t dare mention who it was or his mother might come unglued. “Sick Bay!” The intercom was silent. “Damn!” He wanted to get Branni to safety. All he could do was head for the Jeffries tube and haul the two of them to sick bay. White smoke began to infiltrate the Jeffries tube but Archer carried Branni through the tube until he reached Deck D.

            “Sussa!” but she didn’t answer. “Sussa!” Half a dozen crew members sat on the floor, a couple in beds; a few more stumbled around trying to take care of themselves. “Riaan!”

            “Jon! Oh no! Branni! My Branni!” she cried, rushing to Jonathan.

            “Where?” he asked. She rushed Jon and her child to the last open bio bed. “He was pinned under some metal, he’s unconscious,” Jon said carefully.

            “Strap him in, I don’t want him falling off the bed” Riaan said. The immediate rocking and explosions had stopped, finally. But loose objects on shelves and ceiling debris still fell randomly.

            Jonathan coughed, trying to get some of the smoke out of his lungs while Riaan placed sensors on Branni’s head. The monitors began to beep, and aside from his not waking up and a red bump on the very top of his head, the other body functions seemed normal.  Jonathan grabbed a blanket from overhead and covered the boy.

            “Stay here a minute,” she asked him, and rushed back to another patient.

            “Where’s Sussa?”

            Riaan tilted her head towards a corner of the sick bay, where Sussa lay on the floor. Seeing no red alarms on the monitor above Branni’s head Jonathan sprinted to Sussa. Dark green blood that came from her throat puddled around her head, sticking to her clothes and hair. There was no life left in the body; it had been still for many minutes. Not another death. Every death was like a knife cutting out another piece of his heart. He grabbed a lab coat hanging above him, and amid the chaos and scramble he placed the coat over her head and the congealing blood.

             “Engineering! Archer to Engineering!”

            “We’re a little busy here, sir!”

            “It’s Archer. I want a buoy with a 100 grams of anti-matter launched towards that Orion vessel. Do it now!”

            “Sir!”

            “Now Commander, light a fire under it!” He slammed the intercom again. “Archer to armory! Load forward torpedo bays!” and he smacked the intercom one more time. “Archer to the bridge!”

            “Go ahead sir!”

            “Launch a torpedo at that buoy and best speed out of here! Now! Go!”

It only took a couple seconds before he heard the torpedo launch and felt the small shake of the ship.

          “All hands, brace for impact!” came an order from the bridge. Archer didn’t wait for the explosion. He headed back to the Jeffries tube and climbed another deck. At that moment the torpedo struck the buoy and the shockwave hurled not only the Orion ship 100 kilometers but it also pitched Endeavour on its nose.

          When the stabilizers engaged Archer scrambled to a weapons locker, arming himself with a phase pistol and a rifle. Instinct took over despite a year on earth at Star Fleet. A shock rattled the port side of the ship. Archer suspected the docking hatch was about to welcome some escaped Orions on board. He ran down the corridor towards the airlock.

          He heard the locks on the doors click. Archer slipped behind the door where it was hinged, one of the few hinged doors on the ship since it led to space. The large oval entry door swung open; he heard a single footstep and kicked the door with every fiber of his strength, knocking the Orion back into the airlock. He sprung forward and slammed the door, locking it from the inside control panel.

          Archer climbed like a spider back up the Jeffries tube to the bridge. He burst in the door and looked through the smoke and flames at the view screen. The visible speck that was the Orion ship no longer glowed but instead floated at an awkward angle, dark where it had been red. A few remaining cascades of sparks drifted randomly into space but quickly disappeared.

           “He’s alive!” Sato shouts to Archer. He turns toward her voice on the floor in front of the captain’s chair. She holds Captain Mitchell’s head on her lap, and wipes some debris from his face.

          “Let’s get him to the ready room!”

          “Sick bay!” she countered.

          “We’ll never get him there from here. Turbos are down, fires everywhere, even Dr Sussa is dead. They’re swamped, we need to stabilize him and get him outta this room!” Archer picked him up by the ankles and Sato by the wrists; together they picked up the unconscious captain and took him to the closest room off the bridge. “Get Riaan up here, quick. Quick!” he told Sato. She sprinted out. Archer pulled some first aid supplies from an overhead cabinet and covered Captain Mitchell with a blanket, then grabbed a second one and placed it under his head.

          “Come on, Pete, you’re not getting out of this assignment that easy. You always wanted to go to Andorria, didn’t you?” he said to the still body, checking for a pulse a second time. It was fast, and weak, but it was there. A gash on his leg slowly bled, a vein, so Archer tore some of Mitchell’s pant leg where it had been cut and tied a gentle compression around it. The blood lost, although not a life threatening volume was enough to induce a hypovolemic shock.

           With nothing else he could do, he looked back out onto the bridge. Only one person remained, behind the captain’s chair in the situation room. The helmsman had gone to sick bay, Sato also to fetch Riaan. The armory officer had been Archer.

            “Ensign,” the admiral called to the last man standing. “I need you up here, somewhere, at communications or helm!”

          The officer jumped around a pile of twisted, smoldering metal and down to the helm.

         “Uh, Ensign…”

         “King, sir.”

         “Ensign King, get us outta here, best speed to Andorria. It was our last heading.” Archer sat in the captain’s chair briefly. For a moment, he was the same man he was 10 years earlier, in charge and confident, as if the years had not sent him on journeys as a peacemaker and diplomat. For some reason, he turned behind him and saw the ship’s bronze placard still firmly affixed to the wall: NX-07 Endeavour. He jumped up again and in two steps he was at the communication station.

       “All hands, this is the cap -Admiral Archer. I need status from all department heads! All senior officers report to the bridge immediately!”