"Dude, Who's my Captain?"

[Dumbass 0]

Some of the Klingons, now our prisoners, were dragged to sick bay kicking and screaming.  Others were simply dragged. They had suffered prolonged radiation exposure from their ship as well as the same memory loss affecting us.  With that particular situation under control the bridge was fairly quiet, save for the occasional alarm going off telling me another system had malfunctioned. While I had the time I was able to use it to refine my hypothesis about what happened to the ship - and what to do about it.

 

Although I had bridge command Narn was still in command of the ship, although it has been some time since we have heard from him.  This was a situation that would not do.  He and Rhoz are facing criminal charges for misapropriation of resources, unauthorized experimentation, impersonation of superiors  - including DNA theft, criminal negligence leading to our current situation, and probably a host of other crimes I haven't had time to think about yet.  Although Rhoz may be cleared of his involvement he at least faces an investigation. However I've seen the proof of Narn's culpability with my own eyes, coupled with his confession to me he didn't know I was recording and downloading onto my personal hard drive.  That confession, along with Narn's memories of the incident, are lost in another reality.

 

Nor is HoD BcH fit to command either.  Although her memories have recently been recovered she faces a Federation crew that still believes her force is responsible for attacking us.  It would not be prudent for her to attempt to regain command until the rest of both crews recover their memories.  Even were this not a factor, the legality of a Klingon Empire national commanding a Federation ship is questionable at best.

 

That leaves only one other person able to take command, Lieutenant Senior Grade Messner, until recently a "yellow shirt" in Security.  After the explosion he discovered he was Lakota's Chief of Security, but has not had much experience on the bridge, let alone command.  Nevertheless he is the only logical choice.  I called him to the bridge to discuss a security matter - which is not a lie, took him aside, and explained our situation and the legalities he must now consider the best I could.  We needed our privacy, and I needed to give this my full attention, so when Dr. Garnoopy hailed me I had to deactivate my comm badge.

 

Messner is skilled in demolitions, so I explained the 3 flashes using that analogy.  A quantum explosion is essentially no different than a conventional explosion. The only difference is the explosion is at the quantum level, not the atomic or molecular level.  In a conventional explosion the explosive force creates a vacuum that blown everything outward, and then forms a vacuum that sucks everything back in a chemically altered form.  This is why those who survive explosions talk about rushes of hot air blowing over them and then having the air sucked out of their lungs.  That is essentially what happens.  A quantum explosion follows the same process.  A vacuum is created not at the molecular level but at the quantum level, and is fed by whatever quantum realities are available to it.  The result is what happened to us.

 

That was a lot for Messner to handle, and he must now handle even more - taking command of a ship in distress with little if any command training.  Perhaps it's not Vulcan-like but I sympathize.  My academy major was Operations, which is a Bridge Officer position, and I've recently learned I have Tactical abilities as well. Plus I have been on the MeH on the QoB-Lakota more than most non-Bridge officers, and have occasionally been placed in temporary command.  Messner didn't ask for this.  Until recently he was content to fulfill his duties as a security officer and I'm unaware of any goals he had above that.  Nevertheless I am reminded of an incident from Earth's history, when a group of US Marines suffered a terrorist attack in Beirut.  The ranking officer on the scene, a dentist, was required to take command.  In Starfleet, sometimes you do what you're trained for.  The rest of the time you do what you have to.

 

Messner's briefing took longer than I would have liked, but it was necessary.  If he was going to take command he needed to understand the situation, and why Narn is a threat to me when he recovers his memories. Having settled that, however, it was time to return to my engineering duties.  The ship has been on partial main power for some time and all systems were indicating it could still asterisk up.  I got down to Main Engineering in time to see that several power distribution nodes were not functioning.  I quickly asked for replicator power to generate new ones, and had my engineers swap them out.  

 

Full power is now restored.  This does not mean there aren't other systems and structural failures, just that we have the power to initiate repairs.  Even though we are getting power from the warp core we still can not initiate warp.  For the moment warp power is not a priority.  We still have nowhere to go.