Memories

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Stardate 2260.58

Aboard the Vulcan cruiser Men-Hilsu

 

Audraya stood on the darkened bridge of the Vulcan ship and shivered. Her subconscious mind was playing tricks on her, dredging up the memories from two years ago. Always in the deep recesses of her mind, waiting for the right moment to come springing out of the darkness like the Big Bad Wolf after Red Riding Hood.

 

Physically, she was standing on the bridge of the Men-Hilsu. Subconsciously, Audraya's back at the Battle of Vulcan, hearing the Entente enter into her death throes from Nero's attacks. The lights flickering, the hull screaming in protest, like a living being, as its being torn apart from the Narada's advanced weaponry until the dorsal neck fails. There's Lt. Perry...taking an exploding console full in the face and chest, going down in a spray of blood as razor sharp pieces slice through his carotid artery and jugular vein. She turned, Lt. Nelson getting hit by a live power conduit and grounding out through the deck, his bones flourescing under his skin from the current and voltage running through it. The auxiliary bridge's emergency lights goes dark as the batteries drain...the heat leaching through the hull, or more specifically what's left intact of the hull, since there's no longer life support. The gravity stators have long since wound down, bringing the deck's occupants into freefall. A couple of chemlights that Ensign Sakai had pulled out of an emergency box and cracked fitfully tried to illuminate the space, but weren't able to compete against the oppressive darkness.

 

There's the constant grinding traveling through the dead metal as chunks of debris smash into each other, creating smaller and ever finer chunks, before being sucked into the singularity that was Vulcan. Entente was lucky, in that when she went down, she was located just outside what was to become the ergosphere. Audraya didn't know just how much time she and Sakai spent floating there, not saying a thing, trying to conserve their diminishing O2 supply. Then a swirly shimmer, bright light, solid deck beneath them, warmth, as they're recovered and returned to the land of the living by the crew of the Constitution...

 

Audraya shook the cobwebs away and took a deep, cleansing breath of cold, stale air. She looked at her chrono, and hung her head. “Two hours, thirty remaining...this is going to be one of the longest hundred and 50 minutes of my life.”