How do you do under pressure?

[Atragon9 0]

DCS, Caisson Disease, the Bends, Rigelian Dancing Fever (it's Star Trek, there's always an alien name or a future "historical reference") - whatever you want to call it, it affects the great and small, the powerful and the destitute. Once a humanoid body is put under a great deal of increased pressure such as terrestrial deep water diving, moving between space ships and space suits, or even emergency warp plasma conduit repairs (See, I did it again - okay, I'll stop now), you must be careful returning to standard pressure. The condition arises from dissolved gases coming out of solution into bubbles inside the body on depressurization. This can lead to horrible joint pain, shortness of breath, loss of balance, altered senses/memory loss in the brain, spinal cord paralysis, death.

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So, where were we? Oh yes, Atragon-9 was in a Belosian shuttlecraft with three of their warriors, guarding him and wearing space suits and helmets because they cannot survive in Terran atmosphere. They decided to set the shuttle for A9's requirements, not their own. It was one of the ways that the Belosians thought differently than many other races, in how they classify their own logical thought. It helped Special Ops defeat their invasion and, he hoped, it would help him defeat his guards. Although they cannot breathe Terran air, their native gravity is similar to Earth, so their outfits were not built as pressure suits. If he was wrong, this experiment in prisoner escape would be quite short-lived.

Besides aiming at the Manticore flight path and setting up his thrusters-as-morse-code trick, he had to disable or kill his captors. That would involve the slow build of the shutle's atmospheric pressure. He didn't know how much he could sustain, but he set it for the maximum he had heard about at the Academy. After that, it was a waiting game. Wait to see if they would die before he did; wait to see if he found the Manticore, since he would probably have blacked out by then; wait to see if Manticore would figure out the pressure variance or if they would just rip open the shuttle...

From what he was told later, he was very glad to be unconscious when they tore off the hatch. DCS can often take up to 48 hours to kick in, but there have also been cases that affected the patient immediately. Thanks to his good luck, A9 was in the second group. It also didn't help that no one knew why his unconscious and barely breathing form began to suddenly and violently convulse. The Security team in the shuttle bay didn't have the expertise to diagnose his condition, but they had the good sense to rush him to Sickbay. The medical staff had no idea what they were facing, nor were they sure why the initial scans were showing the sudden formation of N2 bubbles in his joints, spine and brain. Thankfully, Dr. Chalice decided to trust in the test results, rather than what should be "possible," in this situation. A9 was moved to a hyperbaric chamber and they cranked it up "to eleven" (Spinal Tap, anyone? In truth, they really had to adjust the pressure to 11 bars just to get the N2 in his system to dissolve once again.) It was going to be a long time before he was able to walk the ship freely, not to mention the extreme stress on his Titanian physiology that has 0.3 Earth G as standard pressure. Maybe he'll look good in the hoverchair with the big shiny X on each side, like Professor Xavier.