"Grab Bag"

[LtGeorgeMcLean 0]

McLean's Logs (Log 5)

Lieutenant (Jg) McLean

Chief Engineer

USS Reaent

0303.12

"Grab Bag”

 

His face glistening with sweat, George wipes his sleeve across his brow.  Before him sits a console he hopes is salvageable, yet its charred appearance only mocks him.  Just below him are the remnants of some unfortunate individual who had certainly met an untimely end.  He shakes his head and looks back to the console.  Moments later, George swallows hard as he feels compelled to take a closer look at the grab-bag assortment of body parts that cry out injustice to him.  He bends down and pulls out his tricorder, hoping maybe that the soothing rhythm patters of it might help put his stomach to rest.  Near his left shoe he discovers three fingers curled as if they were trying to grasp onto something.  They are covered in a sticky film, which George believes to be a chemical reaction between human flesh and whatever happened to these individuals.  As George stares at the fingers for awhile, while his tricorder continues to chirp, he imagines those fingers are vainly trying to reach out for him.  He realizes that their last hope were hours before the Reaent arrived there.  Yet, this fact gives him no comfort.

About a foot beyond the fingers rests the pieces of a skull, and in the depression of one of the pieces of bone George notices three teeth.  George now feels his stomach turnover and gags loudly forcing some of his lunch up into his throat.  Forcing it back down, George resolves that he has had enough looking closely at the bodies of former Star Fleet officers.  The situation reminds him of one away mission ten years previous while serving on the USS Ticonderoga.  

           Engineering teams from the USS Ticonderoga had been sent to get a Bajoran light cruiser up and running after an unexplained catastrophe killed all but two civilians on board.  The situation there was eerily similar to what George was experiencing.  George remembers looking down at a young Bajoran Engineer similar in age to him, and seeing how death had treated him.  He remembers looking into the gaping holes where eyes used to exist and staring into those holes incredulously.  He remembers reaching out to touch the face of the deceased Bajoran and having half of the Bajoran’s face collapse onto his hands.  He recalls the months of nightmares of meeting a similar demise following that horrific experience.

George stands up abruptly shaking away the memories, memories he would’ve liked to have slipped from his mind.  Nevertheless they still haunt and plague him.  In anger George kicks the carnage at his feet away, sending the remnants high into the air and listening to them as they shatter upon the hard floor.  After regaining his composure, George turns back to the task of getting a console up and running.  He begins assessing the situation when he notices that pieces of his boots are beginning to corrode.  This puzzles him.  Watching an eighth of an inch lay peel from the top of his boot, he taps his combadge and says, “Lieutenant Kroells…I may need you down here.”

[Travis Kroells 0]

lol....lean mean McLean...I can testify for the mean part but as to granoopys discripition of lifting you...well im gona have to get one of those fancy japanese scales to end this issue  :)