Wellington

With all his strength the young officer clung to his console with every ounce of his being. His nails scratched across the far side of the construct as the force of the Bridge's atmosphere venting into space yanked and pulled at him along with anything else not bolted down. Captain Tanis had already been blown free along with several others. The thunderous whoosh of air was horrifying. Screams as crewmembers vanished into the void and the thought he might be next terrified Olmek to his core but his will to live was indomitable. Another scream … another blown free … and then … a crackling hiss caused by the static charge of a forcefield being erected and the room pressurized.

Olmek's skull throbbed. His mind felt as if it could burst free from it's hardened life-long abode any moment. It was almost too much but somehow he remained conscious and relatively alert. Alert enough to see he and Crewman Davies were the last two remaining people present.

The Wellington shuddered and moaned. Part of him refused to release the death hug he'd been holding onto his station with. Another impact… Fear welled deep inside him before it was trampled out or shoved in a hole by Cardassian genetics that demanded action instead of waiting for death to appear. We've got to get out of this nebula. But how? Olmek eyed what used to be the helm as he sat back down in his seat. The controls were smashed to be polite. Sitting there wouldn't do them a damn bit of good.

"Davies," Olmek said turning to face the Engineering crewman who was coming to rest at what was left of his own workstation. "Can we route helm to another station?" The look on the younger man's soot smeared face was blank. "Davies!" Olmek called out worried the other man might have fallen off his warp core.

Davies shook his head as if trying to clear a fog from his mind. "Yeah … um yeah …" he said looking at his console with a half confused expression. "Wait, what? Oh my head …" the Engineering crewman said bringing both hands to their side of his forehead and massaging his temples. Olmek was only a tactical officer but in required field triage classes at the academy they taught you to recognize serious head trauma and Davies was giving off those signals like a subspace beacon.

The Bridge was smashed. They were the last two breathing on the deck, and present for that matter following the decompression. "Ensign Olmek to Engineering." An acrid taste of burning conduit began to fill his mouth as he talked. The smell of smoke burned his ridged Cardassian nose. He hadn't noticed one of the science stations was on fire but the fire was spreading to neighboring consoles. Suppression systems were clearly off, and no one was answering from the ship's engine room.

"Ensign Olm…" coughing from the smoke Olmek got up and moved to grab Davies under his arms. "Ensign Olmek to anyone aboard, we're abandoning the Bridge, any hands near Engineering?"

Dragging the unconscious Engineer to a turbo shaft Olmek did his best to gently lay the limp Mr. Davies inside before shutting the door and securing it. The man would be safe in there as long as Olmek could extinguish the source of the mounting blaze. Pulling an extinguisher from an emergency store near the first officer's chair the Cardassian youth strapped a phaser to his side as well just for good measure and then charged the now erupting bank of science consoles spraying the extinguisher in slow controlled sweeps.

The fires were going out one by one but the small blaze that had initially spread refused to go without a fight. As he pressed on Olmek's com badge chattered to life. "Bridge," came a static laced transmission, "this is Chief Constance. Engineering is impossible to reach. Several bulkheads are down. The computer seems off line. We have severe power fluctuations on all the lower decks from what I'm told by runners who've made it through here to Security." There was a pause and the in a reluctant sounding voice the chief continued.

"For the safety of all hands we're abandoning the Wellington. Is anyone else alive up there?" Constance asked.

Cardassians are a funny lot. They are intensely loyal, to family and friends and to the state, but from time to time the 'Every man for himself' gene kicks into overdrive. Trying to save Davies might cost him his own life. The man would only slow him down. Plus if the Engineer's injuries were worse than a mere concussion then the entire arduous ordeal of dragging him to an escape pod would be for not. "N…" Olmek almost replied before his training reasserted itself.

It took training? Conditioning? For me to override my very nature? The thought sent a small surge of revulsion through his body. Then again every species, even Humanity, had traits Starfleet worked hard to strip away and plaster over with layers of new instruction. "No one but me and Crewman Davies, but he's unconscious. I'll get him to the pod on deck two. Bridge out." Dropping the nearly empty canister he'd been spraying on the deck Olmek wiped the sweat from his forehead. The temperature was still rising.

Opening the tube he'd secured only mere minutes before the officer was suddenly sucked, no slammed into the opening. A micro breach must have expanded in the hull lining the tube causing it to decompress. Davies was gone. Olmek had put him in the tube to save him and instead … killed him!

"No!" Olmek yelled shoving himself back with a violent rush of rage. Working the hand actuator like a mad man he forced the entrance shut again. Tears welled in his eyes, his head throbbed, his stomach roiled in anger at what he'd done. Slamming his fist against the deck he did his best to regain control, but it looked as if, like Davies, he'd die there.

"At least it's hot," he muttered in Cardassian, but as the words fell silent from his lips the air began to twinkle and spark around him and Ensign Olmek was beamed to the safe confines of a Wellington Runabout. Around him were people huddled together on the floor, some others standing and leaning against the walls. They were soot covered, burn marked and bandaged survivors the lot of them all staring blankly. Some at one another, some as if they were looking through you, and some as if they had died but something in their mind had failed to tell the rest of their body. Like mannequins or holograms without programing glaring into nothing.

It was shock. The Wellington hadn't been in a battle. She'd been surveying a unique dilithium filled asteroid belt when a derelict gravitic mine left of from one of the many wars in the recent history had suddenly gone active. By the time the thing had dropped it's tiny cloak Wellington was already on top of her.

Wellington's shields had been offline when the little mine went nova. The resulting explosion and the amplification of the blast by all the nearby raw dilithium rich asteroids nearby ripped entire decks on the ventral side of the saucer section and tore the main navigational deflector from existence opening several decks of the drive section to space. Had it happened moments later when the ship's nacelles and Engineering section had been over top they'd have all gone up in an antimatter explosion.

"What happened to Davies?" A man asked appearing in the door to the room.

Olmek did his best to come to his feet quickly. Hefting himself up he stood at attention in the face of the short officer wearing medical blues with a collar sporting Lieutenant pips. "Sorry sir, Mr. Davies was blown out of the Jefferies Tube adjoining the Bridge while I was attempting to secure a fire behind the science stations."

The Doctor's expression faltered for a second. So many had been lost. It had just all happened so unexpectedly. So fast. "Very well …" the man said stepping back out of the doorway, "oh," he continued, "you're wanted on the flight deck. They want a report from the only remaining officer from the Bridge."

"What about the Wellington?" Olmek asked walking after the doctor.

"Are you kidding kid? The Wellington is a burning wreck. We're putting as much distance between her and this belt as we can. Only thirty pods have launched besides us. Everyone else … is gone."

Moments later Olmek stood on the flight deck and reported what he'd seen. Days later at Starbase 213 he'd recounted his story again, and again, and again before Admirals, Captains and JAG officers. He'd been at the helm after all. He'd been the only survivor from the Bridge. If someone was to hang he was the only man who could. In the end though the board saw no negligence. Either in his piloting as the ship's helmsman that day, or in the loss of Crewman Davies. Somewhere in it all they'd even decided to give him a bump in rank. He'd gone before them an Ensign and left them all a junior Lieutenant.

Orders eventually came and soon Olmek was off to the Chin'toka. A new chapter in his life was about to begin. He could only hope his second posting faired far better than his first.