Landfall: Serenity Valley - Missile Strike

Posted on Sun Jul 12th, 2020 @ 2:28pm by Noah-Jade True & Alison Bliss & Daiyu & The Narrator
Edited on on Sun Jul 12th, 2020 @ 5:53pm

Mission: The Milk Run
Location: Hera - Serenity Valley
Timeline: Day 12 - Late Afternoon

Alison glanced at the console, flashing with several alarms. Including... fire in the engine compartment.

"Noah!? Kai! Get to the engineering and see if we didn't lose it. Please."

Kai released the straps that held her, shook her head to clear it and started to run down the length of the ship towards engineering. She could feel the heat emanating from the rear as soon as she stepped into the aft hall.

"It's bad!" She shouted back, grabbing a fire extinguisher from the side and wrestling with it, but kept back halfway down the corridor from the door by the outward lick of angry flame. "Noah!"

As soon as the shock from the blast faded, Noah knew he was hurt. It wasn't just the fire; he could feel a sort of numb pain about him, the kind where he wasn't sure where it was coming from. For what it was worth, at least the flames and smoke were above him, as he found himself on the floor on the engine room. Beside him was a part of the engine that definitely should not have been on the floor. There were a few other pieces scattered about the engine, but the one closest to him was the biggest... and the sharpest... and had the faint shine of blood on it, reflecting the orange of the fire above. Noah tried to not think too hard about that last part.

"Fire," he yelled, weakly, attempting to pull himself up. It was much more difficult than it ought to have been, but his arms were shaking. The main engine still seemed to be spinning, albeit slowly and erratically. And with all that fire... probably a fuel line had been severed in the blast, another with god knows what else.

Frankly, Noah was surprised he could think this clearly. He was afraid, truly afraid. He had often what Paul had felt like, when Paul's ship was going down, and he dreaded being able to experience that first hand. Was Paul this afraid? Even a brave man like Paul?

After a short moment that felt like forever, Noah manage to shut off the main fuel line into the engine. It was just a switch. The side engines were still getting some fuel, but that "extra power" Alison had requested was now gone. At least the flames were, too.

"Need some help down here!" Yelled Kai as she moved forward. "Noah? Noah..." There was cursing as she took in the full extent of the engine room and the charred looking engineer caught somewhere in the middle. "You don't look great..."

Alison felt the sudden loss of extra oomph that the engines had. From a heavy muscle truck, the Echo changed into a school bus.

"Qing Wa Cao De Liu Mang." She cursed under her breath calmly. Having the control back though, she dove lower into the valley hoping that the faster and smaller vessel waiting for them above would lose them from their sensors. Going so low, she noticed a recess and an overhang that could hide them. She slowed down and hovered, then gently pulled inside it. "How is it back there? Daiyu, can you help Kai?" She called on the intercom watching with one eye the sensor readings.

From behind them, as the Echo dropped towards the valley once more, came a burst of turret fire. A few shots pinged off the hull and then there was a rush of sound as the smaller ship zipped overhead, made a point of banking around to check, and then hightailed it back the direction they'd come from.

Noah glanced up at Kai, half-leaning against the wall of the engine chamber. He thought he could smell just the faintest, metallic hint of blood beneath the overwhelming scent of smoke. "Kai. We got-" Noah grimaced, pausing for a moment. "There's extra fuel line in cargo bay." He grabbed towards the old line, now switched off. It was surprisingly narrow, and short, but this one was all torn up and burnt black in parts. "Looks like this. From when I fixed it. Last month. Go get it." The more Noah talked, the more difficult he found it form coherent sentences. Of course, he would have gone to find it himself, but he wasn't sure leaving the engine was a good idea... if he could even walk after this. He was terrified; but he was also trained to fix things, and when the terror pushed away his sense and wisdom, his training was all he had to go on.

"Do you mean this?" Daiyu dropped a pile of engine parts that she had lugged all the way up from the cargo hold. Only the fuel line remained in her hand. Though her hand trembled as though afraid, her dark eyes burned cold with determination. "How do we change it?"

Noah hesitated. The new girl... seemed awfully convenient that she mysteriously showed up so soon before everything went wrong. Then again, he didn't need to trust her intentions to trust her here. If the ship went down, she'd go down with it, no matter what she was on. "Yeah, that." Noah turned towards the old fuel line - luckily he was already sitting right next to it. "Hand it over," he spoke a curt command. Frankly, he didn't care if he sounded rude or not, not right then. They had bigger things to worry about, him especially. "I need my tools. Toolbox is right by the door." At that, he glanced at the door; there was a medium sized metal box right beside the entrance. Luckily it hadn't been too disturbed by the blast.

Standing in the way, Kai seemed conflicted, and definitely a little freaked out as she watched Daiyu pitch in to help Noah. "Ali," she finally said into the intercom. "You better get down here..." Then she picked up the engineer's tool box and headed past Daiyu into smoke-filled, blood scented hell that was currently the Echo's engineering room.

"Give me a moment!" Alison replied from the bridge. "We have this Kuh Wu Hwen Dan flying around."

The Echo was hovering wobbly, as Alison constantly had to counter uneven thrusts of engines. She waited ready to pull on the throttle and get every bit of the power she could muster to smash the smaller ship like a bug against the valley’s walls. But nothing was happening. They either took the bait and they were flowing over the valley assuming that the Echo was still flying or the Alliance showed up and forced them to flee.

"Chwee Ni Duh.” Alison murmured cutting down on the power and settling the transport down on the ground. Switching off systems, she made sure to turn off everything. Just in case, damages were threatening integrity of the entire ship. "I am coming to you." She said over the intercom and unstrapped herself.

"Hurry up!" Kai called back. This was way worse than she wanted to explain over the comm system.

"Over here," Noah said, reaching for the toolbox. Despite the adrenaline, he still felt dizzy and light. A part of him knew he was still bleeding, but he couldn't quite tell from where... he couldn't feel much and he didn't dare look, not until everyone was safe. The fuel line wasn't the only issue; there was the damage to the hull, and the matter of the parts strewn about the engine room. But once the fuel line was fixed, they could flee. Escaping was the only thing that mattered. Fight or flight, and a Firefly was no fighter. With shaking hands, he opened the toolbox and pulled out a wrench. It took two tries for him to get the wrench onto the edge of the fuel line - the first time he missed, almost dropping the tool. And then he began to loosen one side, in a process that felt like it took forever.

Quietly, and with a seriously intent expression on her face, Kai moved in closer to Noah. She stayed close by, offering up a worried gaze and a burdened sigh as he struggled.

"Ta Ma Duh.... Tell me what to do, Noah," she finally insisted, moodily. "I'll do it for you."

"Just-" Noah took a deep breath. "Turn these. Pull the line off. Put on new one. Tighten back up." The engineer normally spoke in quite formal sentences. He did, after all, grow up on Londinium, among "high society". The fact that he didn't add more than four words in a sentence really said a lot. The mechanic carefully held out the wrench towards Kai, with a bit of desperation on his face. It was hard, in times like this, to not think of the next step as all that mattered. Just fixing the fuel line was only one thing, but at this point he was fixated on it. He HAD to do it. He could think of hardly nothing else.

Kai was no medic, short of basic first aid she knew little that might be of help here, but she could smell the charred skin and coppery scent that meant only one thing. She could hear the ghost of his breath as he tried to guide her through the tasks they needed to achieve. Noah was badly hurt.

So, without argument or dissention, Kai helped. She let Daiyu pitch in wherever their newest addition felt able, and between them, they tried their best to replicate the engineer's skillset by being his hands for him now. Wrestle the old connections off. Fight to force the new one on.

"Okay, we're good," Kai told him with a proud defiance and a wipe of dirty hands on her brow. As she tightened the seal, she crouched down beside Noah and handed him back his wrench. There was hope in her desperate tone as green eyes hit his hazel. "Now, we fix you..."

This looked bad. That was Alison's first thought as she entered engineering. The rocket did a lot of damage and for her it looked like everything she imagined, short of engineering dropping off back there. Her eyes became even more concerned when she noticed Noah-Jade and Kai next to him. She was in the war long enough to know when the situation was very serious. Where was Karen when she was needed? She clenched her teeth.

"Everything is powered down. We are safe for the moment." She squatted next to Noah-Jade to help Kai. "Come on, let's take him to the infirmary. Daiyu, now it would be a good time to tell that you have a degree in surgical medicine."

"Who's flying the ship?" Noah asked when he saw Alison enter, this new concern suddenly taking the place of where the concern about the fuel line had been. The ship still felt like it was flying, at least. "Who's flying?" He repeated, slightly more panicked than before. From his position, half sitting against the wall of the engine room, he tried to grab at the wall of the engine room to pull himself but he didn't make it more than a couple inches. The wall beside him looked about as bad as he did; in fact, a bit of daylight shone through where it definitely should not have. This ship was not sound for space. But that wouldn't matter if they couldn't escape that attack, just like Paul couldn't escape his, but to do that Noah needed to get up and fix the ship. He couldn't. He simply couldn't pull himself up any higher, not with all his effort. Only then did Noah look down.

He suddenly felt sick at the sight of all the blood. A part of him knew his injuries had been bad, but another part had refused to accept it. Some metal pieces poked out of his legs, and some reddened tears darkened the pants of his suit. But the worst of it was the most obvious; a long cut from just below his ribcage to the middle of his thigh on the opposite side. The sharp piece of shrapnel, maybe a former part of the hull, lay a few feet away.

Kai reached across to offer some kind of comfort or support, but struggled to find anywhere on Noah's person that didn't look as if it would hurt like hell if she touched there. Blood... so much blood...

"We're on the ground," Kai said, and she shot a look to Alison to be sure. "It's okay, Noah. We're gonna look after you." A second look to the pilot and first mate. "We're gonna fix him all up, right?" There was anger, frustration, worry and fear mixed up in those words, and Kai didn't hold any of them back.

Alison checked Noah-Jade briefly. Her hands moving on his body. There was a lot of blood and she had no idea if moving him was the right solution. Her medical experience was down to what she saw during the war and she had no idea what to do. At the same time, she knew that even if she didn't, it was down on her to lead the way. Deciding that it is better to have him in the infirmary, she took Noah-Jade's hand carefully and put it around her neck. She nodded at Kai to help her and then, she stood up, dragging Noah-Jade toward the infirmary.

"Come on, stay with us. Did you named the parrot yet?" She asked.

"He's got a name. I just-" Noah grunted as the others started to drag him. He tried to help them, but he couldn't do much. No matter how much effort he put in, any strength he managed to lend was microscopic compared to Alison or Kai's efforts. "I don't know. Only Paul knows." Then he was quiet for a moment. "I think we're flying still."

Wide-eyed, Kai waited for Alison to check Noah over, a sinking feeling in her gut intensifying as she took in the mixture of obvious injuries and the sheer amount of blood when the engineer was moved even a little. It looked like most of it was outside him rather than in.

"We need the Doc," Kai said, then repeated the sentiment as, with Alison, she helped move Noah. "And we should carry him properly, not drag him, we'll make it worse..."

She moved to pick up the engineer's feet and tried to be gentle as she took the weight off his legs. "Just two flights of stairs, Noah," Kai promised. "Almost there." At least they could give him painkillers then, she figured. A grim expression took up residence on the younger woman's face as she added. "We're not flying," she told him. "We need you for that."

Alison guided Kai to the infirmary, carefully walking backwards and then taking the stairs. As they reached the destination, she put Noah-Jade gently on the bed. She started to watch his wounds carefully. It looked bad. He was bleeding badly and they had to do something.

"Kai, do you know anything about first aid?" She asked Alison after couple of seconds. "If not, go on the radio and see if you can raise the doc." She decided. It was really up to Kai now. If she knew enough to attempt patching up the engineer, Alison would be the one trying to call Karen. But if Kai was not feeling confident enough, then Alison was ready to muster everything she knew from the war and try to patch Noah-Jade the best she could.

"The hull got breached," Noah muttered as they set him down on the infirmary's bed. Luckily for Alison and Kai, despite Noah's height he was rather light, and quite thin. "We got to fix it."

"First we need to fix you," Kai told him, her tone supportive but tense. She knew enough about life and death to suspect Noah's chances were slim to non-existence right now. So much blood... "I know some," the young woman answered Alison second. "Enough to try," she nodded, pushing away her fear and settling for pure determination.

"I'll do my best," Kai promised Noah, as she moved to take some small bottles and an infuser from a nearby chill cabinet. Painkillers. "Here," she said, resting a firm hand on the engineer's shoulder as she pressed the infuser against his neck and pushed. "This'll help. I can knock you right out, if you want," she suggested, but the light in her eyes gave away her fear that he might not wake up again, if she did.

Alison nodded.

"I'll try to get Karen." She said leaving the infirmary. She ran back to the bridge. She was sad, quickly working her way out with nimbleness. Getting on the bridge, she sat in the pilot chair. She switched on communication, feeding it from the onboard battery. As soon as she got everything working she recorded the message.

"Jacob. We need Karen back. Right. Now. Noah-Jade is dying. When you get it, come to Serenity Valley. I'll be on the radio. Waiting." She tapped few more buttons and sent it.

Meanwhile, in the infirmary, Kai worked to stabilise a very drugged up Noah. He was conscious still, but barely, and the two of them were absolutely covered in his blood. Kai spoke occasionally, just simple words that didn't mess with her concentration, but offered support to the man on the table.