| The Funny Thing About Airlocks |
| Summary: | A mission to fix an airlock and find a lightbulb goes awry. EVENT |
| Date: | PHD060 (17 June 2009) |
| Related Logs: | None |
| Players: |
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After the holocaust, this little airlock became mostly defunct. It was one used to load mail and small supplies into central distribution and no deliveries mean it was pretty well useless. The raid on Charybdis gave it new meaning, and now the room is piled full of crates that were pilfered in the name of humanity from the destroyed station.
It's just a small room, no bigger than fifteen by fifteen feet, with double decker doors of the airlock a small flight of stairs that leads to a glassed off control booth, and then beyond that, the rest of the ship. Sen and Roubani are currently in the control room, the former of which is beneath the console and keeps repeating, "Now? How about now?" Apparently, they're trying to fix something.
Meanwhile, Matto and Castor where in the wrong place at the wrong time in the halls when Sheridan was marching down them, trailing a crewman behind him. Just like that, the pair was enlisted by the Commander to help the whining crewman come down to the airlock and find a particular kind of lightbulb that must be stored down here.
Roubani's hefty cast is gone, cut off early that morning sometime between the ruckus in berthings and the start of duty. His broken wing has been settled into a less cumbersome but only slightly less restrictive brace about two shades lighter than his skin. With straps and tight fastens it keeps his wrist immobile and his elbow nearly so, hugging the blade of his hand and circling his deadened two fingers to keep them together and protected. Across his upper and lower back are two other straps to support the weakened muscles. "Still nothing," he tells his CO, as he pokes through a panel directly above where she is. He lightly sucks his teeth. "Try again…"
Sen's sigh echoes out from beneath the console, "We might have to replace the entire circuit board, I already swapped out the wire…" She comments, her words slightly muffled, even more so by the fact she's sucking on a lolipop while she works. "Now?" She asks with hollow hope.
"You know, I've always wanted to hunt the wild lightbulb. There used to be some wonderful preserves on Leonis. Not that I ever had the cash to shell out to go down south. Or… ever knew how to fire a gun," Kissy prattles on aimlessly to the Tinman after his usual fashion.
Castor looks over at Matto, "Well, Kissy, on Aquaria they roam wild and free and they are a source of light and goodness." He then takes a moment to whisper conspiritorially, "I hear that they are dangerous some of them may be rabid." He does however keep moving along with his fellow pilot, after all this came from brass and that is a big thing.
The crewman thrusts a cigarette in his lips the moment the Commander went in a different direction, "I don't know what his panties are in a wad about, I tell you what. I think that light bulb is for his night light." He snorts. "Get it? Commander's all upset because he's afraid of the dark? Ah forget it." He grumbles, not even giving Matto and Castor a chance to respond to his quip. "I they're in the back row of boxes…" And he disappears behind a stack of crates taller then he is.
"Nothing, sir," mutters Roubani drily, as his eyes stay on the panel and the dead console face beside it. He tries to adjust something else in the mess of wiring, but again, darkness. "I suggest calling time of death."
Sen scoots out from underneath the console, but continues laying on her back on the deck. "Do you have any chewing gum?" She asks absently. For their project? Or to further feed her sweet tooth? "Go on down into the box, and try flipping the feed open. Maybe we're not getting power to the whole shebang."
"Hey, this whole ship is going to be a mess when we run out of light," Kisseus points out, "I mean… our jobs are tough enough with the world fully lit," he goes on, "I wouldn't blame the Commander for being afraid of the dark. Tht's pretty much what we're warding off, after all." He scoots back toward the back rows with the Crewman, checking crates as he passes.
Castor watches the crewman and then he gives a patented 'th frak' look before he turns back to Matto, "Then we need to find a planet to put down on ASAP. I mean considering that if we start running out of light we should use the sun or you know something." He then takes a breath wishing he had a cigar right about now but instead he offers, "As for the Commander being afraid of the dark, I doubt it. Commanders aren't allowed to get spooked, ever." He then takes a breath as he starts checking crates for this elusive light. "Just be mindful of the rabies Kissy."
The crewman plunges around a bend in the maze of supplies, cracking open a crate seemingly at random to peer inside. He's quiet for the time being, now occupied in the hunt for the elusive twenty watt micro bulb. Quiet until there's a, "Frak." Coming from him. "Splinter." Comes the explanation.
"I don't, sir." Roubani's probably never been seen chewing gum around here in his life. Or what short part of his life's been spent here. Though he offers helpfully, "I've got duct tape and some string, if you want it." Hell, it might help. His back straightens carefully and he fishes a maglite from his kit, sliding it into his front pocket of his jacket. "Alright, let me see if I can find it…" He practically has to step over her to get around her, which he does without thinking twice, and heads for the down entrance into the airlock.
Staying where she is until Roubani steps over her, Sen continues to ponder their quandry while she sucks on her candy. Hmph. The ChEng rolls into a seated position, before dragging herself back to her feet with a hand on the console. She looks around, seeing what else she can test while she waits on Roubani, and she leans forward, thumbing on the intercom that goes from booth to box where the boys are. "Testing." Yup, that works, she hears her own voice echo back to her.
"What planet were you planning on settling down on, Tinners?" Kissy chuckles at the Tinman with some mirth in his voice, then looks up from his search at the announcement. "Oh, hey Poetryslam," he calls.
Castor looks over at Kissy, "Frak if I know Kissy, I'm paid to fly not to think." he then looks at the crewman and lets out a strong Aquarian, "Ya!" which would roughly translate as dumbass, "Watch where you put your fingers, don't get all cut up just now alright." He then takes a moment to look over at Roubani, "Ensign." He says politely before he turns to rumage through another crate.
"FRAK!" The next cuss from the crewman is a little more panicked, and suddenly he's pawing at the shredded paper packaging that was surrounding the fragile cargo within the box. "Frak me. Oh frak…" Paw, throw, shove - he's desperately trying to get the stuff out of the crate.
Roubani glances over towards the swearing, watching the spot for a moment, then looks back at Matto. "Kissy." That's even a faint smile spared for the Raptor pilot as he starts past, and a nod to Castor. "Sir." He picks his way through crates towards the feed panel that Sen needed him to get to, then pauses and glances over his shoulder at the wayward pilots. "What…are you doing in here?" This said as he opens up the panel.
Matto turns toward the cussing, coming around a bend of crates, to squint, "Guy?" he calls, "What's up, do you need to get that looked at?" Last he heard, after all, it was a splinter. "Looking for lightbulbs," he adds, semi-distracted, to the Poetryslam.
Sen fingers open the com system again, "Hi boys." She greets the assembled down there, because she can hear them over the monitoring system. Sen turns away from the viewport back to their panel connundrum.
Matto turns toward the cussing, coming around a bend of crates, to squint, "Guy?" he calls, "What's up, do you need to get that looked at?" Last he heard, after all, it was a splinter. "Looking for lightbulbs," he adds, semi-distracted, to the Poetryslam.
Castor looks over at the Sen, "Captain." He then takes a moment to look over at Roubani and Matto, "Don't give away our mission, Kissy, it is classified." Not really but it is for humors sake. He then turns to look back to the Captain, "Everything allright, sir?" He then begins looking again through his crate, no, nope, nada, zilch, zero, anyo as he moves through this crate. "This one isn't the one." He then takes a moment to look over at different crate.
"I dropped my cigarette, I dropped my frakking cigarette right in the…" FFffffwump. The dry paper might as well be kindling, and the cigarette the crewman was so frantically searching for just went from smolder to - oh dear gods, are those flames? The crewman flinches back from the fiery box, unaware his fatigue sleeve has also caught on fire.
Roubani flips his maglite on and sticks it between his teeth so illuminate the dusty depths of the wiring in the panel. He asks absently around the black stick as he works, "Eier o' oo ow soh-one 'ame 'anklin 'aler?" Translate that if you can. He might have been just about to clarify but then? Cripes. He spits the maglite out, turning on his heel towards the problem. "Crewman, get back and get on the ground." Stop, drop, and roll, kindergarden never fails.
Sen has her back turned, otherwise maybe she'd see the fiery display, she's still talking over the line that she has jammed open, "I can't figure it out, we should have at least secondary power…get on the ground?" She asks quizzically. That doesn't make sense. She wheels around to try and find Roubani in the maze. Oh look. Flames. "Contain the fire before…" A klaxon wails, and a red warning light starts flashing near the hatch leading from the airlock to the control room before there's a loud 'clank' sound. "…before the fire monitors pick it up, and the airlock gets shut off by the fire wall."
TOO LATE!
Well. Crap. Kissy turns toward the wall, seeing the nearest fire safety station hatch… nicely hidden behind some crates. Wonderful. "Yah, yah," he agrees with Poetryslam, "Stop, drop, and roll, guy," he calls, while going to try to grab one of the crates and lug it out of the way.
Castor whips off his jacket and attempts to begin to smother the fire on the crewman, why because this pilot doesn't want to lose anyone. He then begins to use appropriate procedures to put the fire out on the fire out on the crewman, "YA!" This time he shouts loudly which in Aquarian amounts to a big old frak you, as he goes to work on the crewman. He looks at Roubani, "Come and help or do you want the crewman to burn to death?"
Stop drop and flail? At least the crewman got two of those rudimentary concepts right, and now he's down on the deck wallowing around and screaming in pain as the flames lick up his arms. Castor's efforts are helping to smother the flames on the crewman but not completely, and the box is still on fire and the flames are quickly spreading. Matto isn't making much progress on the crates by himself to get to the proper equipment, as the crew must have piled the heaviest boxes right there to be annoying.
The warning klaxon of the airlock is alarming, but it's second priority. "Captain," he calls out. "Tell Sickbay we've got a burn coming in." His steps are carrying him quickly towards the two, as he started off further away. He gives Castor a funny look at the implied insult. "…or do I /want/ him to burn…? /What/?" The poor crewman can't be his first stop though, as he's sprinting towards the wall panel to help Matto. "Keep on him, Lieutenant. We need that panel." Heavy crates. Awesome.
Sen moves to the intercom box so she's sure the microphone picks up her voice. "Now listen very carefully. You have to extinguish the fire in the next few moments," She says calmly, evenly, though she's looking a little pale beneath her freckles. "Otherwise the secondary failsafe will trigger, and the airlock will open to void the fire." Which is a nice way of saying, the four of them are about to get flushed out to space. "I can't override it from in here. My control panel is down." Which, amusingly enough, was what they were trying to fix.
"Frakbaskets of turbot, what the hell is in these things?" Kisseus manages to grunt out as he tries to yank the crates away from the wall enough to clear the hatch. As Poetryslam comes over, he nods to him, "One. -Pull.- And. -Pull.- And. -Pull.-" he mutters through clenched jaws to time their efforts and get them working in unison rather than individually.
Roubani grabs hold of the crate Matto's working on. The impact of it moving vibrates pain raging up his damaged arm and through his shoulder, making his teeth slam together so hard it's a wonder enamel fragments don't spew out of his mouth. "Ah /gods/…!" Pull. The. Damn. Crates. Roubani. And he does, hearing the heavy things scrape along the floor. "We…got it." As much called to Sen as to Matto. "Get the panel, Kissy."
"Zeus's ball sack do you know what you are doing." Leda says as he moves in and begins to work to save the crewman. He shouts loudly after a moment of working on the crewman as he shouts, "The fire is out, you flush me and I will not be happy." He shouts again, "Frak my eye are you people stupid?" He then shouts out loud enough for everyone in any near by room to hear, "We need a medic, now, or even better many medics." He looks at the man as he tries to see how bad the damage is, "I don't think this is good but I am no professional." He then barks out, "Matto, get an extinguisher on that fire ASAP or we are all KIA!"
The crewman is concious, but barely, shock settling in quickly and the smell of charred flesh fills the tiny expanse of the room. He's groaning now, and Castor's coat is smoldering from where he used it to smother the burning crewman. Meanwhile, the fire rages on in the boxes, having spread to two others and now they're leaving dark char marks on the wall where the flames climb but find no purchase on the metal hull. The place is starting to heat up quickly.
"Maintain calm, Lieutenant." The Captain says through clenched teeth, nothing she can do from this side of the glass but sit back and watch the show in horror and hope the flames get put out on time. She's made the call for the medics, but they haven't arrived yet and they can't get through the steel fire wall either. "Roubani, by my count, you have less than two minutes. You may have to pry open the panel near the airlock and see if you can disable the hydrolic mechanism that opens the airlock."
Matto scrambles for the panel once the crates are dragged out of the way, yanking the handle downward and pulling, tossing out one fireblanket, two fireblankets toward Roubani in a scramble to get to the chemical extinguishers while eviscerating the enclave of all useful and pertinent items. If there's more than one extinguisher he tosses the spares out, too, for Poetryslam and Tinners. Three extinguishers are better than one.
Roubani's eyes take in the flames growing. Two minutes. And that? That's not a two-minute fire. "Put your shirts over your noses and mouths if you can, and get as low to the floor that you manage." He calls to the others in the room, then shouts up to Sen. "The vents! Can you pump the vents? The smoke'll do us before the airlock at this rate! I'm going." He reaches back for one of the extinguishers from Matto, his arm screaming at him as he hefts the full thing. Flipping the handle on, his path starts directly through a swath of the flames towards that access panel she pointed out, white foam going all the way back towards the base of the blaze.
Castor looks at Roubani and Matto as he moves to put the fires out, "Get on it!" He shouts as he begins to move in his own right to put the fire out, "Kill this flame or we are all tourched. So get onit." He then looks at Vendas, "You better have a MC the flipside."
The crewman isn't so much groaning anymore as he is just sitting there and drooling. He'll need medical attention after this, alright, and luckily for him, there's a team assembled and just waiting impatiently on the other side of the hatch. Sen can hear their shouts on the otherside of the doors that will not open yet. With Roubani going to override the hatch, and Castor and Matto left to fight the fire, it rages on, looking as if it's just about to spread to another box.
For a long second, Sen keeps her gaze locked on Castors through the window. In that pregnant moment, disapproval is written all over her face. But she has bigger fish to fry, and so the lolipop stick gets manuevered to the otherside of her mouth and she's looking down to the dead console. Vents. She can't do frak all with a dead board.
Matto takes up the third extinguisher with a weary half-grunt, the smoke getting to him as his throat threatens to strike, complaining insistantly that this air will simply. Not. Do. Nonetheless he ducks down and begins to join in the spraying.
Roubani coughs hard as smoke rolls up from the flames around him, still moving fast towards the panel. Fire licks up from the blaze onto his fatigues jacket as he makes a quick dash straight through it, starting his bottom hem ablaze. He jerks the jacket off his shoulder and tosses it down before it can spread to the rest of his uniform, cutting the spray on the extinguisher and grabbing for the panel handle. Which is white godsdamn hot. His hand snatches back and then grabs again, skin probably sizzling under the metal, and forces the panel open. Airlock. Airlock. Shit. His hand flies up on autopilot, punching keys and juryrigging some wire connections. Sparks snap from the inside of the panel, spraying his hand and right into his face, taking part of his eyebrow off that he'll miss in the morning. Finally a blue light comes on at the bottom. "Captain! Bypass engaged, control's in the booth on panel 94." A working panel.
Castor does likewise with the extinguisher, following Matto's movements of engaging the extinquisher and starting to paint the boxes with a thick white foam. Above the airlock, yellow spinning lights are triggered by the fire detector failsafe. Sixty seconds until the airlock starts to open. Roubani was just in time.
Sen cracks her knuckles, while she waits a tense moment for the relay from Roubani, and then as he has the control diverted back to her, she's almost pouncing onto the control system, her hands flying over the panel and in split second the vents are turned on, reversing the airflow into the room, and starting to suck out the smoke to void it into space. Another sequence is entered and the yellow warning lights die away. No airlock induced death today.
Matto leaves the not getting vented into space in the hands of others, just trying to keep awayre and upright long enough for the vents to give him some beathable air. Where there is something bright and flickery, he sprays white in that general direction, just taking it a second at a time and a step at a time and keeping spraying stuff down probably long after the fire's completely out.
Roubani grabs the fire extinguisher back up the moment the airlock is out of his control. What Sen does with it doesn't even register. Foam sprays from the red canister in his hands towards the section of fire nearest to him, the sound of his coughing constant as the vents open up.
Castor keeps spraying until his cannister is empty, then lets it fall to he floor with a heavy clunk. He makes some smart remark about how they still haven't found the Commander's lightbulb, as the fire doors are disengaged and the medics rush in to take the poor crewman to sickbay to treat his burns.
Sen stands in the open hatch, smiling slightly because in the end it was a job well done. "Everyone up to sickbay. Get checked out for smoke inhalation. Ensign, how's the arm?"
Matto settles against a white-painted bulkhead somewhere, having got out his inhaler and shaking it in one hand, still holding the fire extinguisher in his other hand. He's not letting go of it. Just in case. He looks up at the order to scram, and shambles on out.
"It's okay, sir," Roubani manages to get out. Which it really isn't. Extinguisher down, has has his arm cradled protectively with the other, face ashen. It looks even funnier with that half a brow singed off. "Kissy…Kissy has asthma. Is he alright?" The Lieutenant, of course, is buggin', but Roubani can't see that from here.
Sen steps aside so they can all exit. "He'll be fine. He's going up to medical to get checked out. And so are you. C'mon. Pack it in, that's an order." Because no, she doesn't believe him about the arm and she's going to escort everyone up and fill out the necessary 'we had an oopsie' paperwork.
