Darkened and Broken
Posted on Wed Jul 23rd, 2025 @ 4:03pm by Lieutenant Richard Pierce MD
Edited on on Wed Jul 23rd, 2025 @ 5:05pm
429 words; about a 2 minute read
Mission:
Admiral Ambition and the Borg
Location: Sickbay | Deck 7 | USS Jane Addams
Timeline: MD004 - 1900
The overhead lights finally sputtered out for good, casting Sickbay into a dim orange gloom lit only by two failing portable lamps and the flicker of a cracked tricorder display. Pierce adjusted the last of the pressure bandages on a wounded crewman, tied it off, and wiped his hands on a towel that had long since given up being clean.
He exhaled slowly. The air was getting thinner—not dangerously so, not yet—but enough to make each breath feel like it had to fight for its place.
No comms. No internal sensors. No way to know what the hell was going on anywhere else on the ship. He didn't know if Raz was alive, if the Bridge still had a crew, or if they’d already been carved up and vented to space. For all Pierce knew, he might be the last officer still on duty.
And yet… somewhere on this broken hulk, people were still alive. Injured. Trapped. Suffocating.
He couldn’t sit in this room and wait for them to die.
Pierce grabbed a half-functional padd, flickering with what little schematic data it still remembered. Most of the ship’s network was dead, but the medical system had a few redundancies—mostly for battlefield triage. He couldn’t get a full deck plan, but there were fragments. Environmental readings from nearby junctions. Life signs flickering in and out like ghosts. Pressure seals holding in some corridors, failing in others.
He could work with that.
"All right," he said, turning to his dwindling medical team—three people still on their feet, maybe two more barely upright. "Malen, Fex—you’re with me. We’re sweeping this deck. I want every corridor checked for pressure, air quality, and anyone who’s still breathing."
“And if they’re not breathing?” Fex asked quietly.
“Then you make them breathe,” Pierce snapped, a little harsher than he intended. Then, softer: “No one dies alone on this ship. Not if I have anything to say about it.”
He slung his medkit over his shoulder, clipped the flickering tricorder to his wrist, and pried open the jammed Sickbay doors with a sterilization wand and sheer spite.
“Let’s map out what’s left of the Jane Addams,” he muttered, stepping into the corridor. “One hallway at a time. One life at a time.”
And with that, Dr. Pierce disappeared into the dark. Searching. Healing. Fighting—not with phasers or orders—but with gauze, grit, and the raw refusal to give up.
Lieutenant Richard Pierce, M.D.
Chief Medical Officer
USS Jane Addams
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