Space Odyssey
Verse: Trekverse
Prompt: Sacrifice
Warnings: angst, death
Characters/Parties: Joan Weiss, Logan Wolf
Word Count: 1353
One moment she was fully focused on the blue glowing tablet in her hands, the next she lied on the floor under the desk. A quiet curse left her mouth as she stood up. Something must have stopped the ship’s drive.
“Logan?”, she called her friend via the intercom. He was the only other person on board.
“I'm sorry, Doc. We just performed a full stop. I’ll figure out the reason why. Give me a second,”. He sounded stressed.
“I'll grab my gear and come forward, if you need a hand.”
“Well, if you must.”
The doctor let go of the button and grabbed the tablet and her bag. She left the room and turned into the narrow hallway, walking forward towards the bridge.
She pressed the key to open the door to the bridge, and entered the brightly lit room.
The grabbed an earpiece to contact Logan again, who was at stern, where the engineering was located.
“Okay mate, what do you need to know?” she asked.
“First tell me, is something flashing red?”
“The main engine.”
“No shit Sherlock. That's what I'm trying to fix right now, but there must be a problem somewhere else. Joan, check the circuits.”
“Copied that.”
“Remember the time we had to save this man from the station on Moxa IV?” Joan asked after quite a long pause.
“Yeah, we had the real McCoy with us and I was just the guy to open the door,” the young engineer chuckled.
“And then a seal of my suit just broke; fatigue. You saved my arse,” her smile was transmitted too.
“Or this time where we went camping at the Elliot Lake and in the morning a grizzly was eating our food.”
“Good old times. You still were a cadet at this time.”
“Well after all that we have another story to tell.”
She came back to the problem they had. “I can't spot something that's wrong, wait, there is too little power flowing through the temp regulation.”
“Okay I might have an idea. Can you help me down here. In person I mean.”
Joan turned around and started moving towards the door.
“I'll do this the old fa--,” with a bright flash she was wrapped into darkness.
She couldn’t hear her friend anymore.
Instinctively she reached in front of her, where she felt the cold material of the door. She heard a quiet murmuring.
“Logan?! Are you alright?”
No answer, the connection probably broke off.
She opened her bag and tried to find the torch.
The door had opened, but just a few centimeters. She tried to look though the gap.
“Logan?”
She heard steps approaching. She did not like the dark, this situation was starting to get weird already.
“We have no power,” explained Logan. “I will try to fix it. Are you alright?”
“I am. Are you?”
“I kinda tore my arm, it's bleeding a bit.”
“Okay.” Joan exhaled. “Let's try to open this door.”
“Aye. There should be paddles to manually open.”
Joan opened the small cabinet but it was empty.
“No, sir.”
“Fuck. Look, I need to talk to you about something,” he said, the ‘about’ carrying his Canadian accent. “Now you are trapped…” he added more softly. Logan and Joan had started out as people with similar interest but they had grown together in course of the years. At first working at separated places later on the same ship.
“Yes, mate.”
“I think I know why this is not working.”
“Our favourite Scotsman told me to replace the paddles. But I forgot to put the new ones in there.”
“So?”
“That's not the only thing. I think I made a mistake when rewiring the drive's temperature-regulation systems. The reason why we are now drifting in a powerless tin can. I fucked up.”
“You feel guilty?”
“Yeah, I do. By the way that's not all bad news. We don't have auxiliary power means--”
“-- no life support”, the medical officer finished his sentence.
“We are screwed.”
“Nah. We just wait. Our rendezvous point with our parent ship is a few parsecs away. They will find us”, Joan felt that it was her duty to keep him calm. That was quite of a challenge because it was hard to focus for her and she noticed that she was getting nervous as well.
“Logan, could you go and get my medical kit, please?”
“Yes.”
She could hear him leave. She sat down and turned on her tablet again. Her mind wrapped around the math she just did on it.
Logan returned and sat down.
“Can you pass it through the gap?” she asked.
“Let me try.” Thankfully it was a fit.
“Let's make a deal,” she said and tried to sound as optimistic as possible.
“I fix you and you fix the ship.”
Logan chuckled. “Okay.”
He put the hurt arm though the gap. Really no big deal, Joan thought.
It was really just a big scratch and she fixed it petty fast.
After that Logan left to take a look at the electronics again.
She never liked the dark ever since she was a child. “There is just Logan with you, there are no monsters,“ she whispered to herself. She began to humm the Largo from Dvorak's New World Symphony.
She already imagined all the worst case scenarios. She had to stop it, she was a professional, but being anxious was not really professional.
Logan in the meantime was at the end of the hallway, the torch in his mouth and trying to switch the charred cables and burned relais for new ones. If he could repair the auxiliary power, they would have back the life support and communications.
He felt a drop of sweat running down his temple.
It was just a mess, nothing really looked like it looked before. His mistake had lead to a chain reaction that fried every neighbouring system. He would need hours to repair it needless to say that he lagged spare parts and he only had the basic tools onboard.
The situation had a dark feel to it and he felt kind of desperate. What if they suffocated until the others found them?
He cursed and went forward again to update Joan on their situation.
“Yes, I kind of knew that would happen”, Joan said. “I did the maths. We have 90 minutes left before the carbon dioxide level is too high and we pass out.”
“That's not a lot of time.” He observed her picking up the torch that was lying on the ground. She opened the medical kit again. He noticed that she was crying.
“What are you doing?”, he asked softly.
“I'll grab an injector and load it with vecuronium.”
“I'm not in pain,” Logan stated.
“It is not for you.”
“Wait what?”
“It's for me”, she sniffed and disappeared from his sight.
She sat down with her back facing the door.
“Vecuronium bromide relaxes your muscles. It's a fast working anesthetic. It will relax my diaphragm too. This will buy you time.”
“It will kill you. You can't do it. It's my fault. I could never forgive myself. Give it to me.”
“This is what I mustn't do. Logan, I swore an oath, to protect life and do no harm.”
“Even if this life is guilty of causing this situation?”
“Yes, even then. The truth is I love you. I couldn't live without you.”
“Same goes for me.” He replied, his voice was cracking.
“I am so sorry, Johanna. Please just don't, let us die together if we have to.” He put his hand through the gap and grabbed hers, feeling her warmth.
“I’m sorry as well.” She squeezed his hand. With the other one she lifted the injector to her neck and released the content into the vein.
Her grip loosened up but he kept holding. With a weary sigh she fell over. He felt her pulse at her wrist and how it got weaker and weaker. Unable to do something he watched her die. He felt like he was falling apart, all this guilt. But he had to stay alive, for her.
