Riptide blinked a couple more times. The sheer audacity of what Anode had just said was still loading in his processor.
"....Me?" He asked quietly, or at least it would have been quietly, "Why......me?" he said, looking around somewhat answering his own question.
"Like I said" Anode repeated "Everyone more senior is most likely dead, so I'm Captian, and either you or MegaJoule is next, and I'll be fragged before he's holding any authority on this Ship... Or, what's left of it."
"Well, Captian" Lug interjected. "we've gotta see if anyone else actually sruvived before we start thinking about any more command appointments or whatnot."
"As your...First... Officer...I second Lug's assesment" Riptide said, trying to pull himself together and trying to sound somewhat official.
Anode took a 'breath' herself. "Alright... First Order as Captian. Find as many other survivors as you can, but don't leave the ship itself if you can help it. Find everyone you can and bring them to either the Mess if you can, it should be at least halfway usable... We'll take count and go from there. Got it?"
"Yes Sir." Riptide said with a salute.
"Aye-aye Captian" Lug said with a wink and smile.
"Alright. To your duties." Anode said releasing Lug and gently moving aside to let Riptide and Lug float past her.
As the left the Bridge, Anode hung back for a bit and began securing all the corpses still in the bridge to something solid.
"Anode..." Lug said, hanging back. "They're gone, you know..."
"I know." Anode said, not meeting her eyes. "I just want to make as firm a count as I can" she said, securing the last remaining corpse, Cheif Ophiucii, called Ophy by everyone, to the aft bulkhead.
She then followed Lug out of the bridge to try and find everyone else she could.
By unspoken mutual consensus, they all first stopped at the Infirmary, and got as many Exo-packs and trauma kits as they could. Anode herself took the grim duty of checking Meical Officer Deerboy and the two crewmen who had been in the Infirmary at the time.
She reported their condition with a silent shake of the head before securing them to their stations.
Once out of the infirmary, they all took careful but separate paths through the ship, each as methocially as possible searching what they could of the Nova class Cruiser's 18 main decks and 4 main sections.
They mostly found corpses and secured them as Anode had for later count and what funeral honors they could. Eventually each did find a few alive.
The first to be found was Swerve, still in the galley area securing his regular duty-station before going to battle-stations. Anode got him quickly revived and stablized with an exo-pack then moved to help him clear a space in the Mess for them to meet, checking and moving the bodies there as they went. There they managed to find Cadet Crosscut and Crewman Jackpot, both of whome hadn't quite made it out of them mess at the Battlestations call, and thus made it. Anode helped Swerve stabilize them with a couple exo-packs and a trauma kit.
Riptide wasn't having as much luck. With how exposed the landing bay was, he was lucky to find anything recognizable of the flight crew.
He did eventually find acting Search and Rescue (SAR) specialist in a lucky spot where heavy shrapnel and wreckage had just missed. Riptide got him revived and patched up with the Exo-pack.
After a quick explanation, he sent him back up to the Mess and moved on to hopefully find more survivors.
Lug was making her way back to the the reactor, though checking all the compartments and quarters on the way. It was with some shock but little surprise that she found Ensign Hypr in Warrant Officer Trencher's damaged and affected quarters very much engaged with each other at time of death.
Lug steeled herself for a moment then examined them both. Trencher had unfortunately taken a stray piece of shrapnel like a bullet right to the spark chamber, Lug could tell from the holes in the bulkhead and floor, while Hypr fortunately had just been knocked out.
Lug began to carefully extricate and separate Hypr from Trencher's body, feeling a little dirty as she did so, then revived her with an Exo pack. Thankfully, she came around quickly with the distinct gear-and-hydraulics sound of a transformation cog working.
Once conscious, it took longer than Lug would have liked to get the young and understandably hysterical officer calm enough to understand the situation.
It took a full Megacycle for the new Command Triad (Commanding Officer, Executive Officer, Command 'Chief') to search the searchable areas of the ship. The majority of the Lost Light's space frame, unfortunately, is little more than loosely associated scrap metal. However, in the search, they found that the Keel of the ship was largely in tact as well as the center sections.
By now around a Dozen survivors had been found and brought back to the Mess. Lug decided to stay to make sure the death toll didn't rise any more, though she was somewhat regretting the decision. As the search had gone on, it became abundantly clear she was the most senior enlisted bot left on the ship, thus making her the 'Command Master Chief' or more simply the 'Command Chief' Despite the fact she was just an Engineering Operator by rank. Now instead of managing various systems and stations in the engines, she was now forced to manage Hypr and MegaJouel's seemingly never ending moral feud while trying to keep the other remaining survivors from wanting to end themselves.
This was becoming increasingly difficult.
