Chapter 8: Preperations

[Livvy Sandoval]

"The oldsters would be so jealous," Livvy said, "This ship would need at least a month in drydock. While you are working on the core I'll run diagnostics and get a full damage list..." She glanced around, "And um... take care of some other things."

With Miki's help Livvy set about the grim task of moving the crew. There wasn't a smell, that in itself in its strangeness was a bit disconcerting. She had chosen cargo bay four, as there were far too many bodies on the ship to fit in the morgue to transport the crew to. It was thoroughly unpleasant work.

After half an hour Miki was zipping up the last bag. Without the benefit of names Livvy simply used her laser cutter to burn the rank into the bag for some sort of identification, and placed a site to site tag and beamed the body away.

Livvy straightened and wiped the sweat from her brow with the back of her hand despite the temperature on the bridge being a fairly comfortable 22 degrees Celsius. "We'll need a name for this ship," she said to Diana over the comm.

[Diana Talon]

"Well, how about the Sandoval? Can't remember off hand if we already have one or not but... hey it kind of IS our family name." Diana replied. "Unless... we go full on geek and give it a Tolkien-ish name."

[IRIS]

Iris materialized near Livvy and handed her a padd. "My 'sisters' and I have completed the hull breach repairs on the dorsal side, we're working on the starboard breaches now. If you want to rename the ship... I can have the bots repaint the hull flags." she said with a smirk. "Oh and there are still a load of messages on the comm system that never got sent out, obviously they'll go into the ether so... I took the liberty of archiving them until I have full comm data net access. What IS curious... one of the messages was being sent to the USS Denver for your grandmother and Diana's great-grandfather."

[Livvy Sandoval]

Livvy was wiping her hands using a anti-microbial wipe with a expression of someone thoroughly grossed out. Shoving the wipe into her pocket she took the PADD. "Uncle Nick never served on the Denver." She scrolled through the PADD and spoke absently, "Hey Di what do you think of Pheonix? This ship is literally rising from the ashes."

[Diana Talon]

"I like that even better... even IF there are dozens of Phoenix's but hey screw it... it's our Phoenix." Diana said and hummed. "Actually I remember him telling me he did serve with her briefly during one battle in the Dominion War, blasted Oingo Boingo's 'Dead man's party' in engineering during the battle. He wasn't even really an official part of the crew, but she needed a Chief and he just sort of... took over. Great-grandpa Nick and Grandma Becca were so cool when they were young. Interesting that someone tried to contact them." she bypassed a console and installed a temporary fix which brought the new AliceCore online. "I got the AliceCore online... structural integrity is slowly but surely getting better, I need to fix the deflector array controls, first bit of space dust we hit at warp is going to tear a hole in the ship. Give me another hour down here and I'll meet you on the bridge. I'll bet your OCD is going nuts huh? Everything's so dusty."

[Livvy Sandoval]

"I don't have OCD! I just don't care to be dirty, and you'd feel dirty too after what I've done."

Livvy crossed the bridge and slid into the helm, and tapped at the controls, "This antiquated setup is going to take getting used to."

With a beep the alert lights switched to a flashing blue, "Thrusters are on line. Di you might want to hang onto something. IRIS do me a favor monitor the Engineering station."

Pressing a single flashing red button on the helm the thrusters roared to life that sent a low rumble throughout the ship. Slowly they lifted away from the surface climbing for orbit.

[Diana Talon]

Diana's fingers moved over the large control panel in engineering and diverted power to various parts of the ship to keep the shields and structural integrity from shaking the ship apart. "Hey I've got the skeletal torso of an engineer manning a flow rate console. Oddly that's probably how the poor dear died. His fingers are locked in the right position to keep the impulse plasma flow regulators going." she sighed heavily. "I think we owe it to this ship's crew to do right by them. They didn't give their lives during the Dominion War, before either of us were born, to see Earth going to literal hell in the name of some misconception of the Almighty. "

[Livvy Sandoval]

"Amen," Livvy said as she rerouted emergency power to the inertial dampers. The ship rose through a thick bank of gasses and burst into open space. The stars twinkling brighter than she could remember. "We are in a stable orbit," she said to Diana. Now, can you appreciate me bringing along a Worker Bee?"

[Diana Talon]

"Personally I'd rather be in a suit of armor but yeah it was a good idea..." Diana said with a smirk. "Just be careful Livvy. I'm going to keep monitoring the internal repairs. The Mikis and Irises and the auto repair drones I've deployed should get us warp capable in a few hours, at least enough to get to a friendly port, but if you can get that warp nacelle fixed, then we don't need to find a friendly port, we can get ourselves home in a day or two."

[Livvy Sandoval]

"Suit of armor doesn't fix starships. I'll see if I can tractor the runabout into the shuttle bay."