Star Trek: Starbase 777

And now they were here! In the command deck. To send out an important message that was essentially 'please stop and check your ships and do not go to warp because you could immediately die if you do not have these parts'. Essentially. "Never actually done this before, so... I assume you just hit a button and it goes out to every ship in our sector," he said with a laugh, not knowing that was probably actually how it worked, more or less.

"Yep. Pretty much." He pressed a few buttons on the nearest console and then spoke into his commbadge, transmitting the message to everyone in the sector: "Station Commander Mo of 777 here. Due to reports of critical safety features being stolen, all outgoing shuttles are no longer allowed to exit the station, and all shuttles elsewhere are advised to halt travel, especially at warp speeds, and check their ships for missing parts for the safety of those aboard, including but not limited to:" With Allan's input based on what they'd found out had been stolen, he rattle off a list of parts, then ended the transmission.

[COMMS] "ACTO to Captain, hostage situation resolved, civilian hostage being taken to medical, no further perpetrators at large in the entertainment promenade."

As Mo listed off the components, a message came back from one of the ships that had just initiated their warp core. "Copy that 777, we'll get that checked when we're out since we've just started warp." The person on the other end probably thought that it wasn't a glaring issue, as their warning alarms started blaring over the comms. "Wait one 777, I have an issue- oh SHI-" The comm call cut as one of the ships out command deck window went to warp, turning into a long trail of fire as the shuttle was torn apart under it's own stress. Usually there were safety systems in place to stop this, oh well. (edited)

This was great. They'd sent out the message, that was what they could do, and yet - the message over the comms said they'd just started to warp, and they'd just said not to warp, and then there was the sound of the alarms and the - the disconnect. And moreso, the burst of fire outside the window that scattered out into the void of space. His eyes seemed glued to the space ahead of him, out to where the fire had quickly started to dissipate and soon had gone. And yet, despite it now being gone in reality, Allan was still seeing it. Shock had him held still, his pupils still wide as he kept staring blankly ahead at the scene that kept replaying, at the scene that was being intermixed with a scene from three years prior that, in all respects, looked nearly exactly the same from this viewpoint. A sudden burst of fire, a sudden loss of a comms line that had just been there. A sudden loss of someone who was just living and breathing moments ago, gone in an instant. And a sudden creeping of a feeling that he was at fault. He wasn't aware of the physical feelings of his pulse quickening or his hands feeling cold and somewhat numb, and he was very, very aware of the voices in his head asking him if there was something else he should have done here. Why didn't he send out the message sooner, why didn't he think to do it the instant they found that these parts were missing from the shuttles? That was something he should have done, wasn't it? Why did he wait? Why wasn't he on top of this whole thing sooner, shouldn't he have caught onto this whole operation earlier, why hadn't he had the engineering department check shuttles more often, why- divider

00:41

He knew somewhere in his brain that none of those were reasonable. But they stayed close to him, swirling around his mind as the tendrils of panic continued to coil around his chest, constricting his breath as he continued to stand there, feeling the urge to flee, to escape this somehow, and yet he was still rooted here, body trembling as memories mixed with the present with perfect and merciless clarity. And physically, there became less and less of a divide between the past and the present as well, reality having left the chat quite a bit ago. Everything was the same as it was. The familiar hum of a room around him filled with consoles, the blurred vision as the scenes out the window slowly faded, and the warm, wet streams of tears falling across his cheeks that were the obvious source of said blurred vision. Everything was the same. There was a brief look over at Mo, though as soon as he recognized him he looked away, and the thoughts got louder in his head. What if someday later, it was him? He wanted to say something, though, a gasp of his breath returning preceding much more shallow breaths as he tried to think of something to say to the other man, something to say at all, but nothing ever came. He felt stuck, and yet all parts of him were moving at a speed more than what was normal. The breathing, the heartbeat, the shaking - it was all a lot more than it should have been, and yet it was so much the same. No words, all thoughts, head full.