Obdurate Defiance

Tisma had somehow managed to roll onto her left side, it hurt less that way. Though in general the area felt like it was going numb now. The dead body had her freaked out a little but that could have been due to the fact that she was starting to reach her coping limit for the day. As Mier fired the additional rounds she smiled with faint satisfaction.

"I told you you were going to die."

"How bad, babe?"

"Not sure..... Bad." Tisma was trying to work herself into a sitting position and it wasn't really happening any time soon. "Did you find anyone?" Maybe she could distract him while she tried to pull herself together enough to move. Had to get to the engine. Had to see what was rigged before it went. Fat chance of that but she made small progress as she finally got onto her hands and knees. Oh sweet lady that hurt.
 
"Four locked rooms in the quarters areas, at least one has someone inside. I was about to try to check inside when you hit your comm." He paused, holstered his pistol, and reached out to steady Tisma. "You're not going to be able to move under your own power, are you?"

Rather than finding and retrieving one of their chemlights, he retrieved another and cracked it, leaning over her back to get a good look.

"Shit. That's not good. That's very not good. What did you do with the med kit you grabbed?"
 
"You're not going to be able to move under your own power, are you?"


"Not sure, going to keep trying though." Tisma shifted from his hands and attempted to start moving.


"Shit. That's not good. That's very not good. What did you do with the med kit you grabbed?"

"Don't know." She was making slow progress toward the engine. A little farther and she'd be able to fiddle with it. A grunt and she was half on the floor again but at her destination. From her stomach she reached up and started carefully sifting through the wires.

"Get that person out of here. I need to handle this if I can." Stomach wasn't going to work. Shit. Closing her eyes she took a deep breath and focused herself. One more and she was moving herself into a sitting position. Crap she was going to have to lean forward too. This really wasn't going to be pretty.
 
"I'll get right on that," he said as he scanned the room. "But first..." He found the medkit and brought it over to where she was sitting up. "Try not to move for a minute."

He pulled out disinfectant and some bandages, poured the disenfectant into the wound. Yes, he was sure it hurt. On the other hand, infection was a Certified Bad Thing. Waiting a moment for the disenfectant to do its thing, he carefully bandaged her back, wrapping the bandage around her chest and abdomen to secure it. When he was satisfied it wouldn't move - and would keep the wound from pulling -too- much - no matter what she did, he closed the medkit and backed off.

"I'll be back as soon as I can, babe. Call me if you need anything."


Shortly afterward, he was back in the crew quarters. He tried to open the door he'd heard whimpers behind. A negative blatt from the lock and more whimpering from inside. He tapped in his override code - though only Tisma and Quinn knew for sure why he HAD one, but he wasn't complaining - and the door opened to a teenage girl and a young boy who visibly flinched at the sight of him. He raised the chemlight so they could see his face.

"Easy, kiddos. I'm one of the good guys. Let's get you off the ship and safe, yeah?"
 
By this time she couldn't help it anymore, the disinfectant made her scream and tears started to come against her will. "Mother Mary of Anabolic Grace you couldn't have waited for me to do this first could you have!?" She was quite sure she was going to murder him later for this and from the way he wrapped her wound she wasn't sure she'd have the mobility to get done what she needed to. Damnit. The bandage might have to come off.

"I'll be back as soon as I can, babe. Call me if you need anything."

Leaning forward she pushed against the section of the engine, trying to get it to rotate just a little bit so she could gain access to the part she needed. From the position she was in this took quite a bit of effort. With it finally turned she pulled a pair of pliers off her belt and started carefully disconnecting a few things. Separating another wire from the mass she attempted to follow it. Shit. It was leading all sorts of places it shouldn't be and into sections she couldn't reach, at least not like this. Spotting something else she let it go for now and whipped out her hydrospanner and made short work of a coupling that'd been welded and misplaced.

"Shit shit shit.. Not the dampers. Mother fuck." As the exact rigging dawned on Tisma she heard a click. Oh this wasn't going to be good. She keyed her comm and left it on. "Mier, get whoever is on this ship off and run!"

Adrenaline overrode pain and with some effort Ti got herself up and moving toward the dampers. If the plates connected the ship was going to blow and she didn't have the tools to pull them completely. At the very least maybe she could slow them down. Crying as she wrenched a panel off the bulkhead, she finally got a good look at what exactly had been done to the ship. There were six dampers and so far only one had been engaged. There must have been some sort of timer placed on each one. Taking the spanner she managed to bend a few in place for now, wishing she had a welder so she could either permanently ruin the servos or remove them. As she went to bend another the second coupling engaged. Black spots were starting to form in her vision and she had to blink quite a bit to keep them at bay. A few more attempts and she did all she could do.

Belting her tools she turned to head back out it took some effort just to walk and she was getting awful wobbly. "So earlier, when I said I like liked you..... I was lying." Tisma paused to lean against the engine. Taking a few deep breaths she started her slow progress again and wasted breath with words. "Because while you said you weren't entirely sure you loved me and didn't want to sling the word around. I know for a fact I love you." The third coupling engaged.


"I just thought.. you should know." As she made it to the engine room door her world went dark.
 
Tisma shouted over the comm and Mier stopped trying to coax the kids out. Let them be scared of him, at least they'd be alive. He grabbed them one under each arm and sprinted out of the ship, then looped a blank triage tag over each of their heads and pushed them out through the shield. Then it was back into the ship to get Tisma.

Like hell he was going to just let her die. Especially after she'd gone and said she loved him.

He somehow managed to pull his impossible-speeds-through-impossible-terrain trick again, and arrived in the engine room just in time to see the fifth coupling slam closed. Tisma was in a boneless heap at the nearest...damper coupling, if he remembered correctly. He didn't know what would happen if the dampers turned on, but it didn't promise to be pretty. And only one coupling was left unengaged.

He sprinted to the remaining coupling and took stock. He couldn't reach the servo to disable it, but...

Without thinking, he grabbed the power cable that fed into the near plate of the coupling and pulled on it with all his strength, bracing himself against the coupling's shock frame. It wasn't enough - the cable didn't have enough give for him to rip it out. He kept trying, though.

The servo engaged, and the cable's connection gave out, the plates failing to close the circuit despite being slammed closed. The sudden lack of pressure sent both Mieranor and the cable sprawling onto the deck. There was a sudden arc of electricity followed by a loud pop! as the main fuses burst, and all power on the ship suddenly failed.

Mier pushed himself stiffly to his feet. Being next to a high-voltage line discharging into the hull plating didn't fall on anyone's List Of Good Things To Happen To Me (or if it did, he didn't want to meet the guy), and his muscles were still intermittently convulsing. Carefully, slowly, he walked over and picked up Tisma, careful not to jostle her any more than necissary. As he carried her out of the engine room, he heard the click - click - click of an analog timer. He swore and started moving as fast as he could - which, admittedly, wasn't very fast, but it was faster than walking.

He made it to the shield and just barely managed to lurch through before the fail safe went off, secondary explosions shredding Persephone's hull moments later. He managed to get Tisma to the triage point and hand her off to the medics before collapsing himself.
 
Tisma woke up to a steady beeping noise that had managed to work it's way into her sleeping brain and start to slowly drive her mad. Blinking against the harsh light she looked around and groaned. Med bay. Wonderful. She hated this place. Further analysis showed she was hooked up to an IV. Mother Mary, we still use those!? That alone was a testament to the backwards mix of technology they had available at the base. At least she didn't have one of those annoying blood pressure cuffs attached to her arm. Careful patting with her free hand let her know they had a halo on her that was keeping track of her vitals.

Scrunching her nose she made an attempt to sit up and immediately regretted it. Either she'd done it too fast or her pain meds were wearing off but either way the halo reacted to the spike in vitals and a sudden wave of sleepiness washed over her. With a vaguely annoyed sigh she had just enough time to get comfortable again and wonder where Mieanor was before unconsciousness took her.



It was hours later that she woke up screaming and thrashing.
 
Mier had been awake and active for hours by the first time Tisma woke up. He would have preferred to be with her, but with her out of action, he was in charge. His whole body ached, but the medics assured him that was only to be expected after having nearly three thousand volts of electricity run through him. EOD informed him that he was lucky his pistols' ammunition hadn't cooked off, or he wouldn't have legs at all. Hell of a day.

After waking up from his stint of unconsciousness (Thankfully brief; Teegan came after him in the chain of command) he'd organized a salvage effort for what was left of Persephone and after that he'd returned to Medical and begun coaxing their story out of the youngsters he'd rescued. It was slow going, but they were warming up to him. It probably helped that he was in worse shape than they were, and that his pistols were with the Armorer being checked out. So far he'd managed to piece together that the man with the knife had been one of the refugees, and that the kids had known him for years. They thought he'd cracked. Mier didn't think it was anything so simple, but he let them keep what little innocense they had left.

When Tisma started screaming, he was still talking to the kids. All three of them started, and Mier nearly fell over himself getting out of his chair and out the door. He could hear the girl snicker through her shock; a detached part of his mind was glad that she still had a hold of her sense of humor.

He arrived at Tisma's bedside before any of the medical personnel did - having been essentially cooked slowed him down, but being almost next door still counted for something. He wrapped his arms around her shoulders and hugged her, pinning the arm with the IV in it so she couldn't accidentally pull it out.

"Shhh. Hey, babe. I'm right here. I'm right here."
 
It took her a few moments of fighting Mieranor off before he brain actually decided to click through with valid information separating dreams from reality. When it finally did she stopped completely and collapsed back against the bed looking exhausted, however one hand maintained a death grip on Mier's arm. These nightmares were starting to really reek havoc with how much restful sleep she could get and it was starting to wear her down. With a sigh she closed her eyes and used her free hand to rip the halo off her head and toss it across the room.

"How long have I been out?"
 
Mier smoothed Tisma's hair back for a moment before answering. He didn't move otherwise, and simply raised an eyebrow at her throwing the halo. Those things were surprisingly tough.

"About sixteen hours. Medics say you'll be fine so long as you rest and try to saty off your feet. I've been up and moving for ten-ish. How're you feeling?"
 
"Stay off my? Clearly these people have never had to run an entire operation in the absence of their leader if they think I'll have time to stay off my feet." With that she attempted to sit up so she could start taking care of things. There were reports that needed to be filled out, people that needed to be interviewed, and a ship that had remains she needed to sort through. That alone would take three days if not more and that was just the top of the list. The only problem was that her body was screaming oh no no as she was trying to move it. This was going to be a problem and her body was going to lose the argument if she had anything to say about it.....

"I feel fantastic, fine, wonderful, like I could run a thousand miles....." A strange look twisted across her face and she sighed. "Like I got hit by every speeder in the Trix VI Derby." Tisma closed her eye for a moment and sighed again trying to sort out her thoughts and what exactly had happened. She remebered searching the ship for survivors, she remebered being stabbed by some guy in the engine room, she remembered the dampers and making it so they'd take longer to engage, and she re-..... Oh shit... she hadn't really said that had she?

A sudden look of deer in headlights came over her face.
 
Mier chuckled.

"I've noticed. Delegating helps, I've found. It's so much easier to let other people do the legwork when you feel like one giant bruise."

He let her lie her ass off about feeling fine - briefly - and then he saw her freeze up. Impressive, given that she wasn't really moving to begin with. He recognized her expression though. It was the same expression she used to get when he cornered her. He bent down and kissed her forehead.

"Love you too, babe. You can stop freaking out now."
 
"Freaking out? Who's freaking out?" Tisma waved her hand like it was nothing. "And no you don't, you're full of it. You're just saying that because you feel bad for the injured girl."

Tisma avoided meeting his eyes and started looking pretty much anywhere but there. She eyed a data pad on the bedside table and nabbed it so she could start going through reports. If they wouldn't let her up she could at the very least start taking care of somethings from RIGHT HERE! It only took a few seconds for her focus to completely shift from the situation to the information. Proper diversion meant emotional crisis averted and a faint smile touched her lips as she skimmed.
 
Mier sighed and gently pulled the pad out of her hands. It was, admittedly, the medics' instructions, which she would realise in a moment anyways and set it down out of sheer bloody-mindedness, but that was beside the point.

"You're freaking out, Tisma. Just like you always used to when I caught you avoiding me. And I am not just saying that because I feel bad. For crying out loud, woman, I carried you to safety seconds ahead of a fail safe bomb after being electrocuted by the Dampers' power feed. If that doesn't say 'I love you,' I don't know what does."
 
"It says adrenaline junkie. You could've left me." Ti made a move for the pad and gave up when he pulled it farther away. "And if that's not the case you just like me for my body." The sentence ended in an amused snort because she didn't know anyone who would actually think that. She wasn't the most attractive thing to grace the universe, not in her own mind anyway. The end of his sleeve was folded over on his t-shirt and it was bothering her so she fiddled with it. It took a moment for her to realize he was still in the same clothes.

"You haven't bothered to get cleaned up or changed?" She fingered a charred section on his pants. The man was crazy. Why had he bothered to pull out the cable when it very well could have killed him. Her brow furrowed. "You shouldn't even be up and moving around. You should be resting. Go shower and get some sleep, Mier."
 
"If I'd left you, then I wouldn't have you anymore. Then I'd be all cranky and trigger happy and that just wouldn't end well. And while you are pretty, I like you for more than that."

Mier gave her a quick hug and then let her lie back on the bed, setting the datapad on the table it'd come from.

"I wanted to be nearby in case you woke up," he admitted sheepishly. "Besides, getting things running gave me something to do. And it took forever to get those kids not scared of me. They're just a few doors down, by the way. If you ask nicely, I'm pretty sure the medics'll let you go over and talk to them."
 
Supposing she just had to accept defeat she pulled on his arm to get him closer and kissed him. When she finished with her through kissing she pulled away just far enough so she could look him in the eye.

"Call me babe again and I'm going to sucker punch you." Leaning back she grinned up at him.

"Now I'm certainly not going anywhere. I doubt the idiots in the white jackets will let me out of this bed unless it's absolutely necessary so you can just bring those kids to come see me. I need two datapads and a comm as well. If you bring my datapads that don't have system access I'll lodge them both in your brain. After you get them in here and get my things you need to go take care of yourself. That's an order, Mieranor Athren, so you better listen to me." Ti was giving him a very stern 'I'm in charge so you better obey' look.

"There needs to be a full diagnostic run on every remain of that ship and I want each piece cataloged and marked. I want that black box. If people haven't filed their initial reports by the time the stuffs gets here either I'm going to need to have words with them. I also need an additional comm now that I think about it. I want one to order people around on and another to keep an ear on incoming information. And Boots needs to be fed. She'd probably like some catnip too since she's been a little neglected lately." She paused to think if there was anything else immediate.

"... Also... I want chocolate pudding."
 
Mier snorted. Tisma thought she could intimidate him. That was so adorable.

"Tell you what, Ti. This datapad here," he tapped the pad she'd grabbed earlier, "has read-only system access. You can have that. No comm, though, and I'm using yours since mine is a charred lump of plastic. EOD and Valeri are going over the wreckage with a fine-tooth comb, Systems Analysis have the Black Box, and initial reports were done nine hours ago and reviewed an hour and a half after that. Boots has already been fed, but now that you mention it, I'll give her some catnip and love on her a bit later. The pudding, on the other hand, I can get you now. Be right back."

He bent over and kissed Tisma, then escaped through the door.

Ten minutes later, he was back, holding a bowl of chocolate pudding from the mess hall and a card.

"Pudding, as requested. And the engineering staff apparently managed to find time to circulate a get well card. Impressive, really."
 
Tisma had started fiddling with the datapad again while he was gone. Sure it was read-only NOW but that didn't mean she couldn't change it to be all system accessible. By the time Mieranor came back there were little bits of datapad all over the bed and it looked like some part of the machine that had been monitoring her had also been cannibalized.

"Pudding, as requested. And the engineering staff apparently managed to find time to circulate a get well card. Impressive, really."

"Yay pudding!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Ti nabbed it and took a few heaping spoonfuls before setting it down to look at the card. Upon opening it she snorted, glanced at Mier, then giggled. Grinning she set the card on her little table and then went back to eating her pudding and fiddling with the parts strewn across the bed. "You know, if you're not going to listen to me you might as well just rack out here. I know I'd feel better if you were closer."

Carefully she moved some bits over to one side of the bed so if he wanted to sit or anything he could. She was pretty sure she only had a few more moments to get away with this all before he just tossed it all on the floor and scolded her.
 
Mier looked at the mess covering Tisma's blanker. Then he looked at her. The one that wasn't quite a glare. Then he rolled his eyes.

"I should scold you and take away the bits of the pad, but I'm sure the medics will get around to yelling at you for taking apart medical equipment later. And, as previously mentioned, I've already been electrocuted once today. And the racking out here idea sounds stellar."

He plunked himself down in the chair at her bedside, gave her a quick hug and a kiss, and then was out like a light. Evidently he'd been running on willpower alone for at LEAST a couple hours.
 
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