Things were going down. Kriana had no proof of this but even the uninitiated could recognise the signs. Numbers in the Starlight Lounge had thinned out a short-time before and those departing did so with purpose, their voices low and urgent. None remained, the bar was eerie in its emptiness, the yellow alert signs only adding to the tension, standing out amongst the cool blue ambience of the lounge. Kriana couldn’t ever remember being alone in there before. She moved between the tables collecting glasses, cups, mugs and plates and returned with them to her refuge behind the bar. There wasn’t much cleaning up to be done, but that which remained she dispatched mechanically, her mind on other things. Kriana wondered what Fearne would be doing in situations like this, a yellow alert. As she put some glasses away she mused on just how much she didn’t know about Fearne’s day-to-day. Kriana had had a small amount of introductory training to life and procedures aboard a star ship, but nothing like a security crewman would have. The bartender began to wonder why she didn’t ask her wife more about her work.

Kriana picked up a bottle by its neck from the bar and placed it back into its position on a shelf behind her. But no sooner had she done so the bottle moved by itself, flying forward. Kriana had only a split second to consider just how odd that was before she realised she too was moving forward and the deck below her was now no-longer holding her up. The last moment before she slammed into the bar Kriana considered how pretty the myriad of flying coloured glass was in front of her eyes, colours as varied as the many worlds the liquors and syrups came from. Then all she knew was pain. Her lower ribs on her right side impacted the edge of the bar with force and she shrieked in pain and surprise, the kind of sound Fearne would certainly have mocked her for under normal circumstances. But these circumstances were not normal, that became abundantly clear as Kriana crumpled, landing hard on the floor and shrieking again as bottles began to rain down on her, dislodged from their jolt-proof recesses by the violence of the impact. Finally, after what seemed like a minute but was probably much less the sounds of teetering bottles falling and smashing on the hard floor of the bar subsided, just in time for the lights to go out.

Kriana sat where she was, her hands still shielding her face, shivering, a whimper or two escaping her lips involuntarily. She had been on ships that were under attack before, but had always had prior knowledge of potential danger. Hathaway was quite different. She knew nothing and it was the surprise that had shaken her just as much as the impacts. Kriana tried to assess how many parts of her throbbed angrily, and which was worst. She gave up quickly and wrapped her fingers around the edge of the bar, attempting to stand. Kriana cried out in pain. Her ribs were on fire, but, channelling her Klingon Uncle she pulled on through and ended standing, panting, resting her forearms on the bar and her head in her hands.

“What the fuck was that?!” She screamed angrily to no-one.

A few minutes later saw things in much better shape. Kriana had stumbled to the emergency locker behind the bar and had acquired and activated a wrist torch. She had crunched her way to the other end of the bar and, using a wide broom, swept the remnants of the many shattered bottles into the corner, the liquid mostly swept along with it and pooling on the floor into what Kriana suspected was one of the most potent cocktails in Starfleet history. From her limited training she knew the lounge would be a collection point in a crisis situation, and so she had gone on the hunt. The first two bottles were sadly gone but her third option was still in one piece. Acquiring lemons from the floor that had formerly been in a bowl on the bar and adding some sugar for more fuel she created luminescent cocktails, generally made for some alien holiday she couldn’t recall the name of, that dimly illuminated the area about them in an eerie green. These were placed by the entrances to the lounge on both levels and at key points, the stairs, the walkways between clumps of tables and along the bar. Kriana huffed and groaned as she moved about the space, her features bathed in green, her pale skin and dark hair making her as a witch in a cheesy movie.

Her task seemingly complete Kriana hobbled back down the stairs, moved to the nearest couch, lay down and promptly passed out.

An intense, rhythmic banging soon erupted from the far side of the ground floor mess. In between, ghostly groans filled the air between every clash on the metal doors that kept someone… something… beyond the mess hall walls.

Eventually, an unwilling Kriana was dragged from the comforting embrace of unconsciousness. All she wanted to do was stay where the pain was null, where her trauma was dispersed into a million tiny atoms lost in the darkness of comatose. But the sounds of banging stirred remembrances of duty in the back of her mind. As she began to wake that duty took more coherent form. Kriana remembered who she was, where she was, what she did and what her responsibilities were as a bartender.

With a groan she shifted, clutching at her cracked side and with some effort mustered a sitting position. The table adjacent was her crutch to get her standing and she moved towards the door slowly, her mind awash with fatigue and the remnants of adrenaline.

“Who’s there?” She scowled loudly towards the door as she approached.

Once the banging ceased, voices penetrated the walls and drifted into the mess. “Ramirez and Osha,” the masculine voice called out, followed by a second, “we have injured!”

Kriana didn’t recognise the names but they certainly didn’t sound like invaders. She studied the door panel for a few moments under the bright light of her wrist torch, attempting to remember how the mechanism worked. A small spark somewhere in the fog of her thoughts directed her shaking hands and entirely without conscious intent automatically gripped the lever with her left hand and pulled it with all the force she could muster. A loud clunk reverberated around the empty lounge.

“C…can you handle the door? Kriana asked the men through the newly formed gap, cold sweat appearing through the foundation on her face. Her ribs throbbed in protest to the exertion of standing, let alone a manual release. ”I think I’ll pass out again if I try…”

“Yeah, I think we’ve…” Pink, tendril-like fingers slipped through the crack in the door, searching for the right point in which to grasp the metal bulkheads. With a vice-like grip, the two pairs of hands pulled at the door, grunts and groans accompanying their efforts until they finally prised the doors open far enough to enter the sanctuary of the mess facility. “Got it!” Ramirez barked, whilst Osha crouched down and helped their injured party up.

“We need to get her down somewhere,” the man in dishevelled blue directed, waving Ramirez back to help him. “Do you have a first aid kit?” Osha asked of the barkeep.

“Yeah… let me…” Kriana did her best impression of walking normally towards the bar, skirting around the many dislodged and tumbled chairs that had been thrown about by the impact. “There’s couches up on the side… things…” Kriana’s descriptive abilities failed her as she explained, and she indicated with a hand towards the raised sections on either side of the main lounge area that featured a prominent and comfortable couch. Acquiring the med kit from the emergency supply space behind the bar she shone her torch about the space looking for where the new arrivals were headed.

The safest place was the large sofa that was attached to the wall beneath the windows in the aft bulkhead. It wasn’t in danger of moving anytime soon and was padded so it would be somewhat comfortable for the Cardassian scientist who had been injured by falling equipment in one of the science labs.

“We’ve not been able to reach anyone,” Ramirez told Kriana from across the other side of the room. “Any idea what happened?” Kriana stared at him dumbfounded. She’d completely forgotten about her badge. Being unused to having one and rarely actually needing to activate it, it had escaped her thoughts entirely. She shone her torch away so the new arrivals wouldn’t see her test the badge that was clipped to her top. It seemed dead. With a mental shrug she made her way back over to where they were with the med kit.

“No,” she said simply, passing the kit to the closer and easing herself into a seat as nonchalantly as she could. Her ribs throbbed.

Opening the kit, the apparently senior of the two men grabbed an object and tossed it to his colleague. “Try this,” he suggested, nodding towards Kriana, “it might help with the ribs.” He then took out the tricorder from the kit and began to scan the prone Cardassian, who lay in absolute silence, the rhythmic rise and fall of her chest the only sign that she remained alive.

Osha approached Kriana, holding out the dermal regenerator as if he were asking for permission to help her. Kriana eyed him suspiciously, her expression acquiring a hint of cornered animal.

“What’s that?” She asked quickly, standing uncomfortably and taking a step back. She could put on a decent show of cordiality and composure with the crew under normal circumstances, it wasn’t even particularly fake, but the pain and the fear she felt now brought out the other side of Kriana, bad tempered, suspicious, moody and rude, the one her Uncle had despaired of, the one only her wife Fearne could keep calm.

“It’s a dermal regenerator,” the young crewman told, noting her suspicion and concern. “It wont heal your ribs completely but it should take away most of your pain.”

Kriana lifted the right side of her top to expose her ribs in a sign of acquiescence, but her dark eyes stayed glued to Osha, her lip slightly curled in a Klingoneque show of threat she didn’t even realise she was doing.

“She live?” Kriana asked tersely, looking past Osha to the Cardassian woman for a moment.

Osha stepped forward and began to run the medical equipment over the damaged and bruised area of her torso, just a few millimetres from the skin so that he didn’t add to her discomfort.

“She’s alive,” Ramirez nodded from the sofa area, standing up to his full height again and stretching out his back, the crack seemingly loud enough to travel the entire hall. Boy, did it give him some relief of his own. Turning back towards the proprietor, the Hispanic human put his hands on his hips and let out a sigh. “I’ve got her stable, but we need to find a doctor.”

“I can watch her if you need to go find one,” Kriana replied. It was from one perspective a kind offer of help but it also illustrated that the Bartender was not inclined to go searching for one. Even if she were she wouldn’t know where to start, especially if they needed to move between levels without the use of a turbo lift.

Osha and Ramirez looked at one another, unsure as to whether to take the woman up on her offer or not. Once they were in agreement, Ramirez nodded. “She should be fine until we return. Just try and keep her comfortable if she does wake up,” Ramirez instructed, whilst Osha placed the dermal regenerator on the bar top.

With that, the men left the two young women alone…

…in the increasingly eerie darkness of the lounge.