News had spread fast. With it came a melancholy resignation that permeated in the air of Deck Six’s crowded hallway, sinking into the carpet and clinging to the cold steel walls. They’d done it. Narendra III was safe, at last. Thousands of Klingon civilians were safe, or at least, so everyone hoped.

But there was nobody coming for them. The Klingons were busy elsewhere. Starfleet might not even know they were here. And with main power stubbornly refusing to come back on- despite the concerted efforts of T’Vara and her engineering team- Oakland was dying a slow, agonizing death. Three hundred souls, consigned to the deep by a clock ticking hundreds of times faster than the warp engines of the nearest ship could go.

It was an awful lot of time for Shymel to think far too much about the mangled mess of a woman she’d hauled here what felt like hours ago. Charlie was barely conscious at her absolute best, eyes fluttering, chest just barely moving with weak breaths. And her legs… the less Shy dwelled on that, the better. Without doctors, there hadn’t been much to do except take a phaser to them and hope the shock didn’t do what the shrapnel and explosion couldn’t.

So far? She couldn’t really say.

Footsteps roused her from her reverie. The Andorian glanced up from the barely-conscious XO leaning against her shoulder, just as T’Vara- covered in grease and soot from head to toe- dropped down next to her. “How is she?”

Weary eyes drifted back to Charlie, and a sigh hissed from barely-parted lips. “Hanging on.” A pause, a silence so heavy it was crushing Shymel’s lungs, before she patted lightly on the carpet. “How is she?”

The Vulcan nodded slightly, and Shy couldn’t tell if those were grease marks or bags under her eyes. “‘Hanging on’ is an accurate turn of phrase,” she murmured. “Emergency power cannot keep life support running for very long. Even after completely cutting off power to every deck not currently inhabited, and jettisoning the warp core to reduce the likelihood of a fatal explosion and redirecting the power from the containment fields, I do not estimate we have much more than half an hour’s worth of power.”

Half an hour left to live. Shymel huffed out a breath, hoping her face wasn’t falling as quickly as her mood was. “Anywhere else we can pull from?”

“Only engineering life support itself,” T’Vara replied, sounding… almost glum. Shy never thought she’d see the day a Vulcan gives into despair. “Even that would buy us only about another half-hour, and we would lose any potential to either restore main power or get a distress signal out.”

Shymel muttered a quiet curse under her breath,  cut short as Charlie’s unconscious form shifted against her shoulder. “… that’s it, then?”

“It would seem so.” T’Vara’s head swayed backwards slightly, like she was debating simply leaning against the wall and knocking out. Instead, after a moment, she perked back up- forced, like she’d pulled her head forward with a string. “Have you seen Otto?”

Shy blinked at the use of the ensign’s first name, and even more so at the barely visible tinge of… something on the Vulcan engineer’s cheeks. “Ensign Petrenko? He headed further aft, last I saw him. I’m… sure he’d appreciate the company.”

“Mm. Humans are most illogical when crumbling under pressure… and I do worry about his mental state.” T’Vara rose, wiped her oil-stained hands on her jacket. “I shall accompany him, attempt to keep him stable.”

Shymel held back the teasing about T’Vara wanting to spend her last half-hour alive with Security’s walking, talking ball of anxiety. Now wasn’t the time. With how it looked, there probably would never be a time. Instead, she only offered, “Just… remind him that we won.”

T’Vara made a noise that didn’t sound entirely agreeable, a short grumble deep in her throat. This was not a win by any logical standards. But, likewise, she said nothing of it but a quiet, “I will,” before disappearing into the darkness of the hallway.

Without T’Vara, the time dragged on. Shymel felt like she was experiencing the final half-hour of her life in slow motion. There was nothing but her and Charlie’s weight on her shoulder, the silence only broken by the occasional quiet groan of pain from the other woman. The helplessness sank in. There was nothing she could do now- nothing any of them could do.

The time dragged on. Five minutes became ten, fifteen. Twenty. At twenty-five minutes, Shymel started counting to herself, ticking down the time on their clock, counting the final grains of sand falling through the hourglass.

One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, four…

At twenty-seven minutes and fourteen seconds, Oakland abruptly lurched and rocked around them, sending panicked screams wafting into the air. “Tractor beam!” someone called over the din- it sounded like it might’ve been Petrenko, of all people.

Shymel leapt to her feet, gently propping Charlie up against the wall before snatching up her phaser rifle and flicking the safety off. Hopping like a mad rabbit over a sea of tangled limbs and injured crewmen, Shymel gathered by the scant half-dozen other Security personnel still up and about. “All hands, stand by to repel…”

Then they beamed down, and the final words died on her lips.

They weren’t Vaadwaur. They were a dozen stout, burly Klingons, bat’leths and disruptors in hand, almost looking equally as surprised to find living Starfleet officers as the security team was to see them. Weapons on both sides lowered, and the biggest of the bunch fixed Shymel with a weighted… and impressed, gaze. “I am Kord, son of Ko’rok, captain of the IKS Seg’pa. Are you the captain of this vessel?”

All eyes fell on Shymel. She gulped, shoulders slumping. “… provisional, yes. Lieutenant Commander Shymel sh’Insynaph, of USS Oakland.”

Kord fell silent again, surveying the mess of wounded crewmembers, the six barely-standing officers still on a hair-trigger for danger… and let out an impressed harrumph. “We had received word from Narendra III that a Starfleet vessel had come to their aid… but I had not expected a ship such as this. Once again, Starfleet proves it has worthy warriors in the strangest of ways.”

Maybe she was just out of it, but Shymel didn’t notice he’d come close enough to clap a hand roughly on her shoulder until he’d done it, the shock making her jump. “At ease, Andorian,” Kord declared, his voice almost… not soft, but reverent. “You live to fight another day. This day, the lost of your crew join the honored dead in the halls of Sto-Vo-Kor. But let us ensure their numbers do not swell needlessly, eh? Move your wounded to the Seg’pa. We will take your ship under tow.”

Shymel could only nod, and just barely. Her mind was blank, white noise buzzing in her head, as she robotically moved to gather up what was left of Charlie. A quiet murmur of pain left the mangled XO, cradled in her arms as though she weighed nothing.

“… I know, I know,” Shymel murmured, only half-consciously. “It’s gonna be okay, Charlie. We made it.”