Halsey had returned to the bridge after getting Lieutenant Choi stabilized and into the care of sickbay.  Reports from across the ship regarding their small Betazoid population were trending in a similar direction.  He had given Doctor MacDonald leeway in treatment and help for them given that whatever it was out there was able to affect them more than most.  He’d returned to the center chair and was looking at the latest reports when the science officer spoke up, “Sir, I’m detecting a significant power surge….”

He interrupted, by standing and ordering, “Shields!”  The helm officer was ahead of him and had tapped the console the moment his CO had stood.  For a moment, the bridge was still as each of them held their breath in anticipation of what was about to happen.  

The science officer shook her head, “Nothing…wait…something is interfacing with the ship!”

An officer shouted, “Transporters across the ship have activated!  They are being transported to cargo bays at…holy crap!  It’s putting everyone in!”

The science officer began to tap quickly at her console, “Attempting to reroute transporter controls.”

Halsey jumped from his chair and slipped into a spare console beside her, “Working with you, Ensign.  Lock there…and…there.”  She nodded as her hands worked as fast as his as reports from others on the bridge confirmed that over 650 of their crew were now trapped in sealed cargo bays, and the number was climbing.  Leopold stabbed at the console as his science officer worked to prevent being caught up in whatever this was.  

Suddenly, she gave a shout – “Transporters locked out!”  Halsey turned to congratulate her when suddenly all hell broke loose.  The lights flickered, then died.  Klaxons rang out from all corners as shouted reports confirmed that the USS Mercy had been hacked.  Sparks flew from a console or two. Officers shouted both to the CO and to each other as the interfacing from the moon station continued. Halsey returned to his chair, and shouted over the din, “Quiet!”  The officers went silent, and all turned to face him as he sighed, “Report.”  The emergency lights flickered on, spotlighting parts of the bridge as if it were a stage.  Most of the consoles were dark or flickering.  The operations station was powered for the moment.

Operations spoke up, “Main power is offline.  We have limited auxiliary power from the impulse engine reactors.  Engineering was able to prevent losing control of 25% of them.  We have life support, limited internal sensors, and some console control.  Turbolifts are disabled and not functional.  Most ship communications systems are also offline.”

Silence held on the bridge as Halsey frowned, “It’s never the easy route in these situations.” 

Science jumped in as she tapped at her flickering console, “ We’ve got some internal sensors, but they are spotty at best.  The big concern is getting main power back online – we can’t do much with the auxiliary.  Those reactors were meant to power the impulse engines…not an entire ship.  We have access to battery power, but it is limited.  We use that up; we run the risk of not having a failsafe should something happen to the auxiliary generators.”

Halsey grumbled, “So we need to work on getting control of our ship back.  Without control and without power, we can’t ask for help.”  He shook his head, “We’ve got some work to do.  Does the shipwide comm at least still work?”  She checked with a nod, and he tapped the console on his chair, “Attention remaining crew of the Mercy – we’ve experienced a mechanical intrusion into our systems…the good news is it’s somewhat partial.  The bad news is that we don’t know where all of you are.  Your mission is to make it to…”  he tapped at the flickering console and found the three central locations, “Sickbay, Main Engineering, or the Bridge.  Whatever it takes, find your way to those locations.  As you make your way, find ways to return control of our systems back.  Once you get to those rendevou points, we’ll have a better idea of what we need to do.  The rest of the crew is currently sealed inside the cargo bays, and we need to find a way to get our ship back…so we can get our away team home and get our folks out of the cargo bays.  You have your orders.  Let’s get to work.”

He closed the channel and grumbled, “What a way to start off as a CO.”