Across the bulk of Atlantis there were two medical complexes – the primary one on deck 08 that serviced the majority of the ship and crew and the secondary complex in the engineering hull on deck 12. It was well suited for attending to accidents and injuries either in sickbay or the main shuttlebay, but otherwise was a pale comparison to the wards, labs, operating theatres and offices that made up the main complex.

It was also where Doctor Blake Pisani preferred to be, away from the ceaselessly disapproving Doctor Terax.

And, as a number of the medical staff had discovered over the last few months, the walls in this sickbay were somewhat better soundproofed by virtue of being so close to the ship’s heavy machinery. Blessed relief for those working nearby, not so much those working inside as it turned out. Those working in the secondary sickbay had either swapped their duty shifts with colleagues or developed a taste for loud and often chaotic music choices.

As silence fell over Blake’s office, the music cutting off automatically thanks to some judicious additional programming to the door’s sensors, Blake was looking up from her reading with a look of absolute annoyance before it melted away into delight. “Mac! What are you doing here?” she said as she jumped to her feet and rounded her desk.

“Got a job for you,” he started, “but also I don’t visit your workplace very often, thought I’d make an exception.”

“Who’s minding the bridge then?” she asked as she popped up to kiss him lightly on the cheek.

“I just threw the keys into the air and let them sort it out,” he answered.

“Out of the captain I’d expect that, but you, I don’t think so.” She sat herself down on the edge of her desk and directed Mac into one of the chairs to sit. “So, a job for me huh? Terax is kind of territorial about treating senior staff you know.”

“It’s not medical,” he clarified, then continued as she looked at him confused. “What do you know about the situation outside right now?”

“Purple and peach gasses don’t make a colour combination I’m a fan of,” she answered. “Sensors are kind of useless, engines are slow and we have no contact with the outside world at the moment. Which is kind of annoying because I was downloading some things over subspace when we lost comms.”

“That’s about it. And if we were just looking for the Rubic without any problems, I wouldn’t be here. But…I need to pick that ancient warfare hobby brain of yours because we have two problems distracting from our ‘simple rescue mission’.”

“You know the captain is a better air breather pilot than I am,” she responded. Then her eyes squinted slightly at him. “And you don’t need a tank commander.” Her brain was still working through things when she leaned back, planting her hands on the desk behind her as realisation hit. “You want a submariner.”

“Yes, we do.”

“You know I’m absolutely terrible right?”

“Because you insist on ignoring tutorials and setting difficulties to the maximum.”

“Because learning through hard knocks is fun,” she insisted as she sat up straight again. “You want me to advise on how to handle Atlantis if we get attacked in his soup?”

“You are bridge trained.” He watched her nod in agreement. “And you have the most experience fighting a ship in conditions like this.”

“Nuclear-powered attack subs,” she answered. “And I haven’t won a single scenario. Mac, trust me, you and the captain have a far, far better idea at this than I do.”

“I’m not going to insist. But what if I bought you lunch and picked your brain for lessons learned from your various sinkings?”

Blake looked him over, an eyebrow raised, then pushed herself off her desk and offered him a hand to stand. “You know, there’s another reason why I like working down here in the dungeon.”

“Why’s that?” he asked, taking her hand and rising to his own feet.

“Because we have a lounge just around the corner and I’ve bribed a couple of Rrr’s people into making sure the replicators are up to the same standard as those in Port Royal.” She didn’t let go of his hand as she started for the door, forcing him to go along with her and catch up, lest she drag him through the sickbay from her office.

Lunch as it turned out, was interrupted by a summons from the bridge. One of those all-important blast it across the ship-wide summons. Which immediately set Mac on edge and away from his half-eaten lunch. “It can’t be that bad,” Blake insisted as the turbolift whisked them through the ship. “Otherwise Rrr would have sounded yellow alert.”

“If it wasn’t yellow or red alert bad, then why didn’t they just call me directly?”

“Because a ship-wide call then means they can start sorting out the issue right away and actually have something to tell you when you arrive?” Blake nudged him in the arm with her shoulder. “Rrr’s got things under control. If they hadn’t, they’d have escalated it.”

“That’s a fair point.”

Just then the turbolift arrived, doors swishing open to a bridge that wasn’t the calm and collected nerve centre for one of Starfleet’s explorers. It wasn’t also the complete chaos of a bridge in crisis.

“Helm isn’t responding.”

“Tactical keeps locking up on me.”

“Engineering is reporting they’ve gone to local control.”

“Wait, I’ve got helm back…no, never mind.”

Voices were all overlapping, shouting updates as Atlantis was obviously suffering some sort of problem. Various computer consoles were flickering off and on again, the few that weren’t manned by personnel fighting to work the problem out. Officers all over were engrossed and hadn’t even noticed that the executive officer had just arrived.

“Report!” Mac found himself shouting purely on reflex as he stepped out onto the bridge, Blake in his wake. Now people took notice but had the presence of mind to keep working the problem.

“We seem to be having some sort of main computer issue.” Rrr’s statement was plainly obvious. “The ship is dead in the water at the moment.”

“Lieutenant, I think I got it,” a young Andorian officer at Ops said. “It’s the Fleet Formation system.”

Both Mac and Rrr turned to face the young officer, then back to each other, confusion on their faces. “Are you positive about that Ensign Th’chiral?” Rrr asked as they shrugged at Mac and then stepped forward towards the ops station. There was no need to relieve the young Andorian, already pursuing the problem, when one could stand behind them and look over their shoulder.

Mac joined both of them and glanced over the readouts himself. “Fleet Formation is line-of-sight and needs another ship to initiate completely though.”

“Aye sir,” Th’chiral said. “But it still uses subspace comms for initialisation requests.”

“We’re too deep in this gas giant for subspace comms,” Mac continued. “And I know we lost another relay probe.” He reached forward to tap at one of the screens surrounding Th’chiral, this one blinking to try and get the ensign’s attention but having failed. “Just a minute ago according to this. So there is no way anyone of anything is getting a signal to us down here.”

“That’s just it sir,” Th’chiral continued. “We’re not getting the full initialisation signal. It’s garbled and partial, but just enough of a signal to start up Fleet Formation. It uses ultra-long wavelengths to get around most jamming systems at which point laser comms then handle all communications because you can’t jam a direct line-of-sight beam. But down here, the signal loss causes the system to consider what it got as a false alarm and turn off, just in time to start up again.”

“So something is transmitting on that frequency, tripping our system into starting?” Mac asked.

“Which seeks out a partner, fails to find one and shuts down. But gets the start-up and tries again.” Rrr clicked their fingers, a sharp crack of two rocky appendages. “It’s a classic boot loop.” They looked to Mac, face contorting into a smile. “Fleet Formation does tie into weapons, shields and navigation which explains why the systems are faltering. Got to love versions. It shouldn’t try system take over until it’s fully confirmed start-up and brought itself online.”

“I need to know where the signal is coming from,” Mac said as he placed a hand on Th’chiral’s shoulder. “And quicker would be better.”

“Aye sir,” Th’chiral replied.

“And as for you,” Mac said, looking to Rrr. “We can’t do anything like this. Get whoever you need and go lobotomise Fleet Formation or long-range comms, whichever is easier. Turn it off, disconnect it, or shot it with a phaser, I don’t care. Just us back our ship.”

“On it,” Rrr said, departing the bridge in quick order after handing the keys over to Mac.

“So,” Blake asked, having taken the right-hand seat during all of this for herself, “wake up the captain bad or merely interrupt her morning bad?”

“I don’t know just yet,” he admitted. “But the rescue ship needing a rescue doesn’t look good that’s for sure.”

“No, no it doesn’t,” she agreed. “So anyway, as I was saying, the trick with firing on another sub is…”