Twice more unto the Breach

Posted on Mon Jul 6th, 2026 @ 9:00am by Ensign Aidan "A.J." Reid

1,462 words; about a 7 minute read

Mission: Sins of the Empire
Location: Torpedo Room
Timeline: current

AJ kicked off his Starfleet-issue boots and laced up his running shoes. He'd learned that lesson the hard way. If the medical teams needed him, every fraction of a second would count, and there wasn't a faster pair of legs on the Washington. He set his combadge to open distress frequency and stepped into the turbolift, riding it to the center of the ship's neck, where he could reach any section in roughly equal time. The red alert klaxon pulsed through the walls. He stood still and listened past it, parsing the crackle of incoming distress calls, and beneath them, without meaning to, searching for her voice specifically. It came through. She was being assigned to a damage control team—on standby, she said. Waiting for the next catastrophie.

AJ stepped out beside one of the transporter rooms and stretched, rolling his ankles and shaking out his long legs, jogging in place for a few seconds to get the blood moving. The corridor was quiet enough that he could hear his own breathing.

Then the ship lurched.

The impact threw him sideways into the wall and down onto the deck, hard enough to knock the air from his lungs. He lay still for a moment, listening to the groan of the hull settling back into itself.

:: Crewman down, Deck Twenty-Nine, Dorsal Section! ::

:: Medical teams responding! ::

:: Hull breach, Deck Fourteen, Sections C through F! Forcefields holding, but we need a repair team NOW! ::

:: Plasma conduit rupture, Engineering Bay Three! We've got a fire! ::

:: Casualties on Deck Eleven! Two confirmed, possible third! ::

Around him, crew members streamed past in both directions, boots loud on the deck plating, faces set with purpose. Nobody stopped. Nobody had time to stop.

AJ pulled himself to his feet and pressed his back against the wall to stay out of the current of bodies. He reached over and tapped the information display panel beside him, eyes moving across the damage readouts as the ship shuddered again beneath another hit. His jaw was tight. Somewhere in his chest, something pulled at him, the old instinct to move, to sprint toward the nearest crisis and do something with his hands.

He breathed through it. Not yet. His speed was a resource, and resources got wasted on the wrong problem. He would wait for the call that needed him specifically, and until then he would stand here, still, and watch the river rush past him.

:: Torpedo room! We got a jam! I need a set of hands down here now! I can't disarm the warhead! ::

:: Site to site transport is down. We can have a team to you shortly. ::

AJ tapped his combadge. "Aft or forward?"

:: Forward Torpedo Launcher! Deck Four! ::

"I comin'!" The turbolift indicator showed it three sections away and descending. No time. AJ pivoted and threw open the Jefferies tube hatch, ducking inside.

:: Bridge to Engineering! We've lost lateral thrusters on the port side! ::

:: Medical to Deck Seven! We need a gurney at junction 7-Gamma! ::

The tubes were packed. A whole river of bodies moving in every direction, elbows and boots filling every handhold. AJ shouldered through, muttering apologies that nobody had time to accept, until he reached the first vertical shaft and started up the ladder.

:: Hull breach on Deck Nine, Section Fourteen! Forcefields are holding but we need a repair crew! ::

He didn't climb so much as throw himself upward, hands skipping every other rung, running shoes barely kissing the sides of the shaft. The ship bucked hard. Somewhere below him a man's grip gave way and he dropped, a flash of gray uniform falling past AJ's peripheral. AJ shot his arm out and caught a fistful of the man's collar, wrenching him back into the rungs.

"Hold on, mon! Hold on!" He didn't wait for a response.

:: Plasma conduit rupture at junction 4-Delta! Somebody get a team down here before this whole corridor goes! ::

Up through Deck Ten. Deck Nine. The shaft was narrower here and he had to angle his shoulders to keep moving. Deck Eight. His palms were burning. Deck Seven, where he had to exit the vertical shaft and sprint the length of a corridor to reach the next one, shoes hammering the deck plating, ducking under a damage control team hauling equipment the other way.

:: Tactical to AJ, where are you? We needed you at that launcher five minutes ago! ::

"Me almost dere! Stop talkin' to me!"

Deck Six to Deck Five, the second vertical shaft, faster now, the urgency in his legs outrunning the burn in his arms. He came out of the tubes at Deck Five at a full run and spotted a turbolift standing open at the end of the corridor, doors patient and waiting. He threw himself inside.

"Deck Four. Fast."

AJ threw himself through the torpedo room doors, nearly losing his footing as the hull groaned and shuddered around him. Three men were wrestling with a torpedo that had jammed on its track, its nose crowding up against the warhead of the torpedo already loaded in the tube. Red emergency lights strobed across the walls. An alarm screamed somewhere above them.

"What is happenin' in here?" AJ barked, grabbing the jammed torpedo alongside the others and hauling back with everything he had.

"It won't reverse off the track and we can't clear the one ahead of it, sir, the warhead's locked to the rails!" the crewman shouted over the noise.

The ship lurched violently to one side. Someone grabbed a handhold. AJ kept pulling.

"Bridge to torpedo room, we need those tubes ready, now!" A voice crackled through the comsystem on the wall.

"Working on it!" one of the men hollered back.

Another impact rolled through the hull, deep and resonant, like a bell struck from the outside. The torpedo did not move.

AJ let go and straightened up, breathing hard, looking at the jammed warhead seated uselessly in the breach.

"Dis," he said, "is a stupid problem to have." He wiped his hands on his jacket. "Dis is exactly why I stay in intelligence."

"Well, Mister Intelligence! Put it to work and figure a way out of this deep shit we in, or we won't need a spaceship to fly through space!" The crewman said.

AJ sighed.

"I don't know much about engineering, but these torpedoes are modular, yes?" AJ asked, his Jamaican accent thick and unhurried even as the ship groaned around them.

"What the hell does that have to do with anything, sir?!"

AJ stepped toward the torpedo bay and pointed at the tube, his finger tracing the problem in the air like he was drawing a map.

"That one goes forward but it cyan go back. And that one is attached to propulsion that free of the railing constraints." He moved his hand to the torpedo jammed on the track. "This one will move forward but yuh cyan get it off the track. So disconnect that warhead." He jabbed a finger at the torpedo stuck in the breech. "Lift this one off the rack and move it out of the way. Then move that one forward." He pointed back to the stuck torpedo. "Weld THAT warhead to the warhead that will move forward and squib-load the tube!"

The ship rocked hard and the crewmen exchanged glances before nodding. "That's going to be one hell of a torpedo when it lands, sir!"

"Then get it done!"

AJ hauled the tractor beam platform over the tube, its hum cutting through the noise of the rattling hull. Two crewmen wrestled the stuck warhead free while a third activated the tractor beam. The unspent propulsion module of the first torpedo lifted smoothly off the rail and drifted onto a transport cart. AJ and the crewman muscled the torpedo forward into the warhead in the breech, the metal scraping and clanging as they forced the two pieces together. A crewman ran the welder along the seam, sparks scattering across the deck.

"Good! Let's go, let's go!" AJ and the crewmen heaved the modified double-headed torpedo into the breech and locked it in. A green light blinked on above the tube.

"I take it dat is a good ting?" AJ asked.

"Hell yeah it is!" The crewman slapped his combadge. "FORWARD TORPEDO READY TO ROCK! Just aim that round at something far away!"

The tube beeped once, sharp and loud, and fired. The whole room went quiet for a half second before the ship bucked violently, the walls shuddering from the impact of whatever that double-headed torpedo had found out there in the dark.

"Oh, those bastards gon need to be glued back together after dat one!"

AJ and the crewmen burst out laughing as the next torpedo slid into place automatically, smooth as anything, no problems at all.

 

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