LAST EDITED ON Jun-07-09 AT 11:16 PM (EDT)
 
It would never have occurred to Prescott, a paradoxically self-deprecating but image-conscious young man, that he had earned his rest that day. Even before his fall from the top of No. 2 reactor, he'd garnered lasting fame as the officer whose quick thinking and decisive command of the evacuation had saved 23 people from the portside warp engineering watch before the E-hull went up - one of them, a Vulcan woman (presumably a fill-in from some other watch, he didn't recognize her), by personally dragging her up the saucer pylon's larboard emergency companionway. Then he had reported to Impulse Engineering rather than seek treatment for his own burns and bruises; then he had suffered that shockingly broken leg when the gravity blipped; then he had crawled to the auxiliary command console on the lower level and helped to stabilize the reactor before he would finally allow himself to be carried to sickbay. Everyone who knew what Francis E. Prescott III had done during the Invincible's last battle agreed without reservation that the young officer was a spaceman of the first order.

That rather sounds like something you get a medal for. One of the big ones, like the (digs through copy of GURPS Prime Directive) Star Fleet Silver Star, or maybe the Gold Star (the latter being the CMoH equivalent). In fact, I think I'll ask: what medal is Prescott going to be surprised by for that effort, and will he get it from UF-Starfleet, or the WDF?

“They planned their campaigns just as you might make a splendid piece of harness. It looks very well; and answers very well; until it gets broken; and then you are done for. Now I made my campaigns of ropes. If anything went wrong, I tied a knot; and went on.”
-- Arthur Wellesley, First Duke of Wellington