AT-3 Rescue Team Charlie (Part 2 of 2)

Posted on 12 Nov 2013 @ 8:57am by Rear Admiral Lirha Saalm & Lieutenant Jacob Pendleton & Commander Luke Wyatt & Petty Officer 3rd Class Bo Chalan & Petty Officer 1st Class Siren Hex Saalm & Legatus of Borg & 8 of 8 & Chief Warrant Officer 2 Arthur Willis

3,121 words; about a 16 minute read

Mission: Episode 04 - Exodus
Location: Borg Cube - Subjunction 12, Grid 10-1, Tactical Grid
Timeline: MD 06 - 1342 hrs

Previously, on Rescue Team Charlie (Part 1)...

They were running out of time and although he agreed completely with Siren he wanted to do both tasks and get out as quickly as possible "I'll go with Pendleton and then we'll meet you back at the rally point" He looked towards their leader with the facial expression begging for him to agree so they could get moving.

Bo glanced between the others. Now was not the best time to be having a debate over tactics. Whatever was to be done ought to be decided and accomplished, not waffled about. "If that's settled?" Bo murmured with a slow blink and nodded to Hex. "I'll follow you. Let's get these people out of here."

Jacob shook his head, "I believe there are more than one member of the Venture here and they all can be rescued. I appreciate your concern for me Siren, but I will be fine, I promise, if anything goes wrong I will run towards your position with all haste. Now set your emergency frequency alarms and let's get to work." He looked at their faces, "Now go, and may the Supreme Architect of the Universe protect you." He face was firm and his body language was hinting to the fact that he did not want to "pull rank" and make the decision an "order". He swiftly rose and began to quickly head to the nearby console.

And Now, the Conclusion...

[ON]

Taking a full minute to study the Borg systems layout and pulling up what specs were to be had from what information Star Fleet had gleaned from its meetings with the "mechanical zombies" previously and then began to work through the various computer systems, subsystems and sub-sub systems looking for a way to affect the Borg's tactical and shield and weapons systems without them picking up his intrusions. It was going to be a challenge but he was enthusiastic to the task.

Jacob stopped a moment to watch his colleagues and then check his proximity alarm he had set up to alert him if any Borg got within 30 feet of him if they moved on his position so he could make an escape if necessary.

Luke didn't need to be told more than once the lieutenant was clearly standing by his orders so he began making his way back down the maze of corridors after turning on his emergency frequency. It wasn't long until they came across the first set of venture assimilated crew members. Luke pointed at two of the Borg "I recognise these ones" from within the mangled pieces of metal you could see one wearing Green the other Yellow. They must have been apart of the ships security crew when they got attacked.

Siren nodded, looking at her tricorder with a frown. "They match the medical files from Venture," she confirmed. "They will need to be knocked unconscious at the same time."

Bo loaded the hyposprays. "Same as before? Quick to the neck." He looked at the other drones in the area, wondering if there were people still waiting for them wherever they'd come from. Their families, friends... was it right to leave them all here and only take those of personal significance to the Galileo and the Venture? No. It wasn't. That was the answer. They didn't have enough hyposprays to knock out every drone in the Cube. They didn't have enough medics to see to their recovery from assimilation. They didn't have enough room on the Galileo to safely transport them back. But none of that excused the fact that they were willfully leaving these people imprisoned and without will.

Luke watched the others and then back to watching if any of the other Borg had started to notice anything, one Borg from the collective was easy, but three? Shaking the thoughts he turned his attention back to the group as they readied for a simultaneous knockout.

Siren started on the move with her own hypo. There were only two Venture crew, but she'd have to take down the other drone too to make sure it didn't twig that something was wrong when the other two dropped. She held her breath virtually all the way, of course, that only made it feel like her heart was beating faster. She moved in behind the drone that was her target, jaw set tight even as she let out a long, slow breath to force the rest of her body to relax, knowing she couldn't move well if she were tense. She looked at the others, making sure they were in position before counting down on her fingers, lifting her hand to press the hypo to the vile skin on the count of 'zero'.

Bo had been trained in the ancient martial arts of qu'el quin, taught the graceful poses and practiced strikes involved in that technique, forged from a childhood of war and oppression... but there was a reason he'd chosen medicine and meditation. Not every man was meant to be a soldier, no matter how much training he underwent. But this was not war, he reminded himself. This was healing. This was returning the lost to the light. As he reached a spot just behind his target, he glanced over to Siren and prepped the hypospray for her count.

Making his less so graceful but acceptable way to the third Borg he readied his Hypospray. He had already done this once and was pretty confident in himself and for the hypospray to work. Looking at the rest of the team he silently counted down mouthing the numbers down to Zero and with a confirmation nod he pressed the Hypospray to the neck of the Borg.

Siren hit it at the same to be sure they were synced. She took a sharp breath as she stood back, the body hitting the floor with a loud thump and she let out a breath of relief even as she had to lean over and close to him to tag him up for beaming. It was more than a little disquieting, being that close to a Borg drone. Unconscious or not. Previous Starfleet crew or not.

Luke waited for the Borg to begin toppling before quickly putting his arms under his and gently placing him to the floor, when he heard the thumps hitting the floor he wondered why he bothered. "Are we taking this one or leaving him here?" He asked pointing out the fact that they had now 2 ex venture crewman and 1 times Borg drone.

"Our orders were to take back our people, there was no mention of others," Siren replied, but she knew it was of little use. It could be read either way; there was no mention of saving others so they hadn't explicitly been told not to, or there was no mention of saving others so it wasn't their orders. "This should be the team leader's call," she shook her head lightly. "He's the one in charge here."

"None of these 'drones' belong here," Bo couldn't stop himself, now that the danger was temporarily past, and his voice was hushed with subdued frustration edging on anger. "He deserves a rescue as much as the crew of the Galileo and the Venture. All of them do. And Pendleton isn't here. In his absence, Conscience should be our guide and Conscience dictates we help those in need. If being assimilated doesn't qualify as 'in need', I don't know what does."

Siren shook her head, her jaw tense. This was why they shouldn't have split up; they were now left with no officer in their team and no real team leader. "Doesn't work like that. There's a hierarchy," like it or not, Siren thought as she looked to them. "We're both Crewman," she nodded to Bo. "And you're a Marine so not usually in the regular Starfleet chain of command. But you out rank us considerably, so the way I see it, that makes it your call, Gunny. Unless you want to go and get the Lieutenant," she added, checking when the next beam out was. "We have two minutes."

"Hierarchy," the Bajoran grumbled under his breath. She spoke as though he had no concept of the idea; his entire life had been about hierarchy. The castes of Bajorans, then the overpowering Cardassians, then the orders of the priesthood, then the ranks of Starfleet. He turned to the marine, "You must see, in your heart, that we owe this man as much consideration as the others. Can we truly leave him here, chained to an existence we are sure he did not ask for, simply because we were not instructed to bring him back?"

Siren watched him. The emotional pull was strong. As Intelligence though, she wanted to offer the other side of consideration to Wyatt. "Also consider what we're capable of. Galileo is a relatively small ship with limited resources and currently full of survivors from Venture. We don't know if it's possible to reverse him; not all older assimilations can be successfully reversed, it's a complicated procedure. And we have limited doctors and resources to deal with our returning assimilated crew as it is. If all teams over here took extra drones back with each hit, the number would soon mount up. And where do we draw the line? This drone? The next drone? A row of them we stumbled across?" she looked down to her tricorder. "One minute, thirty seconds," she looked to Wyatt for his decision, not indicating which side of the argument she actually felt was right, just simply offered the other side of it to him.

"Yes," Bo hissed; the priest in him yearning for what even he knew was impossible. She was right; the Galileo was a small ship and could not have managed to save every stolen life in this Cube. Not even between both the Venture and the Galileo could they have managed it. There were simply too many. But- "They were men and women once. They had families and friends and dreams. There are people out there who miss them and wonder if they're alive. If we can only save one, or fifty, or a hundred, then we must. There's a moral imperative. If not for them, for those they left behind."

Luke looked back and forth from the two he did not want this to fall on his shoulders, thinking quickly he bit his lower lip "We..." he thought back to his daughter and how she would feel if Luke had the chance no matter how slim even to be brought back from the Borg. No matter how small the chance she'd try everything to have her dad back. "We take him, now we take him and the other two and we leave right now" He said picking up the Borg. How easy life can be debated over "I'll take responsibility but lets go!" He said leading back through the corridors.

Siren nodded and moved quickly to crouch at the fallen drones, tagging them to make sure they'd be beamed out with the next cycle. The time counted down surprisingly fast whilst she did it and it wasn't long from standing away from them that they disappeared. She took a quick look around the area, mostly out of instinct, before following Wyatt and already looking back at her tricorder.

Luke hoped that the people back on the Galileo receiving the bodies were not all to angry with them sending back a plus 1. "Time?" He asked Siren as they found themselves nearly at the extraction point and two more Borg ahead of them. "Lets hope these are ours" He hoped they were.

"We have several minutes until the next cycle," Siren assured. She frowned, shaking her head. "They're not flagging up on the tricorder, they're not ours, we'll have to go around them."

Bo hissed under his breath, but said nothing, continuing on doggedly past the drones who had not been chosen. What the Vedeks would think of this humanitarian travesty... he didn't have to guess. He could hear them in his head. The will of the prophets centered around charity, humility, and faith. It was not charitable to let men rot in the prisons of their own minds. It was not humble to decide who had a right to a full life and who did not. It did not show faith to stand aside and leave them simply because logic said it was too hard to handle them all. Everything was hard. Life was hard. The challenge was doing the right thing despite the difficulties. "If they are here," he said as they moved into the corridor past them, "when we return, we should take them with us. I know," he sighed, before the others could speak. It was not the time or place for a moral dilemma, but moral dilemmas rarely occurred in happy sunshine places or happy sunshine times. "I know we're a small ship. I know it may not be reversible. The Prophets say that silence is the supreme of all authority, Abrem," he added by habit, "but that goes two ways. It is patience, but it is also acquiescence. If we stand by and allow this monstrous situation to continue when we had an opportunity to alter it, we are as good as agreeing to the rightness of the situation." He shook his head and slightly lifted his hands to augment the apology, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry." He refocused his phaser. "Let us continue with the course set for us and complete the mission's objectives. Only please consider the course we set for our souls in the meanwhile, if you are willing."

A whispered low frequency call came to Siren, Bo and Luke, "Secondary Objective mostly accomplished," the deep voice of Jacob was easily recognized even in a whisper, "I have recalibrated the forcefields through slight moderation of the protonic flow coming from their generators. It appears that I have gained us a time savings of thirty three seconds off of the time it will take to transport our crew back to the Galileo. I have also put a 'glitch' in their weapons systems so that any use of their weapons will result in a feedback that will damage their own systems fairly hard. Unfortunately that glitch will only last for the next couple of hours at best. I will rendezvous to your position in one minute. Pendleton out."

Luke didn't need to respond. Looking at his teams his expression gave the sense of urgency "Come on we have one minute lets bag and tag at least a couple more before we get out of this place!" He motioned for Siren to take point with her tricorder.

Jacob hurried to their position. "Everyone ok? How goes the mission so far? How many have we been able to rescue?" He asked in a whisper as he looked around.

"Not enough," Chalan murmured darkly.

"We got our man," Siren replied with a steady voice, tilting her head a little to the side in a considered way.

"We've done what we could lieutenant but I wont object to staying here a little longer and do one last sweep before we high tail it out of this dump" He replied, his voice not faltering hiding his anxiousness to leave. They had stayed to long and surely it wouldn't be long till something went wrong. It always did.

The Bajoran nodded succinctly. "There are still seven hypos in the medkit. With your permission, I'd like to see to it they're all used."

Jacob nodded, "We will stay until all the hyposprays are used. Let's stay together and get this done. I will cover while you rescue what you can. Let's move folks."

"Sir, our orders were to get Galileo and Venture crew members," Siren pointed out quietly, offering the other side of the situation, the more practical side. "We don't have another hit on the tricorder for more of our people close, so to find more Venture crew, we will have to explore further. If we're talking about random drones, we don't have the medical expertise here to know who can be successfully de-assimilated and who can't. And our Sickbay is struggling under Venture survivors already, let alone the rest of the drones the other teams will bring home and the ones we've already got. They might not be able to cope with a load more drones, not to mention considering where they will all go," she tilted her head, her features still. It might only seem like seven more people to them, but if all the teams thought the same way, and all teams did what they were doing, they'd end up overloaded on the ship.

Jacob sighed, Siren was correct. His ethical mind and heart objected to what was obviously practical but his rational mind knew better and so after a long pause he looked up at all of them and said, "Siren is correct... we cannot burden our overtaxed sickbay and possibly endanger our own lives the longer we stay here." He carefully watched the facial expressions of the team for a moment and continued, "I know.. I know that we leave many behind, many that have been taken from their families and their worlds... sometimes all one can do is the best job one can even if it means that there will be failures and non-successes...." Another pause and then, "I am sorry, it is time to go. If anyone is to take the blame or the fall or the responsibility for this decision... it is I.. I am your team leader and that burden falls on me... prepare for transport back to the Galileo..."

Jacob's voice trailed off with a strong measure of sadness and guilt as he touched his commbadge: "Chief Willis, Charlie Team and rescued crew ready for beaming. May the Universe protect us all..."

Willis began the locking process for their bio-patterns. =^=Aye=aye." he said calmly. =^=Energizing=^=

[OFF]

--

CAPT Lirha Saalm
Commanding Officer
USS Galileo

Lieutenant Jacob Pendleton
Chief Science Officer, Leader of Charlie Team
USS Galileo

CN Siren Hex
Intelligence
USS Galileo
[PNPC - Scarlet Blake]

Gunnery Sergeant Luke Wyatt
Marine Liaison
USS Galileo

Crewman Bo Chalan
Nurse
USS Galileo
[PNPC - Lilou Zaren]

Senior Chief Petty Officer Arthur Willis
Engineering Computer Specialist
USS Galileo
[PNPC - Markum Quinn]

8 of 8
Drone
Borg Collective
[PNPC - Jared Nicholas]

Legatus of Borg
Narrator
[PNPC - John Holliday]

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