AT-4 Rescue Team Delta (Part 3 of 4)

Posted on 14 Nov 2013 @ 10:17am by Rear Admiral Lirha Saalm & Lieutenant Asahi Kita & Lieutenant JG Tykhin Vess & Chief Warrant Officer 2 Riley Cameron & Petty Officer 1st Class Gabriel Stark & Petty Officer 3rd Class Thanis Rothgra & Legatus of Borg & Lieutenant Lilou Zaren & 5 of 8 & 6 of 8 & Chief Warrant Officer 2 Arthur Willis

1,743 words; about a 9 minute read

Mission: Episode 04 - Exodus
Location: Borg Cube - Subjunction 22, Grid 8-9, Repair/Engineering Conduits
Timeline: MD 06 - 1346 hrs

Previously, on Rescue Team Delta (Part 2)...

Thanis bit the tip of his tongue between his teeth, scouring the data stream on the PADD, and took up the secondary probe line between his fingers. If that had been personnel information... if you could call it that... Federation standards would presume that sensor feeds would be available on the secondary console to the top left. But they weren't Federation and there were three console connections instead of two. No markings... no clue as to where the next probe should go... his stomach twisted nervously. There were at least a dozen connection points that looked like that could have been to sensor routing. Taking his heart into his hands, he chose one at random and prayed.

And Now, the Continuation...

[ON]

"Nice Crewman....nice....that's clearing up a little....och what have we here then? Looks like there might be more of a Federation presence on this deck than we thought...."

"What do you mean, sir?" Thanis asked nervously.

With no drones on the way back, thankfully, the now once again leery Asahi returned to the duo of engineers. "We found Peers, and we're moving on. Did you two find anything?"

Thanis actually jumped when he heard the lieutenant's voice. Heart racing, he tried to cover his nerves with an awkward salute, hands full of tools. "We tapped into their manifest, sir, just a bunch of numbers, as you might expect, and found out where some of the recharging stations are... oh, and Cameron found... something?" he glanced at the Warrant Officer.

"Aye you could say that." Holding his tricorder up for the Lieutenant, Riley smirked from ear to ear as the datastream downloaded into his device.

"This here is a record of all the drones this cube has ever assimilated - these last few, I would bet the whole glen are our officers....and these here...are their locations on the cube...there's half a dozen on this subjunction alone!"

Asahi flashed an apologetic smile in the young Trill's direction, before eying the tricorder placed in front of him. "... That is going to make things so much easier, especially if they're wandering about down here." Hopefully Raifi and some of the Venture's crew were among them, or at least nearby. "Tykhin and Stark are keeping an eye on Lieutenant Peers right now. She should be safe on the Galileo as we speak. We'll meet back up with them, and then we can go investigate further." The sooner they did, the sooner they were likely to find answers... and find the way out. "She wasn't in any good shape for roaming about, but she'll be just fine in a medbay." He grinned, finally put at a little ease now that they seemed to be getting somewhere. "Let's get moving before we're spotted, yeah?"

Thanis nodded his agreement hurriedly. He was relieved to hear they'd found Lieutenant Peers and already evacuated her back to the ship. It almost gave him hope they would all get out of this.


Sub-junction 336-1-5

Asahi was delighted to finally move. It didn't change his caution, nor his suspicion, but he was fairly certain they were on the right track. The specs Cameron had discovered had to have led to something good, at least to let them progress on. He even had his own tricorder out by now, inspecting anything that looked even remotely out of place.

"Down this way - I think there's a couple of our guys just---"

Cameron's sentence was interrupted by his face squarely bouncing off the surface of a Borg forcefield, the green/yellow field shimmering intently as it repelled every atom of his body from it's surface.

"Ya son of a....dammit why isn't there a sign warning people about these things?"

Stark frowned, having to resist the urge to just shoot it. "Can you bring it down?" he asked the Engineer, glancing around to try and find an alternate route if not.

Tykhin just blinked, watching the situation unfold in front of him. This isn't happening to me. He started scanning for approaching drones.

"We're compromised now. That field strike will register and they'll probably investigate. If this area is important enough to seal off, trying to get in is probably considered threatening," Tykhin whispered urgently.

Thanis searched the walls nearby, looking for an access panel. There wasn't one. But there was an odd little hole in the wall about shoulder level with calibration grips on its exterior... "Cameron? What about this? Looks like it might fit those tube-things they've got, doesn't it?"

Grabbing an interface probe, Cameron inserted the device into the small nodule, before back linking it to hus tricorder. The apprentice enginner might have been young and relatively inexperienced but he was certainly observant.

"Aye this looks like an interlink node...for the drones to control the forcefield access...maybe we could get one of them to open the door for us so tae speak? Might even snag one of our guys in the process?"

"You can't trigger it?" Tykhin asked.

"well, I could, depending on how long you want to wait - I'll have to identify the interplexing frequency, backrun that to the door controls, then figure out how to fool the access controls.....maybe take me 5 minutes?"

Cameron grabbed his tricorder and started pulling up the data he had to hand, anything that might speed up the process.

"Or....I could short it out? Make it look like a random overload?"

Thanis liked the idea of taking the time to make sure it was done right, rather than potentially gaining more attention by creating some kind of 'accident'. He had no idea what the other teams were up to, but as soon as any one of them tripped the Borg's suspicions, they would all be in danger. But he was only an apprentice, there to carry tools and do what he was told by the more experienced officers, so he kept his mouth firmly shut.

Gabriel looked to Kita with a slight frown before offering his opinion as the security; however, he was torn. "An 'overload' might end up with them sending a Drone out here to repair it. However, the longer we're here, the more at risk we are, especially if things go badly with another team and we don't know that they know we're here." It was Kita's call. Both alternatives had their advantages and dangers.

It was quite a conundrum, and one Asahi had already been mulling over once both options were placed on the table. There were enough factors on both ends to make either seem like the better option, but if he didn't choose soon, the other members may have become antsy again. That was something he would have liked to avoid, for everyone's sake. "Five minutes is a long time, but it's more likely that they'll send more drones if there was an accident. Try getting a drone down here first. First sign of trouble, we'll have to short it to distract them."

There was an uneasiness in Asahi's voice, but he swallowed it down, nodding toward the others. "We'll just have to hang tight and cover you while you do that, Cameron."

Thanis squinted at the port in the wall, then looked back between his tricorder and his PADD. "What about the registry you found, sir?" he asked Cameron quietly. "Can we ping one of the individuals on the manifest?"

"You're in their systems? Quick, datalink my tricorder," Tykhin urged.

Thanis gently tapped the PADD to the tricorder and bumped the data over wirelessly.

Tykhin looked down at his tricorder as it started to enumerate the available data. His mouth dropped open. He glanced up at Thanis with raised eyebrows and then set to work. He ran searches for and started copying off data regarding propulsion systems, transwarp and cube schematics. He also queued searches for the planet they were orbiting and its species, nanotechnology and communications protocols. As the tricorder set to work, Tykhin dug back into the medkit for the medical tricorder. He tapped it to his intelligence tricorder to link them and used it for additional data storage.

"Four gods, just give me enough time," Tykhin prayed.

With his tricorder and probe linked up to the control port, Cameron started working his way through the armada of code that kept the forcefields under control. There was simply mountains of it to sift through, but eventually, he found something that looked like an energy distribution sequence.

Grabbing a hyperspanner from his belt, the engineer set to work removing the cover that protected the delicate internal circuitry of this particular forcefield generator, and discarded it without a second thought, before hooking up additional probes to try and get a handle on the layout of the circuits within.

The others now working hard on their task, Asahi turned toward the temperamental security man, pulling his own phaser out. "Keep an eye out." Like he had to say that to the guy trained to 'keep an eye out.' "Hopefully we won't have to shoot anything."

"Aye and hopefully I won't blow my hands off if I get the wrong sequencer here...."

Cameron muttered as he moved into position with what he hoped was the power relay assembly. Grabbing a plasma cutter, the engineer removed the outer casing of one particular component, moving the shards of metal out of his way as he locked eyes on his target. Attaching one final probe and picking up his tricorder, the engineer closed his eyes as he tapped the command sequence, and the forcefield fizzled into nothingness.

"Hey...wha...och it looks like I got it!"

To Be Continued...

[OFF]

--

CAPT Lirha Saalm
Commanding Officer
USS Galileo

Lieutenant JG Tykhin Vess
Intelligence Officer
USS Venture

Lieutenant JG Asahi Kita
Engineering Officer
USS Galileo

WO Riley Cameron
Engineering Officer
USS Galileo
[PNPC - John Holliday]

PO2 Gabriel Stark
Security/Tactical
USS Galileo
[PNPC - Scarlet Blake]

Crewman Apprentice Thanis Rothgra
Engineering Officer
USS Galileo
[PNPC - Lilou Zaren]

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

Legatus of Borg
Narrator
[PNPC - John Holliday]

LTJG Lilou Zaren
Asst. Chief Engineering Officer
USS Galileo

RSS Feed