Boarding Party Evaluation (pt.1)

Posted on 31 Dec 2012 @ 5:49pm by Crewman Indri Chara & Senior Chief Petty Officer Anthony Davis & Petty Officer 3rd Class Justin Smoak (KIA)
Edited on on 07 Jan 2013 @ 9:39am

3,070 words; about a 15 minute read

Mission: Episode 02 - Resupply
Location: USS Galileo - Deck 2, Holodeck 2
Timeline: MD 15 0430 hours

[ON]

It was hard to see with dark, cloying smoke filling the air but at least the disruptor blasts seemed to stop - for the moment. The smoke affected the Klingon's vision as much as Jeremy's own which allowed him to find cover behind this stack of crates, but it wouldn't last for long. His biggest worry is that he didn't know where the Klingons he spotted were and he knew they weren't the last aboard the ship. Warriors from three different Bird of Prey ships roamed the battered and bloodied halls of the Galileo - living up to the promise of "take no prisoners".

His way down here, a hard won firefight with his team scattered through the ship. He didn't need to see the carnage of bodies lying everywhere, their blood soaking into the deckplates through hallway carpeting to know the ship was lost. The ship was pretty much lost right before the Klingons beamed over. Their disruptors and torpedoes had done significant damage. Almost all of deck eight was opened to space, only the weakening structural integrity fields kept what remained of the environment from being sucked into the cold vacuum of space.

Other portions of the ship had been destroyed. Jeremy was particularly hard hit by the damage to the Deck Two crew quarters, a solid torpedo hit that he knew, just from looking at his console, destroyed Lt. Panne's fine piano and large collection of books.

He shifted onto the balls of his feet, drawing his sidearm as he heard the slight scuffling of movement through the smoke. He hoped it to be a member of his team trying to avoid the Klingon death squads, but it wasn't a chance he was willing to take without proof.

The stroke of luck that allowed him to send out two orders before the computers went down - taking the comms with them - seemed to be his last. He checked his chrono. Rhodes and Kiwoski had about fifteen minutes more to complete the task assigned to them. Of his security department, he felt those two were best suited for the job of ensuring the computer core was completely destroyed. If nothing else, the Klingons must be denied the prize they sought in attacking a science vessel such as the Galileo. The irony, however, of becoming a Klingon target merely because of their research was not lost on Jeremy.

Though, he did find the Klingon response - three warships and boarding parties from each - to be a bit of an overkill.

He had to take some pride in that the crew of the Galileo were giving death right back to the Klingons. There was no holding out, no chance of saving the ship. The only thing they could do now was minimize the impact and loss of life and - deny the Klingons any access to the Machina Device or any of the data about it.

He shifted slightly again, steadying the one hand with the other, his finger pressing slightly against the trigger to activate the deadly phaser blast. It was only when he noticed the figure was too short to be a Klingon warrior that he allowed himself to ease up - slightly.

The figure coughed abruptly in an aborted sound of amusement. Gee, thanks for not shooting me, it could have meant. Or perhaps, today is a good day to die... It shifted and jumped off of the hatch ladder, landing on the deck solidly, but it was shadowed by the excess of smoke currently siphoning out of a sore looking plasma conduit.

There were still many of them out there waiting for the same goal. As far as he knew, Jeremy was the last of the senior staff left alive. Commander Holliday died in the initial attack and he'd not seen or heard from Captain Saalm since she and Lt. Coleman came down to engineering to help secure the Machina Device. Through the smoke, he couldn't make out which bodies belonged to whom.

That sense of dread - of uncertainty permeated him and made him assess that he only had one choice left. Destroy the Device before the Klingons could obtain it. He also needed to make sure there was nothing the Klingons could take to recreate the Device. If the Captain was taken prisoner, her advanced rank and associated security clearances made her into a worthy prisoner to have. Jeremy didn't know how much the Captain knew about the Machina Device, but he suspected it wasn't much more than he could recall about it himself.

The figure finally materialized out of the smoke, allowing Jeremy to holster the pistol and grip the rifle. Somewhere out there were more Klingons. They possessed tactical superiority in every way - numbers, firepower, position. But Jeremy had two things they didn't have: knowledge of the ship and the location of the Device and a perfect eagerness to give his life to deny the Klingons their prize.

"Crewman," he whispered, still scanning for Klingons. "Where are the others?"

The short Tellarite made a vague gesture, unclipping her secondary weapon and checking the charge gauge. She let out a colorful line of expletives in Orion Prime in her head at finding it nearly empty. It hadn't started out that way. "I saw Davis in engineering," she whispered back in her low voice. "Smoak, I haven't seen or heard from." Crewman Chara was covered in smoke, soot and pink blood, her uniform ripped at the shoulder and arm. Her face didn't betray fear, only a grim, persevering determination. Though, that didn't mean she didn't feel fear. She just wouldn't let it show. Especially in front of her boss.

"They're regrouping on Deck Seven. The Klingons. I came to find you. We have to go down there." She stared up at him. "We need to destroy that thing." She didn't really know where, or what it was, but she wasn't stupid. They were looking for something and she'd been told to keep engineering clear of Klingons. She grit her teeth, rubbing her shoulder. That seven foot tall Warrior-Bro dislocated it, she was certain of it. She'd left it out of the socket, not willing to risk making things worse by pinching a nerve or doing it wrong, and to be honest, it would probably hurt more. She cradled her arm in her free hand, ignoring the twinges of pain.

"We could generate a contained blast in engineering. The deuterium relays are highly reactive. We may not need much if we focus on them. We could kill multiple targets and that thing." She recalled Davis with a grimace and hoped he was all right. So she was grasping at straws, and doing the exact thing she'd been warned against: offering unsolicited advice, but she wasn't going to lie down and die. She wasn't a Klingon, thank-you-very-much, and she did not look forward to an early grave!

"Your orders were to remain with Davis, to hold the line there," Jeremy said, haphazardly, casually. He wasn't sure why he whispered, her entrance, jumping onto the deck the way she had, had been enough to alert even an old and deaf Klingon warrior. "Alright, we're headed back there, but first-" he shot out and grabbed her arm, hooking it underneath the elbow and planting it into the crook of his arm and side as he jerked it forward and pushed against her shoulder with his other hand, letting the snap of the limb settle back into place.

"Zergth!" Chara yelped a curse in Tellar, surprised as her injured arm was abruptly snapped back to its... sort-of former state. "Davis is senior over me," she whispered back, trying to get some of her original energy back. "He ordered me here. We have got bigger fish to fry," she grumped, touching her shoulder gingerly.

Jeremy sighed. Of course they were in Engineering. That's where the Device was. It was what they needed to destroy. Even if they had to take out all of Engineering to do it. But he'd already formulated plans for that. he just needed some help to get them in place before execution. She said Davis was in Engineering, but that she hadn't seen Smoak. That was unfortunate. He could use all the hands he could get. Speaking of which, he appraised Indri's condition. Of course it was nice to know that the orders of a Senior Petty Officer outranked those of an officer.

"Keep it quiet!" he hissed, scanning around. "You're going to need the use of that arm if you want to keep in the fight. Otherwise just do me a favor and go out there as a distraction so I can at least complete the job we've started."

"Aye," she assented, squaring herself against the inevitable to come. She crossed over the opposite side of the wall with her phaser drawn low-ready.

"Okay," he muttered. "You and Davis will have to do if we can't find Smoak. But, I realize you haven't had much training yet and still think this is all some sort of game, but I'm going to let you know, you make any more noise like that stunt jumping to the deck and I'll shoot you myself. Understood? From here on out we move slow, cautious and above all quiet! We're all that stands between the Klingons obtaining the Machina Device and preventing a potential unbalancing of power in the entire quadrant. I don't have time for newbie games, so pull it together and do so now."

"Understood," Chara said, still focused on the corridor before them.

He held up a closed fist, hoping that they still taught that to mean 'quiet'. Well, technically it was 'stop action' but in a scenario such as this 'quiet' was not just implied or inferred but pretty much demanded. He still couldn't see through the smoke, but there was definitely noise coming from ahead of them. Thick, heavy tread and the jangle of armor.

Klingons.

Chara lifted her phaser up, training it on the fuzzy silhouettes moving through the haze. She didn't fire, just kept a steady lock on them. She wasn't looking to stun, her phaser was set on 'kill'. A Starfleet phaser on stun probably wouldn't do much good against the Klingons anyway. They were notoriously hardy. The Klingon shadows stalked forward and Chara gave her boss a Look that conveyed her meaning perfectly. Now what?

By the time he could make good target identification, they were too close for him to chance giving away their position by giving her instructions. Four distinctly fuzzy forms wavered through the dark smoke. He wasn't sure if there were others he couldn't detect, just beyond this group but it was something he'd have to chance. They have no cover and the only concealment they had was the smoke and that wouldn't hide them for much longer.

Using hand signals he pointed at her, made the numeral two and shook his hand to the left then did the same toward himself only going to the right this time. Hopefully she understood you take the two on the left, I got the two on the right.

It wasn't exactly a universal coda, especially in the dark, smoke-filled environment, but Chara caught on quickly enough. There were four of them. She got one set, he got the other. She gave him a quick nod.

Shifting slightly into a forward crouch, he carefully brought phaser rifle up to his shoulder and sighted in, then made another signal: now.

Chara wasn't nearly as subtle. With only that brief jerk of her head for assent, she charged forward, laying down a stream of directed energy at the first's chest, and then his head. He felled like a sack of bricks, obviously caught off guard. The other had more time to regroup, and ducked out of the way of the rest of her fire. He pulled a standard medium-sized mek'leth out of his belt and wielded it toward her.

Saying that he fired, foregoing the usual taught methods of shooting at center of mass and aiming straight for the head. He had the satisfaction of watching the now headless corpse crumple to the ground, the phaser energy neatly cauterizing the stump that was left of its neck. The second reacted but too slowly - even warriors were surprised when combatants appeared out of the smoke and took down your squadmate. In that half second, Jeremy had time to realign his phaser sights and took down the second.

He swiveled to see how Crewman Chandra fared with her assigned opponents, ready to finish the job he'd given to her if necessary.

In typical fashion, she impatiently kept moving, shooting at her opponent. He ducked again, grabbing her and thrusting her against the wall, lifting her up by the neck. He pressed the edges of his blade into her throat. With one hand, she clutched at the invading pressure decreasing her oxygen. At the other, she struggled, almost to the point where Jeremy would have to act, before just getting proper hold of her secondary backup phaser, shoving it under the mess of hair near the underside of his skull and depressing the trigger. He let out a yelp and dropped her, and she backed off, firing at him point blank for far longer than necessary.

It took her a while to realize he was actually 'dead', which meant his head and neck were congealed blobs of pink goo, and she broke off, crushing his hand under her boot for good measure with a satisfying crunch and kneeling down to pick up her primary phaser.

Jeremy glared at her for several moments while he processed. Walking over to her, he snatched the phaser rifle from her hand and checked the settings, then the sighting. Smacking it back at her, hard enough to nearly knock her off her feet. "This is a ranged weapon. It allows you to have distance from your targets. Why are you running up to them while shooting!" he asked then held up a hand. "No, don't answer that, just get moving. Engineering, now."

Chara didn't have time to react, and put it out of her head. Tellarite efficiency was useful like that. She restrained a small noise of surprise at the rifle thrust at her. Single-mindedness toward their goal was probably the only reason she didn't snap back at him, but she led him over to the hatch and pulled the door over sideways. "Through here. It will take us to Deck Six, where the deuterium relays start. We can begin there, then go up." She whispered it lowly, but hesitated, obviously waiting for acknowledgment or denial.

"Lead the way," Jeremy said while scanning for more enemies. "Do your best not to get us both killed. At least not before we accomplish the mission." He checked his sidearm and phaser rifle for remaining charge. Based on what he saw he should be able to get through to Engineering. He suspected once he got there he could pick up another rifle or disruptor weapon. However, the fight in Engineering would probably be the toughest of the entire encounter. The Klingons had to know that's where the device was held. The fortune was that with the computer down, they couldn't use it aboard the Galileo and it couldn't just be beamed off the ship. They were going to have to either repair the Galileo or try to synthesize compatibility with their systems.

Jeremy slid through the hatch after the crewman making sure there was enough room do that he could react and respond behind then as well as in during them. Watching her performances in the corridor, Jeremy no longer doubted went she was sent off from Davis. Though he should have used her more productively as part of a human shield or distraction.

He halted as he heard faint scraping from a junction up ahead.

Chara could see some figures up ahead as she progressed, unaware of Stone's stop behind her. She stopped herself as she saw who they were. More Klingons. What were they doing in a service hatch? Unless they were attempting repairs of their own. "We can't get into the locker," one of the Klingons was saying. In Klingon. Chara perked her ears up. Years on a backwater station with Klingon proprietors wizened her up to their language early. You had to be, in order not to get ripped off. "We need to repair the servos. Get Tarith on it. He is useless," they laughed, "But he'll do." The voices disappeared, heading up higher.

Chara removed her secondary phaser as a precaution. "They're looking for a way to fix the engineering locker servos. Think they've found that device?" she asked, gripping the ladder more sturdily and leading faster. The thump up ahead was easily heard, and she identified it as their exiting the hatch. Those two would be on Deck Six. They'd have a fight right off the bat.

"Does that change anything?" Jeremy asked, waiting for her to continue. "We already knew we'd have to get to Engineering and defend it, to keep the device from falling into Klingon hands. This just-" he stopped and held up a hand, ordering her into silence as well.

He cocked his head as he listened. More traffic coming down the intersection. He moved passed Chandra to take up position to best open fire when the new group came into sight. He motioned for her to take cover behind the structural supports across from him. She did, pulling down her phase rifle just in case. "Wait until they're fully in the open, make them have to fight to get back to cover. We don't have time for protracted firefights. Also make sure to keep an awareness of your six, in case more come down the hatch."

In one case, he was fortunate that he could "forget" things. It allowed his mind to go blank on some occasions, such as when he faced going into another battle. However, judging from the quiet, furtive noises coming from behind the turn in the junction way, there were more of them this time.

The wait wasn't long.

[OFF]

LTjg Jeremy Stone
Chief Security/Tactical Officer
USS Galileo

Senior Petty Officer Anthony Davis
Security/Tactical
USS Galileo

PO3 Justin Smoak
Security/Tactical
USS Galileo

Crewman Indri Chara
Security/Tactical Officer
USS Galileo

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