Beta Group

Posted on Sun Nov 10th, 2019 @ 3:17am by Avalon [ADMIN NPC] & Commander Liselle Qwyyn & Lieutenant Colonel Azhul Naxea & Lieutenant Carter Smith & Ensign Lunara Hol

Mission: Masquerade Back posts
Location: Deck 3 - Civilian Observation Lounge
Timeline: MD2 10h00
2383 words - 4.8 OF Standard Post Measure

On Deck 3, in the main civilian observation lounge a group of disorientated officers appeared. Pulled from their daily routine and deposited in a locked observation room.

Carter had been in main engineering, working at his console, when the familiar effect of the transporter grab him, and when he regained his senses, he was in an observation room. "Computer, end simulation." Not knowing if he was actually in the observation room, or on the holodeck, he ordered the computer to end the program. There was no response from the computer.

Lunara gasped as she suddenly appeared in the lounge. She had been running late, quickly getting ready for her shift. She wore her uniform pants and the teal undershirt, the jacket hanging from her left hand. "Wh-what the hell?" She instinctively reached for a plasma cutter - something she hadn't carried for 100 years. "Damn... what the hell is this?"

"Advise patient begin aggressive immunotherapy regimen to suppress any flare ups of...." Tallia said, still dictating into her padd until realizing she was not alone, "The Hell?" She said aloud.

Naxea was sitting at her desk in her office, in her standard duty uniform and now, fell back onto the deck after finishing materializing in the lounge. "What is gong on?" she demanded, getting up and looking around, spotting two other officers--one she recognized as Lieutenant Smith who had fixed her replicator shortly after the Elysium had arrived at Earth.

Carlos pick himself up off the floor. He had been checking the ships fighter compliment, and had been checking the internal systems when he had been beamed in. "I do not know what is going on but this is stupid for sure."

Carter looked around to see who was there. "Please, let me have your attention." He waited until there was silence. "Obvious we're in an observation lounge and by judging what's out the window, probably deck 3. Now, I am confused as your are, but that means we need to work together to get out of here." Then he looked around. "Looks like Lt Cmdr Harriman is senior officer. Your orders, sir?"

"Actually, I'm pretty sure she's ranking officer." Tallia said, pointing to the brunette who was head of flight control and was going to be summoned for a physical by Tallia in two days, ~She's perfect, no wonder Anje fell so hard for her twin.... while thinking she was with her... Oh, fuck my life, Anje's actually in love with this freaking goddess. Fat girl can never catch a break around here.~

"Of course, my apologies." Carter replied.

Carlos rolled his eyes and turned to the Trill. He moved to stand beside her. "Commander." he said in a low tone.

Liselle set her jaw. "I'm not able to reach the bridge," she said, her voice wavering. Clearly the idea of any form of imprisonment was playing havoc with her emotions, and she struggled to kept her panic from surfacing. She closed her eyes for a moment and took a steadying breath. "Lieutenant Smith I expect you'll find that any route out of here is going to be sealed. Please verify that is true, and see what you can do about it. Doctor Strode, do you have some means of verifying that conditions in this room are at normal levels? For all we know we're operating with less than ideal life support." With the basics covered, she turned fully to face Naxea and Carlos. She leaned into them, lowering her voice. "No one could trap all of us in here if they didn't have significant control of our ship's operations. Do you either of you have any suggestions on how we should prepare ourselves for...whatever might be going on?"

As she spoke Qwyyn's eyes kept darting to Counselor Hol. No one knew better than her what Qwyyn had been dealing with since her last mission. She wondered if the Counselor was able to perceive the emotional turmoil she was trying to keep suppressed -- and what she might do if she did.

Lunara locked eyes with her, giving a small smile to reassure her everything would be all right. She quietly moved a bit closer, in case Liselle needed her.

Naxea looked around. "Well first off, we try to make some makeshift weapons," Naxea said as she looked around at the observation room, spotting some potential areas to make weapons--a skill she picked up early in her life during the occupation. "It's best to try to keep everyone occupied on getting out of here, ma'am," Naxea said, she meant more for Qwyyn than 'everyone else'. "

Smith walked over the main doors and pulled the panel off the door and tried to open the door manually by releasing the locking mechanism...no use, it was sealed. Then he walked over to the other door in the lounge and tried the same thing...no good. Then he went to the maintenance panel, pulled if off and tried to open the emergency exit, but that was sealed as well. Then he jumped on the conference table and started checking if there were any maintenance Jefferies Tubes there, but the one that was there, the bulkhead had closed. He reported back to the commander, "All doors and access hatches are sealed, commander."

"Commander, it looks like all life support functions are normal." Tallia replied, having conducted very rudimentary check with her padd, "Whoever put us in here had no intention of killing us, I think." She could tell something was wrong with Cdr. Qwynn, quickly putting her jealousy aside she headed to her, "I need to examine you for a moment, Commander." She instructed, placing her fingers on the Trill's carotid artery and taking her pulse the hold fashioned way while listening to her breathing pattern, "Heart's racing, pulse fast..."

Qwyyn tried her best to force a smile. "I'm sure it's just the shock of the situation. I'm -- I'm fine. Promise."

Naxea walked over to a nearby case and slammed her foot into it, causing the case to shatter. she picked out some larger pieces and then moved to find some cloth to wrap around one end of the glass to use as a handle.

Lunara nodded towards Carter. "Did you happen to bring any tools with you? Jalen had a real knack for improvising stuff out of them." It had been awhile since anything like this happened. She hoped she still had the skills that kept Jalen alive.

"Sorry, no. I was working on one of the decks, and I had my tools then, but when I arrived here, I didn't have anything." Carter replied.

Carlos began his own search. The crew observation lounge was not the place they stored weapons. But, it did have a small kitchen area.

Naxea soon joined Carlos in the kitchen, looking for pieces of cloth and soon finding some small hand towels. "Perfect," she commented, holding the towels up for inspection. She then headed back to the broken shards of glass and began to tear the towels into more useful strips of cloth to wrap around one ends of the shards.

Qwyyn couldn't help the relief on her face watching Naxea in action. Since her last mission Liselle had developed a very healthy fear of imprisonment and of feeling helpless to defend herself. Seeing the crew get organized so quickly and with such confidence made it all the easier to swallow the panic that threatened to burst out of her. She could have pulled all of them into a group hug but for the voice inside that demanded she not do something so utterly stupid in her current position of command.

"I can't imagine that any obvious means of leaving this room are going to work," Qwyyn said to the group. "Does anyone have any ideas on how we can get out of here? Some kind of automated system that our captors may not be aware of that we can leverage?" She turned about, looking for ideas of her own. "Is there anything we can do that would trigger the Elysium to give us a way out?"

Carter walked over to the door and pried off the panel for the door controls. Pulling out wires, he tried short circuiting the door. All he got for his problems was some sparks.

"Interesting," Qwyyn said, stepping over to join him. "If a fire were to start in this room while the suppression systems were offline, do you think the doors would be released? I mean, this is hardly a secure area, right?"

Having finished making the makeshift shanks, Naxea joined the two, catching the end of Qwyyn's question. She handed one glass shank to Qwyyn. "Here you are commander. That could be dangerous because if it doesn't work, then we're going to suffocate from the smoke by the fire." She had an idea as she heard Commander Harriman in the kitchen, looking for more weapons--the stove wasn't too far from the door. Commander Harriman, can we get that stove close enough to the door?" She had thought about making an explosive but doubted the kitchen would contain the items she would require and they didn't have anyone strong enough to get the doors apart by hand.

Carter looked around. "The only way we can get out of this room, without the main computer or the transporter, is to blast our way out, but we'd need a phaser for that."

"Aren't engineers supposed to come up with creative solutions?" Lunara grinned. "I think our marine captain might be onto something. If we could isolate the power source..."

"I'd be shocked if any power source is operating in this lounge." Carter looked at the items in the kitchen. Standard starship layout. All he could see was a standard replicator...that wasn't working.

Carlos stuck his head out of the kitchen. "Anyone for a crawl through the air ducts?"

"Well, why not? It'll be just like old times." Lunara shook her head. "Why didn't I think of the jeffries tubes...?"

Carter spoke up. "You really think that the ducts will be passable? Everything else has stopped us from leaving."

Qwyyn nodded. "If you think that might work, let's give it a try. Getting out of this room as quickly as we can is our top priority. In that spirit, Captain Naxea, let's also investigate your plan. Even if the power has been cut off to the room, it's very likely that many of the capacitors in the ODN network are still holding a charge. If we gather enough of them, we might have what we need. Mister Smith, do you think that if we can get the wall paneling off, that we might be able to use some of those capacitors to help us light our stove bomb?"

Carter moved to the wall panel and tried to pry off the panel. "Begging your pardon....I think trying to explode a bomb inside the room may just get us killed."

"That's why we'll set up barricades with the tables and chairs to take cover behind to protect us from the shrapnel," Naxea explained.

Carter continued working on the panel. "Unless that table is made with a strong, solid material, it's not going to protect anyone, captain."

Naxea walked over to the main oval shaped table and knocked on the metal and wood accented table. "I think we'll be fine, lieutenant."

Qwyyn nodded. "I think it would be best if we --"

Suddenly the main doors opened and then over the Comm came: "Attention all hands. We are under attack. We have Jem Hadar on decks 23, 34, 16, 19 and 4. All civilians are to remain in the shelters. All crew prepare to repel boarders. Lethal force has been authorized. All turbolifts are down."

"Jem-Hadar!?" Lunara hissed under her breath. "I thought we beat them decades ago!"

"Jem H'dar doesn't make any sense," Naxea commented, leaning to peek out of the door and not seeing anything.

"Whether or not it's real, we should arm ourselves in case it is real, captain." Carter spoke out. "There's an armory on this deck."

"None of this makes sense." Tallia shook her head, "We destroyed the Dominion's ability to produce white; no white, no Jem H'dar, right?"

"Maybe their rouge Jam Hadar. Reports said that many of them didn't respond to the recall order." Carter looked around the corridor. "We need to arm ourselves, captain. That was the captain who gave that order over the comms." He looked around. "If you're going to just stand here and maybe wait to be slaughtered, that's your business....I plan on defending myself." With that, he took off running to the armory.

Naxea gestured at Carter with her head. "Is he always this ignorant?" she asked the others. "Running blind through the corridor during a possible boarding without even one of the glass shanks I made for everyone to protect himself is just going to get him killed." She stepped out into the corridor and then looked at Commander Qwyyn. "The way looks clear, ma'am. I just hope we don't come across Carter's corpse."

"Let's do our best to catch up with him before that happens then," she agreed. She reached out to take hold of Naxea's elbow. "At your discretion. You've got the tactical training to get us through this as safely as possible. Let's get moving and find out exactly what's going on here."

Naxea nodded and began to move down the corridor at a more careful but fast pace, stopping only at junctions and intersections, seeing the corridors were clear. Her mind raced, wondering if there were Jem H'dar, were they using their cloaking ability? It wouldn't be too much longer until they would reach the armory.

Carter came around the corner, carrying 3 phaser rifles and several hand phasers. He handed out the weapons to the others in the group. "Lieutenant Smith, reporting back in, sir."

"Try some garbage like that again, lieutenant and I'll shoot you myself," Naxea snapped. "Running through the ship alone and leaving the group while a possible hostile force is aboard was the single most dumbest thing you could have done."

Lunara gave him an incredulous look. "If I didn't know any better, I'd say you had a death wish." She wondered what passed for combat training these days.

TBC