How To Science ... With Phasers

Posted on Mon Feb 23rd, 2026 @ 11:00pm by Commander N'Garzi Zora & Lieutenant Alexis Ryan & Lieutenant JG Astrja Kyan

Mission: Aeon's End
Location: Science hub
Timeline: MD3
3125 words - 6.3 OF Standard Post Measure

". . . so we have all of the sensor conduits running at half power or more. The self-repair circuits should sort most of that out in the next six hours or so as long as we can keep the power systems on," said Astraja, explaining to the scientist who had been assisting with the sensor repairs.

"However, we are running low on non-replicatable supplies and I and not sure where we can source more," she added.

The sudden clamor of alert klaxons was, for a split second, more a moment for hesitation than direct concern. Like an overly-sensitive fire alarm with a fetish for burnt toast, there were issues enough in the emergency relay system that the warnings had been blinking on-and-off for hours now, never lasting more than a couple of seconds before the communication gremlins recognised the false alarm and reset. The personnel stationed in the hub had learned to pause, wait, and...

...scramble for leverage as the entire ship lurched and then pitched back again.

"That was impact," Ryan declared, the doors to her office opening seconds later to deposit both her and Commander Zora in the midst of the mounting chaos.

"What!? That cannot be good," said Astrja.

Zora grabbed onto the doorframe in an effort to keep herself on her feet. "No shi-" she started to say as the ship lurched again. She tightened her grip as the wail of the klaxon changed from the familiar one for red alert to one of a lower tone. On a regular day, this new noise sent shivers down her spine, but when the ship was already in a bad state, she couldn't help but fear for the worst.

"That's the intruder alert siren," she shouted, for anyone not paying attention. "Everyone arms themselves, now!" She ordered as she left the safety of the doorframe and moved over to Ryan and Astrja. As she walked, she tapped her combadge but was met only with a faint buzzing sound. "Comms are down."

"Cat kick it! We just had those fixed!" said Astrja as she bounced back to her feet. She dug in her bag and pulled out a datapad, which she plugged into the wall jack. "Internal sensors are up but not communicating with the network. I will see what I can do." Her fingers danced over the surface. "Drokk, something is moving our way. Living but not human, no match in our database."

There had been more than a few glances exchanged amongst the staff, after Ryan had first stepped on board and taken control of the department that had been floundering for months without clear leadership, when the newly-minted Science Chief had insisted on a security locker within the hub itself. It seemed less strange once her history had emerged and, now, as the ex-marine made an immediate beeline for the well-stocked weapon's closet, the Lieutenant's lingering compulsion to be ready for anything paid dividends.

"Everyone arm themselves." Her voice rose over the blare of the intruder alert, decisive and yet notably without the brittle bitterness that had earmarked her for avoidance for the past few hours.

Astrja strapped her satchel closer about herself, so it would not get in the way more than necessary. Then she took her place in line, taking a moment to set her Laserson Probe to maximum power in case she needed a backup weapon while she waited to get her draw from the closet.

Zora pulled her hair into a tighter bun, twisting and wrapping until her scalp screamed in agony. Securing it in place, she gave her head a little shake to make sure that she was battle ready. The last thing she wanted was to impair her vision whilst in the middle of a firefight. She accepted a phaser rifle and checked that it was fully charged and set to stun; she needn't have bothered, of course, Ryan was prepared and ready at all times. "Lieutenant, do we have any visuals of whatever is coming towards us?" She asked the Andorian who was securing her own weapon.

Astrja flicked the safety on her phaser rifle to safe and pulled up her datapad. "We can track their movement but they have some sort of disruption effect accompanying them. But I can wireframe them." Her fingers danced over the holographic keys and a wire-frame hologram appeared of a large insect-like creature with large mandibles. "That is to scale."

Having armed her staff, Ryan took the opportunity to combat a discomfort caused by the fluctuating environmental controls and tossed her uniform jacket over the back of a chair as she hooked a phaser to her belt and ready-checked the last rifle. "Guess the welcome party finally showed up." Staring a moment at the projection, the Lieutenant then turned her head to address Zora without diverting her gaze. "What do we know?"

"Very little," Zora replied, not taking her eyes off the holographic frames. "They're a ruthless enemy who kill without discrimination." They were bigger than she had expected and meaner looking, too. It looked as though their claws would make easy work of the fleshy crew, so they had to keep them at bay, for as long as they could. "Set phasers to heavy stun," she ordered, eyeing their thick exoskeleton.

Zora's words had barely left her mouth when the doors to the science lab rumbled. Someone had had the sense to lock them, but that wasn't going to keep the aliens out for too long as they shook again, and the sound of twisting metal filled the room. "Take up positions! Only fire when the doors have been breached and you have eyes on the target." She went around one of the desks opposite the door and placed her rifle on the top of it, using it as a perch. She lifted the targeting sight, and she waited...

Astrja looked doubtful but followed instructions, setting the phaser rifle to maximum stun. She put herself in the furthest corner to the right of the door, going down to one knee for a stable firing stance. She checked that her Laserson Probe was ready to be grabbed if needed and then sighted in on the door.

It took a split-second for Ryan to make a decision, liberated from the swinging pendulum of obligation to her staff and utilising her own strengths by the sheer inevitability of imminent engagement. There had been a time, a whole different lifetime ago, where her place on the battlefield had been the highest ground possible and though her eyesight had rendered long-distance problematic, the confined quarters weren't going to give them any amount of space between themselves and their attackers once the doors were breached.

Kicking over a chair, the Science Chief hoisted herself up to stand atop one of the rear-most consoles and spared a moment for the grim satisfaction that being glued to her work for the past few hours had kept her eyepiece permanently perched atop her head. Pulling it into place, she tested her balance and picked off the first shot, right through a patch of melted metal, to land with a resounding crackle of impact against a solid mass hovering on the other side. The resulting screech of protest was pitched just high enough to provoke a wince, and sounded more angry than distressed.

Astrja waited for a clear target, which was not long in coming. The creature looked surprisingly like the wire-frame image, all clean bio-mechanical lines and insectoid danger. She fired short bursts, as she had been taught, from the phaser rifle which marginally slowed the being, but certainly did not drop it.

Zora's hands were surprisingly calm as she fired her phaser rifle at the alien insectoids. She was a pacifist by nature and would rather talk her way out of a situation rather than use the cumbersome phaser that was now her only defence. However, despite this, she considered herself a warrior. Warriors came in all shapes and sizes and she was happy to show this side of her personality when the time called for it.

The insectoid that had breached the doors to the science lab had long since fallen. However, its brothers, or sisters, or comrades, had wasted no time stepping and climbing over its deceased body to get to the crew inside the confined space. Zora's phaser grew warm, but she didn't relent; she couldn't.

"Concentrate fire, we're picking too many targets," Ryan barked, picking off a shot that sent one of the advancing bugs closest to the front staggering back a few metres. There would be time enough later to apologise to Zora for presumption, right now the only instinct was to call out what she could see. "Commander, call shots right. I'll take left. Durnham, Monroe, with me. Everyone else, focus the Commander's calls."

Alexis swung upwards to pinpoint an adventurous bug that had risen vertically. "One, top left."

"Agreed," Zora replied as her dark eyes shifted to the left side of the room. They found one of the creatures, heading straight to her position. Its six "arms" were flailing and its "legs" looked to be in what could be called a defensive posture. "Kyan, Z'ork, my one o'clock," she ordered right before she pulled her own trigger.

"Yes," said Astrja, shifting aim and firing in coordination with Zora. The Andorian's antenna twitched as the blasts hit the bio-insect, the tone had changed. As had the energy flicker. "Commander! They may not be Borg but I think they are evolving to resist our weapons," she called out.

"Then we fire in unison," she called, hoping that the aliens couldn't understand her, just as the universal translator was struggling to convey their meaning to the crew. "Three...two...one...fire." Three beams of light struck the alien and it fell forward a few feet from Zora's position. "Borg protocols!" Zora called out to the entire room, indicating that their weapons should be switched to randomise field and strength modulations.

"On it," said Astrja. Luckily, Starfleet weapons were very user-friendly and the Borg were a known threat, so activating the frequency randomizer only took a moment. There was a moment's pause as the bio-insects started to clear the doorway, using the bodies of their slain counterparts as cover while they did so. She tapped her combadge, "Ops to armory, intruders show adaptive abilities. Recommend Borg protocols be instituted."

Astrja then shouldered her phaser rifle, waiting for that next assault.

From her vantage, Ryan paused several crucial seconds to reevaluate. As much as she couldn't get as high as she typically preferred, and didn't have the distance to target that a sniper's cover usually required, there were still responsibilities that fell back into place as if nothing had changed since the last time she'd been forced to call a battle from multiple points.

"They're not returning fire," she gave voice to the obvious, a quick catalogue of the creatures' deployment formation drawing her brows together in a tight frown. "Are they even capable?"

"We haven't seen any ranged attacks," said Astrja. "Maybe they don't think that they need them?"

As much as Zora loved the speculation, time was not on their side. There was a brief pause in the fight, and she intended to make the most of it. "Ryan, grab a tricorder and do some science. The more data we can gather on these creatures, the better chance we have of defeating them. Astrja, it would be great if we had the shields established around the room before their friends show up."

"On it," said the Andorian, slinging her rifle and popping the control panel by the door with a practiced fist strike. "Do you want the shields keeping them out or directly protecting us? There is only enough power to do one option efficiently," she said reviewing the system.

Do some science.

For a brief moment, despite the imminent danger, Alexis had felt herself slip into a skin that felt infinitely more comfortable than the one she'd been chaffing against recently. She hesitated as Zora's words tore the welcome veneer away, plunging her back into the role that felt a lot less secure than the view down the barrel of her laser-scope. On the verge of protest, she reigned back the instinct and shouldered her weapon, descending from her vantage to jam her tricorder into the console she'd just been standing on.

"Lieutenant, your gadget got any data you can send me?"

"On its way," said Astrja, "linking you to the external feed . . . now. It low rez but the best I can do right now."

It was a wildly bizarre moment to feel relief. Given the circumstances, Alexis didn't even notice at first, too intent on trying to short-cut a working analysis that would give her something useful in the time it took a giant bug to shake itself off and resume investigating. The more she watched the formation, and the unhurried relentlessness of the intruders' persistence, the more the Science Chief was convinced their primary goal wasn't mindless slaughter.

Then what? Of all the places on board, the hub had suffered the least amount of systemic damage, which made it a veritable candleflame to any inquisitive moth trying to scope out a decent vantage. Maybe that was the appeal. Maybe this was less about the annoying bipeds shooting at them and more about whatever information they could snatch from under their noses.

The realisation brought with it the first palpable hint of solace. Zora had asked for science but this...this wasn't a constant cycle of decoding what the experts around her reported, assimilating a broad spectrum of information she'd never trained in for the sole purpose of reporting it accurately to those charged with making the ultimate decisions. This was forging an interface under pressure so that she could drive a wedge between a termite's attempt to burrow into her operating system and that was something Alexis Ryan was trained for.

"If they're after access to the core then disrupting their data retrieval might cause them to stand-down," she reasoned, already hunched over the terminal at work. "Or at least it'll interfere with their plans and stop them transmitting anything vital to their friends. Suggest shielding access to data points," Ryan suggested, a prompt for Zora to respond to Kyan's earlier question.

"I doubt these hellspawn will stand down for anything, but it's worth a try," Zora said. These creatures, whatever they were and wherever they had come from, reminded her so much of the Borg. But in reality, they were worse than the Borg. At least, the Borg made their intentions clear. No one could argue that the Borg didn't know how to communicate. Yes, their vocabulary was limited, extremely so, but they made themselves clear. With the Borg, they knew what they were up against and they knew how to defeat them. At a cost. She shuddered at the thought. She would never have imagined that in her entire lifetime, or even the lifetimes of her ancestors, she would be reminiscing about the Borg, her mortal enemies. But here we are. Better the devil we know!

"I want to capture one of these things," Zora blurted out, before the idea had even formed in her mind. "Alive."

"Does it have to be intact?" asked Astrja, pulling wires out of the control panel. "Because I have an idea." A set of force fields shimmered into existence around the stations were the starfleet personnel were. That is around everyone except the Andorian.

"Lieutenant, no!" Zora yelled, realising a split second too late what the Andorian was planning. She was too late to stop her; she was trapped behind the force field and all she could do now was go along with whatever Kyan had planned.

The bio-insects had finally cleared the doorway. One started to move in, casting around.

There was just enough time for Alexis to pause, her expression frozen in a look of partial disbelief tinged with resignation. Leave it to Zora to ask for the impossible and, for once, fate seemed to be in the mood to supply the exact staff member not only capable of pulling it off but prone to dangling her feet into the abyss as she attempted it.

A quiet, treacherous voice in her head pointed out that Kyan's presence did more than just increase Zora's chances of success; it decreased the Commander's reliance on a Science Chief that probably would have just ballsed up the calculation.

"I'll work on a data-block," she muttered, turning back to focus on the scroll of information.

Several phaser blasts stabbed at the lead bio-insect. "Let that one through! Light up the rest of them," shouted Astrja, holding a datapad in one hand. "Hey ugly!" she yelled at the bug. "My antennae are prettier than yours."

The bio-insect swivelled to face Astrja as the phasers from the other team members hammered the ones coming through the door. The Andorian took a half-step forward and then vaulted back as it rushed for her. She stabbed a finger at the datapad and a shimmering column of blue force descended from the ceiling so quick it seemed as though it just appeared around the bug. It shattered the creature's legs and it scrabbled on its stumps, trying to break free of the trap.

Astrja kicked a piece of leg away from her. "Got it!" she said triumphantly.

Zora let out a sigh. "Lieutenant, risk your life like that again and I'll feed you to one of these things myself." Her tone was etched with anger mixed with disbelief. "Now check that its friends are all gone. Ryan, let's find a way to communicate with it."

"A trap needs bait, ma'am," said Astrja, "but as you say." She tapped at the datapad and the doors, reinforced by force fields, closed behind the retreating bio-insects who dragged their dead with them. "The sensors are unclear . . . but I think they are retreating across the Athena, back to their ships."

For several moments more, Ryan was silent. Then, her tone neutral, she spoke up. "I don't know how long it will hold but that should keep it from chatting to its friends for a while." Several more keystrokes saw her add, "At best, if they tried to extract anything useful, they wound up with our entire database of Klingon hors d'oeuvres."

"Very tasty, I am sure," said Astrja, checking the energy levels of the force fields.

"Good, now let's see what we can find out from these demons," Zora added, switching from battle-mode to first officer-mode in the blink of an eye.