The Way Back

Posted on Sat Jan 23rd, 2021 @ 9:21am by Lieutenant Commander P’rel M.D & Lieutenant Ausra Danton & Lieutenant Leah Bailey & Ensign George Paxton

Mission: The Shadow of Arachne
Location: USS Athena
1482 words - 3 OF Standard Post Measure

Leah had been hovering outside of sickbay waiting to hear from the Captain and the others about the situation. Having uncovered some of what was going on with Ensign Paxton, they now angled to see where Ausra was and what their next steps were.

"I do hope things haven't gone badly in there," she murmured to the Ensign standing nearby. "I dread to think what sort of state we'll be in if both the Captain and First Officer are out of commission."

Ausra came out and heard the last bit of conversation. "They'll be fine. But we have a job now, I'll take everyone available but we need to figure out a way to get out of this mess. Do we duplicate what happened to get us back to normal space or somehow reverse it?"

"Going back to how we got here is probably a good way to start," Leah said with a little shrug. "Perhaps we should take a look at one of those devices the Bolian brought on board? Let's ask Lieutenant P'rel - she was talking to him."

"Right," Ausra said with a small sigh and headed in that direction without another word, assuming people would follow. Was she blaming herself? Perhaps a little bit, it had been her suggestion after all. She wasn't in control of what had caused it to malfunction like this however. "What made you want to go into Starfleet?" Ausra asked as they walked.

"Me?" Leah glanced up. "I think it was when I was young, I saw a holo-documentary about strange space phenomenon and how unique they were. I always loved science, but going into space and seeing them up close was pretty exciting for me. What about you?"

"I wanted to get away from my family and see the universe and ever since I can remember my head was always in the stars. Every time my parents caught me I was scolded for not looking at what was right in front of me." Ausra answered honestly.

Paxton followed along silently behind the other two, unexcited about the idea of picking up the Vulcan. The last time he was with her she almost blew up the brig with one of those devices Leah and Ausra were conversing about. "Are we sure picking up P'rel is a great idea? We could just go by the security office and look at the device on our own..." He suggested.

Leah shrugged. "I've never met her. But she was the one who was dealing with the devices and the saboteur personally. If anyone knows something about the way they work, she will. Right?"

"Let's hope so." Ausra answered. "The more eyes we have on this the better." It really wasn't a one man show and as this was the crew's life they were dealing with, she didn't want to take any chances.

Leah nodded her agreement with Ausra's assessment. They rounded the hallways of the crew quarters and approached P'rel's door. After a moment, Leah poked the door chime. "Lieutenant P'rel? We need your help with something."

The Vulcan, her brow sweating from concentration and her athletic physique on show outside of her duty vest top, swore at the interruption. Her deep meditation was broken, and her self hypnotic chants had lost rhythm; the Admiral in front of her windows remained, clapping slowly whilst the distant cheers of the Federation Council sounded as he stepped away from the podium on the stage, with the bulk of the Admiralty seated behind him... "No" P'rel snapped, and the seated flag officers returned to the familiar windows of her quarters. She stood, irritated that the door chime had sounded a second time. Barely a glance toward her door as she set out towards it, and she had noticed the short walk lined with sneering Jem'Hadar; their sterile, sickly clean breath almost an atmospheric cloud she had to walk through whilst ignoring the clicking and clunking of their heavy plasma rifles. "No" she repeated, and the First in front of her door panel, hanging by a noose around his neck, simply fell away into a disappearing black cloud. She opened the door to find an apprehensive gaggle of colleagues; "no nightmare could be so terrifying as to have three of you disturb my meditation and on that basis I can only logically deduce that you are real", her cold voice said with just barely the hint of threat carrying on it.

"Cheery lady," Leah murmured to Ausra and Paxton. She peered into the darkened quarters. "Yes, real as anything else around here. Look, we know you're likely having trouble with things, but we could really do with your help. We want to get out of here and we think those strange devices you examined might hold the key."

P'rel bristled against the suggestion; "I am not having trouble with things" she replied flatly; her eyes passed over the others then back to the Lieutenant. "What can I do to assist?" she asked, inwardly conceding that it was indeed better to get out of this nightmare space than to remain here. She stepped out of the doorway to her quarters and into the corridor, taking a few steps towards the turbolift and negating any possibility of her colleagues entering her quarters. A few paces and she realised that her duty jacket remained on her bed, and that she was simply wearing her undervest.

"Help is figure out how to reverse this so we can go home, " Ausra said simply. "We could use every hand and every mind."

"When you interrogated the Bolian, did you find out anything about the device?" George timidly asked P'rel as the group headed towards the security office where the remaining device was stored. He knew that she had interrogated the prisoner, but he had left for the transporter room before the questioning started. Perhaps the Bolian had let slip some information that would be helpful in getting them back to normal space.

The Vulcan, even less in control than usual, glared at Paxton; “I would have hoped your boss, the engineer, might have been able to help you there Ensign”. She recalled the unimpressive dealings she’d had with Keating thus far, “but never mind”.

"Well, we've got some bits to go on. The deflector pulse was the key, right? I wonder if we can recreate it?" Leah asked.

"That was going to be my first suggestion," Ausra nodded. "I'm just a bit timid . . . . I don't want it transporting us anywhere else or deeper into something we can't get out of."

"What other choice do we have?" Leah asked. She sympathised with her crewmate but at this point they didn't have many options. "I think we need to try. Let's get to the deflector control and set it up."

“You may be on to something” P’rel offered. “Those devices were designed to initiate a feedback in the phaser batteries, the radiation would have made it easy to track the ship - logic suggests that there were three in case Athena separated”. She stopped to think a moment as the group walked, allowing them to take a few paces ahead of her before they also came to a halt; “Given we’ve seen the explosive nature of them, I’m sure that they were also designed to cripple our phaser capacity once the Breen caught up with us.” She turned to one of the blue shouldered officers, “perhaps the radiation they were emitting interfered with the deflector array. Recreating such a pattern should simply be a matter of accessing the sensor logs at that time of the crossover”.

"Well it's the only plan we've got," Leah agreed. "We should be able to do it from Deflector Control."

P'rel nodded in reply, from her observation Lieutenant Danton - her only authority equal - seemed to be in a less than fantastic condition; as competent as she undoubtedly was, the Lieutenant probably wasn't in a sufficient condition to assume command of the situation. "Alright" P'rel began, pulling a plan together; "Mr. Paxton, Miss Bailey and myself will proceed to deflector control and try to recreate the conditions which brought us here"; she turned to Lieutenant Danton; "Lieutenant, perhaps you would be best utilised trying to identify and mitigate the effects of this environment; we will contact you if we require any input but the logs should give us everything we need". The Vulcan looked around at the other three; "let's get to it", she finished curtly, with just the hint of a question in the tone of her voice.

Ausra nodded and gestured for her to lead the way.

"Paxton, Bailey; you're with me. Lieutenant..." she nodded back at Danton, "...we'll keep you informed". P'rel responded, as the three set out for deflector control first, leaving Danton to her work on the effects of this nightmarish space.