Captives

Posted on Mon Aug 9th, 2021 @ 10:08am by Lieutenant Leah Bailey & Commander Taeler Santu M.D. & Lieutenant Commander Finnley Keating VII & Lieutenant Xavier Leiko & Lieutenant Ausra Danton & Lieutenant JG FalenvralLi Zh’kyhrihr & Ensign George Paxton

Mission: By Artemis' Bow
Location: USS Cavalier
Timeline: MD-03 16:00
2542 words - 5.1 OF Standard Post Measure

The group of captured officers was marched through the lower decks of the Cavalier unceremoniously. Most of them looked to Taeler for their next move, wondering if the XO had a plan of action - be it escape or waiting for rescue. Certainly they were outnumbered and their captors were well-armed, but there was still a feeling among the group of wanting to break free and take back the ship.

"Up ahead. The brig is that way. Move!" one of the mercs grunted, shoving Leah in the back with unnecessary force.

Xavier glared at the man with the rifle. He wanted nothing more than to grab it out of his hand and shove the butt of it so far in his face, that he would need a whole new nose. However, the Betazoid was smarter than that, he knew the odds were stacked against them and he knew if they did try to escape, it would have to be at the most opportune moment, not on a whim. He turned to the Commander. ~What's the play here ma'am?~ He asked telepathically.

Before the XO could answer the group were shoved through a large doorway into one of the small Nova class ship's cargo bays. Barely big enough to house a couple of shuttles, there wasn't a lot of open space to play with.

"I'm not sure about you guys, but I don't like the idea of staying here as hostages. Anyone got any ideas?" Leah asked.

George evaluated their surroundings and tried to come up with ideas quickly, motivated by the fact that there wasn't much room and he had a tendency to become claustrophobic. He saw one locked access hatch as they entered and a small control panel by the main doors, but nothing else outside of that. "We can try to release the hatch over there," he pointed to the opposite side of the confined space. "Or see if we can bypass the locking mechanism on the main door, but I'm going to guess there are guards outside so we'd need a plan to deal with that if we're going out the big doors."

"Good thinking Ensign," Xavier said. "If we can get into the hatch, we might be able to overload the EPS relays to this deck at least. If we time it right, unlock the doors as well as blow the relays, then we can take the guards by surprise and take back the ship. Though I should warn you," he said to the group at large, "the only reason I can think of they left us in here instead of the brig or even the crew quarters, is because they can open the cargo bay doors. If they catch on to what we're up to, well let's just say we'll all be taking a space walk."

"Yeah, that's not on my list of things to do today . . . . course this wasn't either." Nor getting kidnapped nor punched in the stomach which was still very very tender and probably needed looked at. Ausra hoped there wasn't internal damage because she did not feel well at all. "Umm . . . " she said having a hard time thinking. "Maybe it's time to do a little misdirection?" She said thinking of the plan she'd had last mission that hadn't gone well at all.

"Anything to keep us from getting spaced seems good to me," George replied nervously. "In the meantime, I'll get started on that hatch." He said, more and more needing the task to keep his mind off of the small space.

"So what if we created a situation that made them so they'd have to come in here?" Ausra asked the others.

"Do we think these people are likely to fall for the 'sick captive' trick? Seems like it would be an obvious one," Leah replied with a despondent tone.

"How about the brawling captives?" Xavier asked as he rubbed the hairs on his chin. "It's simple and effective... sometimes."

As the others debated the best distraction technique, George quietly hunched over the sealed access port to the jefferies tube. A bead of sweat trickled down his face. All of them crammed into one cargo bay was causing the temperature to rise. Or was it just a side effect of the fact that the walls seemed to be slowly creeping inward? He kept concentrated on the hatch, doing his best to both keep the claustrophobia at bay while hacking into the panel to release the lock.

Santu had been quiet all the way to the cargo bay, the doors closed behind them and she had heard them starting to contemplate how to distract them. She slowly shook her head, she didn't want to do this but it was probably their best bet. The one thing that was plausible, and with the added benefit that her counterpart on the Cavelier might show some sympathy. "No.. no..." She shook her head more intensely now. She walked up to the doors, "Please no! Not again!" She hammered the doors with her fists, calling the panic that she had felt so many years ago, "Please, you can't lock me up here! For the love of the prophets let me go!" Her wails were loud enough to be heard through the doors. She felt it would be more effective if she didn't give the rest of the group a heads up, add some realism to their responses.

George looked over his shoulder at the Commander, confused as to the display of panic, but also relieved that he wasn't the first one to lose it. He wasn't sure if it was a ruse or legitimate, but either way, it was the distraction they needed. He returned his attention to the hatch and finally managed to get it unlocked. Looking inside, he could see that the panel that would allow them to overload EPS relays for the deck was only a short crawl away, but he wasn't sure he could handle an even more confined space right now. "Would you like to do the honors?" George looked at Xavier.

Xavier was distracted by Santu. He wasn't sure if this was her form of distraction or if some trama from her past was surfacing again. Didn't she have a particularly rough time in that nightmare space? Plus, he could sense a high level of anxiety coming from someone, but everything was so heightened at the moment, he couldn't quite pull at the right threads. It was like being in a crowded room where everyone was talking at once, and you were trying to listen out for a single voice, from the other side of the room.

"What?!" Xavier said as he realised that someone was talking to him. It took him a while to pull his eyes from the commotion at the door, but when he finally did and took in George's angst he realised whom he had been 'feeling'. "Are you okay Ensign?" Xavier asked. George's face was pale and cammy, and Xavier could see beads of sweat dampening the collar of his uniform. Xavier looked past the man and saw that he had been able to release the hatch. He quickly put two and two together and before the Ensign had a chance to answer Xavier patted him on the shoulder and made his way over to the tight crawl space. "You're my lookout," Xavier said before he disappeared into the dark.

Santu's planned seemed to work, the cargo bay doors opened with their usual noise and three mercenaries entered. The tall one who had plodded Leah with his rifle earlier entered the room first, looking for the source of the noise. He obviously wasn't in the mood to play games; his rifle was locked and loaded and he clearly wasn't going to be taking any prisoners, well anymore at least. "Be quiet Bajoran!" He spat angrily. However, seeing that Santu wouldn't be intimidated so easily he aimed his rifle directly at her. One of the Cavalier crewmen jumped in the way at the last second and took the full brunt of the blast. His body crumpled to the floor with a thud...then all hell broke loose. The captives in the cargo bay stormed the mercenaries, who seemed to be filing into the room like they were borg drones.

From inside the crawl space, Xavier could hear the commotion in the cargo bay, he knew that if he finished the job and overloaded the EPS relays, it would give him and the other captives an advantage they could exploit. He heard the phaser go off and hoped that no one was hurt, but he couldn't allow himself to think about this now, if he didn't complete the task then more people would get hurt or killed and it was his job to save as many lives as possible. He pulled out a few more isolinear chips and crossed wired a few more power relays. He was basically doing the opposite of everything they told him not to do whilst he was at the academy, but he knew it would have the required results. And it did, when he placed the final relay where it absolutely shouldn't go, there was a loud spark and Xavier banged his head on the bulkhead. The lights in the cargo bay flickered and then the entire deck went into pure darkness. Xavier knew that the decks above and below would also be suffering the same fate. He made his way back to the cargo bay to join the resistance.

The fighting was rough; only a few of the Starfleet captives were truly built for a fight, the others doing their best to occupy the mercenaries. But when the lights went out, it was a different game entirely and the odds were evened-up by nobody having a clue who was whom. A couple of weapon blasts went off, lighting up the space for half a second as they popped into the air. Some of the mercenaries seemed to attack each other in the confusion, too.

By the time the emergency lights flickered on and bathed the deck in a dull red glow, there were a lot of gasping, shaking people looking at one another.

"We need to find a way off the ship," Leah suggested. "They need us as captives, that's the point of this."

"Escape pods?" one of the Cavalier crew suggested. "Or do we fight back...retake the ship?"

Taeler stood with a rifle in hand, lording over the mercenary that had taken a shot at her, "I won't order any of you to follow me, if you leave grab the shuttles, lifeboats are too easy to pick back up," There was nothing remaining of the panicked woman that had drawn all that attention, "I'm taking back this ship from that treasonous piece of shit."

"Well, you might want these if we're going to take the ship back," Finn held up one of the extra phasers they had brought with them as she crawled out of the jefferies tube. "Sorry, we were a little late to the game, tried finding you guys in the brig first."

Li peeked her head out of the access hatch right behind Finn, phaser at the ready. They'd heard phaser fire and scuffling, but she had no idea what they were coming out to.

Xavier took the phaser as he gave his friend a weak smile. "Better late than never," he said. "Where's the Athena?" He was happy to see them both, but he also hoped that they weren't the only ones in the rescue party, a couple dozen security officers would be nice right about now.

"Well, a lots been happening while you guys have been vacationing in this cargo bay," she chuckled slightly. "We received a message basically informing us of your situation along with a threat that we'd better come and get you before anything happens. That left us with two problems. Rescue you guys and protect the pilgrims. Long story short, Li and I were assigned to help you as best we could. She expertly flew that stealth little alien shuttle over here," she smiled at her skilled companion. "We've been crawling around the jefferies tubes trying to find you guys. The Athena is off protecting the space cows. So it's up to us to get out of this situation on our own. We have a map and a couple of extra phasers. The alien shuttle is docked at the waverider docking port, don't ask, it was an interesting ride. The jefferies tube is open all the way through to the main access junction now too."

After giving the whole spiel, Finn paused and then looked at Xavier curiously. "Was that you in the jefferies tube? The one that told me to hurry, but like, in my brain?"

Xavier tried to hide the disappointment that they hadn't arrived with a full security detail. He knew they had a good chance of retaking the ship and completing the mission, he just would have felt a lot more comfortable with several hyped up officers in yellow uniforms. "It was," he admitted. "Sorry, I know you don't like head invaders, but this was a unique situation."

"I'm oddly getting used to it, but if you're going to invade my headspace it would've been a little more useful about thirty minutes ago when we trying to find you," Finn half-jokingly chided her ops counterpart. "So, what's the plan? I heard something about taking the ship back?" She looked around at the various crew in the cargo bay, unsure of who exactly had announced that as they crawled out of the tunnel.

Xavier grinned, "or maybe you can use internal sensors next time, you know like a 'good' engineer," he joked. He looked around at Commander Taeler. "The Commander has a plan, we're going to fight some mercenaries, take the ship back, save some space cows, and be back on the Athena in time for dinner. All in a day's work for Starfleet officers." He said loud enough for the group to hear. "So Commander, we ready to kick some ass?"

Santu looked at the weapon and powered it up to maximum stun, then gave a nod to Xavier, "can't wait."

"Assuming you guys are going to take back the bridge, I can head to engineering and help from there. We should be able to look at both locations on internal sensors from here and get a better idea of what we're up against." Finn suggested before looking to Li. "Can you pull that up and get a headcount for us?"

Moving to the nearest console, Li retasked it from Cargo Control to Internal Sensors. A few more taps and she said, "I'm seeing five people on the bridge." After a moment, she added, "Only one is registering as wearing a comm badge and it looks like it's the XO. Engineering shows three people - no four now. None of them are coming up as recognized by the ship." She nodded toward a mercenary on the floor. "These guy's friends, I guess?"

"Must be," Finn shrugged. "With your permission, Commander," she turned to face Taeler, "I'll head to engineering through the jefferies tubes."