Team Zora

Posted on Mon Apr 25th, 2022 @ 9:41am by Lieutenant Kevan Dash & Commander N'Garzi Zora & Lieutenant Commander Finnley Keating VII & Lieutenant JG FalenvralLi Zh’kyhrihr & Ensign Hok & Senior Chief Petty Officer Mason Malone & Petty Officer 2nd Class Henry Washington & [DECEASED] Gil Silnan Tolbarr

Mission: Ares Ascending
Location: Rondac - Command Center
Timeline: MD-02
2149 words - 4.3 OF Standard Post Measure

"What a mess," Mason commented, mere seconds after materializing, "and what is that smell?" He wrinkled his nose, his hand tightening around his phaser as a sense of dread washed over him.

Zora looked around the command centre as they beamed in. She had to agree with Mason, it wasn't the most pleasant of surroundings, and with it being an 'abandoned' Cardassian station, it only added to the feeling that they didn't belong here. "Let's see what we can find here, I don't want to stay a second longer than we need to. Lieutenant Dash, you and your men secure the area, I'd rather not have any surprises. Lieutenant Keating, you and crewman Washington get those systems back online. Mister Tolbarr, your expertise would be handy here." Zora turned to look at Li, "you and I will dig through the files and see what we can find. Open comms people, report anything .... out of the ordinary."

“Him…” Silnan replied to Mister Mason, softly. The Cardassian shone his light over the putrid remains of a body, it’s small and withered form looking frail inside the Cardassian military uniform. “…and him…” he added, pointing to another. “Commander Zora…” began the young man, tears welling in his eyes, “I must insist we move on…outsiders must not observe these bodies…..please…” he gently pleaded, looking down as his boot caught something hard. His eyes traced the length of the decades old Jem’Hadar rifle to the skeletal hand still gripping it. Partially concealed underneath a third Cardassian corpse, Silnan could make out the facial ridges of a Jem’Hadar soldier’s skull, a glass Ketracel vile which had remained unbroken all these years.

"They're dead," Kevan muttered a little grimly. "What does it even matter?" He shrugged at the suggestion this was somehow a huge cultural slur and moved to check the adjoining corridors. Perhaps he was still bitter that he had to join an away mission like this with Mason on the team, but for the time being he put that out of his head in favour of being professional and keeping the landing party secure. "Nothing alive back here," he reported.

"It's about respecting the dead," Mason answered simply, casting their Cardassian companion a sympathetic look. "Should we vaporize them?" He asked quietly, "if noone else should see them like this .. maybe we should identify them, and then vapourize them to send them on..." He wasn't sure if Cardassians adhered to any religion, and his knowledge of the language was passable at best.

Taking in the surroundings, Hok didn't say anything. He was more concerned about the rest of the team. Having worked in private security on Ferenginar, there were several times he had come across scenes like this in the course of an investigation. He learned early to bury the natural reactions. Otherwise, you couldn't do the job.

Zora glared at Kevan but refrained from saying anything, instead casting her gaze to the fallen Cardassian soldiers and then to their Cardassian companion. After all the years she had spent with the Cardassian people she knew how much they respected their dead and she had nothing but sympathy for Silnan at this moment in time. "Do with the bodies as you see fit Mister Tolbarr, but unfortunately we have a mission to complete and this room is our best chance of doing that." Her voice was full of sorrow with a hint of pity, which she tried her best to disguise, she knew better than to offer a Cardassian pity, in any circumstance.

Perhaps P’rel was right, Silnan mused. Though his mentor had a direct and not all too warming way of putting things, she was rarely wrong and had plenty to say about the farcical state of modern Starfleet, full of lies and contradictions, words over deeds. Save for the one officer, the rest were displaying at best a complete lack of cultural concern, and at the outside blatant racism. “Please, Mister Mason…if I may, sir…?” The Cardassian held his hand out for the hand phaser. He wasn’t rated on any kind of starfleet sidearm and so found himself the only one of the group unarmed, he was sure he could point and shoot if Mason set the weapon for him however. “Not any particular organised religion no sir” he answered, with a customary long nod to the senior officer; “we do however have strong beliefs in our culture around the viewing of the deceased”. He shot a look for the rude man, whose name he hadn’t caught before leaving; “I’m only grateful that someone is practice the values of cultural diversity they claim to cherish by design and duty…”

"Mason, or Chief Malone, and I'm not sure I rate a 'sir'," Mason corrected the man, a soft and supportive smile on his face as he thumbed the phaser to vapourize and showed the Cardassian which button to push. "I can do it for you, if you prefer," he offered, "no-one will think less of you if you do." That, and part of him though that the first officer might not be too keen on handing his weapon -set to kill- to a non-Starfleet person.

Shaking his head slightly, Silnan took the weapon and offered a pithy reassuring smile to the Chief, trying to convey that he wouldn’t accidentally shoot someone else; not that he was entirely confident himself. Having removed the possibility of the corpses being denigrated by alien eyes, he returned the weapon to Malone gingerly, very deliberately keeping his fingers clear of any buttons just in case.

Zora gave Mason a silent nod, an indication that she was happy for the Cardassian to do what had to be done. "Everyone please avert your eyes," she said to the group, turning her back on Tolbarr so that he could privately dispose of the corpses. She heard the shuffling of feet and the sharp, short sounds of the phaser being fired around the room. She wished there were more she could do for these people, getting them home to their families maybe, but there was a job to do and the stakes were too high. Once Tolbarr appeared to be done, she turned back to face the assembled officers. "You have your assignments, please work quickly."

Hok turned away as instructed, ending up facing the main entrance to the control center. When the task was finished, he held his position. If anyone was still alive in the facility, he would be ready if they used that door.

Gulping down her revulsion at the lingering funk of death in the control room, Li made her way toward the consoles at the rear. Overhearing the Cardassian envoy's concerns, she did her best not to gawk - not that she had any inclination toward such to begin with - but she paid the attention necessary to avoid tripping over any bodies.

She rested a hand on the dark console, mentally reviewing what she knew of Cardassian data access systems, then rubbed her fingers together at the gritty dust that covered the surface. She froze for a moment then pulled out a light to look at her fingers and the panel. Glancing over her shoulder, she could easily follow the splatter of blood and other things cast from a nearby fallen body. The control panel was coated in the dried, degraded remnants of the violence that happened here.

Finn sought out the closest workstation she could find. There was no use in looking at the bodies. If she did, she knew that staring back at her would be the eyes of the one she had lost. No, keeping her mind busy was the best distraction from the death that surrounded them. And perhaps it would help to quell the nagging feeling that something was off.

Mason stayed close and looked down at his feet, respectfully closing his eyes as he waited for the Cardassian to finish.

Henry moved to one of the work stations near where Lieutenant Keating was, the sooner they were done the sooner he would be back on the ship. "I believe this is the master command station, if we can restore partial power, we might have a chance of getting internal sensors back online."

Finn nodded as she surveyed the damage, kneeling to look inside the cracked open panel on the command station and cables hanging from the ceiling beside it. "See if you can repair this relay while I try to fix up that cable," she pointed to what looked like a large electromagnetically shielded line running from the console with a slight tear in one section. If anything were to be the main power line, that was it.

Receiving his phaser back, Mason looked to Dash for instructions, as the man was senior in position to him.

"Yes Sir," Washington replied as he took the relay from her and started scanning it with his tricorder. "Does anyone find it strange that life support is still operating fine? In fact, all of the tertiary systems seem to be; artificial gravity, inertial dampeners, computer terminals."

"What's your point?" Zora asked as she made her way to the same terminal where Li had found herself.

"It just means there's some form of power somewhere," Henry said matter-of-factly, "and if we can find the source, we can redirect it to other crucial systems." He shrugged slightly, not sure if he had overstepped his boundary.

Zora smiled, though she doubted he was able to see in the dim light of the command centre. "Well you're the Ops specialist, find me that power and get these systems back online crewman." She turned her attention to Li, "how you getting on Lieutenant?" She clearly hadn't noticed the console covered in dry blood or the look on the Andorian's face.

Li cringed, trying not to think about what her fingertips were touching as she manipulated the unfamiliar interface. It was always tempting to go digging into the deepest, most secure records, but you could learn a lot from systems people didn't give a second thought to. She pulled up maintenance records. Charging notices for cargo handling equipment. She looked up at Zora, surprise plain on her face, antennae, already erect with apprehension about their surroundings, stiffened farther.

"This room might have been abandoned for a long time, but I'm showing activity on the station up until a few days ago. Someone was moving stuff around from the shuttle bay to cargo storage and back at least several times a week to explain this."

Zora was trying to access the computer's memory core, which wasn't an easy task on a Cardassian station that was operating on minimal power. In fact, it wouldn't have been easy on a regular Cardassian station, they truly did respect their privacy. Every trick she knew was either blocked by their declining resources or because the Cardassians loved a good old booby trap, and after their last trip to an abandoned station, she was being extra cautious not to make that same mistake again. "Mister Tolbarr, have you..." She started to say when there was a thunder-like rumble coming from the direction of Ensign Hok. The sound started out low but was growing louder with each passing second. The way that everyone in the room turned to face the direction of the door, told Zora that she hadn't imagined it either.

"Nothing on sensors," Henry said before the question was even asked. He was aiming his tricorder in the direction of the noise.

"Dash, take your men and investigate, take Washington with you," Zora said looking at the pale human. "They may need your expertise. The four of us will stay here and continue trying to restore systems and find out what the hell has been happening here."

"All right. We'll secure the adjacent sections," Kevan nodded, waving the others to move out.

Finn looked back to the cable after the others were tasked with investigating the noise. The thunder only made her need to fix it even more urgent. She worked swiftly, soldering and twisting. Forming each piece of the cable back to the configuration it was originally intended to hold before finally replacing the shielding portion of the cable. Fortunately, Henry had already done an excellent job with the relay repair. All that was left now was getting the power to flow through it and in turn, bring life to the lights which currently hid their existence from the search crew.

Gripping the nearest console edge, Silnan looked to the Starfleet Commander for reassurance. “You were about to ask…?” He enquired, his finger tips digging right into the metal beneath them. Winding up on a ship was bad enough, but at least it was relatively safe, coming down to an old station which was now rumbling was not his glass of kanar.