The olde switcheroo

Posted on Sun May 22nd, 2022 @ 7:45am by Lieutenant Commander P’rel M.D & Lieutenant Commander Finnley Keating VII

Mission: Ares Ascending
Location: Athena & Rondac Facilities
Timeline: Immediately prior to battle commencing.
1904 words - 3.8 OF Standard Post Measure

Having returned to the ship with Doctor Ki and Captain Kane, P'rel had gone straight to the intelligence suite to work up the data they had gathered. The facility had grown in size and was far more industrialised than when she had been there during the war; there was clearly a large scale operation going on now, and not simply the maintenance of Vorta clones and the seeding of Jem'Hadar hatchery pods. This was much bigger; bigger even than she and Kane had previously mused. A shrill beep on a console to her right broke her from her thoughts, and she scooted her work stool over to the display; the other teams were being recalled and the ship had gone to heightened alert. Two names flashed red from the team manifest, neither Lieutenant Keating nor Silnan had returned.

Isolating the narrowband scanners, P'rel directed a scanning beam across the station and came up with nothing; no Keating and no Silnan. It was her fault the young man, practically a boy by Vulcan standards, was there in the first place. She was taken back to the first moment she saw him; a tiny dusty face whose eyes were being shielded from the brightness by a tiny dusty hand. The debris lifted from him, P'rel had cradled the young child and taken him to safety, during the Cardassian relief efforts in the days leading up to the Treaty of Bajor and beyond. She couldn't let him disappear now, not for her sake. Moving over to the far wall, her access code dropped open a long rectangular wall casing, and from it she removed a hand phaser, tricorder and a rifle. Ensuring everything was clipped and strapped where it was supposed to be, the Vulcan - acting more as a mother - coded in a reroute command for a transport and the suite shimmered into the recently familiar setting of the orbital station.

Equipping the rifle and activating the light beam, she visually scanned her surroundings. Nothing out of the ordinary. She walked forward, not sure what she would find, but certain she wouldn't leave until she had Silnan.

Finn had been dropped off into a shielded section of the station. Her companions had been told to make it look like she had been captured and then managed to escape and they had done a good job of it. Cuts and bruises lined her rib cage and arms, evidence of a struggle to break free from her 'captors' and her head throbbed after being hit with the same metal bar that the real Keating had been struck with. The real Keating, the words stuck with her for a moment. What made the other Keating real and not her? She was just as real as the other. Indistinguishable in fact. Besides that, the 'real' Finn was disobeying Starfleet, the whole ship was really, according to what she had been told.

Gritting her teeth, Finn continued to crawl through the jefferies tube, determined to find the Athena's crew and get on board the ship. She had a mission to fulfill. One that had been handed to her from the upper echelons of Starfleet. Maybe if she did well enough, they would let her take the real Finn's place. Especially considering her counterpart was a traitor. It wasn't a thought that stayed long as the station lurched, sending her crashing into the wall. Oh no, Finn let out an exasperated sigh as she realized someone was firing on the station. If she was to be successful, she needed to hurry.

Knocked slightly to her left, P'rel steadied herself with a grasping hand on a piece of piping, keeping the pistol grip and firing stud firmly in her right hand. Captain Kane had obviously opened fire on the station, and knowing the awesome power of the Prometheus Class Starship, she knew that the old war-era base didn't have all that long left. Another stronger jolt sent her sprawling forwards, the rifle's light beam flashing across skin and a Starfleet uniform in a dark recess as it clattered to the floor. Something behind her overloaded, briefly lighting the dark room and revealing one of her missing colleagues. Running over, she scooped up the rifle and came to a barely controlled landing in front of the engineer as another barrage of weapons slammed into the station. "Lieutenant Keating!" she called above the groaning noise of the station, it was clearly coming apart and had by now probably been knocked of it's orbit and had Rondac's gravity field pulling on it.

Finn had finally crawled out of the jefferies tube and managed to find herself in the pitch black room just before P'Rel stumbled upon her presence. "P'Rel?" She inquired. Though the voice was recognizable, it was hard to be sure with all of the commotion. "I was..." Finn started and stopped. Catching her breath and keeping the room from spinning at the same time made talking a more difficult task. "Captured....but broke free. I think...we're in a shielded section. We...need to head...towards the control room." The clone spun her tale and waited, hoping that there would be no questions.

The commotion had descended into chaos. Infrequent rocking largely absorbed by shields had descended into weapons fire crashing directly into the hull of the base, causing huge power overloads and discharges across the structure. Ignoring the Lieutenant's state, she could after all still move herself, P'rel returned her attention to the reason she'd come to the station in the first place. "Where is?" she raised a hand to feebly shield them from a support brace that fell near to them though thankfully missed their position; "Where is Tolbarr?" she demanded urgently. Awaiting an answer she begun to drag Keating up to at least a semi-standing position, made much harder by the floor occasionally rocking violently now.

"Tolbarr?" Finn replied innocently. "I haven't...seen him. He's not...he's not on the ship? If they captured him...he'll be in...the shielded section." She lied, knowing no one had been left there. "Through that jefferies tube," Finn pointed to the access hatch where she had emerged from. "About...about two hundred meters in...take..." she paused, hands on her knees as she stood feigning as if she was trying to remember how to get there when in reality it didn't matter. "A left. There you'll find a hatch...opens to something like a brig. That's where they...held me. He must be somewhere around there...I can go back...with you and help...find him." Although it was exactly the opposite of what she wanted to do, it was the response the real Keating would've given, and knowing what she did of P'Rel, she wouldn't have wanted to keep Finn around to slow her down anyway.

Looking at Keating, she was obviously able to move by herself but just barely. She certainly wasn't up to a quick dash through maintenance crawlways to rescue the young Cardassian. "True to form Lieutenant -" she ducked instinctively as a terrible crack reverberated through the air and the deckplate with equal ferocity -"you'd be far more a hindrance than a help, I suggest you beam back to Athena." She looked down the tube Keating had pointed to, slinging the rifle strap back over her head and stowing it around her back. "I'll go.".

Finn nodded. "Good luck," she replied before stumbling forward towards an unshielded section of the station. Just past the door, Finn made the call to return to the Athena. The plan is working, was the only thought in her mind as the shimmering stream surrounded her and she reappeared on a transporter pad seconds later.

Frowning slightly, and taking a moment to look at Keating, something was off; P'rel had just outright insulted her - as was their way - and Keating hadn't so much as blinked. Something within her, a strange instinct, fought to tell her that something was very wrong, but the Vulcan woman pushed it aside in favour of the more urgent matters at hand. Tapping Keating's comm badge three times to activate the emergency transponder, P'rel stood back as the Lieutenant disappeared.

Knowing that under the awesome power of the Athena, the station had barely moments, she turned quickly and dived through the maintenance hatch and through the crawlway. Gaining her footing on the way out of the small space, she lost it as another volley bucked the station hard. A quick look around, she was definitely not in a brig. "Sil?" she called out as loudly as she could, though she was struggling to hear her own voice over the shuddering and groaning of the station coming apart around her. A sharp explosion to her right caused her to stumble left, and a fire now raged a few metres from her. She squinted through the dark mess of smoke, debris and an already poorly lit room. She had definitely followed Keating's directions, but why would she send P'rel down here for nothing...

"Sil?" she called again, feeling her way out of the small maintenance room and into a large chamber beyond. Perhaps this room would be the brig that the Lieutenant referred to. The instinct in the pit of her stomach knotted hard. The room was another cavernous space filled with bio tubes. She quickly whipped out her tricorder to see if she could scan for Silnan, nothing - literally nothing at all; the tricorder was behaving as it was being dampened. It wasn't exactly unusual for Cardassians, nor the Dominion for that matter, to employ sophisticated dampening fields, however. "Sil! Please!" she begged the chamber, holding on to the doorway as the shaking became so tremendous it was as if she was being rattled apart. There was nothing. She tapped her own badge three times, and realised the futility as the dampening field shut off any signal she tried to get off. Turning around, she was met only with a more intense fire than before, now covering the hatch she had come through.

There was no way off. This was the end. With Silnan not here, he was somewhere else entirely - and not being on a station about to be blown apart had to be better. She was at least at peace that he was probably safe.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, preparing for the final blast which would blow her apart instantly. Her momentary tranquility was shattered by a shrill alarm and computerised male voice; "Evacuation Protocols Engaged. Standby for transport". She opened her eyes, and saw a faintly gold glow sweep through from the inside of the tubes in this chamber, a fraction of a second before the room disappeared into a gold shimmer, and a similar room materialised around her. This room was brighter, however, and clean; distinctly free of the chaos of the battle. It wasn't calm, however; there was an urgent klaxon sounding and the same male voice "Tactical Alert. Report to Tactical Stations. Tactical Alert."

Realising she was exposed, and hearing a flurry of unfamiliar voices behind her, P'rel dived quickly in between a row of bio tubes. Something loosely was knocking from the inside of the tube, as if a clone as floating freely in there and bumping up against the inside.

Where the hell was this place....?