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» LCARS » Newspaper: The Federation Tribune » Newspaper Archives » 2005 » January 2005 » The Alpha Centauri Mystery, part 18, by Ben Versteegt:
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The samples, now on board the Iapetus, hold everyone's attention. While trying to rescue Sandra Burke and recapture the samples, Captain Ayer and his team get ambushed and are knocked unconscious by a stun grenade. Zaag and Enbek can escape and manage to rescue Sandra from the Iapetus' sickbay. Hiding from the crew of the Iapetus and from the Romulans who also roam the ship in search of the samples, Sandra, Enbek and Zaag plan to make their way to the brig to free Ayer, Zjavick and Watters.
And now the continuation...
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| The Alpha Centauri Mystery - Part 18 - Reunions, Part II | |
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The corridors of the Iapetus were swarming with security personnel. Most of the security teams had been dispatched to keep the Romulans at bay, though, so eluding the rest of the teams was going to be a lot easier for Sandra, Zaag and Enbek. This did not mean that sneaking their way towards the Brig was going to be easy, but luckily for them, they were able to move through the various jefferies tubes without being seen. It had taken them long enough to reach the Brig deck, but finally they had arrived. According to the schematics on a computer console they had passed, they only had to traverse a few dozen metres of corridor from the jefferies tube exit to the Brig. So far it had been easy; but the trio knew that the easy part was now over.
Carefully, Sandra opened the jefferies tube access hatch, her disruptor at the ready in case there was anybody here. They had no tricorder, and no way of knowing if there were any crewmen here. It was likely that there were, patrolling the corridors around the Brig. It was Sandra's hope that whoever was out there wasn't paying attention.
The luck hadn't run out yet; the corridor seemed empty. Sandra pressed herself against a bulkhead, hoping to avoid detection, should a crewman walk around the corner now. She listened for footsteps, and heard them too. They seemed far away, so she nodded to Zaag and Enbek, who quickly got out of the jefferies tube as well and, like Sandra, tried to make themselves part of the bulkhead.
"There are at least three crewmen down that corridor," Enbek whispered, and strained to hear more. "I hear footsteps... One of the guards is coming this way."
Sandra sighed quietly. She knew it wasn't going to be difficult to take out one crewman, but the sound that accompanied such a disruptor blast would definitely warn the other two, and possibly any other brig guards as well. As the footsteps were getting closer, Sandra looked at Enbek questioningly. The Cardassian just nodded.
The footsteps became louder; they portrayed the casual walk of a man who did not know what awaited him. To be sure, Sandra didn't know what awaited that man either; Enbek seemed to have a plan of his own. She looked at Zaag, but the Ferengi shrugged. He didn't know what to do either.
There were only a few moments left before the guard came round the corner, and Sandra was still doubting what to do when he got here. Enbek seemed to have a plan, but she didn't know if he could be trusted -- for all she knew, he would use the coming situation to escape for himself and leave Sandra and Zaag to be captured. Enbek's methods of disposing of an enemy were, Sandra had observed, crude, cruel and very possibly unethical, but they were effective. If Enbek was indeed on their side, he would be a powerful ally. But Enbek could only have his way if Sandra chose to trust him. The guard had now almost reached them; this was going to be a split second decision, Sandra knew.
So she did nothing. It turned out that she would only have been in the way, for Enbek leaped at the security crewman as a wolf at its prey. Before the crewman could make a sound, he had fallen unconscious already. There wasn't even a thud when the crewman hit the floor; Enbek eased him down and dragged him away. He motioned for Zaag and Sandra to help him get the guard through the jefferies tube access hatch. Reluctantly, they complied.
The other two guards were just as easily taken care of. Enbek had shot them down even before Sandra and Zaag had closed the hatch. "All clear," the Cardassian told them and sped off towards the brig, while Zaag and Sandra looked dumbfounded at each other. Whatever it was that Enbek did for a living -- and it was bound to have something to do with illegal activities -- it was clear that he was good at it.
The brig guards inside were as surprised as their colleagues who had been patrolling the corridors. Before any of them could react, they were both incapacitated by the energy discharges that came out of Enbek's disruptor. Sandra didn't have the nerve to check whether the crewmen were still alive, or dead. Knowing Enbek, she grimly realised, the case would most likely be the latter. She tried to push away her guilt at being an accomplice to all this -- for now, she had more urgent business.
"Uncle Pete..." The soft voice of his niece reached Ayer's ear, and the Captain carefully opened his eyes. Still feeling rather drained from the stun grenade which he had been too slow to evade, he tried sitting up, but failed. The blur that was the world now focused, and to Ayer's surprise, the blurry shape took the form of Sandra sitting on the floor next to him, smiling at him. The sight of his niece made him forget how tired he was, and he forced himself to sit up.
"Sandra!" he cried, not believing his eyes for a moment. "How did you-" he frowned and sighed when he realised what must have happened. "You've been thrown into the brig here as well. And when we were hit by that stun grenade, we were thrown in here too. I am so sorry you got captured, Sandra. I would have stopped them if I could have, I swear."
Sandra chuckled and shook her head. "I'm no prisoner. Not anymore. Zaag and Enbek rescued me, and now we're helping you escape too."
Ayer's look was one of confusion. "But... Zaag and Enbek were in those quarters together with the rest of us when the stun grenade went off. How could they-"
"I had the brains to duck behind a table," Enbek said. "As for the Ferengi -- he was just plain lucky."
Zaag ignored the Cardassian's comment. "We managed to escape just before the security team got there. We proceeded to free Sandra from sickbay, and then went down here. We'd better get moving, or we may be detected."
"Just let an old man get his bearings first," Ayer replied with a slight smile and stood up with Sandra supporting him. In the other cell, Zjavick and Watters were beginning to wake up as well when Zaag called their names. However, they did not wake up fast enough.
The door opened again and Ayer and his crew once again find themselves looking into the barrel of a weapon. But it was not a Starfleet phaser this time. "Fancy seeing you here," said the Romulan Commander. "Drop your weapons. Now."
Ayer rolled his eyes and nodded at his crew to do what the Romulan demanded when he saw a full contingent of Romulan soldiers in the corridor. The weapons were subsequently picked up by a Romulan guard. Even Enbek threw his weapon away, reluctantly. There was a time for fighting, but this was not one of them. The Captain sighed. "Hello again. And what brings you here to the brig? Did you loose some prisoners, perhaps?"
"As a matter of fact," the Commander replied with a grin on his face, "I did receive word that my prisoners had escaped. I find it only fitting to find them back in a holding cell again."
Sandra did not hide her surprise. "Who are you?" she asked the Romulan. She had heard from a conversation between Donovan and Hall in sickbay that there were Romulans on the ship. She just hadn't thought that those Romulans might know Ayer and the rest of the crew.
"You must be Ayer's missing officer. I have heard much about you, Ensign." The Romulan gave a slight mock bow, while still pointing his disruptor at Ayer and his crew. In the corridor, more Romulans had gathered and were now aiming their weapons at them as well. "Allow me to introduce myself. I am Vraal, Commander in the Romulan Empire."
Ayer raised an eyebrow. "I was your prisoner during the entire trip here on your ship, and you never even once mentioned your name. And towards my officer, whom you have never met, you suddenly introduce yourself?"
Vraal cocked his head. "But Captain," he said, faking a serious expression, "it would not be proper for me to withhold my name from a woman. My honour as a gentleman is at stake. I'm surprised you even ask, Captain Ayer."
Ayer smiled slightly, not finding the Romulan's comment amusing at all. "In that case, why don't you tell Ensign Burke here everything you know about this ship, its crew, and the status of its security teams."
"I'm afraid I can't do that, Captain. Sharing with you my name is one thing -- sharing strategic information with a potential foe is quite another."
"Then what about a potential ally?" Everyone now looked in surprise at Zaag, who continued to explain. "It is obvious that you want the crystals. We also want the crystals. Why not work together? It seems to me as if we have a common enemy. A co-operation seems most profitable."
Vraal laughed loudly but stopped laughing as suddenly as he had started. "Spoken like a true Ferengi," he said. "But why should we want to work together with you? What have you to offer us?"
Zaag thought about it for a moment. "Forty percent of the crystals?" he offered tentatively but realised his bid was rejected when Vraal started to laugh again. "Forty-five? Fifty? Sixty, and that's my final offer."
Ayer took over. "We are familiar with Starfleet security protocols," he told Vraal, who stopped laughing as the Captain spoke. "We are familiar with the technology aboard this ship. We can make this a whole lot easier for you if you just let us come along."
"Do not take me for a fool, Captain Ayer." Vraal waved his disruptor at Ayer, who forced himself to stay where he was instead of taking a few steps backwards. "This is just a ploy to get yourselves near the crystals. And a very transparent one, I might add. You simply want the crystals for yourselves and want us to do the hard part of fighting our way onto the Bridge."
Ayer shrugged. "Maybe. But you have the weapons here. We don't. And since you are expecting us to try something, we don't even have the element of surprise, like last time." He grinned, pausing at the end of the sentence to make sure Vraal remembered that they did escape from the Warbird.
Watters, who was standing now, cut in. "You have nothing to fear from us. The way I see it, we are now your prisoners again, and you can benefit from the information we may have." He threw a quick glance at Ayer. "Again. Besides, if you leave us here, we may escape and make it difficult for you to get to the samples."
"It's your choice," Ayer finished. "But I don't know what you're worrying about."
Vraal shook his head. "If you think you can pull any trick whatsoever on us, you are all fools. Come with us," he finished briskly and walked out of the brig. Ayer and his crew followed. They were uncertain allies once again. Of course, this time, Ayer had no intention of working together with the Romulans. But pretending to supply them with information would get him and his crew on the Bridge in relative safety -- they would deal with the matter of the samples when they got there.
****
Lieutenant Enwabi, the Halian CEO of the Iapetus, did not particularly enjoy being surrounded by security personnel. The Captain's orders were clear, though: she carried one of the crystals with her, and that made her a potential target for the Romulans. Security guards were of course necessary on any Starship -- and particularly this one -- but that didn't mean she had to like it. She had often wondered why Section 31 had crewed this classified ship with so many security officers. They comprised the half of the crew. Section 31 was about stealth, not direct offence. Still, at a time like this, she was glad that there were this many security officers on the ship -- the Iapetus might already have fallen into the hands of the Romulans without the ship's abundance of security personnel.
It was unthinkable that the ship would fall into enemy hands. Captain Donovan -- one of the most capable operatives of Section 31 -- would destroy the ship before he'd let the Romulans take its secrets. In one way, it was comforting for Enwabi to know that the many secrets of this ship and the organisation it belonged to, would not fall into the hands of an enemy of the Federation. On the other hand, she didn't want to die.
But the situation with the Romulans on board was out of her control. She, together with Lieutenant Neba, the Trill CSO, was responsible for building an energy conversion matrix to harness the power of the crystals. If they were lucky, the could hook it up to the ship's weapons, supplying the weapons (those which were still functional, at least), with twice as much power as the entire warp core could muster. Their goal was to fire an overpowered phaser beam onto the Romulan Warbird; their already weakened shields would be no match for the destructive power of the enhanced phaser beam.
"Nearly finished?" Neba asked her.
Enwabi nodded. "Almost." Building the contraption hadn't been a problem; construction on it had started even before the Romulans boarded the ship. After a few finishing touches, the CEO placed the crystal gently into the slot of the machine. There was an audible 'click' and all readings showed that the crystal was now connected to the machine. "There, that should do it." Enwabi tapped one of the controls on the machine, and the crystal suddenly started to hum slightly. "We've got power."
"Great. Now all we need to do is hook it up to the ship's weapons," Neba replied. "The Captain will be pleased."
"I trust he will," Enwabi said, "but only if we are successful in connecting this matrix directly to the weapons." Her eyes narrowed as she stared at the bulkhead -- but she saw no bulkhead; she saw a future where the Federation would have superior weaponry and would be able to fence off any threat that came to it. "Wouldn't it be great," she said to Neba, "if this technology proves to work? Starfleet would have the most powerful weapons in the entire galaxy."
"That's why we stole the technology in the first place," answered Neba. "We couldn't afford to risk the crystals falling into the wrong hands." She shrugged. "It is regrettable that we had to attack another Federation Starship to get the technology, but since our intelligence reported Romulan activity in this sector... Well, let's just say I agree with the Captain's decision."
Enwabi nodded. "Me too. This technology is too powerful to be handled through normal Federation channels. It needs to be developed in utter secrecy. No one else should know about it."
"Too late for that," sighed Neba. "The Romulans must have as good an intelligence service as we do." She paused and a rare hint of a smile appeared on her face. "Let's just blow that Warbird out there to whatever the Romulan word is for Hell, and get it over with."
The trip to the weapons control room was -- thankfully -- uneventful. It was a strange experience, though, having to scout for enemies in each corridor; the same corridors they had walked through hundreds of times before. Now, the situation was different; there were enemies on board and there could be a Romulan behind every bulkhead. Fortunately, the Romulans seemed to be kept busy on another deck, for the corridors were empty. Upon arrival in the weapons control room, Enwabi and Neba immediately walked towards the manual phaser controls and hooked up the energy conversion matrix with the crystal in it. It attached itself to the console's power input device more easily than either of the two officers had thought.
It was clear from the status displays that a lot of power was now running through the phaser banks, but they appeared to be able to handle it. "Incredible..." Enwabi said softly. "Phaser power output is now at 438 percent and holding."
A faint glimmer appeared in Neba's eyes. "That'll knock those Romulans out for sure." She sat down at the console and began to input commands into the system. "I'm activating the targeting scanners. Targeting their main power core."
Enwabi just smiled and tapped her comm badge. "Enwabi to Captain Donovan."
=/\= Yes? =/\= came the gruff voice of the Captain.
"We have hooked up the energy conversion matrix to the phaser arrays. I am happy to report that the crystal is now powering the phasers: phaser power output is not at 438 percent, sir," Enwabi reported. "We have presently targeted the Romulan's main power core and are waiting for your order, Captain."
=/\= Excellent. =/\= Enwabi thought he heard a chuckle in the man's voice. =/\= Then, by all means... Fire! =/\=
Enwabi nodded at Neba who couldn't resist to prolong the moment of anticipation with a sly smile. With force, she pressed her finger on the button that would discharge the phaser array.
In space, one of the functioning phaser arrays of the Iapetus began to glow. A large spot of phased energy, more than four times more powerful than before, lit up until it was so bright that the surrounding hull of the ship shone as well, reflecting the bright light that was the start of a phaser discharge. The light moved along the length of the phaser array, growing brighter as it moved. It had soon reached an intensity so strong, that anyone who looked into it would be blinded by the light.
And then the phaser discharged. A brilliant beam of light took off from the phaser array, with the Romulan Warbird as its goal. Within moments, the Romulan ship was hit. Its shields -- what was left of them -- couldn't cope with the force of the phaser beam, and collapsed on impact. The beam, hardly diminished in its strength, found its next target immediately; it obliterated the lower decks of the Warbird before sending out power surges throughout the Romulan ship which resulted in numerous explosions on the outside and the inside of the vessel. When the beam finally died out, it had managed to destroy most of the lower sections of the Warbird, and a lot of critical systems.
But at a price. The beam had just fired, when Enwabi noticed that all this power was simply too much for the phaser array to handle. She could barely jump away -- and take Neba with her -- before their console exploded, and many others went up in flames as well. The phaser array, not designed to handle this much power at once, got destroyed in a series of explosions.
Enwabi looked up, but immediately wished she hadn't. The movement only served to remind her of the burns that now plagued her face and the rest of her body. Neba, she saw, was unconscious. "Medical team to the Weapons Control Room!" she shouted into her comm badge. "And get the fire suppression system working!" she yelled at the other crewmen in the room.
=/\= Enwabi, answer me! =/\= The CEO didn't know whether Donovan's apparent genuine concern was for her and Neba, or for the mission, but that didn't matter at the moment.
"I think we did it, sir!" Enwabi cried, trying to muster all her strength to get up. She finally did, and managed to walk to a relatively undamaged console. The burns felt like being stung by thousands of needles when she moved, but she had to ignore that for now; the Captain wanted a more precise status report. Despite the pain, she smiled when she accessed the newest readings. "We succeeded, Captain. We blew out the phaser array while doing so, but we did it. The Romulan ship has lost all power, and is trying to switch to backups. Their weapon systems have been destroyed, their propulsion systems badly damaged and their four lower decks have been wiped away. They're no threat to us anymore, sir, but maybe our tactical officer-"
=/\= Hall's dead, =/\= Donovan cut her off abruptly, and Enwabi did everything not to gasp or cry. She was a Starfleet officer, not to mention a trained operative of Section 31, but still it was difficult not to be shocked at the sudden death of a fellow officer. =/\= How's the crystal? =/\= the Captain continued.
Enwabi looked at the place where the energy conversion matrix had stood with the crystal in it. The device was now located several metres away, thrown back by the force of the explosion. It was in shambles. "The conversion matrix is ruined, sir," she told her Captain.
=/\= Damnit, Lieutenant, I asked about the crystal, not the bloody conversion matrix! =/\=
The Lieutenant nodded briskly (even though the Captain couldn't see her) and walked towards the destroyed piece of equipment to see if she could find the crystal. She could -- but it didn't look good. "The crystal is fractured, sir," she said after a careful but quick inspection. "Any radiation waves it sends out now will be totally out of sync with each other. It's useless."
=/\= Damn. Very well, Lieutenant. Are you hurt? =/\=
"I am, sir," she said as if it were nothing, but even as she said it, she felt as if her face was on fire. "Lieutenant Neba and I have suffered severe burns. Neba's unconscious. Medical teams should arrive shortly."
=/\= Good, =/\= Donovan replied. =/\= We'll have an emergency meeting here in Sickbay. Get here as quickly as you can, Lieutenant. We have much to discuss. =/\=
"Aye sir," replied Enwabi. "And sir," she said before Donovan had the chance to close the channel, "we sure eradicated those Romulan bastards, didn't we?"
Now she was sure she heard a chuckle. =/\= We sure did, Lieutenant, we sure did. Donovan out. =/\=
****
Meanwhile, the Romulan bastards had taken the Bridge, swiftly and silently.
Together with Ayer's team, they had surprised the Bridge crew. The Bridge was theirs... And so were the samples. Originally, Vraal had planned on disposing of Ayer and his team the very moment they had secured the Bridge, but something had come up; he had lost contact with his ship. It didn't take long before he found out that his ship had been dealt with. Until communications were restored with whatever was left of his ship, he couldn't ask for a beam-out. Chances were that the transporters were also off-line, and even if they weren't, the crew of the Iapetus had set up a transporter scattering field -- Vraal would have to go back to the beam-in point for any beam-out to take place.
He was too busy thinking about what to do, that he didn't notice until it was too late that a few of his soldiers lay unconscious on the ground, next to the dead Starfleet officers. When he looked up, he suddenly felt the cold touch of a disruptor pistol against his temple, and the firm grasp of Ayer's arm around his neck. "Put down your weapons," Ayer shouted to the other Romulans, "or he dies." He pressed the disruptor harder against Vraal's temple to prove his point.
Ayer smiled and noticed that Zaag, Enbek, Sandra, Watters and Zjavick were already aiming their newly acquired disruptors and phasers onto the other Romulans. "Looks like you're the prisoner here," he told Vraal.
What he didn't see was the Romulan guard sneaking out of the conference room towards him, ready to hit him with a large and blunt object -- the sample container.
To Be Continued
by Ben Versteegt.
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