TRIBUNAL Part 10 - The Agony Of Defeat

Posted on Mon Jun 17th, 2019 @ 12:35pm by Captain Enalia Telvan & Lieutenant Mona Gonadie & Kodria Mizu & Lieutenant Samuel Clemens XV & Lieutenant JG Thav Th'ovohrot & Ensign Fiona O'Dell & Ensign Briaar Gavarus & Petty Officer 2nd Class 'Big Ethel' Jablonski
Edited on on Mon Jul 1st, 2019 @ 11:15am

Mission: Fractured Fairy Tales
Location: HMS Bloody Rose, Deck 1, The Bridge
Timeline: 2396, Tribunal Part 10
Tags: Areanra, Bloody Rose, Thunderchicken, Dr. Mudd, Agonizers

Eyeing the bionic bounder with contempt, the Queen Regent of the Artan family empire sneered. “Doctor Mudd, there are intruders on my bridge. Should I perhaps panic, as they are casually firing ordinance, ruining my command chair and calling me names?”

The Terran scientist stepped in next to his captain, placing his hands on either side of his temples. “It doesn’t sound like something to lose your head over, ma’am.”

With that said, he casually removed his head, whereupon his headless body tossed it at Clemens, who instinctively caught it as the goateed head in his hands quipped, “If I was rich, I’d be sipping kippers on a beach!”

Which was when his cybernetics short-circuited, locking him up even as his biological parts were struck by crippling agony, as if every nerve ending in his body were firing at once, screaming in urgent, abject agony. As the Intel chief grimaced and struggled not to scream, Jablonski made to smack the head out of his hands, only to be struck by the same effect. Despite her massive size and musculature- or perhaps because of it- the peerless petty officer was driven to a knee as she gritted her teeth and fought to control her body, to finish off the robotic head which was still agonizing both of them as a mocking chuckle came from the command chair. But like Clemens, she could not move as her muscles refused to respond, and they both found themselves helpless in enemy territory.

“You think I wouldn't have prepared for this? You think I wouldn’t have known you’d try to turn the tables after I presented such a tempting target as showing you my bridge? Please.” As the walker mech turned the rather large hand cannon to point it at the pirate queen’s head, she laughed. “By all means, fire away. But you should know that there’s a hostage involved in this crisis. After all, you Starfleet types are all about the preservation of life, aren’t you? So I wonder what you plan to do about this little hostage… show them, Doctor Mudd.”

The headless android body produced a PaDD from behind its back and held it out before him to show another Doctor Mudd, who was holding a screaming baby. A baby with raven black hair, and delicate spot patterns along its temples.

“I was thinking of naming her Ailane… so she’ll be the reverse of everything her mother ever was,” the pirate queen asked, her voice filled with silky menace. “Which is a much nicer name than ‘hostage’ or ‘sacrifice for the greater good’. What do you think, Enalia?”

Transmitting her sensor feed from the Thunderchicken to the Hera, the footage was quickly routed through to Captain Telvan.

Back on the bridge of the Hera and watching the feed, Enalia stood in shock. The resemblance was definitely there, though how her mother got a DNA sample was beyond her. She'd been beyond careful. Either way, whether this child was related to her or not currently did not matter. It was a hostage and from the look of the room around the feed, she knew just where on the ship they were.

Sitting back down, the spotted captain's face was hard as she gripped the arms of the center chair. "They're in auxiliary control. Lock tractors on the Bloody Rose. Have the Manticore unload those EMP warheads when ready. Transporters at the ready. I want Arenara and Mudd in the brig. Now."

On the shattered bridge of the bloody Rose, Thav was conflicted. He was keeping his rifle locked on the pirate queen, but also keeping his eye on his team. Every inch of him wanted to shoot her and go to help his team, but he couldn't. As his helmet read the captain’s instructions, he switched his rifle to fire five of the transporter trackers into the pirate queen. The moment the shields were down, she'd be over to the Hera's brig in a heartbeat.

Clemens had gone through the Intel training courses, intended to provide whatever hardening possible to stave off some of the more brutal interrogation techniques available to his home universe's denizens, but no anti-interrogation/torture technique can stand to a technology specifically-devised to create pure, chaotic, unending pain, that never stops, never does physical damage to the body (after all, can't have the punished unable to work after a booth session, can we?), and is so without pattern that getting used to it is literally impossible.

Even unconsciousness will not stop Agonizer pain- it shares that property with human migraines, and specialists who have worked to understand the technology have suspicions that it may have derived from the study of them.

Regardless of its origins, once it hit him, the fire spread from his hands to the rest of his body like the crawling and biting of fire ants, which also were made of acid, could make him smell burning and rotting flesh, the smell of hospitals and nursing homes, and hear the screams of the damned, along with fingernails down corrugated tin, and anything else he'd ever felt viscerally-repulsed-by.

Later, while trying to sort it all out, Sam would develop a theory that the agonizer accessed all the personally-disturbing memories he had, and distilled them down into the worst sensory medley possible, crafted just for him.

Standing above them all on the bridge, the Thunderchicken seemed to almost bristle. “Alreet.. alreet, ya win, ye blackguard,” the pearlescent black mech said aloud, in the tinny and chirpy voice that very much did not fit the fearsome countenance it presented. “I’ll evacuate the bridge and take me crew wi’me.”

Stepping toward the gaping hole in the bridge that appeared for all intents and purposes to be open to space, the whirring mech motioned to the Security team. “We’ve been ordered ta stand down,” the pixie pilot explained as the orders came across her HUD screen, along with detailed schematics. “C’mon ye four, ‘tis time for us ta piss off. Orders are ta leave the L-T and petty officer on the bridge. She’s got hostages, so we’re ta withdraw.”

Thav scowled but followed his orders. Slowly backing up he didn't take his rifle off of the bandit queen until he was clear and out of the bridge.

While the security officers were hesitant to leave their fellows behind, orders were orders. Thus they dutifully attached themselves to the mech, even as messages came across the HUD of Jablonski’s suit and Clemens' internal systems.

CDRPARIS: Stand by and wait for your moment.

Not that they could read that while their eyeballs were afire and their brains were trying to explode out of their skulls and their innards had seized to prevent them from soiling themselves as every muscle tried to tear itself off the bones that felt like they were filled in their marrow with lava...

Flipping a rather skillful robotic bird to the Queen in the rather crumpled throne, the Thunderchicken retreated to the gaping hole in the aft of the bridge from which she had made her entrance, and the variable fighter vanished from sight, skimming out across the broad saucer section of the Miranda class warship under impulse speed.

“Now I wonder why she left you two behind…?” Arenara mused as she watched the two Starfleet personnel writhing in agony on her bridge. “She must have a reason… “

As she mused, the sadistic queen dispassionately viewed the agonized individuals as one might look at specimens on a petri dish. She might have had more musings, more ponderings on the nature of just what sort of strategy her daughter was playing at. But that was all she managed to get out before a shudder wracked the starship.

In stellar combat, kinetic weapons could be repelled by the deflector- but not at point-blank range with a coordinated strike from the Thunderchicken and the Hera's best security team. With detailed schematics available, the observation deck that served as the forward viewscreen of the auxiliary control center on Deck 9 was breached. The attack was quick and efficient, firing not energy weapons, but plasma grenades in a simultaneous coordinated attack with the Security team still hanging off of the mech's legs. They knew what to do and they were moving in synch. After all, sealed systems made for closed comms unless you chose to broadcast. And while life didn’t come with a HUD, the EVA armor most certainly did.

With professional precision, the security officers moved in through the opening, sealing it behind them with emergency foam. They were staged for a storm and rescue of the hostage if necessary, and all sensors were seeing Mudd, who appeared biological to their scanners, as did the rather unhappy newborn baby, who was very unhappy indeed.

“What the bloody hell is it now?” the dark-haired pirate queen rolled her eyes from the bridge, hearing the chaos of her ship being torn into from below.

The variable fighter mech had moved around to a position where, rather than pound the hull with plasma, she magnetically affixed herself in position, and utilized her sensors to corroborate the data sent to her from the Hera. This enabled her to target the exact conduit junction needed, and execute a computer-guided surgical strike using the vehicle's phaser cannon on the main plasma conduits from Engineering. Which in turn began a rather exciting and energetic plasma fire on Deck 8.

Not that such a vulnerability was a well-known fact about such starships. Not if you knew precisely where the vulnerable location was on the starship. In which case one would have be an expert on the class, and knew just where to strike. To breach the power conduits which fed the auxiliary control panels, to be precise. Which was exactly what Enalia Telven, owner of a similar vessel, was considered- an expert.

“You know, I have had enough of you people. Havren!” The computer chirruped in recognition, and she laid out her command. “Start the self-destruct countdown, twenty seconds!” the coldly furious betrayer of her family and of her fleet declared as two of her enemies struggled and writhed, which didn’t even bring her any pleasure. “I’ll not rot in some brig while my idiotically naive daughter struts like some Starfleet thug before me. I’d sooner burn in hell!

Which was when the lights on the bridge flickered, then suddenly the emergency power came on. Because ship’s power had been disrupted by the machinations of the midget of mayhem. While battery power kept the lights and many of the systems operating, that most definitely meant that the shields were down.

As the lights went down, the Security team burst through the door, with Thav in firing position. The panicked Mudd turned in horror, looked, and held up the squalling infant as a human shield. Tags struck the Terran scientist in the elbow, the groin and kneecap, as the Master-At Arms was steady, and aim was true. For his part, Mudd grunted as he struggled to remain upright. At the signal from the Master-At Arms, both the scientist and the hostage were beamed aboard the Hera to a cell in the brig.

In the cell in the brig, Doctor Davo Mudd looked around wildly, then rolled his eyes in exasperation. Bringing the infant, who had ceased crying when transported, up to eye level, he smiled. “Well, at least I’ve still got you, my chubby little hostage! Gootchie goo?"

Which was when the giggling infant disappeared in a twinkling of transporter lights, and Mudd clawed at the empty air where his trump card had just been, raging at the unfairness of it all. “I used to be somebody, you know! A scientist, an artist, a genius appreciated for his work! And now look at me... stuck playing footstool for a bloody pirate. There’s irony in this, I’m so very certain...”

With that, Mudd dropped his ass onto a bench in the brig to mope. Sooner or later someone would come along, and open the door. And therein lay opportunity, and the chance to make a deal. After all, Doctor Mudd knew all sorts of interesting facts that were often the sort of things people wanted to know. This wasn’t his first jail cell, and it likely wouldn’t be his last. But he’d gotten out of them all. After all, he was an escape artist...

Back on the bridge of the Bloody Rose, the angry Artan pirate queen snarled as she looked about wildly. Panic was a new look for her, and it was one she hadn’t known in a very long time. At the moment she wasn’t finding it a welcome state of mind.

“No! No no no no no! This cannot be happening! I will not allow it!” Vainly she struggled against her own ostentatious captain’s throne, which had been warped and bent around her in a gesture she’d thought practically comical until she was alone on her bridge, cut off from her crew and with only a headless Muddbot to help her. And without its head, the bot wasn’t even that much use.

There were so many contingencies she could activate, if only she could move. Of course, with half the panels smashed, that truly did limit her options, she realized. Sighing to herself, she realized this game was lost. Time to fake her own death and build anew. “I’m done. Beam me to my escape craft, Hav-”

Which was the exact moment when the EMP warhead assault from the Manticore struck, frying electronic systems, circuits, and demolishing the majority of the ship’s computer systems. And suddenly, the Agonizer built into the Mudd robot head was no longer functional, as the delicate circuitry of the complex, yet unshielded android fried, along with nearly every system on the ship. If not for the safety feature of an immediate shutdown of the warp core, it would have blown them all to space dust.

The bionic systems of Lieutenant Samuel Clemens the 15th, however, were EMP hardened. Which meant that he could once more unlock his wondrous cybernetic limbs, while his mind and body cleared of the effects of the agony. Though for both officers, it was an experience that would most certainly make rather strong memories and opinions about such technologies from that point on. An Agonizer experience did one of two things for a person- either it made them want to put their enemies in one, or it made them swear to never let another living being experience such a thing.

The order had been given to ‘wait for his moment’, and given that the pirate queen hadn’t beamed out just yet, this appeared to be it.

After confirming that Jablonski appeared to be functional, via his sensors, he decided to address the issue at hand, having gotten an exact reading on exactly how much atmosphere was available, and how long the forcefield would hold.

Sam decided that he really didn't give a goddamn about learning anything from the head in his hands.

"NIAGARA FALLS!!!" he shouted, suddenly.

Slowly, he turned. Step by step. Inch by inch. He walked up to her. He smashed the Muddbot's head against her chair. He hit him, he bonked him, he bopped him, he socked him, and he mashed his face on the last flat surface on the chair. And then, he knocked it across the room, with a mighty backhand, embedding it into the Engineering console, shattering it and the panel into tiny fragments.

Sam locked eyes with the former Queen. "Right now, I don't care about orders, good or evil, right or wrong. Madame, I must say, you're an evil bitch, and I daresay yoah dangerous to every lifeform around you. You have to be stopped, because you Won't. Stop. On. Your. Own."

He took a step forward, and his right arm shot out like lightning, a finger extended, with a spinning drill bit extended, a fraction of an inch from her pale face, and grinned at her, like a loon.

“Don’t… don’t do it… Lieutenant…” Jablonski gasped, voice muffled inside her helmet with no comms, as her EVA armor had been fried as well. From her knees, she reached feebly for him, still trying to catch her breath and recover motor function. It seemed the more in tune with your physicality, the better the Agonizer worked on your physique. As a bodybuilder, nutritionist and all-around Amazon, it had laid ‘Big Ethel’ quite low. Now she lacked the strength to rise, to stop the Chief Spook from ending the threat to galactic society.

"You wouldn't DARE," the pirate queen hissed, unflinching.

The bit stopped and retracted, and he poked her forehead, bouncing it back against her headrest.

"Boop!"

"Clemens to Captain Telvan. We have the package, and it's wrapped for the freezer," he said, still grinning, as he winked at the prisoner.

There was no response, save for a shimmering of a transporter effect, as the deposed Pirate queen spat at Sam… spittle which would land on the floor of the brig of the USS Hera, in a cell specially prepared for the prisoner. Images adorned the walls- some familiar, like her deceased husband and daughter. A Starfleet ensign, and many more. Rolling her eyes, she sneered at the wall of victims that had been prepared for her. Unrepentant to the end, this simply firmed her resolve. Her smug daughter would get her comeuppance yet, even if she had the upper hand now. Arenara would simply bide her time for her revenge.

Clemens noted the headless android, and realized that it might still have functions that could be useful. Unfortunately, it was impossible to know exactly whom it would be useful to, at the moment. He fired off a few transport tags, encoded with a cyber-hazard warning, and signaled the Hera's transporter ops group to sequester it until he could get a better look at it.

Back on deck 9 of the Bloody Rose, while the EMPs incapacitated the armor of the security officers, all of them would have sufficient air to survive a few moments, and the power assist systems would kick back in once the hardened power backup rebooted the systems. And the well-trained experts knew to be prepared when the pulse hit. But after a brief moment, they were back up and in action again, taking the pirate ship corridor by corridor. The dispirited pirates, who served out of fear rather than dedication, offered only token resistance.

The Bloody Rose, scourge of the spaceways, had been crippled and captured- with injuries, but without the loss of a single life. A feat most would have deemed impossible.

But then, most weren’t Captain Enalia Telvan, who commanded the crew of the USS Hera.