Savoring the Past

Posted on Tue Jul 4th, 2017 @ 8:30pm by Captain Enalia Telvan & Lieutenant Mona Gonadie & Petty Officer 2nd Class Ila Dedjoy & Alden Engstrom XIII & Telvan & Maica III 47 & Aewia Larani & Commander Mal Xustos & Lieutenant Commander Eneas Clio & Lieutenant Commander Thex sh'Zoarhi & Lieutenant Commander T'Pral Jordan & Lieutenant Misty Stormes & Warrant Officer Cato West & Akira Zhuri & Ensign Shavni & Chief Warrant Officer Daytona Ral & Staff Warrant Officer Nexi
Edited on on Tue Jul 4th, 2017 @ 8:45pm

Mission: Death is in the Details
Location: In orbit over Selen VI Orion Starport
Timeline: 2160

Enalia had awoken with a pair of massive hangovers and had literally thrown up on Akira as she administered a double dose of something in a hypo to her after the slingshot. They were here though. Selen VI. The planet itself was a small red planet and the spaceport was big enough to be easily visible from space even from the distance they were at to avoid traffic and still beam to the surface. It was surprising how close the secretive BEPI 113 system was to it at least - their escape vector would be quick.

Sheepishly glancing over at Akira, Enalia wondered how she could make it up to her when an alarm sounded. "That's it. Signal the transporter teams. We have their sensor rotations locked in and can avoid detection now so they can leave when ready. We'll be up here waiting on their reports.

"All team leaders report ready status," Mal said. "That includes you Miss Nexi."

Akira remained by Enalia for a moment, stunned frozen. "This cannot possibly be hygienic," she finally said, then turned with a shudder to find a washroom. She couldn't just rematerialize herself, she would leave an awful mess behind!

Being singled out, Nexi answered the call first. "My team is ready and standing by for transport," she reported from the transporter room where she, Cato, Stormes, and R'Tor were appropriately dressed and awaiting transport.

T'Pral reported next. "This is Lieutenant T'Pral. my team and I are ready for transport."

Mal gave Clio an extra moment to chime in before speaking. She was too adult and too professional to take it personally if he had to single her out for something, but he didn't want to push his luck. He liked Clio and enjoyed spending time with her. Unfortunately, he couldn't wait any longer.

"Commander Enaes," he said, as pleasantly as possible. "Please report your team's status."

"Sorry, sir. We're ready." Truth be told, Clio hadn't really been paying attention to the call to report in. She'd been preoccupied with ensuring everyone's costumes and tech were era-appropriate and as comfortable as possible. But Mal was right about her not taking it personally. In fact, her tone was positively cheerful.

Enalia then pressed a few controls on her chair. Ensign Gonadie, please confirm status of our period specific shuttle, the IKS Loojacks."

"Aye Captain," She replied as she checked some internal sensors as well as logs and reports. "She's confirmed to be ready to go on a moment's notice, Captain. The flight controls are so simple she'll be easy to fly, but just as easy to crash as there's very little resembling computer guidance in her."

"For emergency use only then. Let's hope we can return her to the museum without any added runtime then." Enalia added.

Then the current operations officer filling in for Akira as she cleaned up cleared his throat. "Captain, transporter rooms three, four, and nine report that the teams are all on the surface below and we're receiving telemetry. No signs of detection by the Orion duotronic security grid."

Enalia leaned back in her chair and pretended not to be stressed. "Excellent. now we wait."

------------------
Some time later
------------------

Brig
----
The Enalia demon was tired of waiting. She could sense the presense that summoned her to this universe and she wanted revenge. reaching into the wall of the brig, she twisted. Immediately the power grid was fried and the entire brig's systems were dead. The security on duty were fast, but Telvan was faster as she leapt across the room and ripped their throats out with her bare hands. Standing over them, she watched as one of them barely managed to hit the alarm with his last dying breath, sending the ship into a special red alert and locking the ship down. That was fine with her. She knew everything about this ship she needed to know anyway. She just needed to make a quick stop by the main armory...

Bridge
-------

Enalia was almost bored looking over the sensor readings when the red alert went off and the message popped up on her terminal saying that her demon-verse selve had chosen now to escape. "Holy shit..." she muttered to herself before issuing orders. "Computer, lock down all systems I have access to and transfer all command codes to Commander Mal Xustos immediately. Authorization Enalia echo niner niner one one seven."

"Transfer confirmed. Lockdown complete." Came the computer's reply.

Enalia then turned to Mal. "My demon-verse clone just escaped. Official command will need to lie with you until we can recapture her but if it's okay with you I'd like to still fire off the commands."

"Of course, Captain," Mal replied.

Enalia then steeled herself to command a starship not only blindly but in a manner befitting that of someone of the era she was in. She couldn't help but grin wryly. "Go to red alert stage three, internal infiltration. Security teams, do sweeps of every junction and Jeffries tube access. Environmental, ready the anesthezine system, just in case we can seal her in somewhere. All crewmembers are to be armed. Standing orders are to terminate on sight. Activate all security defense systems." As she spoke, her orders were carried out by the crew a bit slower than normal as they had to punch their access in to get past every lockout, but it was still efficient. The most notable difference though, were the two phaser turrets that popped out of the ceiling to either side of the viewscreen and rotated for a moment, looking for targets.

Elsewhere on the ship
------------------------
Meanwhile, the demonverse version of Enalia didn't need codes or things like that. She just reached into jeffries tube doors and twisted, destroying shield emitters and doors alike, allowing her to pass freely on a direct path to where she knew she'd find the explosives she'd need to erase that presence and hers from this existence.

Soon she was there. The main armory. As she climbed out of the tubes, she reached into the main EPS systems with her hair and twisted, sending cascading energy overloads across the deck. The resulting catastrophic failure electrocuted several of the security guards and blew open the doors for her so she strolled in and grabbed the case, checked the contents, and walked out. Now she just had to find a way to the planet below. She never trusted transporters, but a shuttle was too easy to track... She'd have to leave a present after she left...

Grabbing a couple plasma grenades, she headed out of the armory and reentered the jeffries tubes and headed towards main engineering. Knowing her way around the ship made things easy. She didn't even have to get close, just drop off one of the plasma grenades near the main EPS relays and head towards the secret shuttlebay. Unfortunately, the grenade went off a bit early and main power went offline just as she was coming out of the tubes into the shuttlebay to see the only runabout there - the Wandering Star.

Popping the hatch in a most violent manner, she couldn't make sense of the Ferengi consoles. That meant transporting was her only option at this point. In a fit of rage, she started smashing the cockpit panels and screaming blasphemies that would have made a Klingon blush before grabbing the case of explosives and looking for the transporter in this now useless ship. At least the transporter wasn't completely useless to her and soon she found herself in a busy intersection, travelers stepping around her like she was carrying the plague.

Bridge
-------

The explosion in the EPS relays caused a cascading disruption throughout the ship, enough to cause the blue-skinned hologram at the Operation console to flicker. With panic in her eyes, she rerouted systems to stabilize the power flow and thus stabilize the holo-emitters.

"Captain, I'm reading an unauthorized transport," Akira reported as she got the systems under control. "All ship and cargo transporters are locked down, but it appears that the transport occurred from the work bee storage bay off of Cargo Bay 4." Akira didn't know about the secret bay where the Wandering Star was berthed, or even that the Hera was carrying an extra runabout, so she was completely perplexed by the readings she was seeing.

Nexi's ship, Mal thought. How in Hades did she find the Wandering Star?

"Thank you, Miss Akira," Mal said. "We are aware of the source. There's something in that cargo bay that has it's own transporter that's not connected to the ship's systems. I assume, Captain, that your evil twin was able to access that something down there because you couldn't remotely disable your access codes, assuming that something's owner gave you access in the first place."

Mal looked over at Akira.

"Miss Akira," he said. "First of all, ensure that your systems are stable. We don't want to lose you at a time when you are most needed here. Then attempt to trace the transporter beam so we can narrow down the culprit's location? That will give you a point from which to begin scanning for Trill lifesigns. I don't believe you'll find many, probably only the Anti-Enalia."

"The power surge from the explosion to the EPS relays has been disbursed, I am fine," Akira assured Mal. "Beginning scan," she informed him as she refocused the sensors down to the planet. "I'm reading one Trill life sign in the general vicinity of Lieutenant Commander Clio's team. Attempting to narrow down coordinates."

"Since she's no longer aboard, cancel the lockdown and security sweeps. Prioritize power to life support and the stealth plating next. Mal, if you could transfer command codes back to me, I'd be appreciative." Glancing at the engineering stations, she noticed all the red but other than main power being offline and auxiliary reactors being online, it didn't seem too bad. Transporters were offline as well though, so they couldn't send help to their teams on the ground until main power was restored. "Ensign Gonadie, Please inform our away teams of the situation and to kill her on sight."

With a simple nod, the Ensign busied herself with the comm system.

"Computer," Mal said. "Please transfer command and control back to Captain Enalia Telvan, authorization code Thermopylae480BCE."

"Acknowledged, Commander Mal Xustos," the computer replied. "Command and control has been returned to Captain Enalia Telvan."

"Thank you, Computer," Mal said. After all, it never hurt to be polite.

"You are welcome, Commander Mal Xustos," the computer replied. "Have a nice day."

Mal got a confused look on his face, as if he wasn't sure he'd heard the computer correctly, then shrugged. He really didn't have time to worry about whether or not the computer was becoming sentient at the moment, but he made a mental note to stick with his policy of being polite even to the ship's computer. If it ever came to life, he wanted to make sure he was on its good side. Mal had seen 2001: A Space Odyssey while in the academy. He knew what happened to people who were rude to computers.

"Uhm...Thank you," Mal said. "The same to you."

There was no response from the computer, so Mal got back to work.

=^="Daytona to Hera and all teams!"=^= he said. =^="The crazy bitch has activated three tri-cobalt devices, ripped open the bottom of an elevator car that I betting goes all the way down to the 'secret' labs, and tossed the cursed things down there. This is it. Times up. We need to unass this place RFN."=^=

"We copy tri-cobalt devices are in play," Mal Xustos responded from the Bridge. "All teams prepare to be extracted."

Enalia checked her readouts and saw transporters were still offline. Plan B it was then. "Akira, send teams to the runabouts and have them extract the teams with those transporters. We don't have time to wait for repairs."

"Yes ma'am," Akira replied, and sent orders to the shuttle bay managers to use the shuttle transporters to retrieve the away teams. Her console responded moments later with chirps of confirmation. "Ground teams and shuttle personnel are in place, preparing to extract now," she informed Enalia, then waited for confirmation that their people were safe.

=/\="Bridge, this is the Selune. I have Commander Eneas' team aboard."=/\=
=/\="Bridge, this is the Frigga. I have Lieutenant Jordan's team aboard."=/\=
=/\="Bridge, this is the Bast. I have Staff Warrant Officer Nexi's team aboard."=/\=

Akira checked the life sign readings on her console to confirm, then looked to Enalia. "All personnel present and accounted for," she reported.

"Excellent. Now someone tell me we have warp engines back online," Enalia demanded.

Ensign Gonadie replied as she checked her helm controls. "Negative, Captain. Warp power is still offline."

"Best speed available out of the system then, please," Enalia ordered. "Let's just hope it's enough to get us clear of the blast in time."

"Aye, Captain," Ensign Gonadie replied.

Full impulse wouldn't be enough to escape the blast and Enalia knew that quite well. They'd need some sort of miracle at this point. "Engineering, this is the bridge. Find the craziest human engineer you have and get me warp power in the next... seventy three seconds or we're all dead."

=/\="Aye, kyptin. You'll have it inna jiffy."=/\= Came a thick Scottish accent over the comms.

As the counter on Enalia's chair ticked down, the stress mounted and sweat started beading on her forehead. "Come on..." She muttered as the counter hit single digits.

"Warp power online!" Gonadie exclaimed, her hands reaching for the controls.

"Punch it, Ensign!" Enalia exclaimed back, just as the counter reached zero.

Just as the Hera streaked away, Selen VI flashed three times in quick succession and begin to burn like a solar flare, breaking up and sending out a shockwave from the central reactor core similar to that of Praxis but on a much smaller scale. Most of the starport was pulverized by the blast, but a few chunks floated away from the shattered remains of the planet somewhat intact.