Open Air Prison: Camp 1

Posted on Sat Dec 30th, 2017 @ 2:46am by Captain Enalia Telvan & Lieutenant Mona Gonadie & Commander Mal Xustos & Akira Zhuri & Lieutenant Kieran Gideon & Ensign Shavni & Warrant Officer Cerus Read & Master Chief Petty Officer Abraham Laurent & Chief Petty Officer R'Tor & Chief Petty Officer Ronald Greer & Petty Officer 1st Class Katee Dahl
Edited on on Wed Jan 31st, 2018 @ 10:25pm

Mission: When Iconians Deserve to Die
Location: Inside the Sphere

-=CAMP 1=-
Inside the sphere, Enalia was one of the first to wake up. The Iconian transporter beam was hard on the crew being as fast and sudden as it was and had knocked almost everyone out when it swept everyone off of the Hera. Looking around, she took in her new surroundings.

They were inside the sphere.

Inside of an open air prison.

A white star shone down on them as she assessed their situation further. Purple metal bars stretched in either direction. Short purple and grey metallic structures were on either side and she assumed they were meant to be their living quarters for the time being. The ground was made of some sort of concrete. In the distance there were some incredibly tall towers.

Helping up a few of the crewmen, Enalia moved into one of the shelters. It had a set of food replicators and sleeping units at least, so that was good. They wouldn't starve and could rest comfortably at the very least. As for making sure the food wasn't drugged, she just hoped someone had a tricorder.

Stopping an Ensign that looked like they were more coherent than the others, Enalia started taking charge and getting things rolling. "Ensign, scout the area, find as many senior officers as you can and have them meet me here." She then stopped another crewman. "Find me a tricorder so I can scan something from these replicators. We need to know if food from them is safe to eat. After that, our next order of business will have to be a head count."

"I will take care of that, Captain," Mal said, rising and walking over to her. He called over the nearest Chief Petty Officer he could find. "Chief, gather as many Chiefs and Leading Petty Officers as you can find and start figuring out who's here and if we're missing something. I'll trust that you folks can get this gaggle organized somehow."

"Aye, aye, sir," the Chief replied. She called out names one after the other. Someone responded and she made her way over to him and they went looking for someone else. Mal turned to Enalia. "I suppose it's more accurate to say that I'm seeing that it gets done. I assume we're inside the sphere? I suppose we could be almost anywhere, but the sphere seems to make the most sense."

Leading Mal outside, Enalia motioned towards the horizon. More precisely, the lack of one - rather than dropping off, the ground rose up in the distance and faded from view. Purple, silver, and grey cities could be seen as well as green lush areas and blue water areas. There were even what appeared to be giant solar farms off in distant regions. "I think that's a very safe assumption. The scans we got prior to our kidnapping estimated the inside at about one point two astronomical units. The gravity and air seem to be pretty close to what we're used to. I have to wonder if there's a system in place to simulate night..."

"There likely is," Mal said. "Unless the Iconians, or whoever the Iconians put in here, don't need a night cycle. Have you seen Clio?"

"Something else we need to discover. And no, I just woke up a few minutes ago." Tapping her comm badge, Enalia got a signal blocked chirrup from it. "And without the ship in range, if it's even still there..." She then looked to Mal with a worried look. "Do you think Akira and Maica were left on the ship all alone? All of our systems were failing critically."

Mal put his hand comfortingly on Enalia's shoulder.

"They have multiple back up storage options and back up power supplies," Mal said. "If the ship survived, I'm sure they did, too. They might even be actively trying to rescue us. I mean, you got them memo I sent telling you that one of the computer geeks realized that they weren't listed as 'authorized lifeforms' right? I wasn't able to update that myself, so I forwarded it off to you. If you took care of that, then they have full control of the Hera."

Enalia sighed heavily. "I was able to partially fix that. She's an authorized lifeform, but because of the former Section 31 affiliation of the Intel pod, there's one protocol I couldn't override. Since she's not a biological life form, she can't use the Celium system and thus can't be added to the authorised users list and..." Sighing again, Enalia nodded. "All Authorized Biological lifeforms are likely no longer on the ship, which started a forty eight hour self destruct countdown. If she was able to save the ship from smashing into the sphere, we have that long to get back there, either by her hand or ours."

"I think we need to turn Akira and Maica loose on that system from the inside and see if they can solve that problem," Mal said. "Presuming we get out of this alive. Well, if the Hera somehow made it inside, blowing herself up is going to irradiate us all, if the explosion doesn't completely flash fry us or crush us with debris. If she's outside...well, I guess that depends on how tough this sphere is. Either way, I just scheduled appointment with your wife for another massage and I intend to keep it. As for Akira...Daytona is a very, very, very dangerous man, which I sure I don't have to tell you. If something happens to Akira and he gets it in his head that it's our fault...well...I don't think I'd enjoy life on the run."

"Yeah and you'd look weird in a pirate hat," Enalia replied just as an ensign ran up with a working science tricorder for her. After a brief exchange, she was scanning the surroundings. "Well, it looks like most of us are in this immediate area. I think all but five people are in two groups. About half of us in this camp and the rest about half a kilometer away. I'm also picking up some sort of synthetic life form moving this way."

Off in the distance, they could see a tall being drawing closer. It was bipedal, but clearly not human with its purple skin and no immediate indications of gender. It was covered in violet-hued garb and around it's head was some sort of purple crest-like headpiece. When this being saw the group of individuals in Starfleet uniforms in the encampment, it began to run towards them.

"One of our jailors, perhaps? Or a fellow inmate? Be ready for anything, Commander. I'm hoping for peaceful communications, but if you see anything that can be used as a weapon, just in case..." Enalia scanned the lifeform a bit more with the tricorder but couldn't really tell much more about it that she could use other than it seemed to be mostly bio-organic at a level that the Federation could barely hope to understand.

"Aunt Enalia!" the being called out with excitement as it continued to draw closer, coming to a stop just outside the bars. "Sorry, Captain," the being quickly corrected itself, sighing in relief to see how many people were here. "Thank the stars, I am so glad to see that you're okay."

Enalia was slightly stunned at the voice and words coming from the android now standing on the other side of the bars. "Akira? Uh... You look... Different... Can you confirm that it's really you inside of that android body? And only you?"

"Oh, yeah, sorry," Akira said, looking down at herself. "It's a bit weird for me too..." Now, proof that she was who she was. "Uh, how can I confirm I am who I say I am or that it's just me?" she said as she looked around to see who else was in the camp. "Wait, where's Daytona?" she asked rather abruptly. "Please tell me he's in the other camp!" she said, suddenly full of worry and panic.

Mal frowned and tapped his combadge. He'd be assuming that it would be dead and hadn't bothered to try it, so he was surprised when it chirped.

"Ral, Xustos," he said. "Daytona, come in please."

There was no response. Mal looked at Akira and took her hand.

"He's not responding," Mal said. "But with the ship's systems offline, these commbadges have a shorter range and a less powerful signal. He very well could be fine in the other camp. If not, we know that there are at least five other members of the crew that have been separated from us, but we don't know why or where they are exactly, but we do know they are alive. I'm sure he's fine. He knows how to take care of himself. I would assume that right at this very moment he's trying to figure out how to get back to you. He's probably worried sick about you."

"This is not good!" Akira said, gently reaching out to touch one of the bars, then rest her forehead against another with a sad sigh. With her eyes closed to help her focus, she sorted through all the information the Lab computer had given her about where the memory lab was located, then looked back up at Mal and Enalia. "The Herald Lab told me that there was a memory lab where a small number of the crew were being held as opposed to the camps. I need to get all of you out of here so we can go find the others before their memories are altered."

Enalia tapped her comm badge a few more times before it stopped searching for the ship and switched to solo mode so she could actually use it. "You'll have to fill us in on what you've learned as quickly as possible. As well as the status of the ship." Pulling out her tricorder again, she started scanning for a way out of the camp.

"The news isn't good," Akira started somberly. "The ship is in bad shape; the Hera was hemorrhaging power, controls were failing, I had to shut down everything to try to power the thrusters and bolster the structural integrity field; the ship crashed on the surface of the Dyson Sphere and I ran the ECH to try to get life support back online while I was gone so that there would be an atmosphere for you to return to once I found a way to free you." Which begged the question, how to free them? Then she looked at the bars. Hmm... On a hunch she to took hold of a bar in each hand and pulled them apart. Like magic, the bars began to bend! "Captain, I believe I may have found a way for you to get out," she said as she pulled again, harder this time to widen the gap forming.

Mal had been trying to reach Clio on his commbadge, so far unsuccessfully. He sent a Leading Petty Officer he recognized to find her, giving the excuse that they needed their chief intelligence officer and making sure to seem as business-like as possible when in truth he was worried sick. Then he noticed Akira bending the bars.

"That's...impressive," he said. "And useful. Do you think you can make hole large enough for at least one person and then go and bend open a few more spots?"

"I can certainly try," Akira replied, trying to get a little bit more of an opening in the bars before finally deciding to move on.

Enalia scanned the bars for a few seconds, then shrugged before climbing through. "We have our way out. Spread the word." Enalia nodded to a crewman that had been standing nearby.

Mal followed Enalia out. He looked at her a moment.

"Go," he said. "I'll make sure everyone here gets out. Find our people and bring them home. And...make sure Clio is one of the ones you bring back."

"As soon as I assemble a team, I'll head out. And don't worry - I'll make sure everyone comes back." Enalia motioned to a science ensign and a security crewman to join her, then waved over a civilian medic she'd met in sickbay some time earlier to go with her as well. "Good luck, Commander." Tricorder out, Enalia headed out towards the other camp.

Akira finished opening a second hole in the bars, then caught up with Enalia to go to the other camp. "I hope you're not mad at me for crashing your ship," she said timidly as they walked.

"As long as we can fly it away from here when we're all done, that's all that counts. It sounded like you did your best not to crash it too badly." Enalia replied, glancing up at the tall multi-eyed android speaking with Akira's voice. "So what's it like being in a body?"

Akira looked down at her hands, flexing them slightly as she tried to figure out how to describe how it felt. "It is... unlike anything I could have ever imagined," Akira finally said. "I can't say if it's a good or a bad feeling, it just so foreign to me right now."

Enalia nodded as she turned her attention back to her tricorder and walked in silence for a moment. "I don't know if I've ever told you this. It's common knowledge that I'm joined. But I'm the first host. That part is kind of a secret. For the first few days I was so mixed up. My own body felt so foreign to me. I mean, we knew it was the symbiont's memories and not the host's, but it was so overwhelming... Was I supposed to be a slug or a biped? Which memories were which? I still have issues getting comfortable just sitting in some chairs. Everyone that knew me before say they don't know the person I am after. I have to agree. Looking back at who we were individually... Both as a Trill and as a symbiont... Akira, I'm both sorry and glad that you have the opportunity to experience this sort of thing and I hope that you grow stronger for it."

"I did not know this about your symbiont," Akira replied somberly. "I don't know if I will keep this body; the Herald Lab said it could customize this body to be like my projected image, and I may still do that, but... As novel as the experience is, it is more than a little uncomfortable; I never had any issue with what I was before, I didn't long for a physical form, this isn't who I am."

Enalia chuckled softly for a moment before replying. "You are more than the sum of your programming. When I was joined, that wasn't who I was, but this is who I am now. When I was given command of the Hera, I wasn't a commanding officer, but that's who I am now. Your experiences are what make us who we are, Akira. For better or worse. I thought you'd have figured that out by now after dating a man over four hundred years old. At the very least, I'd keep the body for later if you can. It might come in handy for missions or just for wandering around. It can also hopefully answer some questions about this place later."

"The Lab has provided me with a great deal of information, freely and without reservation, and I have no doubt that the Lab would provide me with more if I asked for it," Akira said in agreement, then paused in thought. "A-and I have been rather curious what real cherries would taste like..." she admitted sheepishly.

"And not what the programmed response tells you? You are on the edge of exploration, Akira. I encourage you to take it, but to do so as safely as possible." Enalia's tricorder beeped a brief alarm as they neared the other camp. "We're almost there. Is the memory lab you mentioned close by?"

Akira paused to check her internal map. "It is in that direction," she said, pointing in the direction that took them through what looked to be a maze of buildings. "I would like to make an opening in the second camp for the crew to escape first."

"Agreed," Enalia replied. "We'll wait long enough to make two holes and set up a rendezvous point, then head towards the memory lab. After that, we'll worry about getting back to the ship and destroying the Master's main lab."

"Yes ma'am," Akira replied with a dutiful nod.