Iconian Gateways: Part 1

Posted on Thu Feb 8th, 2018 @ 11:15am by Aewia Larani & Commander Mal Xustos & Lieutenant Commander T'Pral Jordan & Lieutenant Commander Thex sh'Zoarhi & Lieutenant Vaemyn & Akira Zhuri & Master
Edited on on Fri Feb 9th, 2018 @ 12:15am

Mission: When Iconians Deserve to Die
Location: Not far from the prisons
Timeline: After Iconian Gateways: Prelude

It wasn't long before Commander Xustos' team found the source Iconian gateway complex readings and it was definitely not a waste reclamation center. It was a command center. And though there were no life signs, there were automated defenses.

It was a deep purple pit-like structure with a donut shaped building in the center. The door into the command center building could be easily seen, but swarmer drones filtered through the area. Each one was only about a meter long with its trailing tentacles, but the mild shocks each could deliver compounded in a group this large. Starfleet had run into them in the Gamma quadrant in a few remote asteroid fields, but apparently they had been laying in wait here defending this location as well.

Mal eyed the swarmers with caution.

"Let's avoid attracting their attention for as long as we possibly can," he said quietly. "No aggressive moves. We don't have enough phasers to bring them down before they're all over us. First of all, we need to get passed them and to the door. Secondly, we need to get the door open. Third, we need to activate the gateway and 'dial up' the Hera. Lastly, we need to make it to the gateway without getting captured or killed by those things. I am open to suggestions."

Aewia had a suggestion, but she was sure they wouldn't like it. "I have a bad one. Akira, that staff-like thing on your back... The Master used one as a walking stick a few times while he was interrogating me and considering it's integrated into a piece of Iconian tech like a Herald probe... I think it might be an offensive or defensive weapon at the very least. If you could figure it out and use it as a distraction, I think I can hotwire the door while T'Pral covers me. That way I should be able to get it resealed so the swarmers are outside and we're on the inside." Yeah, it sounded worse out loud and it sounded horrible in her head.

"Staff?" Akira seemed confused, and she looked over her shoulder and sure enough there was the head of a staff-like thing, and so she reached back and grabbed. "Oh, okay, I'll try to figure out-" she started, but didn't get very far into her statement when a black anti-proton beam shot out of the head of the staff. All six of her eyes went wide. "oh, so that's what it does..." she muttered, grateful that she hadn't hit any of her friends with the beam, but that had been an accident and she didn't know how to fire this thing for real!

T'Pral wasn't happy with the plan--too many things could go wrong. However, at the moment, she didn't have any other ideas. "You will need to act quickly."

"Akira," Mal said. "Aim the staff...over there, away from the swarmers and the command center. Let's see if we can get you to fire that thing on command. Are there any controls on the shaft? Did you accidentally hit a button, or was it something you thought when you wanted it to do something?"

"I just held it," Akira said with a shrug, pointing the staff in the direction Mal mentioned. "And wasn't thinking about anything in particular, just wondering how it-" And she was once again cut off as the weapon fired. "Oh, I think I see how this works..." The weapon fired off once again, but this time she was actually trying to! "Okay, now what do you want me to do with it?" she asked. She wasn't used to field work, so she was feeling more than a little out of her element, but she could do this, the team needed her!

"Why don't we stop shooting that thing for a moment, before we attract the attention of our friends over there," Mal said. He turned to Aewia. "Miss Larani, this is your plan. What do you want Miss Zhuri to do with her new found toy?"

"Exactly what she's doing... Distract them." Aewia pointed to the area that Akira had been firing in, while scanning with her tricorder. Several of the swarmers had gone to investigate and several more had stopped to seemingly watch them. "They don't seem to be able to lock on to the source of your weapon too easily, but they're scanning the atmospheric disturbances. If you could head around closer to them and destroy a few of them without them seeing you, then meet back up with us, that would be perfect. It should draw enough of them off that I think we can slip down there without too much of a hassle."

"Akira," Mal said. "You can do this. I have faith in you, and I'm not the only one. If Daytona were here, he'd be cheering you on, so if you get really nervous or afraid, just think of Daytona dressed as a Terran cheerleader, in one of those little skirts, waving pom-poms around. Alright everyone, let's go."

"That I would pay to see," T'Pral commented with a grin as she and Mal headed down towards the Swarmers, moving towards their left flank. 'A rookie mistake,' T'Pral thought as she noted the swarmers keeping their attention on their comrades.

Much to her surprise, Akira could feel the cheeks of her android body warming up with a slight blush. "Um, I am confused; what does sex roleplay have to do with this?" she asked. Of course, her only context for a 'cheerleader' was from her mother's database of sex related activities.

Vaemyn, who had staying uncharacteristically quiet as he worked up his courage, facepalmed with a loud smack at the android’s words. “Can we please stop talking about weird dancing humans and just do the stupid heroic thing before I need to change my pants? Pretty please?”

"Daytona Ral isn't human, but sure," Mal said. "If it helps, you can think of him wearing a utilikilt like mine. You might want consider wearing one, Vaemyn, if you feel that you might be in danger of losing control of your bowels every time things get exciting. Much easier than having to pull down your pants in a hurry. Anyway, this gate won't open itself. Let's do this."

"That was more than I wanted to know about anything, ever," Akira muttered as she readied her staff to begin the distraction, moving around to where Aewia had indicated and began firing her weapon.

Aewia shook her head and grinned. This was definitely one of the more fun teams she'd been a part of. Sliding the rest of the way to the double doors, she tapped on the entry control panel and started scanning it with her tricorder. "Oh, this'll be easy... How long do you think Akira can distract the swarmers?" Tapping the control panel a few more times, Aewia got through a few of the menu systems before she was met with a decidedly negative sounding fractal noise. That did give her what she needed though, and her next few taps on her tricorder cycled through a few polaric modulations that unlocked the door, signaling a positive fractal noise from the keypad. Pressing a control, the door behind her wooshed open with an intensity that only Iconian tech could reproduce. "Into the chu'Sui hole, everyone."

The swarmers seemed fall for the distraction easily enough, but after a few shots, they began to track the atmospheric disturbances back to the anti-proton beam. Akira quickly moved to confuse the swarmers and fired in different directions, but with each fire of the staff, they simply got closer and closer. She didn't have a comm badge on her, but the comm signals were programmed into her matrix for when she emulated a comm badge, and she found that this Herald body could access those frequencies directly to communicate with the team while separated.

"Uh, I don't know how long I can keep this up, they're really smart," Akira said.

Tapping her combadge, Aewia replied to Akira's call. "Then get your purple butt over here. The door is open."

"T'Pral!" Mal said. "Cover Akira!"

Mal waited outside of the command center with T'Pral. He would wait until the last possible moment.

T'Pral nodded as she drew her phaser and rushed to meet Akira. "Move!" she said as she moved to shield Akira. The swarmers were now onto their plan and were heading towards the command center. T'Pral fired a wide-beam at the swarm, causing them to scatter and slow.

It was plainly clear that Akira wasn't made for combat, she squeaked in surprise as T'Pral let loose cover fire, but she did as commanded and moved as quickly as she could for the command center. "I do not like this fighting business," she declared once she was safe with the rest of the team.

“Who does?” Vaemyn agreed with an enigmatic shrug, then grinned self-consciously at T’Pral as he belatedly noticed her gold shirt. “Ah, no offence intended, Commander. I am very grateful whenever gold-shirts save my life, which is more often than I like to think about.”

T'Pral shrugged. "It's what I do," she replied.

Glancing outside at the swarmers as they returned to their normal patrol pattern, Vaemyn added cheerfully, “On the bright side, we appear to have bypassed what meager defences this facility possesses. That suggests that we can access the local control interfaces for the gateways without further difficulty. And even better news, I can confirm that this is not a waste extraction facility.”

"Vaemyn, Thex, Akira," Mal said. "Get the gate operational. Aewia, get on one of the consoles and monitor the sphere's security systems as best you can. Try to keep that door shut and give us a heads up if you discover that we've tripped additional security measures. Try to deactivate anything else we trip before it becomes a problem."

" On it." The andorian replied wishing the Vorta hadn't tempted fate. With her antenna bandaged and painkillers flooding her system she still felt horrible. Still, she was one of the few engineers she'd trust with this tech and the sooner they could get it done the sooner she'd be back in her quarters with a nice cold drink.

Aewia was able to relock the door after everyone got inside so they at least wouldn't have swarmers streaming in after them. Now they just had to get this command center under their control. Heading over to what looked like a security center, Aewia started tapping into the systems. "Commander, If I'm reading this right, which I'm pretty sure I am, as soon as the Hera tripped the sphere's security measures, the Master was alerted to our presence. This says he's bringing his actual ship here, which... Ok, I don't understand this part... But he'll be here in about..." Pulling out her tricorder, Aewia did some quick time calculations on it.

"He'll be at the sphere in just under two hours our time. Also, sensors show that an area of the Nightmarelands outside the sphere is clearing up. There's more that I don't understand... But it seems it's because of the sphere. Internal security is..." Aewia paused as she looked for it. There wasn't any though. Try as she might, there just wasn't any. " Nonexistent. The swarmers and I guess those fire breathing critters are it for internal security."

Suddenly an overhead holographic viewscreen came to life showing the Master's face. His booming voice filled the command center as they worked to escape their prison that he placed them in. "That's where you're wrong, my dear. It's so good to see you again. I've been watching all of you scurry around like mice in a cage all this time and you've been quite interesting. I can't wait to see what you plan to do next."

"We'll try not to keep you waiting too long, then," Mal said. "In the mean time, everyone please cover your eyes..."

Mal reached out and took T'Pral's phaser from her, adjusted the setting, and fired into the overhead holographic view screen, destroying it. Sparks rained down and there was now a fair amount of smoke in the air. The holographic image of the Master, however, was gone. Mal handed T'Pral back her phaser, grip first. The command center's ventilation system kicked in and began to clear the smoke from the room.

"Sorry," he said. "I really wanted to do that myself. Well, everyone, let's not stand around contemplating our navals. Things to do, places to go, demonic mad scientists to kill and all that."

"I could've just turned off the projector," Vaemyn commented wryly as he worked one of the strange Iconian consoles, his hands flying over the holographic controls, "but blasting it does have a certain flair. Anyway, Commander, I think that I've found the Hera, crashed on the exterior surface of the Sphere. The computer is labelling it as a 'primitive client race conveyance', but the hull outline looks about right for a Nebula-class. We should be able to create a large gateway back at the crew's location that will connect directly to one of the Hera's cargo bays."

That said, the Vorta's eyes widened, his mouth dropping in amazement as he read the readout. "Or...oh my. this is incredible. I could connect the gateway directly to Starfleet Command, the Senate building on Romulus, any world in the Dominion...anywhere in the galaxy. How did the Iconians ever go extinct with wonders like these at their fingertips?"

"A revolution," Akira answered simply as she watched what Vaemyn was doing. "It does tend to happen when a more advanced race subjugates 'lesser' races, those being subjugated inevitably rise up to overthrow their oppressors; the Herald lab gave me data and a lot of it, the history of the Iconian civilization was part of it," she then explained. "Do you think you can adjust this gate to deposit us someplace else on the Hera? Life support should be restored, so Thex and I can do a hard reset of the computer to restore default coding and eradicate the virus. From there, all systems should reboot on their own, barring any physical damage from the crash, and then it should be safe to send the rest of the crew over."

Aewia shook her head as she worked on her own consoles. "They weren't exactly subjugated. They wanted the far superior tech the pacifist Iconians had and tried to take it by force after a few thousand years of adherence to a form of their own version of the Prime Directive. Two sides to every story, I guess. The Iconians used the other races to improve their own society without impairing them and in return helped the warp capable ones in minor, non-interference ways in their own vision. I've located a security control system that should allow me to retarget the swarmers to another area." After a few more seconds of work, Aewia looked up. "And they are now on their way to the Memory Lab."

"Then let's get over there and get the ship back online," Mal said. "How long is this reboot going to take? And once we get the transporters online, will we need to rely on the gate get everyone back to the ship or can we just switch the cargo transporters to troop transport slash evacuation mode and start beaming them over in large groups?"

"No no, we will definitely need the gate to get everyone back onto the Hera," Akira declared in no uncertain terms. "Sensors were going out, so assuming the transporters even work, there would be no way to lock on to anyone, not to mention the power it would take; I don't even know what kind of power is available to us, and we'll need that for the computer and life support until we can get the Warp core and more reactors online." With that, Akira flinched, then looked to Thex. "So sorry, I know there's procedure for shutting everything down safely, but there was no time. I really hope I didn't damage the Warp core." Then Akira returned her attention to Mal. "As for how long it will take to reboot, I don't know; there's a lot of damage and I don't know how that will effect things. But as soon as we're sure there's a sustainable atmosphere on the ship, we can give a signal to gate people over to start repairs."

"Understood," Mal said. "I'll have Clio get people moving over this way. Now that Aewia has dealt with the swarmers, the path should be safe enough. Vaemyn, connect the gate to the Hera. Get me to the bridge. The rest of you should go wherever you feel you can be most effective in getting the ship back online."

An alarm sounded through the command center as half a dozen iris style vents opened and out popped a swarmer from each of them. Aewia tapped furiously at her security consoles trying to find the controls for them, but she just couldn't find them. "I'm not seeing these anywhere in the system! I think they're some sort of automated defense! We'll have to take them out!"

On top of that, the Master's face popped up on a few of the still functioning overhead consoles. "I'm not so easy to get rid of that you can just destroy the main displays and I'd leave you alone. I'll tell you what, though. Make it back to your precious little ship and I'll let you duel me in mine. If not, then I guess this will be your permanent home. You have about two of your hours... Good luck..." And with that, his face vanished and the swarmers started firing light stinger bolts in the general area of the biological life forms in the hopes of hitting them.

Vaemyn yelped at the sudden onslaught of hissing stingers, dropping to the ground next to his console, although the waist-high metal device provided scant protection. He hurriedly reached up and rapidly worked the controls over his head while he cowered behind cover, wincing at the occasional hiss that indicated a near miss.

"The gateways are open!" he yelled in fright as he finished. Of course, their gateway was a thirty-meter run across open ground, but Vaemyn tried not to think about that as he huddled against the console.

"Go! I will cover you!" T'Pral ordered Vaemyn with a pat on his shoulder and the others before firing off several shots designed more to scatter and distract the swarmers than cause actual damage.

Thex seeing an opportunity ran as fast as she could towards the gateway set to open up in main engineering. Even with her injury, she ran like the hordes of hell were chasing her down as she felt the stingers buzzing around her. She knew she had to get back in and start the reboot of the computer. She hoped the emergency survival kit was still in it's locked with her tools.

With a frightened yelp, Akira was right behind Thex. Passing through the gate, she quickly took note of the conditions on the ship; the air was a little thin and cold, so life support wasn't functioning properly, but what was available should sustain Thex long enough to reset the computer.

"Okay, you get working on the computer, I need to get to Environmental Controls to see what's wrong with Life Support," Akira said. "Oh no, I'll need a toolkit..." she said when she remembered that her kit was still on the Bridge where she last was before transferring herself to the Herald Lab. "I'll find one along the way... Good luck with the computer," Akira said, then headed for the lift; she knew it wouldn't be likely that the lift was there or working, but she could at least climb her way up to get to the right deck faster than crawling through Jefferies tubes.

Mal titled his head forward and ran towards the gate in a full tilt goat charge. Arriving at the gate, he dove through the opening and executed a perfect forward roll when he landed, which ate up most of his forward momentum. He rose to his feet and headed off towards the bridge.

Vaemyn wanted nothing more than to stay precisely where he was, feeling that old Vorta instinct to cower and not risk himself. Still, after seeing the XO jump through the gateway, he gamely looked up at T'Pral, privately amazed by the hybrid's courage as she protected him.

"Moving!" Vaemyn yelled, and before he knew it, he was sprinting for the gateway, panting hardas he eyed his goal, the constant hissing of the stingers only interrupted by the occasional screech of T'Pral's phaser. The other side of the gateway was quite plainly the grey duranium of the Hera and so Vaemyn wildly dove headfirst through the opening, landing ass-first on the deck and skidding painfully.

Aewia was the furthest from the gate, being at the security station. Rather than making a break for the gate though, she kept at the consoles in front of her, using them as a barricade as best she could, trying to find a way to disable the swarmers or at the very least, give T'Pral an advantage in the fight. "I think I've got something!"

Her outburst attracted the attention of several of the swarmers just in time for them to focus on her just as she activated a force field system, trapping all but one of them near the ceiling. Unfortunately that one got off a lucky shot, sending a stinger bolt straight into Aewia's face. Crumpling to the floor, she fell behind one of the security consoles motionless.

T'Pral took aim and fired, destroying the Swarmer as rushed to Aewia's side. She checked her vitals, finding a faint pulse as she holstered her phaser and picked Aewia up, onto her shoulder and sprinted for the gateway, not waiting to know how long the force field would hold the swarmers. Her ears picked up the sound of increased buzzing as the swarmers worked together to try to escape. However, she also knew she couldn't allow the gate to remain operational to allow the swarmers or anything else to board the Hera. With her free hand, she withdrew her phaser and set it to overload as she set the phaser down at the entrance of the gate. The gate soon flashed an empty corridor as she jumped through. The transition was a bit disorienting as she fought to keep her footing. Looking around, she saw that she was on Deck 12. At least she wasn't too far from sickbay. Getting her bearings, she jogged down the corridor towards sickbay--hopefully someone would be there to aid Aewia and allow T'Pral to get to the bridge.