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Ascent Into Danger

Posted on Thu Jan 17th, 2019 @ 11:46pm by Commander Rita Paris & Lieutenant Asa Dael & Petty Officer 2nd Class Ila Dedjoy & Kodria Mizu

Mission: Section 31-B
Location: Sector 31 base 'Castillo De Muerte'
Timeline: 2396, picking up from 'Castillo De Muerte'

Unhooking the line from their gear, Dael handed it to the commander to begin the process of attaching the group to one another.

Their hands were trembling slightly from the encounter with the T-rex. They had seen a complete fossil of one of the beasts at the Chicago Fielder Museum, but it did nothing to prepare Asa for a real world encounter. El Aurian physiology had difficulty with certain frequencies and the T-Rex had definitely included some of those frequencies in its battle cry.

They knew the headache they would have later would be horrible, and the vertigo would catch up to them sooner or later, so Asa wordlessly took a stim shot to see them through the next few hours until they could return to the Hera and have the EMH repair the damage. Once all three were joined, Asa nodded to Paris to signify their readiness to take up the group's 6.

"All right, folks. Into the shaft- be prepared to have your magnetic boots turned on, let's not let anything close with us, watch your buddy on the line. Let's clear the area of hazards, because we might be beating a hasty retreat back this way. If we have to start fighting clusters of opponents we'll switch to grenades, but otherwise let's try to be judicious in our use of force. Phasers don't create zero-G recoil. Command center, retrieve the data, figure out who activated the distress beacon."

Offering a devil-may-care grin, the daredevil dame pulled herself into the shaft and held the edge, waiting for her shipmates to follow.

With a steadier grip than even she expected, Ila Dedjoy steeled herself, switched her targeting assist computer on, , and pulled herself into the turbolift corridor. Though it was big enough for a full sized theropod to get stuck in, there were enough cargo lift pods to get in the way and make things interesting. On the bright side, she could see the top of the shaft and it was only around two hundred meters away. On the down side, there were enough unsealed decks between them and the command center that there was no telling what may pop out at them.

Which is when a ten foot long rat with three jaws and metallic claws leapt from one of those hatches towards Dedjoy. Without even thinking, she brought her rifle around and fired a three round burst from the hip into the face of the beast, turning it into an ex-rat. She then realized that the ringing in her ears was her own scream and toned it down to a panicked panting. Then in a whimpering voice she had something to admit. "I think I've soiled my armor..."

"There's a system built in for that. Good work, Miss Dedjoy," Paris offered, patting the frightened woman's shoulder. "Stay together, team. This is probably going to be a bumpy ride."

Dael nodded, uncertain of their position as rearguard, but hoping silently stoic was the image they were projecting to the group.

It was at that moment what could only be described as an undead opossum woke from its spot hanging at the top of the turbolift shaft. Dael locked eyes with it, and mentally decided to treat the snarling abomination as if it were a pest bothering their homestead growing up and shot it with a phaser. The creature seemed to "die" in as much as such a thing can be said of an undead opossum - or at least it quit moving.

Suddenly a crackling came over the comm channel. It was a bit broken up, but it sounded like a girl's voice calling out 'Hello? Is anyone there?' a few times through the static before cutting out.

"If this turns out to be some creepy doll possessed by a demon or something I am writing a strongly worded letter to the Commodore. Miss Dedjoy, see if you can home in on that signal. Doc, you keep the rearguard. Time for us to get where we're going." With that, Paris raised up her right arm, then launched a small probe tipped with a gravity magnet, which was in turn attached to the high strength wire spooled into the winch in her forearm assemblage. Reaching over to unlimber her rifle, Paris made her ammunition selection of hollow points and rifle in her left hand, she confirmed with her teammates. "Ready?"

"I am really looking forward to the entire place going up in flames when we leave," Dael muttered to themself, then responded with, "Aye, Commander, ready."

“All right, here comes the ride." With that, Paris began reeling in the cable at a high rate of speed, her armor sensors marking any movement as targets and preparing for her to fire, after five seconds of the winch pulling them along, she slowed the winch to half speed and let the landing party drift upward, even as hostiles began shoving themselves out of the shafts above them, hoping to intercept the fresh meant coming to the doorstep.

Fresh meat bearing hot lead, that is.

Rather than using burst fire, Paris was marking her targets and popping off controlled precise shots as possible, until she realized that there were more numbers than she was going to be able to handle, even using her phaser for those who got too close. Calmly she expressed herself to the rest of the landing party as her shots punctuated the comms. “If I could get some fire support it would be useful, otherwise I’m going to have to switch out to grenades…”

"Aye, Commander!" Dedjoy quit fiddling with the comms and returned her attention to the targeting sensors, thumbing the selector back to single fire and popping of rounds into targets that were off to the side as fast as she could. She hadn't brought a phaser and nothing was close enough to use her melee weapon yet, though she'd never used it in zero-g before so that was likely going to be tricky.

Closer to the command center, their comms crackled to life again with that same eerie girl's voice, but this time a bit clearer. "Hello? I can see you. Have you come for me? I've been so lonely."

Ila triggered her comms in response. "We're from Starfleet. What's your name and status?"

A few more crackles of static and "Hello? Can you hear me? Please help me." were the only reply before the transmission broke up again.

"Nothing suspicious about that..." Dael muttered, turning to fire at the hostiles centering on Rita.

"Commander, you take your left, I'll focus on your right. Dedjoy, be my eyes please and alert to any hostiles above," Asa stated.

Aiming precisely, the doctor was thankful indeed for their childhood growing up shooting cans off trees from the sheer boredom as the ability to aim was coming in handy now.

Slobbering half crazed rodent things began clawing at the entry to the shaft a level beneath Rita, and Asa took careful aim, adjusted their phaser and fired upon four of the creatures. The first went down hard, the second seemed to focus on Asa directly and began crawling up the shaft to reach the Doctor, while the other two were winged by shots and retreated back to where they came from.

The doctor was trying to fire quickly at the approaching rodent, but seemed to be unable to stop its ascent towards them. They fired directly into the beasts stomach twice, spewing blood and other unseemly fluids as if they were nightmarish marbles in the zero-g environment.

Seeing the rodent-zombie approach Ila, Dael said, "Yeoman, bogie on your four o'clock!"

Ila was torn between firing at their upper arc and now she had a bogie? Seeing it on her targeting scanner, she knew she didn't have time to pull her weapon around and get it so with her free hand she made a fist and activated the plasma saber in it, severing the zombie rat's brain pan from the rest of it's head and twisting so the front legs went with it. Deactivating the meter long blade, she returned to firing, her large unblinking eyes flickering between targets as her rifle slowly ran down the ammo.

"Doctor, there are still targets above us," the yeoman said in an unnaturally calm voice. She had no idea how she was holding it together right now, but with the strained grin on her face and the thoughts of just wanting to survive at any cost racing through her head, she was pretty sure she'd gone south.

Now almost at the command center, their comms crackled to life yet again with that same girl's voice, this time perfectly clear. "Hello? Are you here to help me?"

“If this turns out to be a trap, I am going to be very put out,” Paris muttered as she fired a short burst at a group of humanoid zombies whose mouths appeared to split into four tooth-filled maws who were interspersing with the Zombie Rodents Of Unusual Size And Activity In A Vacuum. Tuning the frequency in, Paris spoke in the voice of command she had learned when she was a child, yet served her throughout her career. It was a self-assured tone with sufficient depth to carry, with sufficient confidence to make the listener confident on the speaker.

“This is Commander Paris, we are closing on your position now. Sit tight and stay calm. We’re a little curious how you’ve survived, gotta admit. Please identify yourself?” That casual tone belied that after all this time out here there was no way for this not to be a trap. But life finds a way, and Rita herself had been in odder scrapes.

"Oh thank goodness. I can barely hear you. My name is Kodria Mizu of the Starfleet Civilian Corps vessel SS Haspatia. I woke up here in one of the labs and made my way here in the hopes of res..." With another burst of static the transmission cut out again.

Killing that line, Paris opened an outside line while she fired a concussion grenade into one of the hallways, driving back the ravenous hordes that seemed to be practically never-ending in this place. “Paris to Hera, do you copy? I need an ID check run for one Kodria Mizu, of the SS Haspatia.”

More rats and humans and a monkey with wings, of all things, infected with the same flesh-eating disease as the rest, came to end due to the precise shooting of the first officer, who was considering a flamethrower option for her next load-out.

The comm line from the Hera was a bit broken up, but clear enough. "SS Haspatia... Checking... Under construction at... Regula Fleetyards."

While the conversation was taking place, Dedjoy was busy with her own issues, firing into the various open corridors with beasts coming out of them. One larger one, she cycled to a plasma grenade and let it loose, vaporizing everything down it for quite a ways with a loud fwoom that thankfully triggered the blast doors further in and sealed it off. Now she just had several smaller vents and hatches to worry about.

"Maybe she meant another SS Haspatia." Dedjoy offered as she fired a few rounds into a black slithery alien that definitely looked a lot meaner than the rest of the ones they'd been shooting. "Also, I have one that's not dying when I kill it."

"No way it's all a trap, right?" Asa said sardonically. Eyes narrowed, the doctor called to Rita, "Commander! Can we fire at their flanks and force them into a line? That way we can let loose on big blast, or barring that put a phaser on kill at a wide dispersal?"

That said, Dael turned to see where Dedjoy was firing to examine the one that would not die. A bedraggled looking....armadillo?....was slowly charging at the group. It seemed to be panting, even though it clearly was not breathing, and was oozing something that probably used to be blood.

Suppressing the urge to vomit, Asa attempted to fire at the small animals head, knowing from seeing roadkill on Earth that the shell would be harder. They were not successful in hitting the head, and wondered what was so different about this animal. Shell or no, it should have gone down by now.

“Yeah, a cry for help is highly unlikely at this point. Who knows what it really is, but we’ll be prepared for anything.” Rita Paris was a good shot with her own hand phaser, but when her beam lanced out, the black slithery alien dodged once, dodged the second beam, then a concussion grenade went off behind it, stunning it sufficiently for Paris to put a phaser beam through it’s long domed skull. As the wound was cauterized, there was no blood, but she noticed the swarm of critters approaching were avoiding it all the same.

“Wide beam seems like a good plan to me, Doctor. On my mark, wide beam, setting 7…. Fire!” As the duo combined their efforts, their phasers were draining quickly but the effects were impressive. While it was not rendering all of their opponents inactive, it was causing large swaths of them to become small atomic blasted skeletons who were fortunately not mobile. A few well-placed concussion grenades seemed to break the smaller corpses up while rendering the larger ones less mobile, and Paris took advantage of the lull to reel the rest of the away team up to the command center.

"According to my scanners, we're going to have to enter through the level below, ascend through a stairwell and we should be able to access the command center through a security door if we power it up. So into this corridor, magnetic books on, eyes on your scanners and proceed with caution." Paris clapped her phaser back onto her hip, and took the large rifle in both hands to be prepared for anything that moved to be rendered inert. Dedjoy and Doc Dael were friends of hers, and under her command. Damned if she would let them become zombie chow.

"Keep an eye on our rear, Doc. I don't want anything sneaking up on us..." Paris explained as she moved cautiously down the corridor, her magnetic boots making soft thudding sounds in her suit.

"Copy that," the group heard Asa say, followed immediately by phaser fire in three short blasts, then a two second pause and a meaty thump.

"Well, those three zombadillo's won't be bothering anyone again," the doctor said, clearly happy with their shooting, "But I gotta say, all the ooze and blood and stuff floating around in here is making it look like the snow globe from hell."

"My codes have worked so far so there's no reason to think they won't work on that door," added Ila as she slung her rifle onto her back and got ready to do a bit more hacking.

“If they don’t, we can do it the old-fashioned way,” Paris added, firing a few bursts of automatic fire into the darkness at targets she could see clearly in her heads-up display projected onto the interior of her helmet. “All right, Dedjoy, I’ll take the lead up the stairwell and you can worm around me. But if there is something in there that isn’t showing up on scanners, better me than thee. Doctor, I have a voice coming out of that command center that sounds a lot like a trap. Please tell me we have some sort of biosign in there that isn’t something whose face is going to trisect and try to eat me.”

Focusing the scanners on the room, there was an electromagnetic field within a solid object that had a humanoid shape in the control room that had minimal power. "Looks like we've got movement in the control room. Miss Dedjoy, if you could jimmy the lock. Doc, keep an eye out down there. Miss Dox, report," Paris called, and there was only silence.

"Sexton, Jackson, report," Paris called as they reached the top of the stairwell. "Thick walls. Hera, this is Paris, do you copy?" Again, there was silence, which each of them realized meant they were on their own. Wrestling the large rifle back onto her back, the commander drew her classic phaser. "About that door, Miss Dedj-"

That was when the wall started to bubble and melt beside them, as the zombie horta found them.

In a quick movement, Asa unlocked their gravity boots and pushed up to float up from the surface.

"Down!" The doctor yelled, releasing a concentrated oxygen burst for two seconds, luring the Horta near then. At the last moment, Asa turned on their boots, plummeting to the ground and they fired their phaser to the oxygen, igniting the dispersing bubble of air and the horta alike. The firerball it briefly created in the vacuum cooked much of the outer flesh of the horta before Paris drained he phaser to insure it was disintegrated.

"I hate horror movies," Paris grumbled and she replaced the power pack on her phaser, simply snapping on a new handle and clipping the old one to her armor. "Quick thinking, Doctor. Excellent reflexes, they'll serve you well. So, Miss Dedjoy, about this door..."

Quickly shaking off what had just happened, Ila pulled free her hacking terminal and slapped it over the door's own terminal, powering it up. Quickly, she logged in and went through a series of overrides. She was able to unseal the door but once it did so, there was a solid click and that was it. It errored out immediately. Popping the manual override panel, she reached in and pumped the handle a few times, hoping that would charge it enough to at least separate the panels, but even that failed.

Then she heard a whirring sound on the other side. Checking her panel, the yeoman saw that the isolation doors were somehow jamming this one and were now retracting. "It seems that whomever is inside is now willing to let us in..." After a few more seconds, the door panels finally popped apart and Ila was able to pry them open. Quickly retrieving her hacking terminal, Ila placed it back on her belt. "Commander?"

Pulling the slender scientist behind her, Paris broadcast to the local area on regular comm frequencies, or at least that's what she was aiming for. Phaser at the ready, she spoke reassuringly.

"I'm Commander Rita Paris, we're Starfleet. Are you in distress?" Paris watched the scans and the portrait of the scene they painted inside her helmet- as always, hoping for the best but prepared for the worst.

 

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