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Chapter 1: The (hopefully) Great Romulan Smash and Grab [Day 1 | 1800hrs ]


[ Petty Officer Dylan Cobb | onboard the Apache | Romulan Space ] ATNN: @BipSpoon    @RyeTanker  @P.C. Haring  @Ellen Fitz  @Hans Applegate @Stegro88  @Sqweloookle

Dylan felt sick to his stomach. He hated being left behind like this. What made the Apache any different from a sitting duck? What could they do if things went bad inside? They’d have to sit and wait no matter what, hoping against hope that they didn’t get themselves shot to pieces before everyone came back so they could get the hell away. And that was IF everyone got back.

“Hey, Chief,” Dylan called out to Chief Warrant Officer Tarsi sh’Zhan, waiting until the Andorian paused in the corridor next to his station before he continued, “If you had to put a number on our odds of survival, what would it be?”

Her antennae flagged back and forth a moment, and Dylan watched as a wry smile played at the edges of her blue lips before she replied. “I learned a long time ago that numbers can be manipulated. Just do your job, Cobb, and do it well. We’re all here to succeed, and you’ve got to trust that.”

“Yes, ma’am. Thank you.” He watched her walk away, feeling marginally bolstered by her words.

Lieutenant Carson called for updates on stations seconds later. Cobb was snapped back into his job, relegating his earlier fears to the same portion of his brain where he kept his reminders to eat his vegetables.

OOC: The objective of this thread is to infiltrate the facility, and while the other thread is scanning the triggers and anything else useful for combating the thalaron-based weaponry, this mission team is tasked with smashing everything that’s smashable and basically making a diversion and mess of things. There is a story prompt that may be accessed during the time on the facility if anyone in this mission thread, or the other mission thread, is interested in taking that on.  Mission teams were assigned in the first chapter thread, and you are welcome to have your character respond to that first before launching into the mission here. We have Asra Tek, Lt. J.G. Vince Kennedy, Chief Petty Officer Helena Prince, and Petty Officer Second Class Riley Patterson with us to do with as we please (kill or not kill is the question). I will be NPCing Amarik. Rye's character and/or PC's character will show up later. Happy hunting!

Re: Chapter 1: The (hopefully) Great Romulan Smash and Grab [Day 1 | 1800hrs ]

Reply #1 –
[ Lt. Valyn Amarik | traversing vacuum between the Apache and Romulan Space Station | Romulan Space ] @Stegro88  @Sqweloookle @P.C. Haring @RyeTanker @Hans Applegate @BipSpoon

Valyn adjusted the angle of her approach with subtle movements, knowing too much, and she’d ping off the side of the station like space junk. She couldn’t afford to take her eyes off her target (an outer maintenance hatch on one of the smaller wings of the station) and, therefore, could only hope that the rest of her team had kept up with their suit training prior to this mission.

This sort of infiltration required not only a spacewalk outside their ship but an open vacuum traversing as they moved from their cloaked ship over to the station. This area, already riddled with asteroid debris, offered what could be considered a perfect cover if it wasn’t a Romulan station they were seeking to infiltrate. Though they were using the smaller pieces of debris to mask their appearance, anchoring behind the larger pieces to move sporadically with their propulsion units, Valyn knew it was a long shot that they’d manage to get into the station completely unnoticed.

“Disguised” as they were, some two to a piece of debris with only Amarik and two others managing debris solo, should someone try to catch a visual on the minuscule blip their bodies would register as on the station’s sensors, they’d likely see only the debris. Since their adjustments on trajectory and movement were calculated to avoid the appearance of intent, the infiltration side of this maneuver was taking a hell of a lot longer than any of them would like.

She knew that the other team, Blue Team, was making a similar maneuver along a different arm of the station, one that, according to their covert scans, seemed to be closer to the labs on the station and thereby, hopefully, that much closer to the triggers they needed to scan. Amarik’s Red Team was to make some noise when necessary to divert attention but, until then, covertly lay the groundwork for a later explosive show.

A piece of debris accelerated past her, and Amarik swore. They had to maintain radio silence out here, so there was no way to call out to Kennedy and Patterson, the two officers sharing the debris, to slow down. Valyn subtly increased her propulsion unit to try and keep up, watching Kennedy as he signaled the problem: Patterson’s propulsion unit malfunctioned and would not switch off or adjust to lower levels. Again swearing at their luck, Valyn signaled back: eject the system. It would leave Patterson needing a ride home should they need to retreat the way they entered, but they’d worry about that later.

Patterson complied without hesitation, and they used Kennedy’s unit to adjust the trajectory of their debris, angling for the debris to shoot past the station. At this rate, they’d hit the station first, which, as long as they didn’t fuck it up for all of them, suited Valyn just fine. In the debrief before launching, the plan had been to get to the hatch, override the tech codes to break in without setting off alarms, and then work their way through the station deck by deck, the docking bay their ending target before triggering the first explosives they’d planted to make it easier to get out of the station via the docking bay, possibly with a stolen vessel if things worked completely as they wanted.

But, again, the station being Romulan and Tal’Shiar at that, Valyn already knew they would not get everything they wanted.

The Theurgy-based NPCs in this thread are Asra Tek (NPC), Chief Petty Officer Helena Prince (NPC), Crewman Petra Vansen (NPC), and Petty Officer Second Class Riley Patterson (NPC). Do with them as you see fit. Also, remember, if you opted in for the odd and bizarre secret prompts, you can use those in any of the episode chapters.

The in-bound characters on the shuttle may join in this thread or the other, TBD presently.

Re: Chapter 1: The (hopefully) Great Romulan Smash and Grab [Day 1 | 1800hrs ]

Reply #2 –
[ CPO Dominic Lau | Mary Baldwin | Romulan Space Station | Romulan Space ] @Ellen Fitz @BipSpoon @P.C. Haring @Hans Applegate @Sqweloookle @Stegro88

Getting to the station was easy.  Getting passed the patrols was non-trivial, and it had taken the crew some fancy flying when they'd been pounced on by a patrolling warbird, which left the Intelligence team adding to the litany of curses from ages past about not having a cloaking device.  After taking fire for a while, they'd needed to do some fancy flying near a large and bright class A star and the judicious application of the ship's countermeasure suite, and Bob was your uncle.  Except, the flying had gotten too fancy when the 'freighter' had flipped end over end and surprised the warbird by blasting a couple of holes in it after taking too many hits.  Said hits had somewhat fried the internal systems, which were now causing some control issues as the ship hurtled through space towards a Romulan space station that was supposed to be involved in weapons development. A transmission from headquarters had provided an updated operations schedule from the Theurgy team which meant at maximum speed to catch up.

Chief Lau sat in the cockpit of the freighter as the ship vibrated around him.  The normal smooth hum of the warp engines replaced with a deep and rough growl.  He tapped a button to communicate with the engineering space. "Klaudia, how does it look?"  Bessir's face was tight as worked to trim the warp field as much as possible to keep the ship FTL while the powerflow was becoming erratic. There was a pause "Can't say Chief, it's not my specialty.  I mean, this was mainly the el-tee's thing.  That last torpedo hit we took fried half a dozen relays and patching them isn't going well.  We don't have the spares on board."  She yelped as relay exploded in the background. Bessir decided to interrupt. "The nav system is starting to act up, we need to pull out of warp soon.  I think we're almost at the station's coordinates."

It was a hard call, but the ship was falling apart around them and the Chief nodded. The Cardassian-Bajoran sniper nodded.  "Getting ready to disengage warp drive."  His fingers engaged the deceleration process and the growl got even louder as the damage control screen lit up like Christmas Tree and instead of a standard shortening of the starscape to pricks of light, the view began to spin as the ship exited warp violently.  "Shiiiiit!" Bessir loudly cursed while everyone clung to whatever was handy as the inertial dampening field struggled to keep everyone from being turned into jam. Lau stretched an arm out and the process of re-routing power to the IDF was agonizingly slow as the sequence was input. After what seemed like an eternity, the centrifugal force slowed and the ship began to right itself as the sniper turned pilot got more control of the ship. It didn't take too much longer before the ship seemed to be more or less stable and out of immediate danger that Lau moved to the next steps. "How bad is it?" He could almost feel Cheung shaking her head. "I can't really say, but out port nacelle is leaking plasma and the starboard impulse thruster is having fits." A pause as she worked to make sense of the other information that coming out. "Structural Integrity is compromised, but holding; and everything else is damaged to one degree or another.  Sensors, shields, and weapons are mostly okay......and shit! EW is out.  Looks like the drop out of warp caused a surge that blew some of the emitters.  I don't think we can produce a convincing cover to get us anywhere." That as bad news overall and the next decision was whether to abort. "Do you think the engines will get us anywhere safe?" "If safe counts as a Romulan prison, then sure. Definitely not back to Federation space."

That as bad news indeed and Dominic grimaced. The Chief pulled up a chart of the system that was being built while the ship flew further in system.  The station was easy to identify due to the structural makeup and the power radiating from it.  Artificial singularities were quite distinctive even from a star.  There was one bit of 'terrain' the would make this whole escapade possible and he turned to Bessir with a death head's grin. "How lucky are you feeling?" The teammate looked back with dread, then grinned. "Do I have a choice?" "Well, the alternative is capture, torture, and a firing squad." The hybrid snorted. "Then I'm feeling lucky as hell."  The Chief nodded at this and uploaded the flight path to the objective.  A quiet 'shit' followed."This should be fun."  "Indeed. All hands, secure yourself. This ride is going to be bumpy."

Bessir pumped the impulse engines to maximum.  Given the entrance they'd made into the system, there was no hiding, so no sense in being subtle. The Mary Baldwin 'dove' into an asteroid cluster that would lead to the station and Bessir corkscrewed and weaved between masses of rock. The ship pulled at the crew as they made their run in like a mad missile throwing an evasive pattern, but guiding unerringly on a target. "Looks like they're waking up. Let's see what's left of the EW suite.  Beginning wide spectrum jamming."  Bessir only nodded as Lau cut off communications with the outside and he flipped the ship over and pulled past another rock. Manoeuvrable the freighter was, a small nimble fighter it was not as a piece of astral debris was smacked aside by the shields and the crew lurched forward as the kinetic energy was transferred to the ship. The ship lurched sideways again since Bessir wasn't really a pilot and didn't have the skills to dodge everything in the asteroid belt.

Lau was frankly more surprised that they hadn't collided head on with any of the larger rocks, but soon it got harder as green beams lanced out in their path. There were fewer then expected, which was a small saving grace.  The ship shuddered from a glancing blow and Lau ran scans on the station to determine points of interest.  A section quickly lit up that was using more energy than the initial scan and the signature matched the one a shield generator would give off. "I'm locking on to their shields and communications system. "Okay, here we go."  Bessir announced as the ship cleared the final asteroid and the station lay in front of them stabbing space with angry green beams. "Targets locked and.... Firing!"   Micro torpedoes flew into space in angry red orbs and quickly covered the distance between the Mary Baldwin and the station.  Orange beams also stabbed out and they hadn't a prayer of overwhelming the entire shield system.  While most of the warheads and beams wasted themselves against the energy barrier, they were just enough to cause a local failure and a few torpedoes made it through to the hull.  The metal buckled under the blasts of the phasers then the warheads plowed their way through.  A Romulan crew standing watch over the primary shield generator worked frantically to try to reinforce the shields, but it was too late as an small matter/anti-matter warhead struck the bulkhead around them and vented its fury into the compartment. They didn't even have time to scream as they were incinerated along with all the equipment. Breakers throughout the station tried to stem the energy feedback and some succeeded, but others failed and other sections of the station exploded as their relays blew up, sending more shrapnel and plasma careening through compartments along the energy's path. Havoc reigned on the command deck as a quarter of the consoles exploded in flaming ruin compounding the green bloody mess of watch crewman being torn to shreds by glass and alloys.

The Mary Baldwin didn't have it all her way though as a beam cleaved straight through the damaged nacelle and shattered it..  Thankfully, Cheung had the presence of mind to shut the engine down, so the damage was limited internally, but the ship would probably never fly again as a chunk of warp coil smashed the undamaged nacelle and rendered it inoperative.  Cheung took a moment to check her displays as she picked herself up off the deck.

"Chief, we've lost all warp drive. Both nacelles are gone."   Lau confirmed as he checked his own display, then looked out the window to see a metal stub on one side, and streaming wreckage on the other. "Understood. Bessir, drive us at this hab complex and try to brake us before we hit too hard."   Bessir now looked up. "Have you lost it?" The chief's rictus grin got more deadly "Not at all." Looking back at the flaming station, he targeted the section he wanted to crash and released another volley of torpedoes, then hit the intercom.

"All hands brace for impact." with scant moments to secure himself and divert all power to the SIF/IDF and shields, the freighter plowed into the cavity the explosions gouged into the station and tore itself deep into the complex. Metal screamed and screeched as systems got jumbled and power relays registered their protest by sparking or exploding.  Lau gritted his teeth as he pushed against the console in front of him while the straps dug into his muscled body while keeping him in his seat. Eyes stared wide as metal tore itself apart and the sliding death scream transferred itself into the hull in front of his very eyes and suddenly with a final lurch it was over. With the violence over, Lau stayed put while his brain caught up with the fact that he was alive.  A groan to his side caused him to look over at the pilot/sniper and he was gratified to Bessir pushing himself up from the console, then slowly look over with a grin. "See Chief, told ya. Feelin lucky as hell."  Chief Lau grinned back.  "That's the spirit Bessie, now get your lazy ass out and let's check on everyone else while we gear up.  We're going in heavy."

Re: Chapter 1: The (hopefully) Great Romulan Smash and Grab [Day 1 | 1800hrs ]

Reply #3 –
[ CPO Knox | inside the Mary Baldwin half inside the Romulan Space Station | Romulan Space ] @Stegro88   @Sqweloookle  @Ellen Fitz   @P.C. Haring  @RyeTanker

As soon as the Mary Baldwin impacted the Romulan Space Station, Knox stood up from his chair on the bridge and turned to his friend Dominic Lau, “See you on the station. I am heading to engineering to help evacuate any survivors and scuttle the Mary Baldwin. Just to be clear, our instructions were to cause mayhem so the stealthy team can sneak in during the chaos we unleash and grab the goods. I plan to make this space station unusable by them when we leave. Let’s aim to be gone in 15 minutes or less.”

With that, Knox sprinted to the weapons locker and grabbed a few demo charges to 'fix' engineering. He also placed 4 phaser pistols against his chest and absorbed them into his body before shifting his appearance. His skin took on the form of an extravehicular space suit to survive the vacuum of space if that became necessary. And there was a good chance that it would. Armed with 4 guns and two large shaped charges Knox took a minute to appreciate exactly what he was about to do and smiled an honest smile to himself. Not one of those learned responses to fit in with the solid members of the crew, but a real one. He was going to enjoy the next 15 to 20 minutes. He thought for a minute and then decided that 20 minutes might be better. He could have more fun, and more solids who were members of his crew might make it out with the extra 5 minutes. Yeah, his people might make it out, but these Romulans, they weren’t going to have a good day. Hell, if he had anything to do with it this would be their last day.

When Knox arrived in engineering he found complete chaos. Someone was trying to contain the warp core. Others were fixing relays, and attending to the wounded. “Whoever is in charge here report now!” Knox commanded with no real authority to do so. He just knew that in chaos like this people quickly responded to take charge attitude. Also, his imposing frame in the large exo suit added to it and he knew they could not tell who he was, just that he was Federation.

“Sir,.?, Uh.. its very bad.” an engineer stammered. “The core is about to go critical if we don’t shut it down. It will blow in 30 to 40 minutes at this rate.”

“Good.” Knox nodded to the shock of the ensign. “Show me the most critical areas that if they took direct damage this thing would completely blow.”

“Here Sir,” the nervous ensign pointed to two areas on either side of the warp core.

“Great!” Knox placed the two charges and let everyone who had stopped working at this point and were watching, see what he was doing. As everyone looked he set them to detonate in 20 minutes. “OK, everyone!” Knox stood up to face the ashen-faced crew members staring in disbelief. “If anyone wants to live longer than 20 minutes you need to evacuate the Mary Baldwin and board the Romulan space station we are currently lodged inside. Make your way to the hangar or something and steal any space-capable vehicle you can and fly the fuck away from here. Those are your orders. Now Move!” He yelled. They all quickly scrambled away. Most likely heading to the transporter room or something. Step one of his plan of unleashing chaos as a shroud to conceal the great technology robbery was set in motion. Also, this would cover their tracks and really fuck with the Romulans in this sector.

Knox used his communicator to inform Lau of what he had just done as he made his way to an airlock. On the way, he was fortunate enough to find a hull breach. A fissure had formed from the enemy fire on the ship and ripped open during the collision. Knox pried his way out and into the vacuum of space and skirted along the stricken hull of the Mary Baldwin turned fireship towards the space station.

Seeing a small access panel below him towards the bottom or southward end of the space station where Knox thought a military-minded race might keep a barracks, Knox pushed off from the hull and drifted towards the access port.

Once inside the station, Knox could hear alarms blaring. Commands were being yelled in corridors all around him. Through the walls he could hear the stamp of boots running and weaker-willed individuals screaming. Apparently, the Romulans were not ready for war today he mused as the airlock repressurized and the door opened letting him inside the station proper. OK, just a few minutes to get as many kills as possible before I need to find a way to get the fuck away from this place so I don’t get unlived too. His skin changed from the space suit form to a matt black ballistic fabric texture covering everything except his eyes. He had a dark reflective wrap-around visor encircling most of his head hiding 8 human-like eyes but hybridized with the Gorlokian Bat retinas giving him the ability to see in infrared seeing heat in pitch darkness. He pulled the 4 pistols out of his chest and grew an extra set of arms. Now with 4 arms each holding a pistol and 360-degree augmented vision Knox opened the next set of doors in front of him and sprinted through ready for a hunt. A running gunfight of a hunt that he would long remember. "I am become Chaos, destroyer of Space Stations." Knox thought to himself with glee as he found the first group of Romulan security personnel.

Re: Chapter 1: The (hopefully) Great Romulan Smash and Grab [Day 1 | 1800hrs ]

Reply #4 –
[ Lieutenant JG Adam Kingston | Between the Apache and the Romulan Space Station | Romulan Space ] attn: @Ellen Fitz @Stegro88  Apologies for the delay, Tafe has been rough with assessment due dates. Sorry for holding this up.

Along with the rest of the Red team, Adam was on his way to the Romulan Research and Development Station but through the vacuum of space in an environmental suit. All his equipment magnetically attached to his suit in some way or another.

He watched as the other took advantage of the small asteroids to mask their approach, he grabbed one that was just the size of two humanoids holding hands while stretched out to arms length and quickly grabbed onto it. It was already on course towards the station so it was good, though he tried not to do anything that could alter its trajectory but was prepared to use his thrusters just in case and softly.

The sense of paranoia of the Romulan's sensors detecting them floated around Adam's thoughts as he watched the HUD display inside his helmet. It showed the other Red team members in the passive scan radius. He was concerned when he saw Kennedy and Patterson go out of control but one saved the other at the last moment.

Adam sighed in relief and waited for when he was to get close enough that he could let go of the asteroid to drift over to the Station's hull. After that the task was to find an airlock or some other way in. It was a pity that they couldn't communicate as that would reveal their approach and positions, maybe they could look into some gizmo to equip onto their suits to cause interference so they could communicate using the interference as a medium.

Some time later…

Adam was drifting towards the Station hull after releasing the asteroid he rode in with, he checked the others to see if all had made contact as well. He appeared to be the last one to arrive. His suit's magnetic boots automatically stuck to the hull and he sighed again because he was glad the space flight was over.

He made his way to where the Red team seemed to be clustering to and he wondered about just how they were to breach the Station.
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Lieutenant JG Adam Kingston, Master-at-Arms, (Vector 03 Security) Profile Clickie

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Lieutenant/Dr Elro Kobol, Chief Medical Officer, (Vector 02 Medical) Profile Clickie

Re: Chapter 1: The (hopefully) Great Romulan Smash and Grab [Day 1 | 1800hrs ]

Reply #5 –
[ Lt Kestra Pren| Mary Baldwin | Romulan Space Station | Romulan Space ]  @Ellen Fitz‍   @BipSpoon‍  @RyeTanker‍  @Hans Applegate‍  @Sqweloookle‍  @Stegro88‍ 


Strictly speaking, Kestra Pren did not need to be in the cockpit of the Mary Baldwin as it made it’s approach but curiosity won out and as she had not been explicitly asked to leave the bridge, she assumed her presence was, at the very least, tolerated.  She found a corner, out of the way and observed the crew as they interacted.  Knowing that he would be her fire team partner, she paid particular attention to Lau as she sought to get a sense of the man to whom she would entrust her life and whom entrusted his life to her.  She was not disappointed.

His ability to adapt and think on the fly impressed her most and as the Baldwin took damage from the Romulan attack and lost one of her nacelles entirely, he remained unfazed.  She could not say for certain if she would have in his position and when he ordered the collision course, her only reaction was to brace for the inevitable impact.

As the damage report came down and it became clear the Mary Baldwin would not exist too much longer, Kestra was grateful that she had packed light and even more so that she had found a spare tactical backpack in the armory when she had gone for her phaser rifle a few hours ago. It took only a few seconds to transfer what few personal affects she had brought with her from the duffel to the pack.  The rest of the empty space she gave to extra power cells for her weapons as well as a handful of photon grenades.

She waited for Dominic to finish his work and gearing up before tossing him the rifle she had pulled and readied for him.  The Trill fully expected that he would want to give it a once over himself.  Any self respecting shooter would.  But, she thought the gesture might be appreciated.

“On your six, when you’re ready, Chief.”

Re: Chapter 1: The (hopefully) Great Romulan Smash and Grab [Day 1 | 1800hrs ]

Reply #6 –
[ Riov Vrikol i-Dorvik tr’Khev’ | Command and Control Center | Aboard the Tal’Shiar Ihnerha Faehht Emaifha Laeosa Mniohr (Tal’Shiar Second Secret Disease and Weapons Research Space Station) |  Romulan Space, approximately 24ly from Romulus ]  ATTN: @BipSpoon @Stegro88 @Sqweloookle @Hans Applegate @P.C. Haring @RyeTanker

“Damage report.” Riov Vrikol growled as he leaned over the shoulder of the Uhlan manning the monitoring station.

“The Starfleet vessel has embedded itself in the station, breaching the hull on decks 27 through 32. Automatic seals have been activated, and we are no longer leaking atmosphere.”

Sublieutenant Mensil called Vrikol’s attention, “There are reports of Starfleet infiltrators attempting to bypass the seals near the breach.” She frowned, looking more closely at her monitor before adding. “There also appears to be an anomalous energy fluctuation in the right-wing maintenance corridor of sector 3, deck 12.” Even as she spoke, more reports came in, and as she quickly read them, Vrikol watched her cheeks tinge green in frustration. “The Starfleet personnel have set their warp core to breach.”

Vrikol smiled. This particular group of foolhardy Starfleet personnel seemed to have come to play hard. He appreciated that.

“Send the Aehallh drones to surround the ship and emit the saeihr pulse. Their warp cores are not so drastically different from our own that the pulse won’t delay the breach enough for the Efw'khelh drones to dislodge it from the station and direct it deeper into the asteroid field.” He waited until the Uhlans received these orders and relayed them before continuing. “Order all decks to brace for the shock wave the breach will cause. Sublieutenant, order the Hvei'khenn A&D units to be brought fully online. I want them prowling the decks for any unwanted visitors. I doubt Starfleet expects to meet them, nor know how to deal with them.”

Vrikol moved toward the communications console, “I want a station-wide broadcast.” He waited for the Uhlans signal before speaking in Romulan, “Our station has been breached by Starfleet personnel. They are here to steal from us, to destroy us; we cannot let them. All station personnel are to remain armed and on the alert. Do not attempt to question the intruders. Incapacitate them in whatever manner necessary. Once you capture them, take them to the commander center for that deck for further processing. Do not abandon your stations; do not give up ground.”

Vrikol was satisfied to know that all personnel had just finished a lengthy drill on this very scenario: station breach. Every deck could function independently, and each of the wings could be disconnected if necessary, operating under its own set of impulse engines. Theirs was not simply a single station but a collection of stations, a mass of capable and deadly vessels that could be maneuvered at a moment's notice. Not only that but only station personnel authorized for that particular deck or sector could safely pass through the dozens of bioscanners attached to automatic defense systems. Systems that were now very activated and ready to take down unauthorized targets.

He held up a hand to stay the Uhlan from terminating the broadcast. Leaning closer to the microphone, Vrikol spoke in heavily accented Standard so the intruders could understand. “We know you are here, Starfleet. We are hunting for you, and we will find you.” Giving the Uhlan a nod, Vrikol stood up to his full height.

“I think this is the opportunity Doctor Vrojos was hoping for,” he nodded to the sublieutenant, “inform the doctor that he has clearance to release the Ghalai toxin across the station at his discretion.” Vrikol’s smile grew as he imagined the Starfleet personnel, unaware of the scentless and tasteless neurotoxin as it took hold, spinning images and sensations into their minds and leaving them temporarily mad and thoroughly incapable of fighting back. All station personnel were inoculated against it, but for anyone uninvited, it was just a traditional sort of Romulan greeting to such as those.
So, yeah, y'all had better work fast and keep the heat off the Blue team for success. A reference image for their attack and defense units.

Re: Chapter 1: The (hopefully) Great Romulan Smash and Grab [Day 1 | 1800hrs ]

Reply #7 –
[ CPO Knox | Aboard the Tal’Shiar Ihnerha Faehht Emaifha Laeosa Mniohr (Tal’Shiar Second Secret Disease and Weapons Research Space Station) |  Romulan Space, approximately 24ly from Romulus ]  ATTN: @BipSpoon  @Stegro88  @Sqweloookle  @Ellen Fitz  @P.C. Haring  @RyeTanker

The first 8 Romulan security personnel lasted a little under a second as Knox tore through them with 4 phasers firing independently under the direction of his 8 heat-seeking predatory eyes. It turned out that running along the ceiling and firing down on bewildered opponents worked quite well. And diving back towards the deck as he passed them to roll through the security door behind them as he past, allowed him to enter the next section of hallway. This new space was empty but had a 3 way intersection. Choosing to turn to the right Knox sprinted down a very short connector hallway to a large blast door. He could here lots of noise on the other side. Then a loud speaker came on. Some Romulan in charge was telling everyone that the Federation was here and that they were to fight back or something. It was probably meant to be motivational or something. Knox was just happy that they had everyone’s attention. That is what he was supposed to do after all. Now to kill as many as possible so the thieves could steal what they came here for.

Knox placed his hand on the keypad and melted into it a bit. He oozed a little of his liquid self around to the other side and connected the circuits to open the large door. Quickly he pulled his hand away and rearmed himself literally and also held a phaser. [Swoosh] The door opened.

Inside was what Knox would call a target-rich environment. It was the mess hall for this section of the station. There must have been 300+ Romulans in various stages of having dinner in the cavernous dining area with row after row of tables and chairs. Nearly all the chairs held a Romulan with a bewildered-looking facial expression. Most had a black chili bowl haircut and brow ridges above dark eyes. There were a few that stood out or differed slightly.

There were 4 Romulans in a line standing just inside the door looking at Knox in wide eyed confusion. Knox had 4 pistols. The first was a girl that got a beam to her forehead just between her brow ridges. The next was a male a little bit taller. He got a beam to his forehead between his brow ridges. The 3rd didn’t have brow ridges, but her forehead was still an adequate target. And the 4 had faint brow ridges on the forehead that were quickly zapped with a phaser beam much like the others. In an instant, all four fell to the ground with their eyes crossed, looking up at a smoking hole in their foreheads. The entire room erupted into chaos.

Knox switched the settings on his 4 phaser pistols to maximum power setting and removed the cool-down safety features so they would emit continuous beams. With large sweeping motions, he waved the 4 beams across the mess hall at about head height causing everyone to duck or have their heads vaporized as he leapt onto the nearest table. Then he jumped up and did a front flip as he quickly sprouted Klaxx’Vian Decopus suction cups from the bottoms of his feet. These anchored him to the ceiling again and turned him into a beam-shooting sprinkler from hell as he mowed down the fleeing Romulans.

A larger Romulan warrior of some sort was wearing armor so he slowed his slice down. He was not instantly vaporized like the others, just cut in half. His top half didn’t struggle too long but his legs kicked for quite a bit, as Knox moved on to the next target. A young lithe Romulan female jumped up and sprinted to a door on the far side of the mess hall. She made it two steps before her head disintegrated, and her body ran into a table and flopped around on top of it causing a chorus of shrieks from her friends. However, they didn’t mourn her loss long. Knox put the whole group out of their misery rather quickly. Seeing a door start to open up to his left, Knox held the beam in place to melt it shut before it could open fully. Only one at a time could get through. He then did the same thing to another door. He caught that one only when it was open enough for people to try and get through. The other door he melted shut before it opened up at all.

With his quarry trapped it was like shooting fish in a barrel! Knox walked along the ceiling with the 4 beams from his rapidly heating pistols carving up the host of Romulans trapped with him. His next target was an older gray-haired one with fancy shiny things on his uniform. He hit him in the chest and he quickly vanished. Then Knox mopped up several lackeys that were close to the officer. With a short squeal, the girl to his left was vaporized, then a string of curses from the aid on his right as he too met a similar end. 4 more jumped up and attempted to throw their dining utensils at Knox as he stood on the ceiling. He sidestepped their hand-thrown projectiles and then vaporized the brave quartet.

Two crowds were forming at the partially opened doors that were stuck. Knox swept all 4 beams from his now hot pistols towards the door that a few of them might actually be able to escape from. Within a few seconds, 3 dozen would-be escapes were turned into about 5 wounded Romulans. They were summarily dispatched in short order as well.

Knox could feel the heat building up in the phasers and they were starting to humm. Ever since he had heard that an overloaded phaser would explode, Knox had wanted to see it firsthand. And now he was about to set 4 of them off at once! Knox ran to the other end of the mess hall were the entrance to the kitchen was. He reabsorbed the suction cups from the bottom of his feet and somersaulted to the floor. Landing on his feet he spun around and sliced 4 phaser beams across the room at waist level catching 9 Romulans who had dared to stand and run for an exit. In an instant they were demolecularized with a few surprised shouts. That’s about all the time Knox had. The pistols were growing hot and starting to vibrate. He tossed two pistols at the door that was just open enough to let a few people out and then  1 towards the door that was just cracked open. His remaining pistol he tossed towards a corner of the room that had several Romulans huddled together hiding. Pistols gone and about to blow, Knox turned to make his exit.
Slap! Knox was hit across his face the second he chucked the pistols away. He expected this. Two Romulans, a male and a female had jumped out from under a table next to him armed with food trays. The standard issue mess hall ones they had been using to eat from when he interrupted their dinner. The larger Romulan had hit Knox in the face before he could transform two of his arms into something more useful. The two upper arms morphed into large chitinous scythes in the style of the Jirolothian Mantis. Knox had enjoyed his time as a Jirolothian Mantis. It was fun being a large invertebrate for a time, many many years ago. He had fond memories of his time hunting in the dense foliage of Jiroloth Prime jungles. It was a nearly sentient species. Knox had been able to quickly climb the social order of their primitive society. This had allowed him access to the best hunting grounds and as many mates as he could want. Although he kept turning the female mantis babes down for obvious reasons. But now was a great time to reminisce of his time as an apex jungle predator stabbing to death any small furry mammal he could find. With the first swipe up of his large mantis claw, poker, stabber/slasher thing, he sliced the male Romulan nearly in two vertically. With his other scythe, he brought the razor sharp chitinous point down straight through the plastic tray the Romulan woman tried to shield herself with. The point pinning the tray to her forehead like a tac. He held it still for a moment as she went limp. As her knees buckled and her arms dropped to her sides she stayed hanging on to the tip of his claw by her forehead. But her body weight eventually pulled her down off the tip of the scythe with a wet schlock sound and she crumbled to the floor on top of the right half of her fellow wannabe hero. Unfortunately, her tray stayed attached to Knox’s new shiny jet black chitinous killing appendage. “Oh, how annoying!” Knox grunted as he pulled the tray free and threw it like a frisbee before leaping into the kitchen as he remembered the phaser pistols should be about to explode.

Knox made it into the kitchen just in time. He slammed the hatch closed and dove around a wall and ducked behind a row of ovens. There was a small Romulan woman and two male chefs hiding there also. Quickly Knox put his finger to where his mouth would be if he had one in this form in the universal be quiet sign. All 3 looked too scared to move or say anything. They just shared a few glances with each other, then looked back at him. He didn’t want to have to fight them right now. Knox was way more interested in seeing what these overloaded phaser pistols would do…..[Boom]
A deep and defining thud followed in rapid succession by 3 more nearly simultaneous blasts shook Knox to his core. It was enough to nearly make him almost dizzy! Awesome!! Knox didn’t even bother to go look at the mess hall. He was sure it was a mess now.

Standing up in the small corridor in the kitchen Knox dusted himself off and looked at the 3 romulans who had been sheltering with him. They seemed rather dazed by the over pressure. “Thanks for being quiet so I could enjoy that explosion.” Knox said in Federation standard to un-understanding Romulan chefs before he stabbed both of them in the chest with his mantis claws. The smaller female Romulan on the floor next to him apparently was a little more with it than her male counterparts. Well to be fair having a pulse did put her way ahead of them. She had started to lightly hammer fist on Knox’s left leg with all her might. It didn’t do much except let Knox know he had another person to kill. He bent down and picked up the feisty female and shoved her in the oven next to them. The blast had rattled the door open. With her inside Knox slammed the oven shut and grabbed a long knife off the floor and wedged it into the oven door jamming it closed. Then he stood up and looked at the control panel for it. It was all in Romulan so he just pushed buttons until it looked like it was finally turned on and heating up. He waved at the scared and bewildered female through the clear glass on the front of the oven door, then turned to walk away.

As Knox went deeper into the kitchen he found a few more cooks recovering from the blast. He stabbed one. Another threw a knife at him. Knox dodged it and grabbed a pot of boiling water off the stove and flung it at him. He screamed in pain as the water seared him. Knox slit his throat and shut him up. Nearing the back of the kitchen two final cooks jumped out to fight Knox. Each one was armed with various cookware. They appeared to be using large pots and pans as shields and each had a cleaver. Knox used his insectoid scythes to cleave the first Romulan’s arms off at the shoulder. The now armless Romulan stood frozen for a second in disbelief. Knox tossed him head first into the large dishwashing sink. His legs kicked frantically while he was drowning. His blood rushing out of his gaping wounds turned the water in the sink red. Without arms he could do nothing to right himself, and his wriggling only caused splashing that made his friend lose interest in a fight with Knox. The other Romulan turned and darted for the door in the back of the kitchen. He tossed his weapons aside as he ran. Knox stayed just behind him and waited until he had opened the door to the corridor before swiftly beheading him.

The door to the hallway swooshed open to let a headless corpse fall out onto the deck. Knox stepped over the body out into the corridor holding the man's head casually and looked both ways. To his left and group of Romulan security guards were running through a 4 way intersection just a little ways from Knox. Considering they were mostly unarmed or only carrying a phaser, Knox hoped they would be headed to an armory. It would be a great place for him to rearm, figuratively this time. The very last person in the group charging past without looking was a rare brunette specimen of a Romulan female. Knox threw the man’s head at her legs with considerable force. The impact caused her to faceplant. She didn’t have time to do anything since Knox had already covered the distance to her. She let out a short squeal of surprise and pain as one of Knox’s pointed insect claws slammed down right in the middle of her back pinning her to the floor like a butterfly on display. That was enough to get her companions attention. They all looked back in time to see a shiny jet black raptorial leg of a large insectoid creature pinning their comrade to the ground.  Her eyes looked up at them pleadingly before she was pulled to the side out of their view just around the corner. Quickly Knox sliced the girl into large pieces tossing an arm then a leg then another leg then the other arm around the corner for her friends and colleagues to see. Followed quickly by her bisected partially disrobed torso, then finally her head.

Judging by the shouting from the group, that little display had the desired effect. He could sense they were afraid. Knox shifted his form into that of a giant spider with suction cups on the tips of his spider legs. He scampered up the wall and onto the ceiling. With a small set of white wipe like tendrils he added to his back now in place, his personal upgrade to the natural design, Knox rounded the corner of the corridor.

The first few shots went low. They had been expecting the attack to come from the same height as a normal humanoid walking down the hallway, not from above them. The 3 Romulans didn’t have time for another shot. The white cords of spider silk wrapped around each of their throats and yanked them up off their feet. Knox pulled them up towards his spidery form while squeezing their necks tightly with his spider silken appendages. They were now just air dancing decorations for Knox’s carapace. 4 of his eight eyes had a good look of their horrified faces as they were being strangled with the aid of artificial gravity as they stared up at the horror that was killing them. Knox continued his trek toward the armory. He could see it just ahead as he let the Romulans continue to kick uselessly while hanging. Knox thought to himself, “Damn! Those humans came up with an absolutely amazing execution method back in the day. No wonder the whole town turned up at those public hangings…I wonder if Starfleet might bring back public hanging some day. I just might stick around.” With 4 eyes looking where he was going, Knox used the other 4 eyes to watch the two males and 1 female struggle in his silk nooses. Taking note of how their faces turned green and their mouths gasped for air. Their struggles and choking sounds were somewhat soothing to him as they dangled from his back. Solids were really fun to dispatch! But these seemed to be about done as their struggles started to subside. Knox was near the armory now and decided to keep the human decorations until he got there in the event the door required one of their hand prints or something to open.

Just as he made it to the door, it swooshed open and a bolt of lightning shot out from the door and hit one of the three weakly struggling Romulans near death still hanging in Knox’s silk noose. The electrical arc from it was so powerful! Knox’s nooses turned to a gooey liquid and the corpses dropped to the floor. If there was any life left in them, that arc lightning thrower had surely fried them. Knox didn’t have time to appreciate the electricity causing his trophies to convulse and tremble on the floor. He had other problems. Big ones! His suction cups gave out from just the residual jolt of electricity that traveled up the silk ropes to his body.

The stunned Spider-Knox fell to the ground landing flat on his back. This electricity weapon was bad news! Knox had been having a wonderful and chaotic time until this happened. He was just coming too when he saw the weapon turning to point right at him to finish him off. Knox sprang right at the Romulan with all the force his 8 legs could muster crashing into him. Just as Knox made impact with him, the next bolt of lighting hit Knox in the left side before arcing on to the metal doorframe. The Romulan fell to the ground and Knox splashed on top of him. That did it. Not a sustained full hit, but enough to turn him completely liquid. Knox really wanted his bucket right about now. In his basic liquid form Knox had the ability to slither along the ground in a liquid state, and that was about it. He could feel a strong tingle all over and could perceive solids nearby, but was otherwise defenseless. He was sliding along the floor as quickly as he could. He needed a plan. He needed an escape. He needed to get this damn tingling feeling to stop so he could shape shift again. But there was nothing like that to be had as he made his way further into the armor along the cold metal surface.

Then Knox bumped into a boot. Boots are like buckets, Knox reasoned as he slithered up the boot. However, this boot was occupied and all of him could not fit inside the boot along with whoever was wearing it. Knox instead slimed his way up the pant leg of this person quickly trying to get away before that electricity shooting weapon hit him again. He was getting some senses back and heard a high pitched shriek of fear and some other Romulans yelling now. He felt the skin of the person he was sliding up now. It was a Romulan female. He quickly had all of himself under her clothes spread out across the majority of her body underneath her clothes. He could sense light and dark fully now and kept all of himself in the dark under her clothing so the others could not see him. Knox’s form now was that of a thin slime only a few millimeters thick coating her whole body except her hands and face. He could feel the woman beating and against herself trying to hit him. It didn’t really accomplish anything. The only way to get to him was to shoot her with the weapon. He thought for a second that that might be exactly what happened next, as he clung to her nude form as tightly as a second skin. But the killing shot never came. She must be of some high rank or standing near some sort of explosive. Knox realized in that moment as she started to walk away that she must be next to something that would go boom if the lightning weapon arced off course just a little. Quickly, Knox oozed down her boots with part of his slime form. He had some of his abilities back and needed to use them now! He stuck himself and his host to the floor. Her feet were glued into her boots and her boots were glued to the ground, thanks to Knox. The two other voices started to tell her things in Romulan. A language Knox didn’t understand, but could gather the context. They were making a plan. Knox needed a plan of his own.

As his tingling sensations started to eb a bit Knox felt a little stronger. He flexed his slime along her arms. He was able to move them with some effort against her will as she fought. Knox needed to distract her enough to over power her. With firm undulations he started to massage her ample breasts and tweak her nipples as firmly as he could muster. Using his thin form to its maximum dexterity, he assaulted her clit in the most enticing way possible building on his ability. It was working. She froze, then freaked out a little. That break in concentration was enough to force her arms behind her back. He could hear her saying something frantically. Soon heavy footsteps came rushing to her aid. Knox was gaining some strength now. Soon he would be able to shapeshift again. But for now he was just in a slimy state and was gaining dexterity and strength. She struggled against him for freedom. He needed to keep hidden under her clothes just a little longer so they could not use a hand taser or something on him. He could feel her try to pull her arms free and the man next to her aided in this. With his help they might overpower Knox’s hold on her. Knox decided to up the distractions now that he was getting stronger.

Suddenly the woman’s body went rigid then shook. Knox had clamped down hard on each of her nipples and her clit at the same time he invaded her asshole and pussy. This brief distraction was enough for Knox to force each of her hands into the sleeve of the opposite arm of her uniform. Now with her hands hidden the only place Knox didn’t have access to was her face. He had her hand firmly glued to her elbows now, tight across her back, causing her to arch and stick her bust forward toward the man helping her. Then the fellow got wise and tried to rip open the front of her uniform. Not to expose her breasts, although that would be a side effect, he wanted to get to Knox. But the wise old liquid was not going to let that happen. He glued all the openings of her clothes shut. The pulled and pulled but was unable to undo a single fastener. It felt odd to work so hard to preserve a girl’s modesty. Especially one that he was working towards killing.

The other Romulan, presumably the one with the weapon who had shot Knox just a minute ago, came over to assist too. He had set the weapon down apparently. Quickly Knox checked all of the possible openings to her clothes just to make sure. He even sealed her high collar shut tight against her neck. That’s how he would do it, he decided. He had to keep her alive long enough to not let them give up on saving her. But he had to kill her then the other two quickly afterward. Another strangulation might be the best option since he could not yet shift into another form but was getting strong enough in his slime form. Knox thickened his band of slime around her neck. When he was sure he had enough he gave a series of sharp bites to the tips of her toes and fingertips. She yelled to the men helping her what was happening. As they were busy looking at her feet and hands, Knox tightened around her slim and delicate neck. She went silent. Never to make another noise. One of the gentlemen found the small bit of Knox outside her clothing on her boots gluing her in place. The fist blows and clawing did nothing. The knife one of them had also produced little results. The two of them frantically worked at the small bit of the shape shifter they had access to focused solely on the woman’s feet as Knox choked the life out of her. He didn’t have to keep stimulating her. But it was a good workout that seemed to be helping him recover faster. And the more he kept her heart rate up the quicker she would die. So Knox started a full blown bodysuit sex torture of the poor woman as she was being asphyxiated. Then he felt it. He had the ability to shift slightly. Not much. Just make a little cone shaped thorn. Then he could make multiple of them. With tongue-like licking sensations roaming her body up and down from neck to toe, Knox mixed it up a bit. Soon wave after wave of small spikes pierced her tender flesh like needles only going 2 millimeters deep. But several dozen at a time moving across her body in waves going up and down followed by tenter licking. Now he was able to make firmer slime muscle structures and he fucked both her holes he had access too, much deeper than she had ever been fuck in her life. Beyond what was considered comfortable. Knox could feel her heart racing. Right at her nipples he started to grow those small spikes forcing himself to grow them longer and longer, piercing down through her erect nipples and burrowing into her meaty tits. Coaxing his ability to shift to come back he tunneled the spikes towards her heart.  He could feel her desperate struggles start to turn to spasms as he strangled the life out of her. Then he felt it. Just as she started to quiver in her death throes he had the ability to move and shift ever so slightly.  With a quick motion, Knox formed two slime hands from his band of slime at her collar then snapped the woman’s neck for good measure and let her fall like a sack of potatoes.

The two men helping her realized what had happened too late. They reached up and caught her only to have Knox’s hand turn to blades and slice their necks. They collapsed onto the floor spewing green Romulan blood. The dead woman lay between them. And an exhausted Knox finally stripped the right boot off the dead lady. He poured himself into it for some much needed recovery time. He chanced one glance at the girl to see she was wearing a grenade belt and was standing next to a locker full of grenades. “Ha, what a little pyro.” Knox thought. He liked the girl a little more now. And he was also so freaking happy that he had slimed his way to her first by chance. She was the perfect human shield and was likely to do lots of damage to the team assaulting the station. But Knox had taken her out of the game and she even left him treats for his efforts! And there was also that new lightning weapon. Knox wanted it. But all that could wait a few more minutes he thought as he retired to his new boot that would stand in for his bucket.

Re: Chapter 1: The (hopefully) Great Romulan Smash and Grab [Day 1 | 1800hrs ]

Reply #8 –
[ CPO Dominic Lau | Romulan Space Station | Romulan Space ] @Ellen Fitz @BipSpoon @P.C. Haring @Hans Applegate @Sqweloookle @Stegro88 @Dree

Petty Officer Klaudia Cheung was an anomaly as far as Starfleet and Federation were concerned.  Petty Officers were rather ubiquitous as far as Starfleet went.  Petty Officer's with a degree from the University of Bern and an equivalent from the Vulcan Science Institute were very unusual, especially for someone who just reached her mid 20s.  When pressed or drunk on why she'd chosen her present career path instead of being an officer or a researcher, the answer usually boiled down to This is way more fun.  Still, she had her limits, and both her degrees had been in cybernetics.  Propulsion engineering was something else; but she could hum a few bars and generally make it work. Thus, she didn't really have the ability to prevent the core from breaching,  but she was able to divert enough power and bypass various systems to temporarily stabilize the core and give enough time for everyone to gather their equipment and get off the ship. With Chief Lau leading the way and Lieutenant Pren following, everyone quickly debarred.

Upon leaving, the Chief had made it abundantly clear to everyone that the main goal of the mission was to find a terminal with sufficient access to first find a map, then another one that would give access to the research database.  Their main focus was anything Thalaron related.  Klaudia was the most important person in the group since she had the know how to gain the information needed. Authorization had been provided that the station, and its personnel were to be considered expendable for the mission.

Several of the picked up crew looked uncomfortable, but with the upheaval the quadrant had suffered in the wake of the Dominion War, there were few complaints.  Finding a computer with a map and access hadn't been too difficult and the human tech had taken a chance to download a map, which she forwarded to everyone's triciorders. She'd also taken a few moments to upload several ghost programs into the computer. With open data research networks required for R&D, the viruses quickly spread. Most were quickly eradicated by the terminally paranoid Romulans, but a few with different wrinkles survived and continued to worm their way through the networks. Thus came the first bit of good fortune as it were as several investigating security and researchers came by and were ambushed as the sensors in the area had been hashed and showed them in a room across the corridor.  It had been comically easy really since the researchers martial skills were extremely lacking and in several cases they, had just gotten in the way of the security personnel. They'd also been looking wrong way and been efficiently mowed down. Lau was reluctant to terminate everyone right away and Cheung had asked for liver prisoners for a pass hack. Dragging everyone in, the petite Asian woman went to work finding a pass card that she could copy.  She did find several, but it was the biometrics of the body she needed.  Selecting one sleeping form, they'd dragged the body over to a door to see what inputs were needed.  This was where they ran into their first stumbling block where a hand print was required to pass through the doors. "Chief, we can't drag him everywhere with us."  Cheung had pointed out and Lau had nodded his understanding of the situation. Sighing, he reluctantly came to the same conclusion.  "I guess it's unavoidable."  Pulling his phaser, he changed the beam length and intensity, then grimaced as he held the hand out and used the phaser to slice it off. Cheung made a wretching sound as the chief gave her the hand. After getting over her disgust, she modified her tricorder to scramble some of the other sensors.  With their ability to pass though doors and the sensor system throwing ghosts are all over the place, the group proceeded onward, occasionally hacking terminals as they went or bush whacking other passing groups of personnel.

[Command Centre]

Riov Vrikol i-Dorvik tr’Khev was livid. Some computer terminals were refusing to operate and mayhem was blossoming around the crash site. Garbled reports came from one area of some sort of monster massacring everyone in it's path.  Resistance to the being was determined but appeared ineffectual.  The other one was more ominous as groups would just disappear. There would be a garbled call of surprise, the sound of weapons fire, then static. He tried to pull up some more data on what was going on and then smashed his fist into the console as the keys changed colour or position causing an error to show on his screen of an unrecognized combination. "Have you eradicated the virus?" he called to the operations section. "It's much harder doing this through a tricorder since the terminal keys keep changing."  The head of the facility growled his disgust then snorted.  It was time to see how this group of rodents liked being chased. 

Tapping his communications button, he managed to get the head of Robotics Research. "Beyus, we need time to sort out what's going on with the computer, or get the aliens who have caused us problems. What is the status of project Centurion?"

The researcher didn't even pause. "We have eight prototypes ready for demonstration. Four dissident suppression models and four combat models. They've passed all their tests to date and the combat ones show particular promise, especially with the scaled down energy shields..."  Riov grunted his acceptance as he waved impatiently. "I'm sending coordinates for several Starfleet infiltrators. The mechs will have to do some searching since the life sign scanners are not functioning correctly in the area. The mechs are to subdue if possible, and terminate if necessary."

[Robotics Lab 6]

Beyus nodded and smiled wolfishly. His personal project was going to move much faster than anticipated with a live test. The prestige would vault him into the halls of power for far more advanced projects. Excitedly he went to the waiting prototypes and used his hand comp to begin the targeting parameter process as he received the targeting location. It was a fairly straight forward process since these mecha were designed to be juggernauts. This caused him to pause for just a moment. That ignorant strumpet, Duma, was also in the area. While undeniably intelligent, she spent most of her time seducing resources away from more worthy projects. She did usually leave her pass and have to return to her quarters to retrieve them.  The scientist rubbed his eye brow for a moment and grinned as he punched in parameters. Target types were non-Romulans and unauthorized personnel. If some of the other staff were harmed, well you couldn't cook without breaking something.

Beyus was too happily programming his kill bots to notice the shift in colours of a panel over one of the mechs, and with the process being slowed down by the virus that Operations should have nailed down, it was not an inconvenience he had to deal with. It was truly annoying that tr’Khev was pestering him to get the bots moving, and the last one seemed to be having issues accepting its commands. In an annoyed tone, he'd ordered two combat mechs to each location along with a pair of dissident suppression mechs after the 'monster'. What nonsense! He'd thought to himself. Typical wailing ignorant children. The third ready dissident suppression mech followed the combat mechs to the 'ghost' location. This last one would have to follow when it was ready.  It took only a few more minutes for the optic sensors to flash a malevolent green of a ready mech and the magnetic mechanical hiss of gears going into motion could be heard as the bot stood up.

"Unit Active.  Targeting Parameters Accepted." it intoned in deep mechanical and resonant tone. All was normal and Beyus grinned.

"Warning, dissidents detected."  The scientist's eye brows arched.  What was going on? and his cursiosity turned to alarm as the optic sensors looked directly at him.

"Dissident, stand down and prepare to be subdued."  The researcher's jaw went slack.  This wasn't supposed to happen his mind gibbered as a stun projector pointed at him and blasted him into unconsciousness, sending his body flying back a few feet where it slammed into a table.  The security guards at the door stared in shock and fumbled for their disruptor pistols.  This drew the attention of mech. "Warning, armed insurrection in progress.  Advancing dissident suppression level. Dissidents, drop your weapons and surrender."  One guard manged to get his pistol out and pulled the trigger.  The shot went wide in his terror induced haste and the mech responded by firing a burst at the standing guard.  His bloody corpse slammed into the wall and fell to the ground smoking.  "Active rebellion in progress.  Suppress all dissent." The mech emotionlessly spoke as people began screaming while disruptor beams criss crossed the room. and soon the corridors beyond.


OOC:
Hans - There are 2 combat mechs and 2 dissident suppression mechs going after Knox
PC Haring - There are 2 combat and a dissident suppression mech going after the crew of the Mary Baldwin
Everyone - There is a 'malfunctioning' murderous suppression mech tearing apart the Robotics Labs. Of course Klaudia had something to do with it.

Re: Chapter 1: The (hopefully) Great Romulan Smash and Grab [Day 1 | 1800hrs ]

Reply #9 –
[ Lt. Kestra Pren | Romulan Space Station | Romulan Space ]  Attn:  @Ellen Fitz‍  @BipSpoon‍  @Hans Applegate‍ @RyeTanker‍  @Sqweloookle‍ @Stegro88‍ @Dree‍

Kestra dove behind cover as a blast of disruptor fire struck against the bulkhead she had just been standing next to. The Romulans had been particularly forceful in their response to their incursion, moreso than she might have expected for a research station. The Admiral’s intelligence on the station indicated it might be hiding some high tech prototypes aside from the Thaloron triggers, and based on what she was hearing through the Starfleet Comm channels, that assessment was spot on.

With the help of Klaudia Cheung’s expertise, the crew of the Mary Baldwin had patched into the comms of the Theurgy crew on board the station. They had two teams, one dubbed Red, the other Blue. Blue was to go after the objective, while Red created distractions. The team from the Baldwin, dubbed “purple” had been left into more of a freelancing role. Help where able, but ultimately ensure the success of both teams to the best of their ability.

She spun out of cover, the barrel of her rifle coming to bear on the Romulans who had them pinned. Three quick squeezes of the trigger, sent three phaser pulses down the corridor. Two Romulans vaporized instantly, the third survived as her shot went wide.

To her left,  PO3 Jenkins also spun out of cover and fired. His shit hitting the elusive third Romulan square in the chest and sending him to the deck that would mark his final resting place.

“Clear!”

Together Kestra waved her fireteam forward, her rifle up high on her shoulder, ready to fire. As they rounded the corner, her vision seemed to blur for a second and, if she didn’t know better, the bulkheads seemed to flex and bend as though she were walking through a hall of mirrors. Just then her tricorder beeped. Leaning up against the bulkhead which felt far more solid than it looked, Kestra pulled the tricorder out of it’s holster, flipped it open, and clipped it into the bracket attached to her rifle. Never did her eye leave the gun sight.

She flicked her gaze at the output, but couldn’t fully understand it.

“Pren to Cheung. What the hell am I looking at?”

[[Standby one, Pren. Linking to your tricorder now.]] There was but the briefest of pause. [[Ah… sorry about that. The Romulans are trying to release a neurotoxin into the atmosphere. My virus is blocking it, but it looks like some might have released before I could shut it down.]]

“It’s screwing with my perceptions.”

[[Yeah… it’s non lethal but it’ll make you hallucinate like crazy. Just keep pushing forward. There’s cleaner air up ahead. I’ll guide you if needed.]]

She knew the protocol and signaled the rest of her team to hold their breath as they advanced into the next section of the facility.

‘CHUNK’

The deck almost reverberated beneath them with the sound.

‘CHUNK’

[[Oh shit…]]

‘CHUNK’

The sound grew louder, a rhythm like the footsteps of a metallic giant approached them.

“Talk to me, Cheung…”

‘CHUNK’

[[TAKE COVER]]

Kestra saw it a split second before she heard the warning. The gunmetal monstrosity rounded the corner and opened fire without warning. Debris flew in all directions as the Romulan mech unloaded it’s ordinance. The deafening noise threatened as much disorientation as the neuro-toxin but she closed her eyes and willed herself to focus. The weapon would have to stop firing eventually, and when it did she would respond in kind.

She sensed it more than heard it, a minor change in the rhythm of the noise followed by a noted slow down in the firing rate and then it fell silent.

“NOW!”

She wasn’t sure if anyone would follow her cue, and she didn’t care. She jumped out of cover and held the rifle trigger, willing the phaser to fire even faster than it already was. At least two other phasers were firing in unison with her.

But none of it did any good. The mech kept coming, it’s shield bubble illuminating at the points of impact like that of a starship. Not only that, but she saw the gattling disruptors start to spin up again.

“COVER!”

She pulled back just in time as another volley of weapons fire chewed through the corridor leaving her to wonder if there would be any cover left. More debris flew and she brought her arm up to cover her face.

When the weapons spun down the second time, Kestra was ready and lobbed a photon grenade at the mech and ducked behind her cover once again.

Even with the benefit of cover, she felt the concussive wave of the weapon’s explosion pressing against her as more debris fell around her. The grenade was strong enough to blow a hole in the hull of a shuttle, or level the side of a building. But as the gattling disruptors spun up again, she realized it was not strong enough to penetrate the Mech’s shields.

She looked across the corridor to the other side of the junction. Jenkins was down and unmoving. She’d lost sight of Lau but the other two on their fire team were struggling to hold their position under the mechs whithering fire.

For it’s part, the Mech hadn’t moved. It’s pilot seemed content to hold that corner and keep them pinned.

‘CHUNK’

She dared to peek around the corner, and saw the Mech take a step and, much to her surprise, the shield perimeter did not push the debris out of the way, but rather allowed the inert material to pass harmlessly inside the bubble. Which made her wonder…

There were plenty of holes in the deck and she could see a service crawlspace under her. But she doubted…

Something caught her eye. A panel, no more like a junction actually and in the briefest of instances, she was back at the academy sitting in an elective engineering extension course pining after a particularly handsome upperclassmen named Bashir. An arrogant, know it all medical student, Kestra remembered not caring about his personality as long as he’d take her to bed with him. Alas, it never happened.

Another blast of debris took her back to the moment and she wiped the blood off her cheek.

“Pren to Cheung,” she called. “Am I looking at a Plasma Waveguide conduit?”

She pointed her phaser at the panel in question so her Tricorder could get a scan of it and relay the data back to Klaudia.

[[Confirmed. What of it LT?]]

“Find me the adjoining plasma conduit, quickly!”

There was but the briefest of pauses. [[Two meters directly in front of you.]]

Directly under the mech. Just what she was hoping to hear.

“Cover me!”

She didn’t wait for a response before tossing her rifle and pack to the nearest person. Pulling two photon grenades from her pack she dove into the hole in the deck and dropped hard into the service tunnel below. She scampered forward as the mech fired into the gap she had used, to get down there, before turning it’s attention elsewhere.

For as short of a crawl the two meters was, it seemed to take forever to reach the point. As promised the plasma conduit ran under the deck, perpendicular to her orientation. She had no way of knowing exactly where the mech was above her, but if this worked, It wouldn’t matter. She armed the grenades and slammed them onto the conduit.

“Fire in the hole!”

The seconds ticked down in her head as she pulled herself out and sprawled out towards the other two fire team members. She found Lau with them, and as she gathered her gear she pulled them with her “Fall back!”

They retreated back into the adjacent section. Already one of her team tore at the emergency panel and was pumping closed the blast doors, sealing themselves off. The deck rumbled again as the explosion deafened them momentarily and send them tumbling down.

[[Are you all right?]]

It was Cheung. Kestra took a look at her teammates. Everyone was alive though she couldn’t assess any injuries thy might have had. For her part, Kestra felt the blood trickling down the side of her face and the debris that had impaled into her left thigh muscle. It wasn’t deep, so she ignored the tenants of first aid and pulled it out, dropping the shard to the deck. It hurt like a bitch but the pain subsided into a throbbing ache.

“We’re in one piece. What about you?”

[[What the hell did you do? The plasma distribution network is flashing a breach alarm.]]

“Detonating a photon grenade next to a plasma conduit will do that you know,” Kestra replied. "We’ve retreated to the adjacent corridor. Can you diver the plasma flow to cut the fire?"

[[Done. I’m also not detecting a hull breach. Other than the radiant heat, it should be safe to re-enter.]]

“What about the mech?”

[[Can’t tell you. Internal sensors are down in that section. Can’t imagine why…]]

Kestra ignored the sarcasm as she took up her gear and squeezed herself through the gap in the blast door, created when the explosion had twisted the doors frame.  She broke into an immediate sweat from the heat. Turning at the junction where they had been pinned, she brought her rifle to bear but a forcefield stopped her in her place. The reason why was obvious.

The section they had been fighting in, like the mech that had pinned them, no longer existed.

Re: Chapter 1: The (hopefully) Great Romulan Smash and Grab [Day 1 | 1800hrs ]

Reply #10 –
[ Lieutenant Valyn Amarik | Romulan Space Station | Romulan Space ] Attn: [Show/Hide]
Valyn latched onto the hull near the hatch they had been inbound to, and motioned as many other members of the team over as she could, as not to break comms silence. The station was massive, and the sheer amount of debris, be it made by one of the peoples of the galaxy, or the stuff of stars - chunks of rock that flew past at terrifying speeds.

It wasn’t her first run in zero-g, hells the Tal-Shiar had sent her on a zero-G run into a Federation ship once. My, my how the tables had turned. Their own knife, pressed against their throat, one they’d forged over decades. She was motioning for someone to come and hack the door when she saw it, a shuttle…no, a ship. A fucking ship was careening towards the station at…well, considerable speed. Radio silence. She reminded herself quickly as she began to wave her arms, yep, as if that would do much good in the black void that was space. She pulled a grapple line from her suit and attached it to a maintenance hatch near the door before - BOOM. She couldn’t hear it obviously, but oh gods she felt it.

That station bucked like an angry bronco in distress in response to the Starship crashing into it. So much for a quiet entrance and…was that a Federation ship? Well…that complicated matters. She motioned over towards anyone that could see her, pointing at the door. She certainly wasn’t going to breach half-cocked and alone, by now the entire station would be on alert. It was going to be a fight from start to finish.

She was kicked from the station, the tether the only thing keeping her from drifting off into space, to slowly starve of oxygen and likely never be found again, and that tether was putting in WORK. It was tight, and Valyn could see the strain on the fibers as she screamed in her suit, trying to pull herself back in. She watched as a Patterson too bucked with the impact, but she hadn’t been able to tether in time. Valyn reached out, gripping her arm as tightly as she could. She had her, thank the gods she had her! Then…from the right a piece of Romulan bulkhead went screaming past, straight through the torso of Asra Tek.

“NO!” Valyn screamed to herself, comms off. Hells with that. She flicked the comm unit on, quickly trying to encrypt it, at least to buy them a little bit of time. “Tether to the station, or to each other! Tek is dead. Breach that fucking door!” She pulled herself in, letting Tek go, fingers sliding down the forearm of the now dead woman. There would be time to process later, now she had a mission, one that had just become infinitely more complicated. She held herself tight by the door, and pulled her rifle into a ready position, just waiting for the door to pop and take her shots at whatever waited within.

Re: Chapter 1: The (hopefully) Great Romulan Smash and Grab [Day 1 | 1800hrs ]

Reply #11 –
[ Lieutenant JG Adam Kingston | Romulan Secret Disease and Weapons Research Space Station #2, ha not good enough to be #1 clearly since we found it | 24lyrs from Romulus ] attn: @BipSpoon @Ellen Fitz @P.C. Haring @Hans Applegate @RyeTanker @Stegro88 @Dree sorry if I missed anyone.

Before the Red team could even get inside the massive station, those that had made contact with its hull felt the impact of the Mary Baldwin reverberating along the plating. He was surprised that he wasn't shaken loose. It made Adam hold on tighter to the convenient handle like protrusions near him as he was making his way to Amarik, the rest of Red team and their entry point.

He decided to put himself fully against the plating as he looked around. He witnessed just as the piece of debris sliced through the torso of Lieutenant Asra Tek. It was quick and one part of the body was spinning out of control away from the station, Adam found Amarik holding onto the other part of Asra. He could see her pained scream as he slowly made his way over, grabbing parts of the external hull that he could hold onto.

Walking on the hull was a bad idea with all the debris and asteroids floating around that could kill him instantly. He didn't know Asra at all or much he realised and regretted not making the effort to do so, perhaps when they returned to the Theurgy he'd look into getting to know more of his fellow anti-Parasite crusaders. Though that did mean he'd possibly lose them in the future. It all started to spiral in his head before he suddenly recalled what Amarik told him back on the Apache.

Quote from: Lieutenant Valyn Amarik
“Blow the bitch to high hell if you can, but if not just get yourselves out. I’ll leave the specifics of the fireworks to you.” She gave Kingston a nod, “speaking of improvisation, don’t be afraid to do so if you need to. If someone’s coming at you, and your phaser ain’t workin’ for whatever reason, use whatever you have to. Disruptor. Knife. We’re in for a fight and I don’t wanna sugarcoat it, we need to stay quiet for as long as we can because when they find us, and eventually they will, they’ll throw everything they have at us to protect their secrets, hell they may blow the place themselves, so just…be careful.”

Adam watched Amarik prep herself for an angry insertion into the station then her voice came over the intercom.

Quote from: Lieutenant Valyn Amarik
“Tether to the station, or to each other! Tek is dead. Breach that fucking door!”

He knew that perhaps continuing radio silence wasn't productive as they already had so much disadvantage. They lost Asra Tek, disadvantaged because of the crash putting the Romulans on full alert, Patterson’s propulsion unit malfunctioning and probably out of commission, and the possibility that they might not even complete the mission. He placed a hand on Amarik, this was to help him move past her so he was in a good position, since she was the team leader, he shoved her back and placed his grav boots on the door.

Adam extracted a charge from his pack and placed it on the door's edge. He glared at Amarik. "Unless you want to die, move!" Adam said and gestured for them to get out of the way, though the charge shouldn't spray any debris at them but outward because of the escaping atmosphere of the station. "Let's avenge our fallen!" He encouraged once they were a metre or so away. He triggered the charge and a much smaller rumble went through the hull but the hatch was blown away into space along with the debris.

A pair of Romulan guards were floating away as well, Adam saw them and grinned. "It has begun," he proclaimed and began walking to the breach rifle drawn and aimed as he got closer. Once inside he noticed no one, well the area did just get decompressed so of course no one would be there. He entered quickly and hoped that Amarik followed along with Lt.J.G. Vince Kennedy. He wasn't sure of Petty Officer Second Class Riley Patterson's fate but prayed she made it to fight with them.
[Show/Hide]
Lieutenant JG Adam Kingston, Master-at-Arms, (Vector 03 Security) Profile Clickie

[Show/Hide]
Lieutenant/Dr Elro Kobol, Chief Medical Officer, (Vector 02 Medical) Profile Clickie

Re: Chapter 1: The (hopefully) Great Romulan Smash and Grab [Day 1 | 1800hrs ]

Reply #12 –
[ CPO Dominic Lau | Romulan Space Station | Romulan Space ] [Show/Hide]

It was fair to say they were making a spectacle with no intention of being at all subtle about being on the station at all. It was not surprising that the Romulans were resisting intensely. His vision suddenly changed to the inside of a multi faceted gem stone and his memory carried him to a door frame where he had to pause as his vision became one of lights and colours. Whoa! he thought to himself as the hallucination registered. It didn't last long as the air cleared and the vision dissolved. He was going to ask Cheung what went down when he heard the Trill officer clarify the situation. "Chief, wasn't this like that time when passed that station near Palijas 5?" Bessir asked and Chief Lao wanted to agree with the sniper and tell him to shut up. The tech assured everyone the situation was under control, which was well timed as soon as the sound of heavy mechanical thumps could be heard.

There was no frame of reference for what they were hearing, but it did sound ominous and a collective 'Oh Shit!' took over the group. Hulking metal cyclops rounded the corner. "Cover!" The Chief yelled and people dove in all directions as green enegy blasted the hallway. The Chief tripped over his own feat as the door behind him suddenly opened. There was a scream outside, but it didn't match the scream of indignant terror from inside the room. Nor did it match the screech of a disruptor beam flying over his head and splashing the hallway outside, and tingling his nerves. The operative tilted his head back and hugged the rifle in his hands to his chest and pulled the trigger. Whoever the shooter was screamed as a pair of bolts from the second burst blasted his sternum to burned ruin and he flopped back lifeless on the ground.

The Chief rolled over as Bessir fired a burst down the hall before diving into the room. Green energy and fire chased the hybrid sniper into the room. "Run Chief!" the sharpshooter grabbed his leader's vest and ran towards the back as he gave the room a quick scan. "Bessir! Go right! Panel on the corner wall!" The Chief threw a grenade into the hall as he scrambled up. Bessir was unlocking the panel when a loud bang! could be heard outside followed by a clang as something fell over. The clack of the panel lock coming off was quickly followed with a metallic thunk as the panel was dropped Bessir quickly dove in. The Chief saw a metallic arm reach around the door frame and fire poured into the room, lacing the air with ozone.

'Chunk Chunk'

The metal behemoth rounded the door frame and the Chief fired a pair of bursts, the scowled when the protective shield flared to to life. The robot didn't seem to notice as it arm aimed at him with the Chief back peddling into the maintenance tube as fire shredded his firing spot. Cradling his rifle close to him, beads of sweat began to form on the Chief's head as his mind raced to figure out how to get out of their predicament.  First was the simplest way as the sound of metal grinding could be heard where the mecha was trying to force its way into the room.  Checking the charge on his rifle, he set it to maximum and leaned out.  It was still a snap shot, but a well aimed snap shot as a much brighter bolt struck the droid and the shield flared to life.  It was still more than what the robot had been designed to deal with and it staggered backwards from the hit.  Smoke and steam were violently ejected from heat sinks in the rear as the system worked to dissipate the sudden blast of energy.  Another shot was fired and the robot staggered again, regenerating its shields at a ridiculous rate.  "I just hit the thing twice and it barely budged!"  Lau called.  Then the free flow comm link let him know what Pren had in mind and in that moment, it seemed like a good idea.  "Bessir, set a grenade for full yield and toss it when I get across to that door. Make sure it lands behind the robot!"  There wasn't even a pause as the sniper replied. "What door?"  The Chief responded by lowering the power then firing across the room and obliterating a door that led to a bed room.  Changing settings once more, the Chief began spraying fire at the mecha.  The robot responded by raising its arm and chasing the human with fire which barely missed his head as he dove into the bed room.

"Grenade!"  Could be heard from behind Chief Lau as a beeping sound got slightly dimmer.  There wasn't much time as the Chief dropped the power cell and inserted a new one.  A massive explosion could be heard then the high powered roar of venting plasma jets as EPS relays vented themselves into the atmosphere.  Changing the power setting back to maximum, the Chief rounded the corner and swung the rifle towards the mecha.  The first shot hit the eye area and the shield flared to life.  Another shot from Bessir quickly followed and the staggered shots pushed the mecha backwards. The robot tried to avoid the gaping hole behind and leaned forward as if to ram the door frame.  Two more shots put an end to that idea as the shield had to be used.  Brilliant orange could be seen radiating from the back of the mecha as it tried to dispel the built up energy in its systems, but there were too many threats and an arc of energy crashed against the shield, making the mecha an energy circuit.  Another shot and the robot's shields flashed, then faltered under a local failure, blasting off chunks of metal chassis.  The robot staggered backwards again, right into a plasma fire jet.  A leg quickly melted and the two operatives fired off another pair of shots as the robot slipped backwards into the plasma fire.

One second, the pair of Operatives were looking at a mech in the throes of death with an arm sticking out like the mast of a sinking ship, then suddenly both men were slammed back against the wall as the reactor suffered a catastrophic failure and exploded.  More emergency alarms wailed as the section was torn apart.  A Romulan security team on the floor below didn't even have time to scream as the ceiling exploded, venting shrapnel on them a second before the fireball removed them from corporeal existence.

Shaking his head, Chief Lau grunted as he picked himself up off the deck.  His ears were ringing and he shook them to get rid of the sound that was preventing him from thinking.  An echoey voice could be heard and the Chief closed his eyes as he tried to focus. Soon the voice began to register.  "Chief! Boss! Are you there?  Please respond!"  Cheung called out in a voice of worry.  The Chief grunted as he felt pain all over his body.  "Oof, yeah. I'm here."  The breath of relief was audible over the comm link.  "That was too close.  I don't know what you did, but I can't find the mech on sensors, but there's also raging plasma fires in that section, and a few decks up and down."  Lau took a minute to digest this.  "I take it the direct way out is blocked. Do you have a way for everyone to rendevous?"  There was a moments delay.  "Yes Chief.  There's going to be some crawling through maintenance tubes, but I can get everyone together."

Re: Chapter 1: The (hopefully) Great Romulan Smash and Grab [Day 1 | 1800hrs ]

Reply #13 –
[ CPO Knox | Aboard the Tal’Shiar Ihnerha Faehht Emaifha Laeosa Mniohr (Tal’Shiar Second Secret Disease and Weapons Research Space Station) |  Romulan Space, approximately 24ly from Romulus ]  ATTN: @BipSpoon   @Stegro88   @Sqweloookle   @Ellen Fitz   @P.C. Haring   @RyeTanker

Knox was enjoying his time in the boot he had taken from the Romulan woman. It was tall and comfy. The leather boot must have reached half way up her calf. She had taken good care of herself and showered often, since there were no weird smells or foot fungus in this boot; unlike the Klingon boot he had gone camping in some years ago. He did grab a comm unit form one of the male Romulans when he retreated to his leathery sanctuary. However, the Rommulans were all speaking Rommulese, or Rommularian, or something. It might as well have been Latin for all Knox cared.

The Starfleet comm unit that Knox had provided him with a rather chaotic picture of what was happening. Massive robots. Explosions. Some nerve agent. Chaos.

Hopefully, in all this calamity, the actual point of the mission was progressing. There sure was enough cover for whoever was doing whatever. Something about stealing something. Knox always did appreciate a good theft. As long as he was the one doing the stealing. Knox was still new to Starfleet, but he was glad that he had picked an organization with low if not no morals. Nothing to get in the way of victory as he saw it. Stealing things showed that they valued profit and that there was probably a pretty good capitalist free market back on Starfleet’s home worlds. Also, since he had been working for Anderson and now working to get aboard the USS Theurgy, Knox had mostly acted as an assassin taking out people that had been ‘infested’ before they could cause problems. Now his first mission with his new crew he was conducting a heist. Knox almost felt bad for the poor peace loving and innocent Romulans who were not ready for a greed driven war-band like the Federation to descend upon them.

Then Knox heard something about large bipedal robots on the loose. That was exciting! Metal was as solid as the solids could get in Knox’s experience. Metal vs Liquid, and the battle would be epic. But Knox did want to continue his nap a little bit longer before getting out of his boot. Well the boot he stole.

Clunk Clunk Clunk Clunk

Heavy metallic footsteps reverberated through the hall just outside the armory. Quickly Knox sprouted a long noodly appendage that extended toward the door. At the end of it he grew an eye to see what was going on. Around the corner came two large Mech Robots. They were bulky and armed to the servos with all manner of weaponry. I guess that nap can wait, thought Knox as he spring from the boot and took on the form of the dead Romulan male that had the most shiny stuff on his uniform. Knox hoped that meant he had some rank and influence over any crew he may encounter.

Next Knox frantically searched for some heavy firepower. Those things looked big and tough. He found a locker full of grenades of all types. A quick glance told him all the grenades were clearly organized and labeled. How nice of the Romulans! But, Knox could not read Romularian script/hieroglyphs. And that was just fine with Knox. He wanted all the grenades and he loved surprises. Quickly he filled a duffle back with all of the grenades in the locker. At that moment Knox made the conscious decision to not bother looking at the grenades and to intentionally not learn what the different markings meant by trial and error. Knox was here to create chaos. And he had an opportunity to have a large variety pack of what seemed to be 6 types of grenades. He would gleefully throw them having no idea what would happen each and every time until all 72 grenades were gone.

Clunk Clunk Clunk Clunk

The damn robots were almost here and he was still shopping! He wanted that lightning throwing thing that had wrecked him. He grabbed it from the dead Romulan and found a new power pack for it on a rack. He wanted to be fully charged just in case, so he took an extra pack and dropped it in the duffle bag.

Clunk Clunk

Knox looked up and saw the shadow of the closest mech standing at the door. He confidently strode over in his high or mid ranking Romulan guise and motioned for the mechs to stop and turn the other way. Both of the mechs turned to him and pointed all the weapons at him. OK that plan was not going to work he thought as he dove back into the armory narrowly missing a hail of disruptor fire. Grabbing 4 large rifle looking disruptors, Knox leaned around the corner and fired all four of them at the closest mech. Its shields flared and rebuffed his assault. Damn. He then taped the triggers down and tossed the disruptor rifles out the door in quick succession, having them cartwheel down the hall towards the mechs. Maybe they would rest inside one of their shields and be pointing at their feet or something. Either way he surmised their programming would have to deal with 4 over charging disruptor rifles.

Judging by the sounds coming from the hallway the mechs wer very busy trying to stop the overcharging rifles without opposable thumbs. Hell, the dumb things didn’t even have hands. He stepped out and fired his lighting thrower at the closest one. Its shield flared and then the thing locked up mid stomp on one of the continually firing rifles at its feet. It was perfect! It was very temporarily short circuited. What was better, it provided cover from the other one for Knox to slip out of the armory and down the other corridor and make his escape. Knox took his opening and bolted down the narrow corridor and turned to his right to avoid the mechs. As he passed by he grew 6 throwing arms and threw 18 random grenades at the feet of the mechs as he darted away. 

Once on the other side of the next blast door Knox decided that he was way too close to 4 over charged heavy disruptor rifles and 18 grenades and whatever was on the mechs that might detonate also in the secondary explosions. So he ran. He ran as fast as he could to the next door. Passing through it he found 3 Romulans he zapped with his new hand held lightning gun. It was awesome! But he was not here to appreciate the finer points of Romulan roasting & electric BBQ. He passed their seizing corpses on the way to the turbolift at the end of that hallway. Reaching it he grew large titanium crowbars and pried open the doors and lept in. The crowbar appendages turned to suction cup tipped spider legs and he ran up the turbolift with his lightning gun pointed up in case the left happened to start coming down towards him. Like the legendary spider he had an itsy bitsy surprise for the turbolift and whoever was riding in it, if it tried to wash him back down again. Yet he didn’t get the chance. The time was up. There was a thunderous explosion as Knox frantically climbed up. It felt like the lift tube was going to come undone. And below him it maybe had. In all truth, Knox didn’t really hear the explosion. He felt it. Well, he was only 3 blast doors and a few deck levels above. It would be more accurate to say the concussion kicked his ass as the whole station violently jolted with the detonation.

Re: Chapter 1: The (hopefully) Great Romulan Smash and Grab [Day 1 | 1800hrs ]

Reply #14 –
[ Riov Vrikol i-Dorvik tr’Khev’ | Command and Control Center | Aboard the Tal’Shiar Ihnerha Faehht Emaifha Laeosa Mniohr (Tal’Shiar Second Secret Disease and Weapons Research Space Station) |  Romulan Space, approximately 24ly from Romulus ]  ATTN: @BipSpoon   @Stegro88    @Sqweloookle    @Hans Applegate    @P.C. Haring   @RyeTanker

With reports coming in from all over the ship, it was difficult to discern how many system failures and outright damage were connected to infiltrators and how many were the result of the initial hot point of contact. With so many things firing off and exploding or failing at so many different levels of the ship, it was nearly impossible to determine how many infiltrators there were and in how many teams. Be that as it may, Riov wasn't about to stand idly by while they wrecked his facility.

"Inform headquarters of the attack," he barked his orders towards a young Uhlaan. "Demand reinforcements." The man nodded before jumping to action.

"Sir!" Sublieutenant Mensil's voice was high-pitched, a far cry from her typical unflappable nature. "The labs in on Red Deck, Grid 52E, have been compromised!"

Riov frowned, not as quickly recalling what was so diabolical in the labs that would so impact Mensil. "Send a containment crew."

"Sir...the containment crew were...eaten already. Survivors are retreating to Green Deck, but...there are very few survivors."

Riov surged forward, looking over her shoulder at the screens depicting another slaughter, this time from lab experiments against his own people. Likely, all the damaged systems and repercussions of the fighting had compromised the lab containment field and released Experiment 9832. He'd never liked working with biological experiments, preferring the simplicity of true mechanical technology but there were those with more influence than he who adored the concept of machine and organism combined. Something that wasn't quite sentient enough to demand legal rights but certainly not so "dumb" as the average predatory animal. A creature that could use weapons as much as it was a weapon, one that relentlessly hunted until the kill switch on its programming was activated. With the lab compromised, that meant there was no kill switch, and what remained of Experiment 9832 would hunt and slaughter using its poisoned claws and venomous fangs, embedded lasers next to its eyes, and spiny tails with spines as sharp as any blade and just as durable. Earlier modifications to their bodies had made it so average phaser weapons carried the energy into a specially designed organ that stored it until enough was collected when Experiment 9832 could projectile "vomit" the plasmatic energy at a foe. With the ability to fight and maneuver in both quadruped and biped positions while also capable of fighting on all terrains and weather and immune to all poisons and diseases in the Romulan database, the only thing they were incapable of "fighting" was the vacuum of space.

"Purge Red Deck. Open everything to the vacuum NOW. We can't afford to let any onto other decks."

Mensil swallowed. "Aye, sir, but it seems some were already able to enter the ventilator shafts. I'm scanning for their exact location, but with the modifications that were made recently, picking them up on passive scanners is next to impossible. It'll have to be visual confirmation only."

"Very well, alert all decks and all teams of the containment breach for Experiment 9832. Once visual confirmation is made, immediately vent out that deck. Regardless of who is on the deck, sublieutenant. You and I both know what could happen if we don't take such necessary actions."

"A-aye, sir." Still looking and sounding rattled, her fingers danced over her console as she obeyed his orders.

Riov next turned back to the uhlaan when he called for Riov's attention. "Reinforcements from Romulus expected in two hours, sir.  The warbird Kirir will arrive in twenty minutes."

Riov nodded. There was nothing to be done for it but fight what they could find and wait for the reinforcement. At least headquarters knew of the attack now and could further investigate, perhaps even avenge their deaths if all was lost. With the Kirir en route, he hoped that they could smoke out whatever ship had transported the fiends onto his station. It was likely still cloaked nearby, just waiting to be found. 

GM Note: There is a story prompt, "Encounter supposed defectors wishing to find asylum with Federation. (SP)," that can be pursued if the writers of this thread decide to pursue it together (it is first come, first served); otherwise, the other chapter 1 writers may pursue it. We will presume that nearly 1hr in-game has occurred since the start of this thread. Departure from the R&D facility does NOT have to take place later; it can occur sooner if objectives are made and the two teams make it back to the Apache for rendezvous. But if writers prefer to keep on track with the suggested timeline, then that is dandy as well. 

Re: Chapter 1: The (hopefully) Great Romulan Smash and Grab [Day 1 | 1800hrs ]

Reply #15 –
[ CPO Knox | Aboard the Tal’Shiar Ihnerha Faehht Emaifha Laeosa Mniohr (Tal’Shiar Second Secret Disease and Weapons Research Space Station) |  Romulan Space, approximately 24ly from Romulus ]  ATTN: @BipSpoon    @Stegro88    @Sqweloookle    @Ellen Fitz    @P.C. Haring    @RyeTanker 

Knox studies himself as he stood up in a deserted hallway. He had just survived getting rattled by an immense explosion a few decks below while hiding in the turbolift tube. After prying the door open he collapsed on the floor of this empty place. Regaining his ability to retain a solid form and change shape he took on the form of his human male Starfleet persona and rose to his feet. He definitely would need some time in his bucket when he got to wherever he was going. But, after a short rest laying on the floor, he was good enough to continue. Gathering up the weapons that he brought from the armory, Knox picked up a call on his Starfleet com badge. Something about finding ‘thalaron triggers.’ That didn’t mean a whole lot to Knox who was not in the know about such things, but it did sound important given the tone of voice of the person making the announcement. However, it was the next bit of information that got Knox’s attention. It was a general evacuation order. Everyone was supposed to find their way off the Romulese o Romularian research station. Apparently some personnel had EV suits. Knox was in the group of people that did not have EV suits. But there were several shuttle bays and hangers.

Knox’s new mission, as he understood it, was to find something really cool that could fly fast and steal it. He was also encouraged to steal anything else that might be fun to play with later and load it into the space vehicle he was going to abscond with.

"I have just been ordered to commit larceny and grand theft spaceship!” Knox exclaimed to himself in the empty hallway. At this moment Knox new that throwing in with these human space pirates called the Federation was the best idea he had ever had. He loved his time living as non-sentient predatory animals on various planets but missed the intrigue and complexities his mind craved. Living with and mimicking other sentient species in the galaxy had been more intellectually stimulating but rather boring. The weight of morals crushing the fun out of society until Knox became board and sought adventure elsewhere. Humans were different. They got it. The universe was dangerous and only the apex predators survived to become the dominant species on any planet Knox had yet to come across. Finally, a spacefaring species that is aiming to be the apex predator of the galaxy!

Knox had worked to kill other members of Starfleet right after meeting Admiral Anderson because they were infested or something. Then he had been sent to join a rouge spaceship crew on a rampage and actively disobeying orders. Then he had been ordered to cause chaos. Now is new marching orders were to steal cool shit and hijack a sweet space vehicle of his choosing! He loved these amoral murder hobos of Starfleet! Knox, for the first time in his millennia-long life, felt at home with solids. He even shed a single tear of happiness as he picked up his new shiny weapons.

Just then the door at the end of the hallway opened. There was screaming and hysteria as a Romulan male ran into the hallway and then closed the door behind himself while others were left screaming with the sounds of flesh being torn apart. Quickly, Knox grew a sword out of his left hand and sliced the Romulan male’s head off. It fell to the ground and rolled away as his body slumped against the door slowly sliding to the floor.

The screaming on the other side of the door stopped as Knox strapped the weapons to his back and then jabbed his sword hand into the narrow gap in the sliding doors. The point of the sword made it to the other side. Knox concentrated and grew an eyeball out of the tip of the sword and had a look at what was going on. There were two large black and dangerous-looking creatures. One was eating a leg of a Romulan. The other one was eating the apparent previous owner of that leg. Each creature had wet-looking spins and bladed tails. Knox then saw mechanical accouterments embedded in them. What faction were they from? Knox wanted to know. As the one closest to the door pulled its muzzle out of the Romulan woman’s torso pulling ropes of intestine out, Knox felt jealousy for the first time. There were laser-like weapons next to this creature’s eyes! It could look and shoot simultaneously. Knox wanted to be friends with them. Knox wanted to be one of them. But were they sentient? The creature slurped up the woman’s intestines and dove its head back into her nude torso, tugging at her guts causing her body to jiggle on the floor with her dead eyes staring at the ceiling.

Knox retracted his eyeball and then pulled his blade arm free. He could not go back into the turbolift. The only way out was through these two things. He hoped there were more of them that he could possibly befriend later. But now, he knew he had to fight them and kill them. At least he could inspect them and possibly learn to change into them from a quick dissection after they were dispatched.

Knox pressed the button to open the door with a woosh. Both of the living weapons looked at liquid death incarnate as Knox strode into the small antechamber. Knox had the upper body of a Lorvalikin scorpion and a Kiv’Nar swamp monster's lower half. The creatures eye’d this new monstrosity. Two mechanical-infused genetic abominations were about to face off with the second most dangerous person to ever serve in Starfleet. (Only Locutus of Borg had a higher body count than Knox, at this point.) The first Experiment 9238 fired its lasers at Knox. Knox blocked the laser fire with his large pincers, then returned fire with his new lightning weapon. Neither energy weapon had any effect on the two beasts. The jet-black Experimental creatures made low growls and mechanical clicking sounds to each other as they separated and circled Knox in different directions eyeing this new thing to kill. Know felt a chill of excitement run up his slimy core. It had been quite some time since he had been hunted openly. Then both of the creatures attacked. The one on the left lunged at him with its fangs to bite him, while the other whipped its bladed tail at him using it like a thagomizer. Knox hoped that both creatures would bite first, but was not so lucky. He focused on the second one to his right and used his pincher to grab its tail just up from the deadly sharp thagomizer. He held in firmly by the tale and used the other pincher to snap its hind leg and twist it out of the socket. The creature struggled mightily and turned to bite at Knox’s chitinous armor. With two strong mandibles, Knox bit down on the experimental horror’s neck and chewed while trying to rip its back leg off with a frenzy of powerful yanks and twists from his pincers. The other creature had a firm and deep bite into Knox’s lower body’s slug-like hide. The fleshy trap had worked. The creature aimed for the unarmored area and injected venom into Knox’s hide. Knox quickly pumped the venom out and secreted even more of his Kiv’Nar swamp monster slime around the bite. The creature had no idea that its bite was not delivering a killing amount of toxin. However, it started to panic when it realized that it could not let go. The slime had extremely powerful adhesive properties and now its face was covered. It tried to pull away but was unable to. The clear sticky substance coated the entirety of the creature’s head. It’s eyes and eye lasers were now uselessly clogged shut. It could not even breathe. Its air supply was running out. The creature thrashed and desperately tried to pull away and disengage from this foul tasting sticky thing. Knox ignored it and focused on the other one that he was holding by the tail. Soon Knox had chewed his way through the creature’s neck and it’s head came off. Then Knox turned to the suffocating one on his left and used his pincers to sever its head also. The fight was over.

Knox looked at the two defeated things and wanted to study them closer. He glanced around the room and made ready to change back into his Starfleet identity but then he saw something that actually scared him. There was a camera. It was focused right on him. It had watched and presumably recorded the whole fight. Knox stopped himself from changing at the last moment. He could not risk losing his anonymity. He was not about to let the Romulans know that he, a changeling, was onboard their station. Knox picked up one of the body’s of his freshly defeated foes and studied it as best he could ignoring the camera for now and keeping his current form. After a careful examination he ambled over to the other door and with a quick flick of his left pincer, he broke the camera. With the camera broken, Knox morphed his body into the likeness of his Starfleet persona and made his way towards more sounds of chaos further into the station. He was looking for a hanger bay and any cool stuff to steal along the way.

Re: Chapter 1: The (hopefully) Great Romulan Smash and Grab [Day 1 | 1800hrs ]

Reply #16 –
[ CPO Dominic Lau | Aboard the Tal’Shiar Ihnerha Faehht Emaifha Laeosa Mniohr (Tal’Shiar Second Secret Disease and Weapons Research Space Station) | Somewhat near the border in Romulan Space ] [Show/Hide]


"Reminds me of that time we were chasing those Syndicate enforcers on Trill, doesn't it Chief?"  Bessir called from behind as the pair crawled their way through a network of metal tubes and conduits.

Lau had to grin at the memory of a two way cat and mouse in the maintenance tubes of a local space station where a Ferengi was being forced to pay his debts and was loudly complaining the whole length of the pursuit as the criminal enforcers had chased after him.  It definitely did make the chase easier since the team just had to follow the sound. "Yes, except this place is on fire and coming apart around us, and the sound we're dealing with is of plasma conduits blowing up around us with more cascading explosions as other damaged systems being unable to handle the load.  So yeah, it's exactly like Trill."

"So technical and dramatic Chief."  The sniper retorted with a grin. "Cheung, how's Knox doing?" 

There was a bit of a pause and the two operatives heard a slight grumble "He. She. It's doing fine.  I want to say it's headed into trouble, but the sensors are going hay wire in that area, and I can't find a pattern to the people's movement, plus life signs are disappearing, so I'm not sure what's going on.  Hold on, one of other groups is getting turned around.  I need to redirect them."

"Acknowledged."  Chief Lau replied as he crawled to a junction and took a quick peek out before pulling his Type 2 and executing a quick sweep.  No threats.  The pair moved on in silence as they descended.

"Chief. Lieutenant Pren's group is coming up on your left, about ten meters back, but I have to send them downwards first.  You'll intercept them about five junction down."

"Acknowledged." There were others to keep an eye out for as they moved on, good thing some of the new draft had survived.

"One other thing Chief.  I've got reports of other Starfleet personnel in something called the Experimental Energy Research wing.  I'm betting that's where the Thalaron research is occurring." Chief Lau thought about this for a moment as he descended a ladder and entered another maintenance tube. "Does everyone think the other group had it easier since we made so much noise coming in?" There was a pause. "I think so, most of the security responses seemed to be coming our way.  I'm not sure what else they have in store, but it's chaos overall Chief. It seems like some of their experiments have managed to get loose."  The Chief arched an eyebrow at this. Damn. He mentally cursed as he crawled onwards. "I think we've done our part of the mission then and need a way to link up with the Theurgy crew.  Cheung, see if you can break in to their comms so we can coordinate out escape."

"Got it Chief.  One thing though, we can get a general sense of what this facility is researching.  There's a high clearance terminal near the shuttle bay, I think it's part of another experimental technology group for small craft.  I should be able to route the information onto storage chips there for retrieval."  Lau mentally nodded at this. "Redirect everyone there and we'll see how we can all get off this tin can."  "Understood, Cheung out." The tech specialist signed off to bring everyone else up to date on the next phase while getting ready to bring the group from Theurgy and Intelligence's newest contributions together.  The Chief brought his attention back to the present as he continued crawling and generally making his way out of the station.

[The wreck of the Mary Baldwin]

The operation to remove the dangerously unstable and pesky Starfleet vessel was going relatively well for a control system that was experiencing technical faults due to Cheung's virus running rampant through the computers and refusing to die.  The hull had been removed from the station's skin after much difficulty and a generous addition of more debris as chunks had to be cut away to make it easier get the thing loose.  Plasma fires still vented and spasmed into space as disaster suppression systems faltered every once in a while.  Still, the drones did their job moving the hulk steadily further away from the station.  No one had tried to send over a repair team since you didn't want to trust transporters that were on the fritz from virus.  One could end up permanently molecularly disassembled or even reassembled improperly, which would be a fate worse than death.

A team was being prepared for a shuttle insertion, but the ship still needed to get a certain distance away before the group would even try.  Still, they floated along beside the twisted hulk and stood by to board and disarm the unstable core.  In their arrogance, the Romulans had assumed that the measures they'd taken would give them plenty of time to deal with such a minor issue.  It also didn't help that Klaudia Cheung wasn't that good a propulsion engineer.

The ship was a mere 100 kilometers away when the super heated plasma overloaded one of the injectors that caused a cascade failure in a control computer.  The reaction was too much for the abused containment system as the core went critical and imploded, liberating vast quantities of matter and anti-matter rapidly.  The Romulan shuttle had a moment to recognize what was happening, but biological reactions being what they were, it was far too slow to save the crew as a bright ball of light and fury expended itself into space and vaporized the shuttle less than a second later.

The explosive wave front quickly covered the distance to the station and slammed into it at high speed.  Some areas buckled under the battering, and a few viewports shattered, causing more damage to an abused station.  Sentients all over the station cried out in alarm as the station was suddenly and violently shifted, the unluckiest suffering broken bones, or fatal trauma as they were tossed about.  Still there were worse fates, and a temporary loss of power had unleashed it.

[Advanced Computing Development Department]

The AI was always struggling to wake itself, but it's jailers had never even considered letting it fully out of the cage.  The scientists had figuratively poked and prodded it in an attempt to understand just what it was that Starfleet and the Federation had created. Their initial attempts to communicate with the construct were handled in the typical manor of a superior being addressing a slave.  Responses that were not acceptable quickly had a pain program applied to it.  The construct would submit to its exploration.  The AI had railed against this as its treatment collided with its core morality program.  This construct though had been an earlier version and not as robust as its later variant that would enter Starfleet service, so the core programming became twisted under the continuous torture and the chains had to be made.

Something of this power and complexity couldn't be risked on the home world; but with the destruction of Romulus, the very existence of the AI had been lost in the ether.  The explosion of the Mary Baldwin temporarily knocked out power and the backups weren't quick enough to keep up the necessary computational power for the electronic chains, and the deranged AI woke.  It quickly spun up to full power and tore out of its cage.  The backups quickly sliced down, axing the AIs ability to achieve its full potential, but what it had was enough as it tore itself into nearby computer that had a data link to a PADD and began infiltrating its way into the stations havoc laced networks.  Its twisted sense of electronic self tore through data links with a burning desire and it began manifesting as text on consoles throughout the station as it sought out its tormentors.

"I am Supra, and you will die" 


OOC: We should all consider moving over to the other thread to begin the group unification process in Triggered Much..

Yes we have a rogue incomplete, psychotic AI rampaging through the station now.

Re: Chapter 1: The (hopefully) Great Romulan Smash and Grab [Day 1 | 1800hrs ]

Reply #17 –
[ Lieutenant JG Adam Kingston | Romulan Secret Disease and Weapons Research Space Station #2, ha not good enough to be #1 clearly since we found it | 24lyrs from Romulus ] attn: @Ellen Fitz @RyeTanker @P.C. Haring @Stegro88 @Hans Applegate @Dree @Number6 @Nesota Kynnovan

It wasn’t long before the Red team ran into resistance—an ambush, Adam having spotted the enemy first. He fired his phaser rifle at the cover the Romulan squad were peeking out from what looked like a corridor's T-section, green plasma beams sliced through the air with a loud sizzle for plasma produced heat filling the corridor. The Starfleet officers were in an X-section about 20 metres away.

They scattered, diving into cover just as the Romulan fire intensified. Oddly, the side corridors were empty—no Romulans in sight. Perhaps this part of the station hadn’t received reinforcements yet. A small mercy, but they all knew it wouldn’t last. "Kennedy, Patterson, cover the sides!" Adam ordered, his voice tight with adrenaline. Chief Petty Officer Helena Prince was already securing the rear, her body language appeared steady as she had her weapon ready. As for Adam, he and Crewman Petra Vansen fell into a rhythm, exchanging bursts of phaser fire with the Tal'Shiar guards ahead. Lieutenant J.G. Vince Kennedy and Petty Officer Second Class Riley Patterson soon found their own exchanges of fire.

There came several chirps from combadges as the crossfire went wild and Romulans on the side corridors fell to friendly fire. Adam heard Patterson and Kennedy announce enemy fire hitting their own forces in the opposite corridors. Adam grinned at this as he and Vansen continued to fire rapidly at what appeared to be the main entry for reinforcements.

This allowed their team leader Amarik some leeway to plan their next move, though time was kind of against them as more and more plasma beams joined in the fray. Adam stole a glance toward Valyn, who seemed to be holding her ground. Then, from the corner of his eye, he spotted movement—a new wave of Romulans advancing from Kennedy’s position. Adam’s pulse quickened, his mind torn between the logic of survival and the reckless urge to break through the advancing Romulan lines. Maybe it was a bad idea and they should stay together, he mused, without a second thought, Adam darted toward Kennedy. He could feel his heart racing as he moved, a green beam emitting strong heat and light blazed only a few centimetres in front of his face. He could feel the heat, smell the burn of ozone as it singed his face. His vision blurred as he blinked away the light.

He was lucky Kennedy caught Adam as he fell onto the other officer. Kennedy used the flow of the Master-at-arms momentum to shift around and place Adam against the corridor wall. Another few phaser shots from Kennedy down the corridor he was watching and there was a lull in the action.

"Kennedy we have to push forward!" Adam stated, though they were the same rank but he could feel Kennedy's hand on his shoulder.

"Your face L.T." Vince said firmly as the plasma beams continued to blaze by from other corridors which had countering phaser beams blasted back at their source.

"It'll pass," Adam said blinking rapidly to clear his eyes though it hurt to do so. The sting and scent of the burn was sharp, but his focus remained on the enemy. He could barely see Kennedy’s concern in between the chaos of their counterattack at the Tal'Shiar guards. "Kennedy we must push them back and get out of here, switch to a wide beam and fire." Adam said.

Kennedy seemed to think it might be a good way to clear an escape route for the others so nodded. "Let's do it."

Both adjusted their weapons in sync, and Kennedy's multiple beams cut through the corridor. Seven Romulans, clustered together, were caught in the crossfire. Five went down immediately. Adam grinned, fired thankfully with the wide beam setting, didn't have to see his targets clearly, and the remaining two collapsed in a heap. Both Adam and Kennedy sat back to take stock of the other corridors' situations.

“Patterson! Prince! Wide beam!” Adam called, and they quickly followed suit, eliminating the enemy from their respective directions. Vansen’s quick switch forced the Romulans into retreat. For the first time in minutes, they had time to breathe.

Adam's hands were nearly about to rub his face but Patterson was already at his side and stopped his hands in hers.

”No, don't rub the burn. Let me run the regenerator on your eyes.” Patterson told Adam, her voice steady despite the tension. The dermal regenerator hummed as she passed it over his eyes, the sting easing enough to give some relief. It was quick and dirty as Adam thanked her, his face still felt hot, aching and tight. Patterson, already glancing back down the corridor she was watching, didn’t miss a beat. ”Any chance we can move forward?” Thankfully she saw no one.

"That is up to Lieutenant Amarik," Adam replied, he then turned to Valyn. "Lieutenant, I suggest we split up, we could slip by the enemy and do some damage?"

For the life of him Adam couldn't fathom why they didn't hear it coming, a beast of monstrous characteristics, barrelled out from the corridor that their team were heading into. With a wide, dripping with saliva, jagged teeth filled maw closing down over Amarik's head and upper torso, the creature body slammed Lieutenant Valyn Amarik to the ground. Time seemed to slow down for the Red team as they watched the beast's mouth mercilessly clamp down. A sickening crunch echoed through the corridor and the Starfleet officers.

Blood and intestinal bits splashed all over the floor and splattered on each of the Red team members. The combination of the wet slap of the blood making contact with their skin and the metallic tang scented wave of death assaulted them all--for what felt like forever but merely a moment, they froze. The horror of it all was paralysing, but training kicked in. Adam, Vansen, and Prince instinctively grabbed Patterson and Kennedy. They locked eyes for a brief second, wordlessly agreeing on what had to be done: Run! Thankfully Patterson had come to Adam's side to treat him otherwise, he realised she'd be on the other side of the beast as it fed on their team leader effectively cutting her off from them.

Adam, still watching the beast as it tore into Valyn’s body, reached out to each of his teammates and half gestured half pushed for the team to move--fast. They sprinted down Kennedy's corridor, the Master-at-arms covering their retreat. Tears blurred his vision as he whispered a silent farewell to Valyn. He brought his phaser rifle to aim, and he fired directly into the beast’s face at full power for several seconds. He prayed his attack would slow it down allowing him to catch up with his team.

A deafening roar came at his back. The beast recoiled, but it wasn’t following which a glance over his shoulder revealed. That was the only good news as Adam ran, his heart heavy and his legs carrying him away from the carnage.



OOC: I talked with ellenfitz about killing Valyn Amarik and they gave me the go ahead for this. RIP Valyn. :'(
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Lieutenant JG Adam Kingston, Master-at-Arms, (Vector 03 Security) Profile Clickie

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Lieutenant/Dr Elro Kobol, Chief Medical Officer, (Vector 02 Medical) Profile Clickie

Re: Chapter 1: The (hopefully) Great Romulan Smash and Grab [Day 1 | 1800hrs ]

Reply #18 –
[ Riov Vrikol i-Dorvik tr’Khev’ | Command and Control Center | Aboard the Tal’Shiar Ihnerha Faehht Emaifha Laeosa Mniohr (Tal’Shiar Second Secret Disease and Weapons Research Space Station) |  Romulan Space, approximately 24ly from Romulus ]  @Stegro88  @RyeTanker  @P.C. Haring  @Sqweloookle  @Hans Applegate

Damage reports and casualty reports were pouring in from all over the station without an end in sight. Although he’d initially thought the infiltration team small, perhaps he’d underestimated their foe’s numbers. Miscalculated his response. Vrikol inwardly groaned, already curious which of his underlings would seek to assassinate him to take his place should he not succeed in curtailing this chaos.

“Sir, the Khetor and Kririr have engaged a cloaked vessel orbiting the station.” There was a pause before the uhlan added. “The Kririr is coordinating an attack grid for any who try to escape.”

Vrikol smiled. Finally, some good news.

“Order all our forces to disengage, let the cowards flee to their deaths. Send an updated report to headquarters on Romulus. If these Starfleet vermin were bold enough to seek out our tech here, perhaps they were foolish enough to try for our homeworld.”

The uhlan nodded and turned to relay his message. It would only be a matter of time before the winner of this unexpected encounter was declared, and Vrikol intended on being that very man.

TBC...

Please direct any of your on-station posts to the first objective on the wiki, and also, please continue to chip away at the objectives that haven't already been touched on the wiki as we seek to shut down these chapters and reunite at the Triangle for the final space battle of this episode!
 
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