Chapter 5: Mission Objective - ESCAPE!
[ Doctor Lucan cin Nicander | Starboard Guest Quarters | Deck 2 | USS Allegiant 1 | Deck 10 | The Helmet ]
ATTN: @Griff @rae @Pierce @Dumedion @P.C. Haring @chXinya
TIME: Day 2, 1000HRS
Lucan was just “turning the page” of the book on his PADD when the door to his makeshift brig/quarters opened and the captain with the security personnel who’d been tasked with keeping an eye on him all but fell into the room carrying something writhing. Standing from his bed, Lucan moved closer to the force field, curious at first and then beyond surprised when he realized what, or rather who, it was they were holding.
“By the winds, how –“ Lucan stopped himself from asking a question no one was presently capable of answering.
It didn’t really matter at this point how they’d managed to apprehend the Praetor and drag her aboard the Allegiant. What mattered was using the kemocite cannon on her, exposing her to the transphasic light to determine if she was among the Infested or if her recent machinations had merely been born out of a militantly calculating mind bent on destruction.
“Hold her!” Ives ordered the security personnel, barely avoiding Tal’Aura’s snapping jaws as, between her howls and snarls, she tried to take a bite out of anyone and anything close.
The security personnel didn’t need to be ordered twice. Using all their combined weight and strength, they held fast as the captain retreated behind the cannon to ready it. Lucan quickly moved back to his bed, shifting to the furthest corner of it. Even when he wasn’t having an episode, probably because the parasite remained inside him feeding off his body’s energy, exposure to the light still felt like shit.
Her words were barely comprehensible as the Praetor continued to writhe against her captors while Captain Ives powered up the cannon. He recognized the evil desperation in the undertones of her voice, had heard it enough times in his nightmares, in the echoing memories of things he’d said while under the Infested’s control. As if responding to the call, Lucan imagined he felt the parasite within him give a lurch, twisting in his gut.
No. Lucan pressed a hand over his belly, scowling at the scene as it continued to unfold just outside his “cell.”
Seconds passed like hours, but mid-spittle spewing threat, the cannon fired a beam directly into the Praetor’s body, and the woman fell limp. Ives approached, wary but determined. One of the medical personnel who’d joined for this grand adventure approached at his signal, administering a hypospray with deft movements as if afraid the woman would awaken and try to take a chunk out of her at any second.
“Praetor Tal’Aura,” Captain Ives spoke evenly as the woman slowly came to, “I am Captain Ives of the USS Theurgy. Do not be alarmed. We mean you no harm.”
Lucan heard a raspy chuckle. “Then…why am I…where am I…” Tal’Aura shook her head from side to side, blinking Ives into focus. “What have you done to me?”
“We have exposed you to a device that works to subdue the parasite that was implanted within you.” Ives gestured toward Lucan. “You are not alone in acting as an unwilling host. But let this moment serve as hope that you need not continue to be used against your will.”
Tal’Aura glared at Lucan, quickly noting the forcefield with a lip curl of distaste. Returning her attention to Ives, she squared her shoulders. “I am myself, captain. Do they still need to hold me like a prisoner when you have just made claims that you mean me no harm?”
Ives took a steadying breath before giving the security personnel a subtle nod. They seemed more than a little reluctant to let go but followed orders, standing on either side of the still kneeling Romulan with their hands on their weapons, ready to draw and fire at a moment’s notice.
“Are you aware that a fleet of Romulan ships is presently speeding towards the Romulan-Klingon border to break through the Neutral Zone and commit an act of war against the Federation?”
Tal’Aura gathered her robes and rose to her full height, shorter than Ives, yet still managed to stare down her nose at him. “By whose orders?”
“Yours.”
“How is that possible?” She sounded less than convinced, pausing to glare at Lucan again as if he had a part to play in her current circumstances.
Captain Ives gave her a much-condensed version of her status as one of the Infested, of their powers and intent, calling on Lucan a time or two to share insight from one who shared in the fate of being a flesh puppet. When Tal’Aura pressed for more details on what it meant, long-term to be Infested, Lucan had felt more than a little reluctance in laying it out in plain truth to her. She didn’t strike the doctor as one who would willingly accept a life spent dwelling under the watchful eye of a kemocite cannon. Not that he relished it either, but he had more extensive experience with the ins and outs of its construction and still maintained hope that they could perfect it, maybe even find a way to eradicate the parasite altogether without ending his own life in the process.
“What do you want from me, captain?” Tal’Aura folded her hands together in front of her body, looking far more calm in the face of the current chaos than Lucan thought possible.
“Recall your fleet. Now that you know of the Infested, now that you understand you are Infested, you may understand how they benefit from the chaos outright war will bring. Their numbers will spread unchecked to a point where there is no turning back the tide. Instead of letting their duplicitous manipulations divide us from within, toppling governments and threatening alliances, let us combine forces and find a way to remove the parasites, to end them permanently.”
Tal’Aura studied the captain for some time then, a contemplative frown furrowing her ridged brow. “Allow me to contact my fleet.” Her voice held a hardened edge that tickled Lucan’s nerves.
Captain Ives nodded, stepping back slightly to gesture toward the door. “This way.”
The group left with a heavy wariness swirling about them. Lucan moved to the table where he’d left a few morsels of food and drink from his last meal. Sipping at the water, he paced the width of his cell. Something didn’t seem right, and not necessarily because of the parasite’s presence. He finished his water and was nibbling on a piece of bread when the cell door opened, and one of the engineers they’d left onboard to tinker with the cannon entered. His face was ashen, hands shaking, as he went to work double-checking the cannon.
“What has happened?”
The engineer shook his head when he looked at Lucan, a mixture of confusion and fear swirling the depths of his gaze.
“The Praetor attempted suicide while talking to her fleet commander.”
Lucan tossed his roll onto his plate and paced closer to the force field. “By the winds…what?”
“Soon after she contacted her fleet commander, they switched to visual communication, and it was then that she ordered the commander to defend Romulus to the death, no matter who the enemy was, and then she stabbed herself with a knife she’d had hidden in her robes.”
“Is she dead?”
The engineer shook his head. “I don’t know. The captain has the medical team looking at her while we wait for the last of our teams to board. I wasn’t there when it happened, but I heard he tried to continue talking to the fleet commander, but communication was severed before he could get very far.”
Lucan swore as he took a heavy seat on his bed. They’d come all this way to expose Tal’Aura to the truth, and they’d done that very thing. But they’d not managed to prevent the battle that was likely about to take place at the Triangle. Be it doubt at the truths she’d been given by Ives and Lucan or her own determined motives secret to all but herself, Tal’Aura had added fuel to the fires of chaos instead of letting a cool breeze of rationality quell them.
What now? Lucan thought to himself, allowing his head to fall back against the bulkhead and letting the engineer work silently as they mulled over recent events and their ramifications. If Tal’Aura survived her own efforts, would she be more compliant and reasonable? If she didn’t, who would take up the baton of leadership over the Romulan people? Lucan closed his eyes, pressing fingers against his temple. Of all the possible outcomes to this mission, THIS had not been one he’d pictured.
~~
[PO2 Kino Jeen | Transporter Room | Deck 1 | USS Allegiant]
She’d been falling in reverse into a black pit of oblivion, lit by the baleful energies of an unstable artificial black hole: the most dangerous and destructive force in creation. Kino knew she was dead; her mind snap-fired between outrage to acceptance, regrets and lost opportunities, then finally heartache, as she fell. No one could doubt that she'd fought the good fight – she’d tried her best. She hoped, somehow, that Reika would understand...and try to find some measure of peace, of happiness. Kino closed watering eyes, hearing naught but the wind in her ears and the snap-crackle of hyper-condensed magnetic conductors screaming in overload...then felt the detonations cook-off above, to bath her in an orange glow of heat.
I’m so sorry, Legs…
An instant later, Kino's body crashed onto the transporter pad hard enough to crack the polished surface, sending shards of glass out in ricochets in every direction. There she lay, unable to do much of anything but groan and force herself to keep breathing; which is how Chief Nilsson found her. Kino lay curled up on her side, one arm bent at an awkward angle, a mass of bruised flesh and bloody wounds.
“Shit, Kino! Easy, Jeen – easy,” she heard Nilsson’s voice, felt hands press against the worst of her injuries; the blade wound to her shoulder was a ragged hole that oozed blood in time with Jeen's pulse, but the damage done to her eye probably looked worse - a bloody, swollen mass of bruised tissue nearly cut in half. “Get her to sickbay, now,” Kino heard Nilsson bark, and more hands gripped onto her, as lucidity ebbed...
I’m gonna...pass out now, Kino’s mind murmured drunkenly, as everything faded to black.
But it didn’t last.
Awareness blared to life in an instant with a tidal wave of pain; someone was screaming her name - in warning or a plea for help – Kino wasn’t sure. A hypo stood vertical, embedded in her chest. The non-com ripped it out as she sat up and rolled out of the way of a body on instinct; it crashed onto the desk she’d been laid out on with bone-cracking force. Kino scrambled, hands clutching whatever she could for makeshift weapons: a laser-scapel, and a shard of glass.
“Hm, another plaything,” someone mused, in two distinct voices blended as one with an unmistakably wet, feminine, and sinister tone. Kino looked up in time to see a blur of movement: black hair, glowing eyes, a flow of robes – then she was held aloft by the throat – choking. “Greetings, broken fleshling,” the voice purred from the blood-stained grin of Praetor Tal’Aura. A body lay behind her on the floor in bloody pieces; torn completely in half. Dark green stains coated the cramped medical bay, filling it with the butcher house reek of slaughter. “Brace yourself. This will not be quick, nor painless,” the Praetor’s grin stretched even wider – impossibly wide – as the thing within her that rode her flesh savored the torment to come. A pale hand, dripping with green gore, filled Kino’s vision - the slightly blue-tinted one of her cybernetic eye – then the Trill managed to scream as white-hot agony filled her skull.
The Praetor’s fingers gouged, then gripped, and with a savage laugh, the infested cunt ripped the mechanical implant out of Kino's face; she even held it up like a newfound toy with a gleeful smile.
“F-Fuck. Y-you,” Jeen half screamed/half choked out, and pinioned the laser-scapel into Tal’Aura’s right ear, then drove the blade of glass into her left eye. A dark, gurgled chuckle sounded as Kino was discarded to the deck in a heap of bloody and abused limbs.
“Amusing as ever,” the Praetor giggled, then spun away from Jeen as the door to sickbay opened.
“Kill it,” Kino heard a commanding voice order, just before the room filled with phaser fire. Jeen scrambled away in a low crawl as fast as her damaged body would go, through the green-tinted lake of blood and entrails between the ripped apart body that was once the Vulcan botanist, Cir’Cie, while the Praetor laughed. Not...not Tal’Aura, Kino realized. It was the thing that had burrowed inside Tal’Aura – the thing that they’d come to find, and hopefully, stop. The Praetor’s body was being ripped apart right in front of her, burned to tatters; but the thing just kept laughing. It spread its arms wide, and took a step forward. “Behold your end,” it cackled, even as it burned into nothingness – and charged.
Jeen scrambled to her feet, slipped, fell. The door closed, but she could hear the fighting; voices shouting, phaser fire, the clang of metal on metal. By the time she got to her feet again, and managed to wipe the blood-coated door release, it was all over…
Ives sat upon the torn apart remains of the Praetor’s headless body, both hands wrapped around the hilt of a keen-edged blade; it was driven down through the Romulan’s chest, and well into the deck beneath.
“C-Captain,” Kino panted, barely able to stand. “S-she…,”
“It," Ives corrected. "Whatever remained of the former Praetor clearly did not wish to live. It’s over,” Ives grunted in pain, ignoring his own wounds as he looked to his crew first; he stood and withdrew the sword with a grimace of effort. “See to the wounded,” Ives nodded to them all, “and make ready for departure as soon as we have all crew accounted for,” he waved a hand to Tal’Aura. “Preserve this as best we can. It may yet prove useful.”
Someone rushed to Kino’s side; she felt hands try to steady her – pressing into her wounds – and agony re-flared too hot and too overbearing to counter. Kino fell to one knee as Ives continued to issue orders, but she couldn’t keep up. Overcome with pain and unbearable fatigue, Jeen sat against the bulkhead for a moment, just a moment to rest her eyes…
And everything faded to black.
NARRATOR: It was not without loss of life and significant damage to their ship that Captain Ives and his infiltration crew successfully outed Tal’Aura of her Infested nature and established new diplomatic ties with a new faction among the Romulans, one that contested the rule of both the deceased Tal’Aura and the Empress Donatra. Though they retreated back toward the Triangle with their injured and new allies, there were still more questions that had yet to be answered lurking in their minds. What would they find at the Triangle? How would Donatra receive the news of Tal’Aura’s death AND the newly open opposition from among the Romulan-Reman movement? Only time would tell…
TIME: Day 2, 2200HRS
[ Hirek tr’Aimne | Medical Bay | Upper Deck| USS Allegiant ]
“You somehow managed to look worse than me,” Hirek’s voice was strained as he fought back a wave of pain. His comment, lobbed at the Trill on the one biobed of the medical bay, was playful in its barb, traded from one survivor to another. “Reika chose you as her one true love already; there was no need to make such an entrance.”
Whatever pithy remark the Kino intended was temporarily lost as all crew were instructed to brace themselves. The order came mere milliseconds before the ship lurched and heaved, likely from weapons fire. Hirek’s efforts to brace were mightily hindered by his wounds, courtesy of the Tal’Shiar examiner. He managed to grab hold of a counter only to have his feet swept out from under him, landing in a painful heap on the deck.
“I think I’ll just stay here for now,” he waved away the attempted help from a crewmate, who’d paused in taking care of Kino just long enough to brace and notice Hirek’s plight, “until a vacancy develops, this is probably a safer option for me while my fellow, albeit misguided, Romulans attempt to end our existence.”
Injured during their temporary stay at the Citadel, Hirek was curious if it was Lillee flying through the gauntlet of Romulan fighters or if someone else had taken over. The ship rattled again, marginally less violent this time, indicating that the fighters were still in pursuit. It’d been close, their arrival back at the Allegiant and subsequent effort to get off the planet as fast as possible, stealth be damned by that point. Hirek was torn in that, on the one hand, he was glad they were all still alive (well, mostly all) and all in one piece (again, mostly). On the other hand, it was almost embarrassing how they’d managed to get onto Romulus, muck about as they’d done, and get off the planet without greater loss of life.
Still, there was much to be celebrated (if even for the previous few minutes they had left of life before a Romulan fighter got lucky and obliterated their shields and then the ship altogether). The Praetor had been unmasked as being Infested and had saved them all heaps of trouble by “killing” herself, only to die again by Kino’s hand. This left the conniving bitch, Donatra, to be dealt with. Hirek didn’t trust her more than he’d trusted Tal’Aura, as both had favored using the Tal’Shiar in even greater capacities to secure their rule and terrorize their people into compliance.
And now they had this new Reman-Romulan faction, led by Senator Vkruvux and the Reman forces and backed by Senator tr’Rehu and his coalition. During their escape and destruction of the Citadel, a number of those within the faction had come through, and in many ways, they were only successful in getting back to the Allegiant on account of these new potential allies. But would the captain follow through with what they were asking of him? Would he support their claim to govern Romulus and advocate thusly to the non-Infested Federation council when such a time offered itself?
“For fuck’s sake!” The crewman tending to Kino cursed as the ship shuddered, sending his body bouncing between the biobed and a set of drawers.
Hirek concurred with the man’s frustration and unspoken question. There was no way to know if their new perhaps allies would swoop in to their rescue, and Hirek knew they could. The Remans had more than a few ships at their disposal, both officially and unofficially. If they didn’t, then whoever was at the helm and manning the weapons on the ship had better be at their best. Otherwise, none of them would live long enough to contemplate the curiosity of a Reman-integrated Romulan future.
NARRATOR: Soon after leaving Romulus, the Allegiant was hounded by a number of Romulan fighters. It was only because of the superb flying of the Allegiant that they managed to survive.
TIME: Day 2, 2300HRS
[ Captain Ives | Bridge | Upper Deck | USS Allegiant ]
“Sir, I believe I’m picking up the Apache, also on course toward the Triangle.”
Petty Officer Fen Chao’s voice broke through the din of crew calling one to another, working together to fix what systems they could before they arrived back at the Triangle, and whatever dangers lurked therein. Ives wasn’t certain what or who had recalled the fighters pursuing them from Romulus, but their survival was only on account of that variable.
Chao continued as if reading Ives’ reflection on the Romulan pursuit. “There appear to be Romulan ships moving in close formation around it. I’m not detecting weapons’ fire.”
Shifting his weight in his chair to lean forward, Ives replied, “Are they within signal range?”
There was a pause before a “Yessir. Audio only.”
“Put them through.” A moment passed before he was given the signal for connection. “Apache, this is the Allegiant. Do you copy? What’s your status?”
A crackle sounded before a female voice. [ “Yes, Allegiant, we copy. This is Ensign Henshaw. We lost Lieutenant Amarik and others. We were successful in scanning the triggers and relayed our data onward. Have not received confirmation that they received it. Our presence at the station was detected, and during our escape, we commandeered a few ships to support our efforts.” ]
Ives nodded. That explained the Romulan ships. He was not looking forward to the casualty report and dreaded the numbers of crew lost, the names they’d have to add to the memorial wall. They’d only just finished one memorial service, and if they managed to pull off another survival trick in the next few hours, he’d have to officiate another memorial service.
“Thank you, Ensign Henshaw. We will relay a new set of coordinates to you. I want to rendezvous before arriving at the Triangle. As we were unable to call off Tal’Aura’s forces, we will know soon enough if they have beaten us to the Triangle.” Ives nodded to Chao, who quickly moved to follow his orders. “You’ve done a commendable job. All of you have.”
[“Thank you sir, we’ve received the coordinates. Henshaw out.”]
Now, all they could do was continue to make what repairs were possible, link up with the Apache, and continue on to the Triangle. They were still too far out to establish contact or scan, but Ives didn’t need those to confirm his suspicions. He had every confidence that all hell was presently breaking loose among his crew and allies.
AND NOW THE BATTLE AT THE TRIANGLE COMMENCES…
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