Chasing the Russian

Posted on 12 Nov 2019 @ 6:35pm by Senior Chief Petty Officer Mila Rasputin & Petty Officer 2nd Class Mofrich Torg

2,175 words; about a 11 minute read

Mission: Truth and Justice
Location: Deck 3, Corridor 14 B
Timeline: MD15 || 1800 hours

Armed with several PADDs strapped to her torso, shoulders and thighs, two hyposprays loaded with anesthetic and a horga'hn statue which had been in her personal office when she inherited it, Mila Rasputin ventured from the Administration complex and ventured down the corridor with several other Enlisted who worked with her. She had worked out a silent code with them using the PADDs which had been linked together and transferred encrypted messages back and forth to each other, that PADD being a small personal one on her left wrist for easy access.

She moved down the corridor, hearing nothing but the soft footsteps of the few crew members behind her, and wondered where everyone was. There had been a General Quarters Three ordered, but Administration has its own backup system and she had locked everything down. Something was going on with the ship. First it had stopped dead in space. Then it had been hit by something and now it felt like they were in a battle. Strangely, though, no one had came to Administration or even sent an update to the consoles on what was going on and the comms were down.

The corridor rocked with a new weapons volley, but that was not among Torg's worry. He carried with him two Dolmoqour, and one of them was meant for the Captain's yeoman. Anyone else he spotted along the way would be fodder for his phaser rifle. The Dolmoqour that inhabited the Tellarite considered itself thankful that it did not have to tolerate the foul stenches of burnt carpet and human body odor that penetrated its host's nostrils.

As he approached a junction, a Bolian ensign and a human crewman both wearing science blue appeared around the corner, apparently heading for a muster area. Torg fired two shots in rapid succession, downing both crewmembers. It was a pity, the parasite thought. Both would have made fine hosts.

Mila had just started to round a corner when she heard phaser fire and then saw a Bolian fall at the next junction. She pressed herself against the wall and motioned for the others to get out of sight. She raised her left wrist and accessed the ship's layout and saw that junction had one of the few emergency generators that Chief Di Pasquale had wanted throughout the ship. She switched to the functions she had access to and smiled when she saw the ferrofluid turret near the corridor and started to access it for manual fire when the computer informed everyone that the auto destruct had been initiated. She didn't know if the Captain had did it or the First Officer or whoever, but she knew that when the countdown finished, it would no longer matter who was doing what. Her first instinct was to find Aidan, but to do that, she had to get past whoever was shooting crew members.

She went back to the ferrofluid turret and hoped it was working, then accessed the camera at the end of the corridor to see who was coming. It was a Tellurite and he seemed to be the one that had gunned down the personnel, then she recognized him as Torg, Joey's assistant in Intelligence. "Sukin syn," she muttered. "Take this!" she shouted and switched back to the turret and activated it and began to fire globs of sticky balls at anything that moved and came her way.

Torg was surprised at the unfamiliar sound. When he saw the first globs fired in his direction, he quickly dove out of sight. He saw several of them pelt the nearby bulkheads before stopping. Clearly, the turret possessed motion sensors that were independent of the downed security grid. He watched as the globs slowly inflated before stopping. It was an interesting weapon, and he would have to study it further when time presented itself. He prepared to move to attack the turret, only to find that the back of his head would not move. He assumed that one of the globs had struck him when he turned to hide, and now he was stuck to the bulkhead. With a grunt, he pulled forward with all his strength, ultimately ripping all of the fur off the back of his head. Inside, Torg roared with rage, but the Dolmoqour could care less.

A quick reconfiguration of the phaser rifle for a wide dispersal beam, and Torg pointed it around the corner, firing it at setting twelve at the turret.

Mila cursed when her link to the turret vanished and she quickly motioned for the Administration people to fall back. She had no idea if she had hit the Tellurite or not and switched to the camera. She was rewarded with the sight of the now bald back of Torgs head and would have laughed if she didn't know what kind of pain that must have caused. She frowned and tried to think as the red alert klaxon blared and another explosion nearby caused her to crouch down.

She accessed the PADD again and brought up force fields on either side of the junction with the back up generator. She switched to life support and hoped she had high enough clearance to use the Anesthazine gas that Security used on intruders as she backed up down the corridor.

Torg grunted as he was imprisoned inside a junction. "What?" he growled, raising his rifle and backing into a corner. A high enough concussive blast would disrupt the forcefield long enough for him to vault past it. He lowered the rifle's setting to eight and narrowed the beam to the burst setting. He held the trigger down and concentrated his fire on where the corridor bracing met the wall joists near the floor. It took ten blasts to knock the lower portion of the bracing to bend backwards. A quick setting increase to ten blew a hole in the wall, granting a hole large enough to crawl through. He slipped into the hole and crawled out the other side. "Whoever is trying to stop me will die!" he growled loudly.

The Russian cringed when she saw Torg get free and ordered the other personnel to disperse. She came to a Jeffries Tube access hatch and quickly opened it and crawled in backwards, setting the statue on the inside. "Here, piggy, piggy, piggy! Suey!" She called, having watched some Earth holovid with Aidan that had pigs in it. She just hoped that whatever possessed Torg would find insult in it so she could brain him if he followed her. If he didn't kill her first.

She partially lowered the hatch and grabbed the statue again, raising it above her head as she crouched as far to tone side as she could and waited.

"Piggy!?" shouted Torg, turning in the direction of the sound. His ears heard several sets of footsteps running away, and one of them seemed to be coming his direction. Just as he stood up, a male Deltan appeared around the corner, his collar stating he was a crewman apprentice. Torg raised his rifle and pressed the trigger, only for the weapon to not discharge. He growled again, upset that his weapon had run out of energy.

The Deltan didn't know what to do, other than to turn and run. He quickly flipped the rifle and turned it into a bat and swatted at the Deltan, catching a leg with the butt of the rifle. The Deltan went down and suffered another forceful swing from the rifle, shattering the man's hip... and the rifle. Torg kicked the injured crewman. "Where are you, Rasputin!?" he shouted, his snarl dripping over the Ras.

He looked around and spotted a partially open tube hatch. He could only assume that she was inside. He drew his phaser and set it for light stun as he approached. "I'll show you what a pig does!" he growled. Torg yanked the hatch cover off and looked inside, expecting to see a pair of feet disappear down a junction.

"Hello, other white meat!" Mila cried and brought the statue down when she saw his snout and forehead start to enter the hatch. The wood shattered and she cursed as she frantically grabbed one of the hyposprays and hoped the blow from the horga'hn statue would be enough to slow him down while she got it.

Torg was momentarily dazed, and his phaser dropped to the ground. While the parasite didn't feel the pain, it could tell that his host was momentarily unavailable. Like a drunken puppeteer, his arms stretched forward, hoping to ensnare an ankle or a wrist. All he had to do was touch her, and one of the Dolmoqour he carried would do the rest.

With the hypospray in hand, Mila jabbed it at the arm and pressed the release, then scrambled backwards. "I am saying you are messing with wrong person!" she declared.

Mila had no idea how fortunate she was. While the odds were heavily in Torg's favor that he'd be able to convert the woman, the odds were incredibly slim that her hypospray would land directly on top of one of the nearly invisible Dolmoqour that Torg carried. Upon impact, the parasite attempted to wrap itself around the hypospray nozzle, only to take the full force of the anesthetic. The dosage instantly overwhelmed the parasite, completely numbing it as it slipped off and fell to the floor in a clump, dead on arrival.

Torg, however, was outraged. A string of utterly vile curses escaped his mouth, none of which the universal translator could handle. He switched hands and reached for her in a primal rage. "Come here, human!"

The Russian Yeoman yelped in surprise when she saw the disgusting thing on the hypospray nozzle fall off. She had no idea what it was, but Torg was still trying to get her. She threw the used hypospray at his face, then grabbed the other one as she continued to scramble out of his reach. "I am thinking not!" she shouted back at him as she jabbed with the other hypo at his outstretched hand.

She was not as fortunate this time. Her hypo did hit its mark, numbing the Tellarite's appendage, and the majority of his arm instantly. The dosage would have knocked out the average human, and while it had a startling affect on Torg, the Dolmoqour continued to push through. Unintelligible sounds came from the Tellarite's mouth as its body, in zombie-like fashion, entered the Jefferies tube, intent on chasing the woman.

Mila cursed again and started kicking backwards and started ripping PADDs off of her torso and throwing them at the Tellurite. "I am not wishing to bash your head in," she warned him even though the PADDs were ineffectual as blunt instruments. She looked around for anything she could use and saw a bundle of cables in an open panel and grabbed for them. She had no idea what they were for or what it would cause, but she yanked at them with all of her strength until one broke and shoved it at Torg's face.

"ARRRRRGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!"

Torg's cry was deafening, but even the Dolmoqour could not control it as thousands of volts surged into the man's body. Detecting an unusual resistance, the automated circuit breakers kicked in. But it was too late. The roasted corpse dropped to the floor in a crumpled heap as smoke rose from various pores in his body and openings in the uniform. A moment later, something on his left arm began to move, inching down towards the numbed hand in a staggered pace.

Mila's ears were ringing at his roar and the smell of cooked meat made her nauseous but she couldn't stop. In the dim lighting of the Jeffries Tube, she thought she saw something crawling on his arm and remembered the thing she had killed with the hypo. "Nyet!" she screamed over the echo of his death cry in the confined space and grabbed one of the fallen PADDs. She had no idea what it was or how it had affected the Tellurite, but she wasn't waiting to find out. With a disgusted look on her face from what she had just done, she smashed the PADD on top of whatever it was and started hitting the top of the PADD with her free hand until her fist was bleeding.

After a few minutes and tears running down her face at what she had done and the horror of the situation, she lifted the PADD and saw something squished under it and Torg's arm. She turned her head and emptied her stomach, then wiped her mouth with the back of her injured hand, smearing blood on her face and shuddered again. "I am so sorry," she whispered to the Tellurite's smoking corpse. She turned with tears still in her eyes and started heading away from it as fast as she could. Where she was going, she didn't know, but it had to be somewhere less horrifying than this.

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