An Exercise in Futility

Posted on 13 Aug 2025 @ 1:58am by Lieutenant Commander Joey Geisler & Commodore Harvey Geisler

3,365 words; about a 17 minute read

Mission: Imposters Among Us
Location: Somewhere in Space...
Timeline: July 7, 2390 || 1530 hours

~continued from Extracting Information~

Joey clenched her fists against and fought against her restraints, sweat tracing a line down her temple as she stared at her husband. "We need to try to get out of here," she said softly, her skin still stinging from the last jolt she'd just taken. "If we don't, they're likely to kill us. I refuse to let our children be raised by imposters."

Her gaze shifted just beyond him where a grate was, a corner loose. Beneath the grate, she'd bet on an access crawlspace—old, dusty, but safe from the electrified trap. Her fingers flexed subtly, testing the restraints. "While you were being questioned, I was looking around as subtly as I could. There's a grate behind you that's loose," she said, feeling hope for the first time in weeks. "I think we could pry it off and crawl through. I don't know what will await us, but it's got to be better than what we're dealing with here."

Harvey couldn't agree more. If the last exchange with the Selamat was any indication, should they decide to interrogate the couple regarding anything more than their selective use of tricobalts, they were in certain trouble. "I'm all for a great escape," he replied, "but we won't get anywhere with this furniture in tow." His eyes looked around the room, looking for something that could be used to cut the restraints.

Joey's voice was steady, almost eerily so. She turned her head just enough to meet Harvey’s gaze across from her. “There’s a way out,” she said quietly, “but it’s going to hurt.”

“I can get one hand out,” she continued, flexing her fingers slowly. “If I twist just right and push hard, I can dislocate my thumb—pull it through the cuff. I’ve done it before. Training drill… not exactly pleasant, but it works.”

Before he could even think to protest, Joey gave a subtle shake of her head. “We don’t have time to waste. I’ll be okay. Pain is just a signal—won’t kill me. I've been through worse since I've been here. And once I’m free, I can help you. We’ll get out.” A faint smile flickered across her lips—more courage than comfort. “Trust me, love. I’ve got this.”

Harvey knew he had little idea about having been through worse. Aside from three years aboard the Black Hawk and its multitude of adventures past the gates of hell, Harvey was well aware of Joey's past career as a bodyguard for Federation dignitaries. Such a life always came with several close calls, and undoubtedly moments like this. Compared to her past, his short time trapped on Betazed during the Dominion War was a cakewalk.

"Do what you have to," Harvey committed. But even with all of this renewed boldness, there was a sinking feeling deep in his chest that this was all an exercise in futility.

Joey took a slow breath, centering herself in the oppressive stillness. Her eyes flicked to Harvey, giving him one last reassuring nod. Then—without warning—she drove the edge of her thumb against the restraint’s inner ring. A crunch echoed through her body as the joint dislodged with a sickening pop. The pain blazed hot and immediate, jagged like lightning under her skin, but she clenched her jaw against the scream building in her throat.

Her breath came hard and fast for a moment, but she didn’t stop. Blood rushing in her ears, she twisted her hand, inch by inch, slipping the slick fingers through the cuff until—freedom. She sagged forward, cradling both hands in front of her, rubbing at her bruised wrists as the burn of circulation returned. Her thumb throbbed, an angry pulse of pain she boxed up and shoved aside.

With a measured roll, she tipped her chair back, using momentum to pull her legs upward and twist out of the remaining restraints. They clattered to the floor like defeated shackles.

She limped through the water on the floor and dodged the wires hanging from the ceiling as she moved toward Harvey. She crouched behind his chair, her good hand settled gently on his shoulder. “Brace yourself,” she murmured, voice a mix of steel and promise. Then, gripping the metal chair she brought with her like a pry bar, she jammed the leg beneath his restraints and forced the leverage.

Metal bent. The restraints popped.

Freedom—inch by inch.

And freedom never felt so beautiful. Though the restraints no longer bound him, it still took some wiggling to remove his extremities from their grip. Harvey rose from his chair, his right hand rubbing his left wrist in a futile attempt to relieve some of the pain that was inflicted, and turned to Joey. The goal right now was to escape, and he had to stop himself from embracing his wife.

Instead, he took a moment to inspect the burn on her shoulder as both the role of her husband and his past as a doctor commanded him to do. "How much is that wound affecting you?" he asked. While he clearly saw the effects that torture rod had done to her, Harvey had no idea the nerve or muscle damage that had been left behind. All he could do was guess, and he believed that there had to be some kind of numbness or seized muscles somewhere under her skin.

Joey winced slightly as Harvey’s eyes lingered on the burn, but her expression remained composed. She knew how bad it looked... how bad she looked. “It's uncomfortable,” she admitted, her voice low but unwavering. “But I can cope with it. As long as I need to.”

She flexed her fingers, testing the limits of her injured hand. The pain was sharp, yes, but it was manageable—compartmentalized behind the wall she’d built for moments like this. “The thumb’s worse,” she added with a dry chuckle, nodding toward her injured hand. “But I can worry about all of this later. Right now, you’re my priority.”

Her gaze locked with his, steady and fierce. “We get out. We get safe. Then you can look me over all you want.” She reached out, brushing his arm with her good hand—just enough contact to ground them both. “I’m not going to fall apart, Harvey. Not yet anyway. Let’s move.”

It wasn't that Harvey didn't believe her. Hell, Harvey trusted her with not just his life, but every soul that was aboard the Black Hawk. But he knew a thing about pain and the limits the human body could endure, even when those limits were pushed well past the breaking point like they were here.

His hesitation before the nod he gave her was more than obvious. "Then let's get going." Before you do fall apart. Harvey moved past Joey to the loose grate. His eyes scanned around it with his fingers trailing behind vision as he quickly verified that it wasn't just a corner that was loose. He was still unsure when his fingers penetrated the holes in the grate. It wasn't until the grate was free from the wall that his confidence found a boost. Harvey gently laid the grate on the floor, hoping to not make a sound and alert someone.

"Let's go!" he called to Joey before disappearing inside the crawlspace.

Joey didn’t hesitate. The moment Harvey vanished into the crawlspace, she followed, her movements careful. Her injured hand throbbed with every shift, but she gritted her teeth through the pain and pressed forward, dragging herself through the narrow passage with practiced efficiency. After all, the want and need to get back to her children was a seriously powerful motivator.

Before slipping fully inside, though, she reached back and grabbed the grate with her good hand. With a quiet grunt, she pulled it up and into place, angling it just right so it looked untouched—just another piece of neglected infrastructure. It wouldn’t hold forever, but it might buy them precious minutes. Minutes they desperately needed.

She crawled forward, the dim space pressing in around her, but her focus was locked on Harvey’s silhouette ahead. “The grate’s back in place," she whispered, just loud enough for him to hear. “It should buy us enough time to hopefully find somewhere safe to hide.”

The pain was there—constant, gnawing—but she shoved it down again. Her mind was already racing ahead, calculating their next move. “Lead the way, Commodore. We have our children and crew to save,” she murmured, and Joey was willing to bet none of them knew they were in any kind of danger.

And lead the way Harvey did down the initial stretch of tube. It was not much of a stretch, a length that ran perhaps six times his normal body height, before it terminated, offering only a ladder to take them higher or lower. Harvey stopped and stood at the junction, looking both above, below, and then around them for any sort of markings. There appeared to have been labels present at some point, indicated by the scarred remains from when someone ripped them off.

"Let's go up," he swiftly decided. Either direction was a gamble as there was no telling how deep in the belly of the beast they were. At this point, Harvey assumed that they were being held aboard the G90B vessel that the Valcour had wounded. It was the only logical option that he could conceive of, and in that logic, he assumed that they would be deep inside the ship, much like those would be on the Black Hawk. If there were a shuttlebay, it would be up.

Glancing once back at Joey, making sure she was still able to proceed in her condition, he stepped aside and gestured for her to go first. He could lead the way, sure, but it was very possible that he would outpace her, and he wasn't going to do that.

Joey reached the junction just behind Harvey, her breath coming heavier now, more labored than she wanted to admit. The crawlspace had taken its toll—each movement tugging at the burns, each shift of her dislocated thumb sending fresh waves of pain through her arm. Her body was beginning to protest in earnest, and though her spirit burned hot with determination, the physical cost was mounting.

She looked up the ladder, then back at Harvey, her expression tight but honest. “I can make it,” she said, voice low, “but I’m starting to slow down. You’ll move faster without me, and you might reach somewhere to call for help before they realize we're gone. I'll catch up to you. I promise." Though, Joey didn't think he would agree.

Harvey most certainly did not agree. "We're sticking together," he adamantly declared. "We'll pace ourselves, and hopefully we'll find something to defend ourselves with along the way." He looked back up the ladder, seeing that there was another junction two levels up. "If we can make it up there," he said, nodding at that junction, maybe we can find a compartment to regroup in."

Joey gave a soft, breathless laugh, the kind that carried both pain and affection. “I had a feeling you wouldn’t want to go with that plan,” she said, her voice tinged with warmth despite the ache in her body.

She turned toward the ladder, eyeing the rungs with quiet calculation. Her thumb throbbed like a drumbeat under her skin, and the burn on her shoulder stretched taut with every movement. But she didn’t hesitate. One hand gripped the rung above—her good hand—while the other moved with careful precision, avoiding pressure on the dislocated joint.

Each pull upward was deliberate, slow, and measured. She winced as the tender skin around her shoulder tugged and stretched, but she kept climbing, her breath steady and her focus locked on the junction above. “Two levels,” she murmured, half to herself, half to Harvey. “We’ve done worse.”

She paused briefly on the first landing, glancing down at him with a flicker of a smile. “Let’s find that compartment. I could use a minute to catch my breath… and maybe pop this thumb back in.”

As Joey climbed, Harvey kept close behind her, purposely mimicking her every move. He did not want to be so far behind her that he couldn't catch her if she fell, but also not close enough to run into her bare feet and get kicked in the nose. "Reminds me of that time in the Convergence Zone," he remarked, hands moving from rung to rung, "with the filaments. Power was out all over the ship, and we had to use the tubes to go from the bridge down to the antimatter injectors at the bottom."

He stepped off onto the landing, allowing Joey little time to bask in those unpleasant memories. "Though I'd almost take another round with the Dolmoqour over this." He quickly took in their surroundings, which consisted of two different tubes, one going right and one going left. When confronted with a choice, it was always wise to select the side the dominant hand favored. And since that was exactly what anyone would expect, Harvey chose to go left instead. "This way," he said, slipping into the selected tube.

Harvey did not have to crawl far before finding a grate that separated the tube from a dimly lit room. He paused at the opening to look inside, and was thankful that it appeared to be some sort of closet. "In here," he whispered to Joey, not wanting louder sounds to betray them. Harvey inserted his fingers into the holes of the grate and shoved. The grate popped free without an ounce of resistance. He carefully set the grate on the floor and stepped out into the compartment.

A single red light above them provided poor illumination. It was, however, enough to see that the room itself was a mess, filled with various crates and containers, none of them larger than a fraction of a meter. Harvey assumed it was some sort of damage control locker where tools and other critical parts were kept. "Maybe we've got a medkit in here," he said, starting to rummage around.

Joey followed Harvey into the compartment, eyes trying to adjust. The red light cast long shadows across the closet, painting everything in hues of blood and rust. She moved slowly, favoring her injured side, her eyes scanning the crates for anything useful—tools, weapons, bandages, anything.

But then she froze.

In the far corner, half-obscured by a toppled container, lay a figure. The uniform was unmistakable—Starfleet. Torn at the shoulder, stained dark across the chest. Joey stepped closer, her breath catching as she knelt beside the body. The face was slack, eyes half-open, the skin pale and waxy. Whoever they were, they hadn’t died peacefully.

“Harvey…” she called softly, her voice edged with sorrow.

By the time Joey called for Harvey, he had already located a medkit containing very familiar tools. He had thought it unusual for a storage compartment to contain a small crate of these kits, but the second crate he'd opened had a collection of self-sealing stem bolts—something not seen often on this side of the wormhole.

Harvey, medkit in hand, moved quickly over to Joey, who was kneeling over the body. Again, his medical instincts kicked in. He knelt beside his wife, opened the kit, and withdrew the medical tricoder. "Asphyxiation," he announced, the tricorder almost immediately confirming his findings. "Looks like the Bolian's been dead for two and a half weeks."

He closed the tricoder and allowed his body to go limp against the wall. The familiar supplies, and now this body. He hadn't given much proper consideration to their surroundings before, but now he was starting to put all of the pieces together. The more the puzzle was assembled, the more he continued to lose all hope and motivation.

"We're on Unity," Harvey said softly, his tired eyes meeting Joey's sorrow-filled ones. "We're fucked."

Joey blinked, her brow furrowing as she sat down next to him, grateful for the chance to rest. “Unity?” she echoed, glancing around the compartment as if expecting the walls to confirm it. “That’s… that’s good, isn’t it? If we’re on Starbase Unity, then we can find help. We can signal someone... let them know there are dangerous people on board.”

For a moment, Harvey looked at Joey with total surprise on his face. He was dumbstruck, first by the audacity of the question and then with the utter reminder that she was likely the only Starfleet officer in the quadrant who was unaware of how serious things had become over the last few weeks. "Unity..." he said softly, unsure how she'd take the news, "was destroyed two and a half weeks ago. The cell that held us, the room they used during interrogation, and now this," he gestured to their dimly lit surroundings, "are all that's left of the base. There's no shuttlebay to get to because I saw its ruins myself."

Joey’s breath caught in her throat. Her knees buckled slightly, and she leaned back against the nearest crate, the weight of Harvey’s words crashing down like a collapsing bulkhead. Her face went pale, the blood draining from it as the reality settled in—Unity was gone. The fallback, the sanctuary, the last hope of safety… reduced to wreckage.

Her thoughts spiraled. No shuttlebay. No signal. No rescue. Her mind flashed to the Black Hawk, to the twins—bright-eyed, unaware. Her lips parted, trembling, as she tried to speak, to ask how, to say they had to keep trying, but the words never came.

The door behind them hissed open.

Before either could react, a hand shot through the opening—rough and fast. It seized Joey by the arm and yanked her violently from the room. She cried out, the sound laced with pain and surprise, but it was cut short as she was slammed against the wall outside.

The Selamat leaned in, his voice venomous. “There’s nowhere to escape, you fools,” he said, pressing his weapon to Joey's forehead to keep her from fighting against him. "Come on out, Commodore. Let's get you two back to your cell so we can figure out what to do with you."

Harvey didn't resist as another set of hands yanked him off of the floor. It barely registered that he was being shoved out of the room by two different Paradans. He could only glance at Joey once he was in the corridor, but the sight of the pistol against her forehead snapped him back to reality.

"Put that down!" he spat at the Selamat. "We're not going anywhere!" Not yet, at least, he thought, a newfound streak of defiance unfurling inside of him. Escape was needed more than ever, but it seemed a better opportunity would have to present itself.

The Selamat turned slowly, his expression unreadable beneath the harsh shadows of the corridor. He lowered his weapon with deliberate calm, the barrel dipping toward the floor as if to mock Harvey’s defiance rather than concede to it. “You will,” he said coldly.

He gestured sharply to the two Karemma, shoving Joey towards one of them and causing her to trip up a bit. Their grips were firm as they seized Harvey and Joey, the latter still dazed.

The Selamat didn’t move immediately, instead watching Harvey with a predators patience. “Take them back to their cell,” he ordered, voice clipped. “And I’ll follow. If either of them so much as twitches, I’ll make sure they don’t get another chance.”

He fell into step behind the group when they started to move, his eyes never leaving the backs of their prisoners. The corridor stretched ahead showing the severity of the damage Unity had taken, leaving their surroundings cold, unfamiliar, and unforgiving.

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