Red-Handed

Posted on 21 Jan 2016 @ 3:47pm by Commodore Harvey Geisler & Lieutenant JG Charles Carmichael & Commander Terry Walsh & Lieutenant Commander Temerant Bast & Lieutenant Commander Camila Di Pasquale & Staff Warrant Officer William Griffin
Edited on on 18 Mar 2018 @ 9:09pm

2,823 words; about a 14 minute read

Mission: Rude Awakening
Location: SS T'Pring | USS O'Carroll | USS Black Hawk
Timeline: MD 9 || 1320 hours

The transporter beam released its hold on Temerant Bast, having dropped him off on the lead transport ship - the one Temerant knew to be transporting weapons to Gavara. He'd removed his combadge, tossed it into a Jeffries tube on the O'Carroll, and snuck into the unmanned transporter room to beam to the cargo ship.

He pulled out his phaser, and looked around the empty corridor. The lights were dim, and the air in the gloomy corridor smelled damp and stuffy. Steam rose from the coolant pipes running along the walls. At the far end of the corridor, one door led to what he knew was the main cargo bay - no doubt where the crates were waiting.

He stepped forward, and the doors opened, framing a silhouette that was standing in the doorway. Temerant could see the short and stubby outline of a Tellarite, holding a Federation-issue phaser rifle.

"Don't move," said the Tellarite.

Temerant leveled his phaser at the pig-like alien. "Pity is treason," he said, calling out the Consortium secret password.

The Tellarite was quiet for a second. "Step forward," he said finally.

Temerant kept his phaser levelled, and did as he was told. He stepped through the door into the cargo bay, and looked around. Roughly thirty crates lay scattered around the room, each about one cubic meter in size. A few crewmembers from the convoy were standing guard around the crates, each of them armed with a phaser rifle.

He knew it was only a matter of time before the crew of the Black Hawk followed him to see what repairs needed to be made to the convoy ships. He had to dispose of the crates as quickly as possible, before the Black Hawk crew found them.

He turned to the Tellarite. "What's your name?" he asked.

"Gav," replied the Tellarite. "What's yours?" he asked brusquely.

"Bast. You know what's in these crates?"

Gav nodded. "Of course."

Temerant looked around the cargo bay, looking for the transporter console. "We need to move quickly. We have to dispose of these before the Black Hawk crew finds them. Starfleet can't know we're arming Gavara."

The Tellarite paused for a second, then turned to his fellow crewmates, and began barking out orders. They then grabbed antigrav lifts, and started hauling the crates toward the transporter platform.

Temerant activated the transporter controls. He programmed the device to transport the crates to open space, and set it to a wide dispersal field - rematerializing the contents as nothing but scattered atoms all over the solar system.


* * * * * * * *

Back on the O’Carroll, the repairs had gone well after supplementing the current engineering staff. Terry had ordered the ship turned to face the medical convoy.

“Commander, let’s find out which ship has sustained the worst damage and begin there,” he said to Niequist.

After the initial work was underway on the O'Carroll and staffing concerns had been cared for, Niequist moved to man the Science station, where she could begin going through sensor logs. The order from Commander Walsh barely interrupted the scientist's thought process. "Sure thing, Commander," she said, then pulled up her readings on the convoy ships. "The damage isn't too bad, but I'd probably start with the closest ship. She took the heaviest fire before your boys got in place."

“Okay, gotta start somewhere and that sounds like as good a place as any. Prepare an away team, engineers and some medical personnel. Just in case,” Walsh replied.

"Aye sir," Niequist replied with a nod. Running triple duty was second nature to the woman, so she added the Executive Officer's panel to her display, as well, and began going through the available personnel list. After a moment, she opened a channel down to Engineering. "Niequist to Dicon. Hey Lieutenant, you want to stay and oversee the last of the repairs here on O'Carroll, or would you rather lead an away team to the convoy ships? I've got two of your DCs and a security jockey on the way to Transporter Room 1. I can send one of the O'Carroll's crew, or you're welcome to take the task on yourself."

After completing the discussion with Dicon, Niequist went right back to her original task of reviewing sensor logs, then frowned. "Hey, Walsh," she said, then glanced up. "You're going to want to see this. I'm detecting a wide array dispersal pattern. It looks like someone's beaming things off of one of those ships into open space."

Terry stood up and walked over to the Science station. “What the hell is going on over there?” He paused, wondering. “Do you think the sensors could get anything out of that dispersed mess? Or is everything too spread out to figure out what it was?”

"Working on it," Niequist replied with a little grunt of frustration. "Hey, Bast, can you increase power to the forward array?" Niequist asked, then looked towards the operations console across the way. The scientist blinked in surprise to find it manned by someone other than Bast. "Err. Right. Ensign?" she suggested to him.

"Where'd Bast go?" Niequist asked Walsh as she narrowed in on her search. "Hey, Walsh, looks like mostly inert matter and a few energy packs. Could be med kits, could be explosives. It's just too scattered to really tell. Either way, I suggest we contact Captain Geisler."

Terry looked up as well. Lieutenant Bast had disappeared, and quietly at that. “We’ll figure that out in a minute. Right now, you’re right; we need to let Captain Geisler know.” Before Terry could ask for a channel opened, Captain Geisler contacted them from the Black Hawk.


* * * * * * * *

Lieutenant JG Carmichael was more than grateful for Commander Niequist's sudden assignment to the Black Hawk. He never wanted to be in a leadership role, and in fact he'd be grateful to never rise above his current rank. So far he'd given a year of service to the Black Hawk and never before had he been so shocked by the turnover rate. For some reason, however, his service aboard this ship was enough for the Captain to continue to trust Carmichael to man the bridge from time to time.

Except this time. Captain Geisler had taken his position in the center of the bridge, though a new report was in his hand. At least this time he wasn't brooding in the Ready Room. He was instead brooding on the bridge for all to see.

Alas, Carmichael couldn't care about that. The younger man was content to man the bridge station and continue cycling scans of the nearby nebula. He was a Stellar Cartographer first and foremost, and hell would have to freeze over before he gave up a chance to study this phenomenon.

Suddenly, he noticed a spike on his sensors. "What the..." he muttered, leaning in for a closer look. The convoy stood between them and the nebula, so it was impossible for anything to get past these high resolution and multi-spectrum scans. "Captain! You better see this."

Harvey instantly rose from his chair and crossed the bridge to the science station. He saw the trace elements and atoms from antimatter, deuterium, and so much more. Fragments that were not native to this area of space and had suddenly appeared.

"Black Hawk to O'Carroll," he said, tapping his badge. "Are you seeing this on your sensors?"


* * * * * * * *

Terry heard Captain Geisler’s voice come over the comm system. Something was definitely not right with all of this. “Yes sir, we’re detecting it. Commander Niequist suspects that someone is beaming things off of a ship. From what we can tell it's mostly inert matter and a few energy packs. Sir, I’ve got engineering crews on their way over to there and not enough security personnel here on the O’Carroll to spare. I could use some help.”


* * * * * * * *

"Acknowledged. I'm sending a team over now." Harvey tapped his badge to close the channel and then tapped it again. "Geisler to Di Pasquale. I need you to take a security detachment over to the T'Pring. Exercise caution but find out what the hell is going on over there."

=^=On the way, Sir,=^= Camila said a second later. She secured her terminal and grabbed a Type II phaser while calling for Hollingsworth, Gutierrez and Barns to meet her in Transporter Room 1 and to be armed. She knew that Gutierrez wasn't a full Betazoid, but hoped he had training with his empathy and could act as an early warning if things were going wrong on the T'Pring.

At the transporter room, Camila stepped onto the pad and gave final orders to the other Security personnel. "We aren't sure what is going on on the T'Pring, so exercise caution and don't fire unless you're fired on. Phasers set on stun only." She made sure her phaser was set for that and waited until the others acknowledged before she nodded to the chief. "Energize."

Rematerializing on the T'Pring, she had her personnel fan out and began to take tricorder readings for life signs around them. "Gutierrez, see if you can pick up any hostile intent."

The young Warrant officer nodded and let his empathic ability flow past them and began to check the areas immediately around them without moving from his position.


* * * * * * * *

The twenty-fourth crate had just been scattered through space when he heard the whine of the transporter again, this time from outside the corridor. Temerant's head snapped around, and he looked at Gav.

"Block the doors," he ordered.

The Tellarite motioned to three of his crewmembers, who immediately took up position to keep the intruders out of the cargo bay.

Temerant swore under his breath. He pulled out his own phaser, activated the overload feature, and tossed it into the corridor.

"Lieutenant!" Barns called out as she studied her tricorder. "I'm picking up an energy surge around the corner."

"There isn't any real hostility, Lieutenant, but..." Gutierrez started before Camila pushed her past him. She spotted the phaser and dove for it without a second thought. She had spent time as a Master-at-Arms on Deep Space Eleven and one of the things she had learned was how to disarm an overloaded phaser. A moment later, she had the phaser in hand and ripped open the tiny access panel on it and yanked out a tiny chip. The whine ceased, but a phaser shot nearly took her head off a second later.

Hollingsworth immediately returned fire to cover the Lieutenant which caused a member of the T'Pring crew who had fired the shot to duck for cover. "We have enemy combatants!" he called out needlessly.

Camila dodged back around the corner. "Thanks for telling me that," she gasped out. "I never would have guessed."

Gutierrez and Barns took up positions, the male Security officer taking the high approach while the woman ducked down low by the corner leading to the corridor. Camila looked at Hollingsworth and the others. "On three, lay down cover fire. They must be holding the cargo bay."

Temerant was close to panic. Everything was slipping out of control. He had hoped there would be enough time to dispose of the weapons, hoping that his associates on the Black Hawk would assist in delaying the interventions from Security. But he should have known better. Now he was trapped.

He grabbed the phaser rifle from one of the guards who had been stunned by the Black Hawk team, and took aim. He had nothing left to lose. And for the umpteenth time, he hoped for guidance from the Bast symbiont, but none was coming.

He stepped out of his cover, in view of the Black Hawk team. He saw Camila, and raised his weapon, ready to fire.

"Don't do it, Bast!" Camila called out even as she fired her phaser the moment she saw him raising the phaser rifle, the other Security personnel laying down cover fire. She felt betrayed and angered at the same time, knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was Consortium.

Temerant hesitated. He didn't want to shoot Camila - he felt like they had established a rapport. But orders were orders. Starfleet had to be prevented from consolidating their foothold in the quadrant. Their presence here could only spell disaster for the Alpha Quadrant, as it would lead to the resurgence of the Dominion.

He took aim, and fired at one of the guards accompanying Camila. He saw Barns go down.

Hollingsworth darted forward and fired his phaser, taking down one of other convoy crew before he went into a forward roll.

Camila narrowed her eyes when Barns went down and closed one eye. The only person she saw at the end of her phaser was Bast and at that minute, there was no question in her mind that she had to take him down and that he was shooting to kill. She took a breath and released it slowly as time constricted and gently depressed the firing stud on the phaser, watching the beam lance out towards the officer she had just had dinner with a few days earlier.

The beam from Camila's phaser sliced through the air, and hit Temerant square in the chest. The impact pushed him into a stack of crates behind him, destabilizing their precarious balance. He collapsed to the ground, stunned, and the stack of crates fell on him.

"Get Barns," Camila shouted to Guiterrez as she ran to where Bast went down under a stack of crates. "Hollingworth, give me your combadge!" The Security personnel quickly removed his combadge and handed it to her as she pushed a crate aside to reveal the Operations offer's hand. She placed the combadge in the hand and tapped it. =^=One to transport immediately to sickbay. Medical emergency and put Security on him the moment he's conscious!=^=

Meanwhile, Gutierrez checked Barns. "She's alive." He tapped his combadge a moment later. =^=One to medical transport to Black Hawk.=^= he said as she and Bast dematerialized.

Camila teamed back up with Gutierrez and Hollingsworth. "Let's get this ship secure!"

The Tellarite grunted something that sounded like a curse in it's own language. He and his one remaining guard had fallen back to the corner of the room, behind a stack of unlabeled crates. On one hand, the Tellarite knew there was now little hope of escape; the Starfleet ship could simply keep sending more people, even if he was able to incapacitate the people currently aboard his ship. On the other hand, getting captured wasn't ideal, either. He couldn't believe that Bast had allowed himself to be so easily captured.

Grimly, with the famed stubbornness of the Tellarite people, Gav began firing short, steady burst at a crate on the other side of the room. It was filled with thorium isotope and if he could get enough energy into it, he'd be able to cause a chain reaction and take all the evidence and the troublesome Starfleet personnel. with him.

Gutierrez screamed as shrapnel from the edge of the crate hit him and he fell, but rolled over and ignored the pain for the time being and fired another shot at one of the goons.

Camila took a big chance and instead of coming around the side of the crate, which would be reasonable, she set her phaser on wide beam before she jumped on top of it. Yelling a battle cry, she swept the cargo bay with it on full fire capacity and tried to cover anyone who may be in the way of the beam.

Gav snarled a curse as his one remaining comrade took a direct phaser shot to the face, and fell howling in pain. Undeterred, he kept firing at the thorium, until a wild, screaming human leaped onto the very crate he had been shooting at and began waving her phaser around on wide beam. Gav ducked, but not fast enough. The beam caught him mid movement and his momentum carried him sideways, he collapsed like a sack of rocks.

Once the last apparent bit of resistance went down, Camila jumped off the crate and approached the Tellurite, her phaser leading the way. She nudged him with the toe of her boot and when he didn't move, she nodded. "Are you okay, Gutierrez?" She asked as she moved to check the second man and confirmed he was out cold, too.

"Yes," Gutierrez moaned as he picked himself up. "Just some fragments from the crate. I'll live."

Camila waited until he joined her while she struggled to pull the two enemy combatants closer together. When he arrived, she tapped her combadge. =^=Four to beam to Black Hawk=^= she said before she tapped it again. =^=Di Pasquale to Security. Send over four officers to secure the T'Pring=^= she requested before she, Gutierrez and the two unconscious men were beamed back.



~TO BE CONTINUED~

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