Finally! The way out! Or is it?

Posted on Sun Apr 29th, 2012 @ 3:10pm by Staff Sergeant Snow Hill

Mission: The Mystery Men of Mira
Location: Uhm going into Er...

Wherever Sergeant Winter happened to be, it wasn't where he wanted to be and if he ever got out of this labyrinth he sure as hell wasn't coming back. The air swept by him as he ran, breathing deeply as he fast paced it through the never ending corridor. He knew that if he took enough lefts and enough rights he'd eventually end up at a dead end. Equal lefts, equal rights. That had been his pattern as he ran. Logic, dear Watson, it's elementary.

When he ended up facing the same dead end with the same computer pointing him to the end again that he'd been trying to get away from. To say he was best pleased was an understatement although surprised, he wasn't. Logic apparently didn't apply to this ship and if it did, he clearly didn't understand it. He'd taken lefts and rights, running down this corridor and that but he just ended up back at square one. Going to the bridge was starting to seem like a good idea in hindsight.

Walking up to the wall, he took a closer look at it. Large, grey in colour. A sort of a panel effect where plates of metal had been fixed in, "Damn." There was quite clearly no way through this wall as far as he could tell. The perplexing situation felt like a cunning Dungeon master had put an insanely high deciding roll on getting out of this labyrinth alive. Winter considered it annoying how he couldn't even see what the hell he was supposed to be doing. At least with a cross word you had a clue. Right? He'd though the computer would be his clue...but no, on this station the computer had a sense of humour. It was like reading the tales of Captain Picard and the Q consortium.

Slumping against the wall, he slid down and looked back the other way down the corridor. Just a never ending line curving off slightly to the right. The end of which was like the horizon. Something which he could never hope to reach. Winter shivered uncharacteristically.

"Damn who turned down the temperature?" Slipping on his jacket, he paused for a moment. It wasn't that he was cold, it was that he was feeling a draught on his back. A draught... that meant air circulation. The marine spun around onto all fours staring intently at the panel before him. It looked the same as every other panel, but with one key difference. There was a light glowing from the bottom edge. He pressed his hands against the panel and...gave way slightly. Pulling his hands away in case he'd done something he'd regret the panel fell away from the wall revealing something much more familiar.

Eyes widening with amazement and a sudden surge of joy, he realised that the computer had been telling him where to go all along. Success! Quickly he opened up the hatch in front of him revealing exactly what he wanted. A Jeffereys tube. Climbing inside he made sure to close the hatch behind him. No sense anyone following him, right? On his hands and knees, his mouth dry from all of that running he started padding along. Opening another hatch and closing it behind him, he proceeded through the tunnel before coming to a set of ladders. Now, it descended one floor down or one floor up. Somehow...this felt...familiar.

"Up...the command section is up and that's where I'm going!" Winter declared to himself having given up on the idea of going to the barracks a long time ago. He was going to get a map the next chance he got. Ascending the ladders and closing the hatch behind him, he found himself in another tunnel, looking for all intents and purposes just like the last one. He found himself crawling along it, again Winter opened and closed a series of hatches, ascended another set of ladders, followed the next tube into a right hand turn. On and on he padded on all fours.

The tune he'd been humming before in that labyrinth came back as he ducked under a large metal girder, descending a little, padding a little further, descended a little more under another. Looking ahead he saw a set of ladders and a dead end. Coming to the ladders he assessed the little area he now found himself in. Looking up he saw a sign. "No entry, except for ghosts!" The engineer had a sense of humour it seemed. There was certainly no way up where these sets of ladders were concerned. Actually it was where the ladders went that worried him. Down, the ladders went and it wasn't just a little way either. It looked like they descended a good fifty meters or so and there didn't look like there were any other levels of which to stop off at.

Looking back, he remembered how far he'd padded through so far, all of those hatches that he'd opened and closed behind him, the obstacles he'd ducked under the corners he'd turned. Winter climbed onto the ladder and descended. Going forwards, it was the marine motto...wasn't it? At this point he didn't care, he just wanted back to civility. Screw his pride, he should have quite frankly have asked someone for help back when he'd had the chance. But no, now he was getting familiar with the tunnels running through the station it seemed.

"Computer." Winter called on a whim, "Show me the way out please!" After all, it had actually helped him before. Hopefully if he investigated the journey more fully this time... he'd get somewhere. Unfortunately for him however, the computer didn't respond. No flashy nights, no voice just a ghostly wind. It would have been more entertaining had there been tumbleweed, "Computer?" Nothing. Just...complete silence. Great, he was in a set of tunnels with absolutely no company whatsoever.

Making sure he wasn't missing anything on the way down, his foot eventually reached the bottom and the sigh escaped his lips in disappointment but then, he might be able to find a way out surely? Looking around him and stretching out his shoulders while he had the opportunity, there were three tunnels going off in different directions. So he was at a nexus. A nexus leads somewhere usually on military vessels? Right? As he picked one at random and headed off down the tunnel...opening and closing again the hatches behind him, humming a sweet tune that had changed once or thrice, he came...not to an exit...but to another nexus. Yet he was much happier about this set of ladders.

Instead of going down or going up but only slightly, they went up quite a bit, about seventy five metres or so. Grabbing on to the ladders, Winter ascended. As he came to the top, he frowned. No exit as such just another long tunnel. One that had a set of ladders going down or so he could see. Exiting to his left then, along the ladders he followed the tunnel towards its end and peered down. The ladders were short, it was only a single level below. Dropping down he looked around to see... three more tunnels. Picking the one on his right Winter got on his hands and knees of which were becoming quite sore...and carried on. Not one engineer had he seen, not one sole. The only thing keeping him company was him and the voices in his head from his perspective. Taking right hand turn because the path wouldn't let him take any other, he felt like the path was ascending slightly. His heart lifted a smile coming to Winter's face.

Grinning from ear to ear his pace picked up and his tune changed to a happier one at least until he realised something. Just as the tunnel levelled out. He glanced behind him. To his horror, a set of metal girders, "No...that's not...it can't be...surely!" But it was. They would have been the same girders he had unfortunately needed to duck under before. His temper flaring, rage flooded through his veins and he hurried with a much more determined pace through the tunnels. Lefts...rights...ups...downs. It didn't matter, he wanted out, even if it meant going back to the labyrinth. Descending, ascending he paused only to realise he was back at the descent again, looking up he saw something he was coming to hate. "No entry. Except for Ghosts!". Self control, self control. Winter slid onto the ladders again.

Click. Whirrrr

"Take one more damned step and I swear on my honour as a Marine I 'WILL' blow your brains out and use them to mark the way out, you directionless moron!" Winter froze. The authoritative voice came closer having echoed down the tunnel. Coming up behind Winter, the voice was a lot more clearer, a feminine voice even. Still it had a degree of discipline to it that Winter wasn't going to doubt easily, "I have been following you for the past two hours in spheres... I'd say circles, but that's clearly not what you were doing. Just how the heck does a trained Scout get himself lost on a space station that the computer would have happily done an emergency teleport had he requested it!?" Winter's face reddened. He'd completely forgotten about that. "Now...get off that ladder or I swear you're going to be dead."

Winter climbed up off the ladder and turned around realllllly slowly. As his eyes met with a blonde haired, grey eyed, woman wearing a marine uniform without the jacket, "When the Operations officer said that you'd failed to check in and the barracks officer was supposedly expecting you. Guess who got sent to come find your green-horn rear?" Winter gulped, "That's right. Me. I would have shot you earlier had I managed to get you in my sights for more than a few seconds. What were you in a past life? A lemming or a newt? Whatever...follow me." Holstering the phaser, the marine ducked into the tunnel heading back the way he had originally come. As the clicked through numerous passages, it seemed his first mistake was the problem. As instead of going back to the labyrinth as he expected instead they went in the other direction, dropped down a set of ladders through another tunnel and then finally...an exit. Climbing out first, the woman offered him her hand, to which he took, stood regained his composure and then...WHAM.

Wham? Wham wasn't what he was expecting for sure as he stumbled backwards against the wall, "And the next time you ever get me going through tunnels like that again, I will beat your sorry rear to the gamma quadrant!" As Winter's focus came back, he noted the woman in front of him still had her fists clenched and his jaw stung a surprising amount.

"Who the...hell are you?" Was all that Winter could come up with, his eyes still slightly wide from the shock of almost being sunk like a sack of potatoes from a woman. Certainly a shock to the system.

As the woman's eyes de-misted, she smiled somewhat sheepishly, "Lance Corporal Washington...sir." Winter checked his jaw wasn't dislocated.

"I see. You're the spotter that the Major told me to find." Not quite the response that Washington was expecting it seemed as her own mouth slackened slightly. "Since you know your way around the ship...clearly better than I do...I'll take you up on your advice. Show me to the barracks."

"Sir."

"No sirs."

"Yes si-." Washington corrected herself, "Yes." Washington stepped off first leading him to the elevators once again.

"Oh and Washington." The young marine looked back, "Thanks."

//End
//Damn that took far too long. Sorry about slacking off towards the end.