The Boarding of the Utica

Posted on Sat May 29th, 2010 @ 7:40am by Captain Alexander Gunning & Commander Dietrich Reinhart & Captain Liarra Von & Lieutenant Commander Nilani Prax & Lieutenant Commander Melissa Daniels M.D. & Lieutenant JG Callaigh Roland & Senior Chief Petty Officer Gilbert Bones [PNPC] & Chief Warrant Officer Daniel Maddux

Mission: Commissioned
Location: Cargo Bay 2 [USS Utica]
Timeline: MD04 2310

[ON]

The cargo bay was dark an quiet. With main power off line, only the emergency lights provided any illumination. The blue glow of the Starfleet annular confinement beam offered the first activity in a while, revealing the first round of the boarding party from the Jackal. Security Chief Liarra Von, flanked by Petty officers Jennings and Katarn, ready their phaser rifles and fan out around Commander Reinhart. Lieutenant Von gave her orders with hand signals, prompting her team to check out and secure the room.

He wasn't expecting much. Just a few grey crates stacked together, a dark room that was a tad on the cold side. In fact, there was not much he could think of that he would expect. Though he brought his phaser, he was not expecting much of a fight if any at all. Dietrich still believed there was probably good reason for the attack on the Klingons. Of course, it was not the right thing to do, but there was always the other side. Victims usually had a powerful message and a great audience to deliver it to, and nobody much cared for what the assailant had to say. There was that one little bit of the law that said "innocent until proven guilty," however. And if no one else, I'll be the one to believe in it, he said to himself as he looked around the room. Tricorders were useless. He had been on Akira's before, and this would be no different. He did not need a moving map. He only needed a flashlight to help him see in the dark. Or someone to turn on the lights. Dietrich looked around the cargo bay, looking for anything that the security grunts would miss. They were trained to look for people with phasers, drugs, or dangerous things. Reinhart, having been there and done that, started looking for opened cargo boxes and things that the crew might have scowered over. Evidence, in other words, as opposed to the guilty party.

Giving up on the immediate surroundings once he was satisfied that they were safe, the Commander looked towards the security chief, Von, for the all clear. He chose not to speak, because quite frankly, if he spoke and the room wasn't clear yet, that'd be a great security risk he didn't care to write up about in the After-Action-Report.

Liarra's search came up empty as she heard a shout from across the room. "Everything's clear over here, Sir. There aren't even any bugs to scurry away when we shine our lights on them."

Liarra grimaced at her officer's odd humor. That's a relief, Warren. I'd hate to have to requisition some bug spray." She tapped her comm badge. "Away team to Jackal. The beam-in sight is secure, Captain."

The blue energy began to dissipate around the Commander as he shook loose the strange feeling that he always got after being deconstructed and blasted across the vacuum of space (regardless of the size) into another location. It always made him slightly reconsider his decision to join Starfleet. He detached his phaser from his belt and half-heartedly pointed his phaser around the bay.

"I'm picking up the crew's life signs," Nilani reported, as she studied her tricorder. "They all seem to be in clusters, but each cluster is fairly spread out. From the ship's schematics, it looks like most of them are in crew quarters." This fact seriously puzzled her. Why would the crew all be gathering in crew quarters? And they weren't in individual quarters; they were grouped together into a number of different ones, with some rooms completely empty. It couldn't be to wait in ambush, because they'd know that whoever came to board them would be able to detect their life signs...

"The nearest is just one deck up. I think we should investigate."

"Sounds like not everyone's gone rogue." The Commander replied. "Let's move out."

"Now, now, Captain," Dietrich offered quietly as he followed the security detail to the Jeffries Tube, "we don't know the whole story yet. And not for nothing, I won't believe a Klingon before I hear the side of the Federation." He shut up and followed suit, getting into the tube in order.

The Jackal's acting chief engineer was the first to tumble out of the Jeffries Tube. He swiped his phaser around, half-menacingly but he had already taken a scan of the corridor. There was no-one around.

"All clear." He said as the other officers poured out of the junction hatch.

"Where are the lifesigns?" The commanding officer asked Prax as he spilled onto the floor, hopping a little to try and make his egress seem more dignified than it had been.

"About 80 metres down that corridor," Nilani responded, somehow managing to look at her tricorder as she climbed out of the tube.

The officers moved down the corridor. It was eerie with just the red pulsating light of emergency power and no atmosphere of people rushing about except themselves, all maintaining a proximity to one another in case of an ambush. They reached the door, behind which lay the lifesigns.

"All right. Prax, Bones. Get it open." The Commander ordered. "Daniels, be ready in case there's wounded in there.

"You got it," Prax said, before putting her tricorder back in its pouch at her waist. Kneeling down, she opened the pack that was hanging from her shoulder and retrieved a small device designed to pull doors open when they are either locked or without power. As she stood and went to attach it to one of the doors however, she was repelled by the jolt of a force field.

Bones looked at Gunning quizzically. "How will we get past the-"

=Crew Quarters=

"No, no. That is the wrrrong sequence," mewed the voice of some nameless, feline Ensign, crouched over a hole in the wall that revealed a colorful control panel, the removed bulkhead cover sitting off to the side. The voice was one amongst several; four or five junior officers of the Utica were babbling to each other, arguing about how to get themselves out of their predicament. At the same time, a sharp, slightly out-of-tune whistler reclining on a couch behind them was attempting to whistle what they assumed to be some sort of drinking song.

"We need to reroute the auxiliary," came another of the officers' voices.

The whistler in the back smirked. Haven't heard that one before. He paused, then attempted a particularly high, very off-pitch whistle.

"Would you please SHUT UP," came the irritated voice of the young human Lieutenant JG, looking at the man in the back. "You've been doing that for an HOUR."

The older, enlisted man chuckled. "I'm being more productive than you kids," he said. "Music soothes the soul."

"Not yourrrrs," came a reply. "Yourrr whistling is giving me an achehead."

"Headache," corrected the man in the back.

"We're trying to deactivate the force field," continued the young LT. "Maybe if you would get up off your--"

He was interrupted by an orange whistling past his head and splattering on the bulkhead above him.

"Screw you, Maddux," he said, turning back to the control panel with the others.

The man in the back, Maddux, smiled, picking up another piece of fruit from the basket on the table in front of the couch, an apple, and taking a luxurious bite. Food in his mouth, chomping while he talked, he addressed the young officer.

"You know, Lieutenant," he managed, juice running from a corner of his mouth, "If you manage to get that forcefield down, I'll dance naked in the halls and you can call me Sexy."

A middle finger was raised in his direction amidst mumbled profanity among the group.

Suddenly, a cascade of beeps emerged from the control panel. "I... we... I think we got it," came the excited voice of the Lieutenant.

"What did you do?" cried a young female Ensign.

"I didn't do anything!"

Maddux, surprised that the young officers could have pulled it off but instantly wary that it was their shipmate captors returning (with violent intentions), readied his half-eaten apple as a projectile, waiting for the doors to slide open.

Crying out in success from her new crouched position next to the door, at the panel she had exposed behind the bulkhead, Nilani watched as the forcefield shimmered out of existence, the doors opening automatically as they had been programmed to with the securities disabled.

Maddux launched the apple into the growing gap between the doors as they slid open, and heard a satisfying thump and a yelp of pain emerge from the other side. He immediately prepared his muscles to dive to the side and use the junior officers as shields for the coming melee.

Liarra gracefully dodged the flying fruit, and readied her phaser rifle. Nodding to her security team, the three burst into the room, training their phasers towards anyone that looked to be a threat. Jennings and Katarn flanked the Lieutenant on either side of her as she shouted out to the room. "Everyone freeze! Come out and put your hands where we can see them!" The trill was not about to stand by and let fruit be used as a weapon against her captain.

Like the others, and just as surprised as them to see a group of Starfleet officers from a different ship suddenly show up, Maddux raised his hands accordingly as he put some subtle distance between himself and the fruit basket on the coffee table.

With the group stepping away from any cover, Von left her team to keep their phasers aimed. She, meanwhile, checked over the Utica crew members, checking for weapons, or any organic projectiles. She spotted the bowl of fruit sitting on the table, not far from the Master Warrant Officer in the back. She eyed him carefully, but determined that he was not going to be a threat, at least not with her in the room. "It's all clear, sir. They're not armed."

The Commander eventually entered the room with Reinhart, Counselor Roland and the Doctor by his side.

Melissa opened her tricorder and scanned them one by one, thoroughly. She kept her guard up, until her scans had determined that their vitals were normal.

Moving from her place behind the security team, Callaigh edged toward group slowly and calmly. Frustration and fear were nearly palatable to her from this small band of officers for whom she felt sudden and overwhelming sympathy. Her eyes locked with each one in turn, hesitantly 'reaching' out to them and finding that aside from uncertainty and a reasonable amount of residual tension and wariness, they seemed to be of sound mind. Their eyes reflected what their emotional state proclaimed, leaving Callaigh to return to the sides of her comrades satisfied. "They seem to be well enough, Commander, considering." Her gaze returned to the older man who'd sidled discretely from the fruit bowl and was radiating an air of either foolishness or bravery; Cal wasn't sure which.

"Oh, come on, whoever the hell you are," grumbled Maddux from the back with little respect for the numerous higher-ranking personnel in the room. "We've got freaks controlling our ship, you arrive in the nick of time, rescue us, and... wait for it... sit around and scan us for the next hour. This is an unnecessary waste of time."

Melissa gave Maddux a piercing stare. "Master Warrant Officer, I will decide what is necessary or unnecessary." She continued to scan the assembled officers. The seriousness in her voice was completely out-of-character compared to how she was normally. She then spoke, "They're clean."

"I'm Commander Gunning of the Jackal. Who's the senior officer here?" Gunning demanded.

The young lieutenant who had been chastising Maddux only moments before stepped forward and gave a half-hearted salute to the Commander. "Lieutenant Jones, sir. I'm assigned to Stellar Cartography."

Gunning looked the man up and down. He exuded the feeling of a man who carried more about the advance of his career than the safety of his crewmates. "You'd be great if we were charting a nebula, Lieutenant but I reckon we need someone with more than a working knowledge of the way this vessel's laid out."

On cue, every one of the young Utica officers turned and looked tellingly at Maddux. He gave them a sharp glare and then gave the newly arrived Jackal personnel an innocent 'Who, me?' look.

"Looks like your peers have picked you," the Commander said, "What's your name?"

"MWO Maddux," came the reluctant reply.

"Fair enough. Maddux, where are the rest of the crew being held? We need to send a team to free them so that you can all retake the ship." Alex thought for a moment, trying to split the group accordingly.

"Doctor, Reinhart & Von. You're with me. We're going to the brig to find out what the hell's going on here." He paused, looking for the nods from his crew. "Maddux, show the rest of the team where the rest of the crew are being held and let them out. They'll need to retake the ship."

"Aye, Sir," Liarra acknowledged. She turned to her security team. "Jennings, Katarn, you're with Prax, Roland, and Bones. Keep them safe. If you get into trouble, let me know."

"Aye, Lieutenant," the security officers responded.

Melissa spoke, "Perhaps one of our teams should lock the ship down with forcefields. It will make it easier for me to treat the crewmembers on a larger scale, and prevent additional contamination if this is a biological agent." She noted.

"We'll do what we can when we reach the brig, Doctor." Gunning replied. "In the mean time you might just have to make do with the talents of Katarn and Jennings. I assume you'll be pretty handy with a phaser as well?"

Again apprehension colored Callaigh's countenance and she fought to keep her fingers from caressing her own phaser reassuringly. Larger numbers implied safety but also a greater chance of danger were they to all be discovered at once. She sent up a quick prayer of protection and guidance for her teammates, sure that they would need it more than those given the task of freeing the rest of the Utica's captured crew.

The XO looked around, watching as the security detail left with the crazy Maddux guy to free the rest of the crew. What in the hell is wrong with this ship, Reinhart thought as he looked at the Jeffries Tube. "Is there any way we can turn on ships power so we don't have to go down there," he offered. For as much time as he spent crawling around Jeffries Tubes in Starfleet vessels, he sure did not want today to be his last time. With some kind of contagion floating around the ship, and some bizarre crew locking themselves in their rooms to stay safe, the last place he wanted to be was a dark enclosed space with nowhere to go. "Damn it," he said to himself as he crawled into the hole to drop down three decks.

[OFF]

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This post is brought to you by:

Commander Alex Gunning
Commanding Officer
USS Jackal

Lt. Cmdr. Dietrich Reinhart
Executive Officer & Chief Flight Control Officer
USS Jackal

Lt. Liarra Von
Chief Tactical and Security Officer

Lt. JG Nilani Prax
Chief Science Officer

Lt. JG Melissa Daniels, M.D.
Chief Medical Officer

Lt. JG Callaigh Rolland
Chief Counselor

SWO Gilbert Bones
ACEO - NPC

MWO Daniel Maddux
Chief Intelligence Officer