Vying For Control
Posted on Thu May 3rd, 2018 @ 7:32am by Commodore Tyler Malbrooke
Edited on on Thu May 31st, 2018 @ 9:23pm
3,198 words; about a 16 minute read
Mission:
Episode 2 - The Enemy Within
Location: Main Engineering - Deck 11
Timeline: MD006 1000 hrs
Tags: SD 71384.1000
Pellor, Drake, Latouche, and Marquez were tasked by Ayala to take Main Engineering. Ayala had used his intimate knowledge of the Intrepid Class ship to beam his teams in perfectly. As such this team of two men, and two women found themselves in the Jefferies Tubes just outside the access hatch to Main Engineering.
Pellor raised her green hand and signaled for the team to be ready to enter guns blazing, and on the count of three she opened the hatch and all four of them unleashed their phaser blasts. Two of the blasts sailed wide and into bulkheads. The other two hit the two nearest crewmen who dropped to the ground stunned. The four entered Engineering and drew themselves into a circle. "No one moves and no one gets hurt just that simple." Pellor said. "You the Trill shutdown power to the bridge or I will blow your stinking head off." Drake said.
Rial had been sitting at the diagnostics station behind the chief engineers station when he'd heard the disruptor fire. The Trill had been reaching into the emergency safe under his console that held a type 2 phaser when he heard the order. The Trill withdrew his hand, trying to make i look like he'd been fidling with circuitry, "alright, I'll need to get to that console over there," he replied and pointed to an MSD across the large bay.
Pellor turned to the rest of her team. "Keep an eye on them if any one of them does something kill them." She then turned toward Rial "You Petty Officer get over to the MSD I am going with you. You make any sudden moves and I will scatter your atoms against the wall. Is that understood?" She motioned the phaser toward the MSD.
Morol just nodded and held his hands up in front of him as he moved to the console. After they reached the MSD the specialist pulled up the power transfer grid with one hand and started typing in a command at the console near his waist and out of sight, "ok, almost there..." he said and took a step back so the disruptor was pressed into his back. The Petty Officer took a deep breath and hit the execute button on the bottom console sending a shimmering light to envelop the intruders in a force field. At the same moment he spun and stepped to the side, knocking the disruptor muzzle away from himself and grabbed the barrel.
The Orion woman decided that the Trill may have gotten the upper hand but it was only for a moment. She figured love would be stronger than hate. No longer being a Starfleet Officer, she was no longer bound to keep her pheromones at bay. So she leaned in and turned up the heat. "A strong man like you wouldn't beat up on little ole me." She said as she batted her eyes and made sure that he got a full whiff of the pheromones.
Morol blinked as the pheramones filled his lungs. His vision started to pulse with his heart and he could hear the thumps in his ears. From deep inside a disembodied voice urged him not to give in, that the woman was chemically seducing him. Morols body shook as he fought within himself until his hand just dropped from the weapon, "yes, mistress," he said and bowed his head slightly, regreat starting to etch onto his features, "I'm sorry my love, I...I don't know why I lost my temper that way..."
"Excellent lover, now shut down the warp drive and power to all decks except Main Engineering. Drop that pesky forcefield as well. Do it for me baby... For us..." She pouted men were simply too easy. The Orion thought Ayala could have saved his men and just sent her. She will have this ship eating out of her hand in no time.
Morol hesitated as Rial flooded his mind with images from lectures about species who use pheromones that can twist and warp perceptions - Deltans and Orions both being at the top of that list. He grabbed his head and groaned, "as...you...wish.."
The engineer slowly moved to another near by consoles and started shakilly typing in commands. The few other engineers in the room yelled at him to stop. However, the voices echoed and seemed disembodied as Rial forced him to look inward, causing his entire to body to freeze and his eyes to glaze over, making him look almost like a manikin.
When the Trill froze the Orion woman froze as well but for an entirely different reason. Is it possible that the thing inside him is stopping my suggestions she thought. As the rest of the Engineering team was yelling for Morol to stop et... the Orion turned it up full blast. "You see them, they are trying to stop us, prevent us from being together. You must shut the power down now or they will separate us." She entreated and hit him with everything she had. The rest of her team stood there dumbfounded behind the forcefield not sure how this would turn out.
Morol ground his teeth as he tried to fight through the visions. Suddenly his head turned, almost robotically, "no," he said in monotone, his eyes blank, "I can't," he added then stood strait.
Pellor was frozen in place... How... Why... WHAT ran through her head. "What are you talking about? Just hit the buttons and put in your code and then we can move on and be together." She was reaching and she was angry. In truth the Orion woman had never attempted what she was doing on a Trill. She was not sure if this one had a worm or not. But that must be the issue the worm... It dawned on her.
Rial reached out and tapped on the security alert button before falling to one knee, "my...love...." he said, his voice almost changing like a kolidascope.
Pellor saw what he had done and now she had now choice. With him still on his knees she quickly freed her men. "Get ready lover boy here just sent for the cavalry. They will probably be here in minutes. Everyone surround the warp core. They won't risk shooting us there. Too much risk that they might hit the core. MOVE... MOVE..." she rattled off orders to her men as they started moving into place.
The other engineers moved to try and stop the invaders. a few were able to over power one or two of the invaders, however, the basic hand to hand combat was something most had not kept up with after leaving the Academy. The engineers were quickly subdued again with only the lucky few getting out of the bay. The senior officers who made it out reported to the first responders, among them Chief Petty Officer Andrew Moore from the counseling department who had been near engineering on his daily workout when the alert sounded.
Moore moved over to the senior security officer clad in sweat pants, sneakers and hoodie, "el te, did you hear the report, they're aiming weps at the core?" he asked.
The security officer nodded, "I did, we need to breach before they open fire," the junior Lieutenant replied and turned to head over to his team.
Andrew shook his head and moved to fall in along side the officer, "cool your jets there, el-te," he said, getting a sneer from the officer.
"Look, Chief," the younger man started and turned to look the other man in the eye, "I out rank you and I am actually trained for this, you are just a headshrinker receptionist. Let me do the the thinking here."
Moore shook his head, "ok...but, I came up in security. Would you like to know my specialty?"
The Lieutenant sighed, "I don't have time fo-"
"Hostage negotiation and special tactics teams," the Chief replied, "that means in addition to being a psychiatric technician I'm also trained in tactics and negotiating with hostiles," the psy tech explained and held up his phaser too, "you may out rank me, son, but you do not have the same experience."
The security officer glared, "what do you want?"
"Let me go in and talk to them, they don't want to die anymore than we do," Moore said, "but if you execute a raid they will act."
The Lieutenant shook his head and tapped his phaser on his hip, "fine, go, but you have ten minutes to make progress then I'm going in."
Moore just nodded and threw his own phaser at the man before walking to the door, "my name is Chief Moore, I'm unarmed and coming in," he called.
Pellor heard the words from inside the door and barked out orders which her men followed to the letter. Drake and Latouche rounded up the Engineers well all of them except for the one called Rial. Rial was brought to Pellor and she held him at phaser point. "You are going to be my bargaining chip." She said to the Trill. Marquez took his phase rifle and programmed it to overload. All he would have to do is press the trigger and they would all go, including the warp core as he stood next to it. Marquez was to be the last hurrah if needed.
Once all was set she called to the door "You are free to enter unarmed and alone. Anyone else shows up and we all die. I hope you understand that." She smiled as the man entered Pellor quickly locked out Main Engineering.
"Do criminals have a handbook they use or are all of you really not that unoriginal?" Moore said as he walked in, hands raised, not even looking at the phaser, instead keeping eye contact with the leader, "now you're going to tell me to pull up my shirt so you can make sure I didn't bring a side arm with me, even though you can tell I wasn't exactly on duty," he said and pulled the hoodie up, exposing his fit core then turned slowly before facing the woman again and pulling up his pant legs to show he had no weapons there either, "satisfied or do want to see me naked?" he asked, his entrance sounding cocky, but, crafted so he was exerting his own control immediately while cooperating.
And we're dead, Morol thought, his head clearing slightly as his adrenalin started taking over, "I think we were safer before you came in, Chief," Moral said.
"How's this for a new script." Pellor said as she approached the new arrival. "Marquez when I give the order blow us all out of the stars." As she got closer to the Chief she turned up the pheromones again. "Now tell me what you could do with words you fine specimen of man." She winked at him flirtatiously. "I am going to give you five minutes, after all we are pressed for time I do hope you understand." The shift in personalities could have caused whiplash from in charge and giving orders to a purring kitten three seconds flat.
Andrew paused and blinked then got a sadistic grin, "I say if we gotta go lets go with a bang," he replied, his voice getting gravely before he turned and moved over to the man she'd been talking to, "you all wanna die that badly, why wait, Marquez, let me see that," he said and started smacking the mans hand toward the trigger.
Pellor grabbed Andrew by the back of the head and slammed his face into the warp core control panel. "Do it Marquez..." she turned blatantly. "You now have 60 seconds" she whispered to into Andrew's ear as she held his head to the rail.
Marquez pulled the trigger and a high pitched whine begin to come from the rifle as it began it's build up to overload.
As the engineers started to murmur and panic Moore just smiled and put his hands on the rail, pushing himself up just enough to turn and look the woman in the eye, "what, you don't love me any more?" he said in an upbeat voice as blood trickled down from his head, "unless you really are as unstable and bipolar as you're acting you worked awful hard to get here and commit suicide. And before you ask how I know that wasn't your goal you didn't bring real explosive, the overload was a quick fix. Besides, you wouldn't have stopped me if this was anything more than a show to make me think yours is bigger than mine. Now we can die or you can stop the B.S. and tell me what you want," he said, his eyes never pulling from hers, "though I'm loving the kink foreplay."
"What I want is this ship, so you can either have these useless loafs you call Engineers get me control of bridge functions or we can all die. Your choice, because taking out a useless Starfleet vessel is goal enough for me. I am sure the Triad will sing our praises when we die. You have 30 seconds..." Pellor responded with a thin evil smile.
The Chief pulled his foot up and shoved the woman, using the railing for leverage and thrusting his hips forward with the push. He stood up and leaned against the railing and wiped the blood away, looking at it on his hand before folding his hands in his lap, "you know, on Earth we love our fireworks, especially these ones called em eighties. They give a huge ass explosion," he started and looked to Marquez then back to the Orion, "the thing about them is you have to get rid of them quick like a hand grenade. if not, boom," he said and made an explosion gesture with his hand, "now, if you're luck you did it with an open hand and only suffered burns. If you closed your hand....well, they'll be calling you stumpy. That right there is and em eighty," he said and gestured toward the rifle, "it's a non-directed explosion near a hardened target. Marquez, can you pipe in and tell the class what that means?" he asked.
Morol blinked, the adrenaline lessening the effects of the pharamones, at least temporarily. All eyes were on Moore and the two Maquis near the core. The Petty Officer took a steadying breath then moved to a nearby console slowly. He looked to make sure he still was unnoticed then quickly typed in the command to put up a force field around the core.
As he heard the buzz Moore grinned, "a very hardened target," he added then looked back to the man holding the rifle.
Marquez's eyes widened as the realization of what this man said dawned on him. Without thinking he tapped the sequence to stop the overload. "Pellor, it won't work he shouted to the Orion. If I stand here and hold it we will die in an explosion but the core will be fine. If I put down next to the core and walk away they will stop the overload." He said with a little panic in his voice.
Pellor looked at Moore and gave him a spinning roundhouse kick. "You let him get in your head now restart the sequence or do you want to rot in the ship's brig." She shouted back to Marquez.
Andrew spun and landed on his back, the iron taste of blood starting to trickle into his mouth as he started to laugh, "yeah, because that rifle exploding is going to take down a containment field meant to contain a breach, can I have some that peyote you're smoking?" he asked as he sat up and got to his feet and spat the blood from his lip onto the deck, "we aren't giving you the ship, you're man there will for sure die and those not injured will be taken out by the security teams on the other side of that door. The nice thing about stun is you can shoot the hostage too," Andrew said and clasp his hands behind his back and started pacing like he was teaching a class, 'and make no mistake, I'm in your head too or you wouldn't have left your hostage laying on the deck unsupervised to deal with me...consider my script rewritten by the way," he added with a cocky smile, "now you have one minute before engineering is raided, and I don't give free shots at me more than twice, so, don't think about trying to take me hostage to keep them out. Now, what I can do is offer you free passage off ship. You haven't killed anyone, you went far out of your way not to despite your bluster, so we can call this a mistake, no harm no foul...if you lay the weps down now.. You have Forty five seconds to decide."
Pellor laughed maniacally but she did realize the logic in what the man said. He who fights and runs away, lives to fight another day. she thought. "No it is you who has 45 seconds. Marquez execute good night."
Marquez still standing next to the warp core affixed a high yield explosive device and began it's countdown. As soon as the countdown began the Maquis team having failed in their mission dematerialized.
The Chief reacted instantly, snatching the comm badge from the nearest officers chest and running towards where the explosive hung, "Moore to security, execute now! You, get me a demagnetiser," he ordered the nearest officer. Once he had the device he slowly ran it around the back of the device then pulled the explosive away and slapped the comm badge on it, "transporter room lock on this comm badge and transport max distance, now!"
With that the device disappeared in a shimmer and Moore held on as the ship shook, "Moore to bridge, engineering secured. Send a medical with pharamone neutralizer," he called then walked out without another word, hiding his shaking hands in his pocket.
Malbrooke's voice chimed up from the bridge. "Acknowledged Engineering. We still have boarding parties aboard. So security lock out protocol is in place. Someday you are going to have to tell me what that transport was all about."
Rial whiped the sweat that had formed from his eyes and foorhead as security stormed the bay from every direction, "c...copy...bridge, and...you'll need...to talk to...Chief Moore about that.." he said and thought he closed the line but missed the button, "damn counseling department is crazier than the people they treat," he muttered.
A Joint Post By
Captain Tyler Malbrooke
Commanding Officer, USS Pioneer
Petty Officer 3nd Class Morol Rial
Propulsion Specialist, USS Pioneer
Chief Petty Officer Andrew Moore
Behavioral Health Technician, USS Pioneer
PNPC Rial
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