IKC FHew 7C6110
Empty Promise – The Lyan's Den
by HoD Ro' Matlh & Sogh Germite Ephilom & Ne' Michelle "Mike" Young & Soghla' HIchop Matlh & Soghla' Terri (Tell) Hope & Soghla' Jared & Soghla' Marie St. Helene
Post Details
The crew wore HEV suits; heavily armoured space suits designed to resist acid, lava and hard vacuum. They were bulky and cumbersome, and did little to comfort the Klingons who wore them, and even less for the Humans who struggled with the weight. Jared alone wore a lightly armoured space suit. HoS and he had argued about it for some time, but eventually HoS had to concede that Jared's only real chance at survival against Lynn was speed and agility; even though against the Lyan these were of little use.
By comparison, HIchop was wearing the bulky Battle suit they took many years ago from the ruins of a dead world. It had been tweaked and refined; the old power units replaced with newer ones. a set of thrusters for stabilization and Zero-G flight had been added.
Rather than approach the Predator directly Bruce flew them to just within transporter range for a drop off, with the intention of pulling out fast. This meant that the team would be on their own, unable even to radio for support, lest their presence be detected.
There was a glow of red as the team arrived, back to back, weapons drawn. They were in a wide cargo bay, which had been open to space. There was a yellow flashing light playing its strobed glow over the surrounds. From the burn marks on the walls and the few crates that remained it looked as if there had been fighting, but any bodies had been pumped into space when the door was opened.
HIchop indicated to a door and the team cautiously made their way forward. The door opened to expose a long corridor at least 3m tall and twice as wide. Metal mesh gantry ran along floor ceilings and walls. as the door slid closed behind them and atmosphere returned so did sound. A siren, sounding not dissimilar to a guttural growl could be heard.
"Is that an intruder Alert?" Cha'a' came across the comms, trying to watch every shadow at the same time.
HIchop, Jarad and Cha'a' were all at the ready. HIchop in a low voice confirmed the need to stay vigilant< "Weapons at ready. Cover each others backs. Yell out WHEN you see one. There will not be much time. We will move to Engineering and determine where the weapon is"
No one actually knew the internal schematics of the vessel. HIchop seemed to know where he was going but Jared knew better. The group moved cautiously down the corridor behind HIchop's lumbering suit. These war machines were designed for fighting in an open field and did not suit close corridors well. However, the size of these corridors was much larger than most ships.
They reached an intersection and HIchop, checking the corners moved a cross it. As the team followed him Tell caught a flash of movement from the corridor on her right. When she looked again there was nothing but darkness and shade.
Strange she thought I could have sworn I saw something there. I'll be jumping at my own shadow next.
The group continued on till it reached another large intersection. HIchop checked the corners; left, then...
"CONTACT!"
About 30m down the corridor was a giant figure, easily 8' tall. It had long hair falling in matted knots down its back and when it turned its Feline face towards then it was drooling from a fanged jaw, it's green eyes wide. A long muscled tail flicked back and forwards ans it focused on the group.
HIchop pulled the trigger, but the suit took a moment to spin up the rotary cannon. The Lyan leapt from the floor to the ceiling, 5 m closer to them, then running as easily as on the floor, it's giant claws clinging to the mesh, it ran towards them. HIchop's suit gun burst to life, spewing hot metal towards the figure who leapt to the side. Despite the huge frame, the Lyan was fast and agile. With another two leaps it was on top of them. With a final effort it landed on the front of HIchop's suit.
The suit itself was open; a metal roll cage on which to mount weapon systems. The Lyan gripped the frame with both of its arms and HIchop flailed with the suit's own Waldo arms, unable to get a purchase. The metal of the frame groaned and began to bend under the Lyan's grip.
Instinctively, HIcop released one of the controls, pulled his Da'k'tahg and buried it into the arm of the Lyan. It screamed and pulled back, just enough for the suit's other hand to get a grip and fling the creature back down the corridor. For a moment the creature spun and turned in space, only to land on its feet ready to pounce again. The whole encounter had only taken a few seconds and the stunned crew finally managed to respond.
Tell let out a few curses and prepared to support HIchop if he needed it. She steadied her self and her weapons on her own suit and moved forward. Compared to HIchop's Battle armour, her HEV was just a space suit. It still felt heavy with armour plating to Tell.
The Lyan raised one arm and there was a momentary shimmer in the air. HIchop pulled the trigger on his rotary cannon, but it only sputtered and span empty. The Lyan attack had bent the frame enough to interrupt the ammo feed. Still, he had a flame thrower on the other arm. The gout of flame washed down the corridor and engulfed the Lyan. Or, to be more accurate, washed around the Lyan, leaving it unharmed within a protective bubble.
HIchop stopped wasting the fuel. Tell at his side fired her disruptor, but it too bounced harmlessly of the protective field that now encased the enraged Lyan.
It stood to its full height and roared. Suddenly from the corridor next to it a second Lyan appeared running at speed. With a snarl it cannoned into the first Lyan, passing straight through the field and lifting it off its feet. The first began clawing at the new attacker as both disappeared through an open doorway and out of sight.
"Engineering! Now!" Hichop yelled, as he started running in a direction other than the two Lyan.
The team moved rapidly away from the conflict, through mostly empty corridors. Occasionally they saw signs of a fire fight and at one point they passed a section of corridor that was open to space. The floor plan of the ship was not hard to follow consisting mostly of long straight passages. Without further incident they found themselves in front of a heavily reinforced door that was quite obviously an entrance to engineering. It look as if it had been battered and shot at, but had been patched and reinforced from the inside.
Just in front of it lay a Lyan stretched out on the floor and twitching. It was quite obviously still alive, though it did not seem to register their presence as they approached.
Hichop signalled to May'Bel to kill the injured Lyan as it lay.
May'Bel gave the power setting on his disruptor pistol a deft twist as he approached, and unceremoniously shot the creature in the head. The setting was high enough that the shot beheaded the creature with an energetic "SPLITCH" sound, vaporising the head and spattering dark superheated blood on the floor behind.
He wasn't taking any chances on using a melee weapon on one of these creatures.
"Uugh!" Jared exclaimed with obvious distaste, grimacing.
Tell pushed the inert body of the Lyan out of the way with her foot and looked at the door. A double charge of Triceron should do it with out endangering them all. She looked at the scarring on the door what ever they had used before had not made much of an impact.
Close examination of the door also revealed two interesting things. Firstly, it was sealed form the inside; welded joints and girders. What ever did it was still in there. Secondly, while most of the attacks were at a height of about 6', the majority of the sealing was done at about 4'.
Tell looked at the door once more there was something here on the door her hands traced over the seals and then at the scarring. It didn't make sense. Tell lowered her hands and concentrated on the job at hand until it was ready.
"Ready to blow the door when everyone else is. I suggest we take cover." Tell informed the others.
"Can we drag the corpse clear?" Jared asked. "I wouldn't mind a little time to get a look at it."
HiChop's looks sideways at Jared "if there is time".
May'Bel grabbed the corpse's ankle without a word, dragging it back away from the door and our of range of the charge. Then he joined the others back clear of the door.
They moved back down the corridor and stepped behind a corner. Tell flipped a switch on her tricorder and the corridor shuddered as flame belched out past them, and an ear splitting roar. Peering back around the corner they could see that the door had been pushed apart, torn in some places.
Hichop moved forward first, his suit hydraulics forcing the Doors open. Beyond the door was an obvious engineering control area. It was dominated by two chambers. On the right was access to the warp core, disappearing into the gap to the decks above and below. On the Left was what looked like a photon Torpedo launcher, though there was no obvious aperture for it to fire out form the inside of the ship.
Scattered around the place were make shift barricades. As HIchop watched, small dark figures dark figures ducked behind them. A moment later a set of red lights appeared and danced over his chest plate.
"Ohh, look. Pretty lights" as HIchop opens up with his flame thrower. The belch of flame roared over the front barricade and there were screams and howls from the other side. Flame, being like a liquid, is able to wash around barricades and through cracks.
Hichop yells over the sound of the flame thrower "May'Bel, Germite, get behind there and kill what you can."
There was a sudden series of rapid explosions as something popped up from the next barricade and fired a solid slug projectile weapon. Hot metal ricocheted of HIchop's armour as he presented himself as a living barricade for his team.
Four more barricades, each occupied by one or two assailants remained.
Germite's mind went back to a previous battle. It was similar, the only difference is that he was no longer the medic, his job to be to stay back and recover the injured. This time, it was his job to take out the target. He had been in countless battles and seen firsthand the results of different strategies, some good and some bad. He tried to think about how the good plans succeeded. He looked at May'bel and HI'chop. Then he turned to Jared. "We need a distraction, something to draw their attention away from us as we assault the first barricade."
May'bel pulled a unit of his suit, peering out from behind cover he bellowed, "JorwI'!"
The small device sailed over the first barricade and the crew knew to cover their eyes and ears before the flash bang went off. Even through closed eyelids the white light stabbed at their eyes and the sound was intense. When they looked again they saw the figures from the back two barricades running with their heads down and disappearing out of the room down the long tunnel that held the Warp Engine. A single figure at the second to front baricade stood up and fired blindly at the group but Germite's disruptor hit it in the chest and dropped it.
May'bel leapt the first barricade to find it's two occupants, who had taken the brunt of the explosive power both stunned and unconscious. He left them for Germite and moved on to be sure the other barricades were now deserted.
"Clear!" he called, taking up position to guard the Engine room and make sure the assailants didn't return. HIchop tuned and covered the door through which they had just come.
Germite and Mike moved to the unconscious figure. It was smaller than the Lyan, only about 4 feet tall, but they could easily see it was not a child, but a different feline species. Unlike the larger Warriors, these wore jumpsuits covered in technical tools and their one weapon was a heavy bulky projectile weapon.
He scanned the creature with his tricorder. He paused to think about the results. The creature was definitely a different species to the Lyan he had scanned in the hall. It was fundamentally unhurt; just knocked out by proximity to May'bel's grenade.
As a medic, his goal was to keep his team alive. He did not feel any obligation to save this creature's life. The question to be answered was 'Is there any intelligence value to sparing this creature's life?'
Germite turned to HIchop who used to be the interrogator, "Do you have any questions for this creature before I dispatch it?"
"You think you're dispatching it." Mike snapped back. "Your mantra may be that you kill everything without a second thought, but it is not mine. I will help this creature and learn what I can from him, then you may interrogate him, WITHOUT killing him, or you will have some serious shit to deal with afterwards."
"I don't think these little kittens need to be torn apart Germite," HIchop admonished, "but wake it up and put a friendly arm around its neck and leading it this way while nicely asking why there is a missile in engineering. That might be helpful."
"And then if it doesn't want to assist us," He added with a hungry snarl, "put a gun in its hand and let it try its luck."
"Oh and so long as you get me what I want," HIchop added, "You are the interrogation officer"
Mike stood and glared at HIchop. "At this point in time, I really do not care about if you ARE a higher rank than me, you kill him and I can GUARANTEE you are going to regret every SUGGESTING doing such a thing in front of me. As long as this creature, who I know so little about that I want to find out more while he is alive, is in my care, you will not harm him further. Is that understood?"
OOC Ro': Congrats on the new position Germite!. I want the conversation with the technician resolved, then there is a new surprise coming. Mikes outburst need not be seen as subordination, so much as her asserting her role (which we would want her to do). It creates a lovely dynamic where Germite is working to inflict pain and Mike is working to keep it alive.
Germite let out a sigh, then pulled a hypospray out of his kit. He set it to administer a stimulant mixed with analgesics and injected the creature.
The creature gave a low moan and opened it's eyes, looking straight up at the faces of Germite and Mike.
"You're not Klingons," its voice was high pitched almost a yowl, "or Lyan. What are you doing here?"
It looked around catching sight of May'bel and HIcop, "Oh, there are the Klingons. I take it you are a conquered species then, huh?"
It didn't seem particularly scared or upset by your presence.
Germite ignored the comment. He dialed his hypospray to inject a sedative next. Germite smiled at the creature. "We have some questions for you. You can answer them truthfully and quickly." He paused and tapped his hypospray, "Or you can not and then we will resort to other means to retrieve the information."
The creature shrugged. Threats were the Lyann modus operandi so this was nothing new for the little figure, "What's your question?"
Meanwhile Tell and Jared had moved quickly to the device that appeared to be a photon launcher. Indeed closer examination confirmed it was a missile launcher almost exactly like the one on the FHew, except it was mounted on a turntable assembly that would enable it to point in any direction 360x360x360. Which was odd, since there was no obvious aperture through which a missile could fly. There was also a complicated loading assembly on one side.
"Looks interesting," said Tell walking around it "bit more advanced than ours. Think we could take it with us?"
Jared frowned, "Why the rotational frame? Either it is in here for testing or where missing something."
In truth the actual launcher was pretty much equivalent to a Klingon launcher, if slightly smaller, ate around 2 meters tall is taken off its mount. The loader however was quite remarkable. It contained a link to the sensor grid and a complicated set of navigational calculators normally associated with stellar navigation. There was also a generator of a type Tell did not recognize attached to the launching chamber.
Removing the loader housing exposed the warheads, which appeared to be quite moderate yield antimatter torpedoes, practically identical to the ones on the FHew.
Whatever the difference was between this launcher and the one on the FHew lay in the attached generator and targeting computer.
HIchop looked at the device and the obvious flaw in having it in engineering. "I want to know how it gets out of here. Are they just working on it to make it more efficient or do they fire it from here and if so how. Do you think you can work this out, Jared and Tell?"
"I'm puzzled by that as well," Jared commented with a frown. "This thing can fire in any direction imaginable, but no matter where you aimed it, it would impact on the walls of this chamber and destroy the ship. It's a ridiculous design, and I'm not sure I even want to guess what that extra hardware does."
Tell looked at it with her usual scrutiny, her keen eyes missing nothing. "If you take a look at this piece of kit here you'll find it's a Phase Generator, very nice."
Jared frowned at Tell's assessment.
"That doesn't make a lot of sense. If you put a torpedo out of phase, it'd be harmless. The detonation would be out of phase and would do nothing more than saturate the area with exotic particles. Unless you were shooting at something that existed in the exact right temporal phase."
He gave the generator mechanism a brief, critical look-over, and shook his head.
"No... I don't even think it'd be good for that. This hardware it pretty basic as far as phase-gate technology goes. You couldn't even target a specific temporal phase. It could only cause an unstable inducted phase-shift. That'd last for five to ten seconds at best, then the inductive phase field would collapse and the torpedo would just drop back into normal sp..."
He suddenly fell silent, looking stunned for a long pause.
"Oh..." he managed.
He looked at the weapon assembly.
"Oh, that's... brilliant! That's plain old devious!"
He began inspecting the mechanism closely, climbing up on the housing to get a better look. His demeanor had changed from scorn to awe.
"Of course. Use the navigational gear to give you precise geospacial triangulation, set the direction, adjust the phase-bridge intensity to determine the range at which the phase-state would collapse, and... boom."
He glanced over at HIchop.
"I think we've found our ship-killer weapon. Unless I very much miss my guess, this thing is designed to momentarily phase an antimatter Torpedo so it can be fired from the middle of the ship, pass through an enemy's shields, and re-enter normal space INSIDE an enemy vessel."
"I mean... you'd need horrendously complex mathematics to aim the thing, but if you could pull it off, you could detonate a warhead in the middle of an enemy's ship no matter what their external shields and armour are like. And the weapon would be undetectable to most sensors until it detonated, so it'd be almost impossible to even figure out what happened."
There was a sudden resonant "Thwummm" from the device, which began to light up. The weapon assembly began to shift on it's mountings, rotating to a new heading.
Jared blinked in alarm.
"Which... it seems we're going to see in action rather shortly."
Moving to the Navigational controls Tell and Jared were able to see a cloaked Romulan Warbird. It was obvious that the Warbird was cloaked, because bits of it were still invisible, but part of it was batched in a dull red glow that the Navigational computer was now tracking madly, and the launcher was adjusting to face. There was a sudden beep as the lock was made just when the warbird slowed and turned to an attack approach. The launcher fired, but there was no sudden hole ripped in the wall of engineering. Instead there was nothing for a few seconds.
Then the Romulan D'deridex Warbird disintegrated in a fireball.
"Direct hit to Engineering," Jared breathed, in awe despite himself.
But the launcher was tracking again and a glance at the monitor told him why. There, bathed in the crimson glow was the FHew!
While the FHew was diving erratically about the navigation computer was unable to predict their path or calculate a formula for the warhead. However, the FHew suddenly turned and flew straight at the ship on an attack run.
"Allow me", Hichop said as he used his suit to rip into the equipment to remove the phase generator.
He then turned to everyone who looked a little phased themselves "I suggest we all start running now."
The firing mechanism on the device had not been affected by Hichop's removal of the Phase generator. It signaled it had achieved a lock and was prepared to launch.
Breaking radio silence he called "jaqwI' 6 to beam up."
The red glow washed over the group leaving the small engineer to look back at the weapon no aiming directly at the warp core.
"Oh, meow..."
by HoD Ro' Matlh & Sogh Germite Ephilom & Ne' Michelle "Mike" Young & Soghla' HIchop Matlh & Soghla' Terri (Tell) Hope & Soghla' Jared & Soghla' Marie St. Helene
Post Details
| Title | The Lyan's Den | |
| Mission | Empty Promise | |
| Author(s) | HoD Ro' Matlh & Sogh Germite Ephilom & Ne' Michelle "Mike" Young & Soghla' HIchop Matlh & Soghla' Terri (Tell) Hope & Soghla' Jared & Soghla' Marie St. Helene | |
| Posted | Wed May 20, 2015 @ 1:22am | |
| Location | Scar Clan Lyan Predator |
By comparison, HIchop was wearing the bulky Battle suit they took many years ago from the ruins of a dead world. It had been tweaked and refined; the old power units replaced with newer ones. a set of thrusters for stabilization and Zero-G flight had been added.
Rather than approach the Predator directly Bruce flew them to just within transporter range for a drop off, with the intention of pulling out fast. This meant that the team would be on their own, unable even to radio for support, lest their presence be detected.
There was a glow of red as the team arrived, back to back, weapons drawn. They were in a wide cargo bay, which had been open to space. There was a yellow flashing light playing its strobed glow over the surrounds. From the burn marks on the walls and the few crates that remained it looked as if there had been fighting, but any bodies had been pumped into space when the door was opened.
HIchop indicated to a door and the team cautiously made their way forward. The door opened to expose a long corridor at least 3m tall and twice as wide. Metal mesh gantry ran along floor ceilings and walls. as the door slid closed behind them and atmosphere returned so did sound. A siren, sounding not dissimilar to a guttural growl could be heard.
"Is that an intruder Alert?" Cha'a' came across the comms, trying to watch every shadow at the same time.
HIchop, Jarad and Cha'a' were all at the ready. HIchop in a low voice confirmed the need to stay vigilant< "Weapons at ready. Cover each others backs. Yell out WHEN you see one. There will not be much time. We will move to Engineering and determine where the weapon is"
No one actually knew the internal schematics of the vessel. HIchop seemed to know where he was going but Jared knew better. The group moved cautiously down the corridor behind HIchop's lumbering suit. These war machines were designed for fighting in an open field and did not suit close corridors well. However, the size of these corridors was much larger than most ships.
They reached an intersection and HIchop, checking the corners moved a cross it. As the team followed him Tell caught a flash of movement from the corridor on her right. When she looked again there was nothing but darkness and shade.
Strange she thought I could have sworn I saw something there. I'll be jumping at my own shadow next.
The group continued on till it reached another large intersection. HIchop checked the corners; left, then...
"CONTACT!"
About 30m down the corridor was a giant figure, easily 8' tall. It had long hair falling in matted knots down its back and when it turned its Feline face towards then it was drooling from a fanged jaw, it's green eyes wide. A long muscled tail flicked back and forwards ans it focused on the group.
HIchop pulled the trigger, but the suit took a moment to spin up the rotary cannon. The Lyan leapt from the floor to the ceiling, 5 m closer to them, then running as easily as on the floor, it's giant claws clinging to the mesh, it ran towards them. HIchop's suit gun burst to life, spewing hot metal towards the figure who leapt to the side. Despite the huge frame, the Lyan was fast and agile. With another two leaps it was on top of them. With a final effort it landed on the front of HIchop's suit.
The suit itself was open; a metal roll cage on which to mount weapon systems. The Lyan gripped the frame with both of its arms and HIchop flailed with the suit's own Waldo arms, unable to get a purchase. The metal of the frame groaned and began to bend under the Lyan's grip.
Instinctively, HIcop released one of the controls, pulled his Da'k'tahg and buried it into the arm of the Lyan. It screamed and pulled back, just enough for the suit's other hand to get a grip and fling the creature back down the corridor. For a moment the creature spun and turned in space, only to land on its feet ready to pounce again. The whole encounter had only taken a few seconds and the stunned crew finally managed to respond.
Tell let out a few curses and prepared to support HIchop if he needed it. She steadied her self and her weapons on her own suit and moved forward. Compared to HIchop's Battle armour, her HEV was just a space suit. It still felt heavy with armour plating to Tell.
The Lyan raised one arm and there was a momentary shimmer in the air. HIchop pulled the trigger on his rotary cannon, but it only sputtered and span empty. The Lyan attack had bent the frame enough to interrupt the ammo feed. Still, he had a flame thrower on the other arm. The gout of flame washed down the corridor and engulfed the Lyan. Or, to be more accurate, washed around the Lyan, leaving it unharmed within a protective bubble.
HIchop stopped wasting the fuel. Tell at his side fired her disruptor, but it too bounced harmlessly of the protective field that now encased the enraged Lyan.
It stood to its full height and roared. Suddenly from the corridor next to it a second Lyan appeared running at speed. With a snarl it cannoned into the first Lyan, passing straight through the field and lifting it off its feet. The first began clawing at the new attacker as both disappeared through an open doorway and out of sight.
"Engineering! Now!" Hichop yelled, as he started running in a direction other than the two Lyan.
The team moved rapidly away from the conflict, through mostly empty corridors. Occasionally they saw signs of a fire fight and at one point they passed a section of corridor that was open to space. The floor plan of the ship was not hard to follow consisting mostly of long straight passages. Without further incident they found themselves in front of a heavily reinforced door that was quite obviously an entrance to engineering. It look as if it had been battered and shot at, but had been patched and reinforced from the inside.
Just in front of it lay a Lyan stretched out on the floor and twitching. It was quite obviously still alive, though it did not seem to register their presence as they approached.
Hichop signalled to May'Bel to kill the injured Lyan as it lay.
May'Bel gave the power setting on his disruptor pistol a deft twist as he approached, and unceremoniously shot the creature in the head. The setting was high enough that the shot beheaded the creature with an energetic "SPLITCH" sound, vaporising the head and spattering dark superheated blood on the floor behind.
He wasn't taking any chances on using a melee weapon on one of these creatures.
"Uugh!" Jared exclaimed with obvious distaste, grimacing.
Tell pushed the inert body of the Lyan out of the way with her foot and looked at the door. A double charge of Triceron should do it with out endangering them all. She looked at the scarring on the door what ever they had used before had not made much of an impact.
Close examination of the door also revealed two interesting things. Firstly, it was sealed form the inside; welded joints and girders. What ever did it was still in there. Secondly, while most of the attacks were at a height of about 6', the majority of the sealing was done at about 4'.
Tell looked at the door once more there was something here on the door her hands traced over the seals and then at the scarring. It didn't make sense. Tell lowered her hands and concentrated on the job at hand until it was ready.
"Ready to blow the door when everyone else is. I suggest we take cover." Tell informed the others.
"Can we drag the corpse clear?" Jared asked. "I wouldn't mind a little time to get a look at it."
HiChop's looks sideways at Jared "if there is time".
May'Bel grabbed the corpse's ankle without a word, dragging it back away from the door and our of range of the charge. Then he joined the others back clear of the door.
They moved back down the corridor and stepped behind a corner. Tell flipped a switch on her tricorder and the corridor shuddered as flame belched out past them, and an ear splitting roar. Peering back around the corner they could see that the door had been pushed apart, torn in some places.
Hichop moved forward first, his suit hydraulics forcing the Doors open. Beyond the door was an obvious engineering control area. It was dominated by two chambers. On the right was access to the warp core, disappearing into the gap to the decks above and below. On the Left was what looked like a photon Torpedo launcher, though there was no obvious aperture for it to fire out form the inside of the ship.
Scattered around the place were make shift barricades. As HIchop watched, small dark figures dark figures ducked behind them. A moment later a set of red lights appeared and danced over his chest plate.
"Ohh, look. Pretty lights" as HIchop opens up with his flame thrower. The belch of flame roared over the front barricade and there were screams and howls from the other side. Flame, being like a liquid, is able to wash around barricades and through cracks.
Hichop yells over the sound of the flame thrower "May'Bel, Germite, get behind there and kill what you can."
There was a sudden series of rapid explosions as something popped up from the next barricade and fired a solid slug projectile weapon. Hot metal ricocheted of HIchop's armour as he presented himself as a living barricade for his team.
Four more barricades, each occupied by one or two assailants remained.
Germite's mind went back to a previous battle. It was similar, the only difference is that he was no longer the medic, his job to be to stay back and recover the injured. This time, it was his job to take out the target. He had been in countless battles and seen firsthand the results of different strategies, some good and some bad. He tried to think about how the good plans succeeded. He looked at May'bel and HI'chop. Then he turned to Jared. "We need a distraction, something to draw their attention away from us as we assault the first barricade."
May'bel pulled a unit of his suit, peering out from behind cover he bellowed, "JorwI'!"
The small device sailed over the first barricade and the crew knew to cover their eyes and ears before the flash bang went off. Even through closed eyelids the white light stabbed at their eyes and the sound was intense. When they looked again they saw the figures from the back two barricades running with their heads down and disappearing out of the room down the long tunnel that held the Warp Engine. A single figure at the second to front baricade stood up and fired blindly at the group but Germite's disruptor hit it in the chest and dropped it.
May'bel leapt the first barricade to find it's two occupants, who had taken the brunt of the explosive power both stunned and unconscious. He left them for Germite and moved on to be sure the other barricades were now deserted.
"Clear!" he called, taking up position to guard the Engine room and make sure the assailants didn't return. HIchop tuned and covered the door through which they had just come.
Germite and Mike moved to the unconscious figure. It was smaller than the Lyan, only about 4 feet tall, but they could easily see it was not a child, but a different feline species. Unlike the larger Warriors, these wore jumpsuits covered in technical tools and their one weapon was a heavy bulky projectile weapon.
He scanned the creature with his tricorder. He paused to think about the results. The creature was definitely a different species to the Lyan he had scanned in the hall. It was fundamentally unhurt; just knocked out by proximity to May'bel's grenade.
As a medic, his goal was to keep his team alive. He did not feel any obligation to save this creature's life. The question to be answered was 'Is there any intelligence value to sparing this creature's life?'
Germite turned to HIchop who used to be the interrogator, "Do you have any questions for this creature before I dispatch it?"
"You think you're dispatching it." Mike snapped back. "Your mantra may be that you kill everything without a second thought, but it is not mine. I will help this creature and learn what I can from him, then you may interrogate him, WITHOUT killing him, or you will have some serious shit to deal with afterwards."
"I don't think these little kittens need to be torn apart Germite," HIchop admonished, "but wake it up and put a friendly arm around its neck and leading it this way while nicely asking why there is a missile in engineering. That might be helpful."
"And then if it doesn't want to assist us," He added with a hungry snarl, "put a gun in its hand and let it try its luck."
"Oh and so long as you get me what I want," HIchop added, "You are the interrogation officer"
Mike stood and glared at HIchop. "At this point in time, I really do not care about if you ARE a higher rank than me, you kill him and I can GUARANTEE you are going to regret every SUGGESTING doing such a thing in front of me. As long as this creature, who I know so little about that I want to find out more while he is alive, is in my care, you will not harm him further. Is that understood?"
OOC Ro': Congrats on the new position Germite!. I want the conversation with the technician resolved, then there is a new surprise coming. Mikes outburst need not be seen as subordination, so much as her asserting her role (which we would want her to do). It creates a lovely dynamic where Germite is working to inflict pain and Mike is working to keep it alive.
Germite let out a sigh, then pulled a hypospray out of his kit. He set it to administer a stimulant mixed with analgesics and injected the creature.
The creature gave a low moan and opened it's eyes, looking straight up at the faces of Germite and Mike.
"You're not Klingons," its voice was high pitched almost a yowl, "or Lyan. What are you doing here?"
It looked around catching sight of May'bel and HIcop, "Oh, there are the Klingons. I take it you are a conquered species then, huh?"
It didn't seem particularly scared or upset by your presence.
Germite ignored the comment. He dialed his hypospray to inject a sedative next. Germite smiled at the creature. "We have some questions for you. You can answer them truthfully and quickly." He paused and tapped his hypospray, "Or you can not and then we will resort to other means to retrieve the information."
The creature shrugged. Threats were the Lyann modus operandi so this was nothing new for the little figure, "What's your question?"
Meanwhile Tell and Jared had moved quickly to the device that appeared to be a photon launcher. Indeed closer examination confirmed it was a missile launcher almost exactly like the one on the FHew, except it was mounted on a turntable assembly that would enable it to point in any direction 360x360x360. Which was odd, since there was no obvious aperture through which a missile could fly. There was also a complicated loading assembly on one side.
"Looks interesting," said Tell walking around it "bit more advanced than ours. Think we could take it with us?"
Jared frowned, "Why the rotational frame? Either it is in here for testing or where missing something."
In truth the actual launcher was pretty much equivalent to a Klingon launcher, if slightly smaller, ate around 2 meters tall is taken off its mount. The loader however was quite remarkable. It contained a link to the sensor grid and a complicated set of navigational calculators normally associated with stellar navigation. There was also a generator of a type Tell did not recognize attached to the launching chamber.
Removing the loader housing exposed the warheads, which appeared to be quite moderate yield antimatter torpedoes, practically identical to the ones on the FHew.
Whatever the difference was between this launcher and the one on the FHew lay in the attached generator and targeting computer.
HIchop looked at the device and the obvious flaw in having it in engineering. "I want to know how it gets out of here. Are they just working on it to make it more efficient or do they fire it from here and if so how. Do you think you can work this out, Jared and Tell?"
"I'm puzzled by that as well," Jared commented with a frown. "This thing can fire in any direction imaginable, but no matter where you aimed it, it would impact on the walls of this chamber and destroy the ship. It's a ridiculous design, and I'm not sure I even want to guess what that extra hardware does."
Tell looked at it with her usual scrutiny, her keen eyes missing nothing. "If you take a look at this piece of kit here you'll find it's a Phase Generator, very nice."
Jared frowned at Tell's assessment.
"That doesn't make a lot of sense. If you put a torpedo out of phase, it'd be harmless. The detonation would be out of phase and would do nothing more than saturate the area with exotic particles. Unless you were shooting at something that existed in the exact right temporal phase."
He gave the generator mechanism a brief, critical look-over, and shook his head.
"No... I don't even think it'd be good for that. This hardware it pretty basic as far as phase-gate technology goes. You couldn't even target a specific temporal phase. It could only cause an unstable inducted phase-shift. That'd last for five to ten seconds at best, then the inductive phase field would collapse and the torpedo would just drop back into normal sp..."
He suddenly fell silent, looking stunned for a long pause.
"Oh..." he managed.
He looked at the weapon assembly.
"Oh, that's... brilliant! That's plain old devious!"
He began inspecting the mechanism closely, climbing up on the housing to get a better look. His demeanor had changed from scorn to awe.
"Of course. Use the navigational gear to give you precise geospacial triangulation, set the direction, adjust the phase-bridge intensity to determine the range at which the phase-state would collapse, and... boom."
He glanced over at HIchop.
"I think we've found our ship-killer weapon. Unless I very much miss my guess, this thing is designed to momentarily phase an antimatter Torpedo so it can be fired from the middle of the ship, pass through an enemy's shields, and re-enter normal space INSIDE an enemy vessel."
"I mean... you'd need horrendously complex mathematics to aim the thing, but if you could pull it off, you could detonate a warhead in the middle of an enemy's ship no matter what their external shields and armour are like. And the weapon would be undetectable to most sensors until it detonated, so it'd be almost impossible to even figure out what happened."
There was a sudden resonant "Thwummm" from the device, which began to light up. The weapon assembly began to shift on it's mountings, rotating to a new heading.
Jared blinked in alarm.
"Which... it seems we're going to see in action rather shortly."
Moving to the Navigational controls Tell and Jared were able to see a cloaked Romulan Warbird. It was obvious that the Warbird was cloaked, because bits of it were still invisible, but part of it was batched in a dull red glow that the Navigational computer was now tracking madly, and the launcher was adjusting to face. There was a sudden beep as the lock was made just when the warbird slowed and turned to an attack approach. The launcher fired, but there was no sudden hole ripped in the wall of engineering. Instead there was nothing for a few seconds.
Then the Romulan D'deridex Warbird disintegrated in a fireball.
"Direct hit to Engineering," Jared breathed, in awe despite himself.
But the launcher was tracking again and a glance at the monitor told him why. There, bathed in the crimson glow was the FHew!
While the FHew was diving erratically about the navigation computer was unable to predict their path or calculate a formula for the warhead. However, the FHew suddenly turned and flew straight at the ship on an attack run.
"Allow me", Hichop said as he used his suit to rip into the equipment to remove the phase generator.
He then turned to everyone who looked a little phased themselves "I suggest we all start running now."
The firing mechanism on the device had not been affected by Hichop's removal of the Phase generator. It signaled it had achieved a lock and was prepared to launch.
Breaking radio silence he called "jaqwI' 6 to beam up."
The red glow washed over the group leaving the small engineer to look back at the weapon no aiming directly at the warp core.
"Oh, meow..."