Escort Mission, (Part 2)

Posted on Sat Sep 21, 2019 @ 12:43pm by Civilian 'Key Holder' Yolanthe Ibalin & Commander Caleb Ryan & Lieutenant Annora Tessaro & Civilian Jason Haines

1,934 words; about a 10 minute read

Mission: Doors of Perception
Location: Risa, but not as we know it.
Timeline: MD11 1900

The pressure wave slammed into the away team, heat and noise as solid and speedy as a meteorite, picking them up and slapping them down again onto the tangled ground.

Tom was quite close to the blast, and he may have had a split second to think as his body caught numerous pieces of the shuttle as it was destroyed. The blast scorched his body as it threw him through the air. The only thing he had time to think of was his wife and daughter, and he knew he would be with them soon. He smashed into a tree and his world went dark.

Jason hurt. What happened? He knew something bad. His mouth hurt, a number of teeth had been knocked out, blood was oozing out his mouth. His shoulder hurt. A stick had jabbed into his arm where the body armor didn't cover. His lower leg hurt, it had been burned a little from the blast. His ears were ringing bad. He could barely hear the screaming of pain coming from a few of the marines who had been closer to the shuttle. His mind was a bit clouded with what to do next. He needed to think, he needed to focus. He tried to count in his head, he couldn't do it well. He got to three. He tried to think of the lyrics of a song, a simple song, a song wouldn't come. Then his focal point came to him, almost as if someone whispered the answer to him, Alanna. His mind slowly started to clear, but not as fast as he would like.

Caleb groaned, his vision unstable, his ears shrieking at his brain in protest from the overloaded aural nerves. He clawed at the ground as he fought for air, the breath knocked out of him. He smelled burned hair and flesh, and his mind flashed back to the shuttle crash that killed Mika. He whispered her name.

The blast threw Annora and her security team off their feet and onto the ground with substantial force. The armor was designed to protect against bladed weapons and dampen the energy of phasers and disrupters, and only slightly lessened the impact the fall.

Then the air around them began to shimmer with the familiar sparkles of a transporter beam materializing. Figures appeared around them, in body armour painted in dark greens and browns and grays.

"Drop your weapons, and put your hands on your head!" shouted a voice. "You're under arrest!"

Jason could barely hear the voice. It seemed like the Vulcans wanted to confirm the job was finished with eyes on the ground versus another explosive. Come on, Jason, think! he thought to himself, trying to come up with a plan. Casting a glance left and right, he could see quite a few blurry figures.

Under arrest,, Jason thought. What crap.

If they weren't killed right here, they would be used as hostages. He didn't want that to happen. Regardless, one way or the other, they would be dead sooner or later if they stayed. Slowly an idea started to form. It was very vague right now, but it was forming. He needed to die before they could kill him. If he didn't, he knew that not only were the others in trouble, but something told him Alanna would be as well.

Slowly, he started to rise a little, keeping his hands to his side. When he got about half-way up, he fell forward to the ground face down, letting his phaser fall to the ground.

Caleb tried to align his thoughts. He reached for the strap of his rifle to remove it as instructed, and his hand brushed the grenades on his combat harness. Using the effort of removing the rifle as distraction, Caleb grabbed one of the flash-bangs and depressed the timer. He then dropped it and kicked it toward the Vulcans. His team was already nearly incapacitated by the shuttle explosion. The flash-bang couldn’t really do them much more harm. But Vulcans had more sensitive senses, and they were perfectly capable of hearing and seeing right now as the grenade exploded in bright, searing light and ear-shattering sound.

When his vision cleared from the searing white, the Vulcans were in disarray. Those closest had ended up on their knees or their backs, blinded, deafened, and their balance shot to pieces. Others were staggered, hands clutching at ears or pressed over eyes, stumbling about.

Caleb rushed the Vulcan that seemed to have been in charge, tackling him to the ground. He knew he had to be quick. Vulcans were stronger than Humans, so he took advantage of the confusion to aim a blow at the man’s throat, either to crush the windpipe, or at least prevent him from breathing. He was rewarded with the sensation of a wet crunching under his arm, and then the Vulcan started to gurgle desperately as he fought to get air into his lungs. jerking and spasming as he did so.

She wasn't too surprised the Vulcans booby-trapped the rebel's shuttle. While such tactics were generally frowned upon by Starfleet, it was still employed by those in the guerilla style warfare that seemed to dominate the present conflict. What was more surprising was the Vulcans turning the shuttle into a method to trap the rebels. When her vision and hearing started to return, Annora was reminded of a mantra drilled into her head almost since the time she entered the service. I will never surrender of my own free will. If in command, I will never surrender the members of my command while they still have the means to resist She wasn't in charge, but doubted Commander Ryan would surrender so easily. Her instinct was correct when the Security Chief turned XO lobbed a stun grenade at the Vulcans.

Jason started to get his hearing back when the flash bang went off. Given that the torpedo blast had thrown him back a decent distance, his ears now were only lightly ringing. He heard the screams, which he assumed were the Vulcans, as their hearing was so sensitive. Now he had a choice to make, given that he now had two missions. He had an opening right now to get out of the combat zone and get moving to his second mission. He also could stay and fight. The problem was, he didn't know how many Vulcans had come down, how many of them had been affected by the flash-bang, and how many of their team could fight.

Right now he had to decide between a small group of individuals or the greater chance of the anticipated event that Temporal was worried about. The many had to outweigh the few right now, given the stakes. He needed to get back to the portal.

The conflict of his choice briefly alleviated, Jason grabbed onto his rifle, staggered to his feet, and used the current confusion to move out back towards the portal.

Taking advantage of the confusion, Annora rose to a kneeling position, rifle in hand. Taking aim at the latest Vulcan, she fired several shots. She heard the whine of two other phasers from the security team join in. Wondering where the other two were, she glanced to her right. There she was Petty Officer Martin helping Crewman Vandenberg on her feet. The Tellarite had a bandage wrapped around her head, having hit it on a rock during the explosion.

With everyone accounted for and alive, Annora focused back on the task at hand. Securing the rifle, she grabbed the stun baton out of its holster. Letting out a roar, she charged the Vulcans.

Fool! Jason thought to himself and he took cover behind a tree. Even though he knew he needed to get back to the portal, the Haines in him wouldn't let him abandon them just yet.

Although his aim wasn't good because of the stick in his arm, Jason shot at the Vulcans. Worse come to worse, they would keep their heads down.

Leaving the choking Vulcan commander to gasp for breath on the ground, Caleb kicked out with one foot, sweeping the legs out from another Vulcan who was beginning to recover from the stun grenade. He felt a wrench in his bad leg and winced. He’d worry about that later. Now he yanked out his sidearm and put a stun into the Vulcan he’d just downed, then into the next one. He started to roll as a Vulcan turned her attention toward him, her ears bleeding, and the ground puffed as the disruptor blast hit where he had been.

Then the female Vulcan went down with a hole in her chest. Someone gave a roar. Shavias, the Andorian rebel leader, limped up the small embankment of dirt that had been thrown up by the shuttle explosion. The left side of his body was burned, that arm hanging limp, the recovering antennae shorn off once more. He struggled to keep his balance as he shuffled and fired, almost zombie-like, screaming in agony and rage the entire way as he mowed down Vulcans.

The strike force lay scattered around them, mixed with the dead from Ch'Zath's crew, and the twisted wreckage of their ship. The whole thing had taken maybe five minutes. Half hidden, like a soft whisper behind his ringing ears, Jason heard Alanna's voice. <<"Danger. Avoid portal. Vulcan trap.">>

Jason shook his head. He couldn't have mistook that. He flipped open his tricorder and saw what he was hoping he wouldn't. The tracer.

"Damn!" he cursed, as he got his own medkit out. He yanked on the stick and pulled it out of his arm and let out a relatively light stream of curses. He didn't have time to check the bleeding wound for splinters, and he just wrapped it. He sprayed a burn salve on his leg and wrapped it. The teeth would have to wait for later.

He looked at Commander Ryan and said, "We have to move."

He took a piece of wrap from his medkit and then tossed it to Ryan.

"The Vulcan's have set up another trap at the portal. I need to go retrieve Lieutenant Wells while you find a way to clear the trap. And before you ask, first, I got the information from a Betazoid blast from Lieutenant Wells. Second, getting the lieutenant is a mission for me, that I will tell you and Commander Soran about later, intel business."

He took his last rank pip off his collar and flipped it to Ryan. "So, I can find you."

With that, he took the wrap he had pulled out and shoved it in his mouth to stop the bleeding from where his teeth had been knocked out, and then started out to get to where Alanna's signal was.

Caleb scowled. “What Intel mission?” he shouted after Jason. “Damn it!” He needed to know about these things! He couldn’t have personnel wandering off on an away mission, especially when that went south so drastically. “And how do we find you?”

But Jason was already disappearing over the hill, and Caleb had wounded that needed attention. Shavias had collapsed once the last Vulcan was dead, so Caleb rushed over to triage him.

"Don't worry, if I don't find you", Jason called back. "I'm dead."


[OFF]

---

Lieutenant JG Jason Haines
Chief Intelligence Officer

Thomas
Human rebel fighter

Commander Caleb Ryan
Executive Officer

Shavias Ch’zath
Andorian rebel leader

Lt Annora Tessaro
Cheif Security Officer

 

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