Closing Doors (Part II of IV)
Posted on Sat Nov 9, 2019 @ 10:26pm by Lieutenant Alanna Wells & Captain Maritza Soran & Commander Caleb Ryan & Lieutenant Annora Tessaro & Lieutenant JG Erich Hartmann & Lieutenant JG Scaliontis Lovok & Civilian Jason Haines & Lieutenant Kivan Ta'Gas & Ensign Calaban Bel-Asher & Gunnery Sergeant Terry Henderson
Edited on on Sat Dec 14, 2019 @ 11:11pm
1,883 words; about a 9 minute read
Mission:
Doors of Perception
Location: Risa But Not as We Know it/Portal Caves
Timeline: MD11 2130
Previously, in Closing Doors
he back rank of Vulcans fell suddenly, felled where they stood by phaser rifles. Tarik and the survivors spun around, suddenly finding themselves attacked from behind. They scrambled for cover, but they were caught out in the open, and the Starfleet members had the cover of the jungle. They dropped prone to minimize exposure.
“Fish in a barrel,” Caleb said with a grim smile. “Cover me,” he told Annora. Then he yanked one of the grenades off his vest and stood, throwing it into the center of the group of prone Vulcans.
And now the Continuation…
Alanna grabbed Jason and ran back over the short wall to avoid the blast. Once she'd caught her breath, she handed Jason the disruptor, pulling out the phaser for herself. If Tarik was still standing after the grenade, she'd shoot him.
It took all of Jason's will not to yell in pain, as Alanna had grabbed him by his injured arm and essentially pushed him over the short wall. It wasn't a glamorous landing. He felt something move in his chest area. In his fight with Sovok, he must have gotten a cracked rib that didn't like the sudden stop at the end of the fall.
Taking the disruptor, he grinned a painful grin. He had known that Ryan and the others would make it. Even if it was just so that they could kick his ass after the doctors healed him. Having no adrenaline left to speak of to spur his actions, it took weary determination and grit to pull himself up to a firing position.
Making sure the disruptor was set to its max level, whether that was disintegrate or extra-crispy, Jason started shooting the prone men, starting with Tarik first. Even if the grenade had been a stun grenade, he wasn't going to take the chance of one or more of them recovering and shooting them in the back. Not after all this.
"Get ready to move," he said to Alanna with a cough. "I'll be right behind you."
"You'd better be. I'm not going anywhere without you."
"I knew you were going to say something like that," Jason replied painfully, his words very slurred. He took another shot. "Next time Ryan and company open up, you go and I'll cover. And when I start dragging my ass out, you cover me."
She looked at him for a moment and nodded. She turned back and continued stunning Vulcans.
What remained of the conscious Vulcans got up and made a sprint for the trees and cover, trying to get away. They weren’t even bothering firing anymore, dropping their disruptors. Caleb calmly stood up, sighting along his scope. Slowly and methodically he began to pick them off, one phaser pulse after another taking a Vulcan in the back until there were no more conscious Vulcans.
“Get those explosives clear,” Caleb told Annora. Then he looked across the field to the low wall he had seen Jason and Alanna scramble behind. “Ya’ll okay?”
Seeing the way was clear, Jason staggered slowly along with Alanna until they got to the rest of his team. Covered in green and red blood, breathing heavy, and in a hell of a lot of pain, Jason raised an eyebrow at Caleb's question. He smirked, and not being able to do much besides grunt, he simply gave a thumbs up.
Alanna didn't have the energy to get her boots. "We're alive," she said, her voice barely a whisper. "But it was close. Thanks."
Thinking a moment, Jason then pointed up to the sky to remind Caleb of the ship in orbit.
"Aye, sir! Martin, Vandenberg, see to the injured. Akioka, help me with the explosives. Kawalsky, keep an eye out for any further opposition."
The Bajoran ensign moved forward with Annora to clear the portal of the explosives. Annora pulled out her tricoder, while Akioka visually examined the booby trap.
"What do you see, Jallold?"
Crouched down near the portal entrance, she gave her report. "It appears to be a chain of plasma charges enhanced by thalmerite. Nothing too fancy, but more than enough to blow us to kingdom come. The wildcard is the portal itself. There's a chance it will blow through and affect the other side."
Time was of the essence, and they both knew it, but so was safety.
"Then simply detonating the charges is out of the question. We'll have to find a way to disrupt them. See if there's a primary detonator. "
Many agonizing minutes later, they declared the explosives inert.
"We're clear to go, Commander."
Caleb nodded. “Sovok and his lackey?” he asked. “If there’s anything left of ‘em alive, Ah’d like ta bring ‘em back for prosecution,” he said.
Jason wiped some of the green blood off his face and extended it towards Ryan and shook his head in a negative motion. And, of course, he had fried Tarik when he was down.
“Well, that’s too bad,” Caleb grumbled darkly. “I promised Ch’Zath I’d make the bastard suffer.”
"His death...wasn't pleasant," Alanna said, holding tight to Jason's hand with her left one. Now that the fighting was over, she was feeling light-headed from pain and shock.
Jason shrugged his shoulders slightly and then painfully said, "Home."
“Okay. Let’s get home,” Caleb said. He stepped up to Alanna. “Are you okay?” he asked her, noting her paleness. They didn’t have a medic with them, and Jason looked just as bad. Maybe that would teach him to run off and abandon his team. He motioned to one of the others to help Jason, and they headed toward the portal where Annora waited.
Alanna shook her head. No, she was definitely not okay, but she didn't want to talk about it. No one seemed to notice that she was wearing nothing but a jacket, which helped. Now that he was closer, she could feel Commander Ryan's antipathy toward Jason and it made her defiant. Whatever Jason did, he did it to save her. She held tighter to Jason's hand, not sure who was supporting whom.
Her feet were bleeding by the time they got to the portal, but she wasn't going to say anything to the others. She was afraid if she stopped, she'd fall apart and she couldn't do that just yet. Not until she got home where she was safe and could be alone with Jason.
She stopped when she felt the energy from the portal. There would be guards waiting for them on the other side. Would they even be allowed through? She wasn't sure. She looked at Commander Ryan. "Do you want us to go first or follow you?"
Jason had waved off help. He wasn't going to give the team more to grumble about. He stubbornly made his way to the portal staying as close to Alanna as possible. He quietly stood there waiting for the Commander's answer.
With the team preparing to return to Pangea, Annora tapped her comm badge. “This is Lieutenant Tessaro. We are returning through the portal. Everyone is alive, but we require medical support.”
"Lieutenant Tessaro, communications don't work through the portal. You have to walk through first." Alanna had done enough testing to know that the lieutenant would get no response.
The Portal Caves
"Frǽcednys! Frǽcednys! Frǽcednys!" the Sentinel kept intoning in its gravelly baritone. "Danger! Danger!"
The blue light bleeding from the pylons was getting brighter, and the hum that emanated from them was making the whole cave section vibrate.
"Chroniton radiation is ninety times standard background," Calaban announced, eyes on the ever-moving count on his tricorder. "If nothing happens in the next five minutes, we have to pull the plug, or we're all going to fry."
"Hold your water, Dr. Bel-Asher," Soran murmured. "We're getting a reaction. Whatever you did, gentlemen, do it again, only more." She glanced at Bel-Asher's tricorder over her shoulder. "Only quicker."
"Maybe switch to pulses, that way you can put more into each pulse, and faster. This will allow for better modulation within seconds. Maybe different frequencies of the same particles?" Scaliontis asked Kivan as he came to stand by the hybrid's side, but still watching the portal.
Kivan shook his head in frustration. "We can't. Even if we did pulses, we'd still have the same problem of exceeding the safety levels of chroniton radiation," he responded, while trying to shift to a different frequency. He studied the read-out again as he tried to think of another solution. Unfortunately, time was continuing to run out. He knew that if they did not make a decision soon, then the portal would undergo a cascading effect, terminating the connection.
"Wait! If we…” Kivan began to say as he tried to think aloud. "If we increase the pulse rate, then we can only do it a certain number of times. Hopefully that will be enough to establish a thirty, maybe forty-five second window to allow someone or a communication to come through," he shouted.
Terry came into the cave ready for anything. He looked around at what was going on, and then saw his priorities, two marines on the ground. Pulling out his medical tricorder, he went to them and started scanning. He scanned the first marine, nothing too series, a cracked rib. It was relatively easy to fix, more time consuming than difficult. Normally he would have been talking to his patient, but the room had too much noise in it. After a moment, he gave his fellow marine a thumbs up and slap on the shoulder.
Moving to the other marine, his scan revealed a concussion. Giving him a hypo to stop the swelling and a light pain reliever, Terry then ran the marine through an eye test with his finger, watching the soldier track his movement. When the marine extended his middle finger, he knew they were not in serious danger. He did make a note on the soldier's record that they would need to be followed up on in a day.
With that, he put his medkit away, got out of the way of the eggheads, and kept his rifle ready. He knew the portal was important, but sometimes he wondered if they were messing with too much power.
"Anything down here that can emit a forcefield?" Scaliontis asked. "We could make a forcefield dome around the portal that could protect us for a while longer," he offered.
One of the marines pulled a kit bag from one of the hover carts. "Portable field generators, sir, should be able to cover the core and the pylons. But it would also cut communications to the device. We wouldn't be able to control it remotely."
To Be Continued…
Commander Maritza Soran
Commanding Officer
Deep Space Five
Lieutenant JG Jason Haines
Chief Intelligence Officer
Deep Space Five
Gunnery Sergeant Terry Henderson
Combat Medic
Deep Space Five
Lieutenant JG Alanna Wells
Chief Science Officer
Deep Space Five
Lieutenant JG Scaliontis Lovok
Chief Engineer
Deep Space Five
Lieutenant Annora Tessaro
Chief Security Officer
Deep Space Five
Lieutenant (jg) Erich Hartmann
Chief Operations Officer
Deep Space Five
Commander Caleb Ryan
Executive Officer
Deep Space Five
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