Unsung Heros (Part II of II)
Posted on Tue Apr 27, 2021 @ 10:02am by Civilian 'Key Holder' Yolanthe Ibalin & Lieutenant Annora Tessaro & Lieutenant Alanna Wells & Crewman Steven Phillips
2,479 words; about a 12 minute read
Mission:
Si vis pacem, para bellum
Location: Bowels of Deep Space Five
Timeline: MD 04 0500
Previously in
Once the hatch was sealed. Steven put his tools away and tried to think. What could they do? They were just low ranking enlisted! But, his fathers words echoed in his head, Don't ever start a fight, but, if a fight comes to your doorstep, you make damn sure the other guy goes away with more than a bloody nose.
William thought back to the security team he passed several minutes earlier. He didn't know them personally, but still hoped they were safe with whatever crisis had suddenly gripped the station. "I agree we should try and do something to help, but at the same time I'd hate to trap the good guys along with the enemy. Whoever they are."
"I agree," Piper said. "We're supposed to be the god buys. We can't cause trouble for our own people. Or, we can, but we shouldn't."
Steven nodded silently, feeling crestfallen. "But, this..this is our home," he said quietly. "I know we don't have a phaser between us, nor do we have the auth codes to get any from the armories." He shook his head. "What can we do?"
And now the conclusion
"It's okay," Piper said. "We do need to do what we can. But we need to make sure we aren't making it more difficult for the guys who are repelling the attacks. So, what are our options?"
Steven continued to think, then a revelation presented itself to him. "We should disable internal sensors. Or at least, disable them where there are few, if any, Cardassians! That way, we could at least have a place to figure out how we are going to fight back!"
Lash pursed his lips. "what about the opposite?" He asked. "Why don't we get the sensors to find Cardassians and lock those areas? and turn the temperatures down. Cardassians run cold, so they'd feel pretty miserable pretty quick?"
Steven brightened up at that suggestion. "Lash, that's great! Uhhhh..." he started thinking quickly. Then, "This way! The closest internal sensors trunk is five decks up and ten sections over!" The young human began to climb excitedly, his tool kit bouncing against the back of his right hip.
About ten long minutes later, the group made it to the area in question. Against one bulkhead, a single terminal was mounted, with dozens of thick cables running into the back of it. Steven quickly tried to gain access to the system, but was locked out. "Someone has locked out the system," he said, confused. "Lash, go back over to the section we just came through, open up the auxiliary terminal. Maybe we can try to circumvent the lockout."
"Check." Lash trotted back to the junction box and cracked the terminal. "Ready for the bypass." He called back. "Just shout!"
William followed the others through the jefferies tubes to the sensor trunk. While they weren't security or marines, hopefully they could use their engineering expertise to slow down the Cardassians and buy time for those with the weapons to regain control.
"If the bypass doesn't work, could we cut through the housing to reach the cables? Would take longer, but should still accomplish the same thing."
Steven was about to reply, when suddenly, the voice of the station's X-O, Commander Ryan, came through every speaker that was working.
“Attention all Starfleet personnel and residents of Deep Space Five. This is Commander Caleb Ryan. As of this moment, the station is being turned over to Cardassian forces. All members of Starfleet should lay down their weapons and report to their quarters. Residents should also report to quarters and remain there until given further instructions. To the colony and Marines, lay down arms and report to barracks for withdrawal and evacuation.”
When the message ended, the small group was silent for a few beats. Steven finally broke the silence. "What the hell?!"
"What do we do?" Piper looked at the others. "We could go to our barracks, or blend in with the civilians. I'm sure some of them will stay behind."
"We should go back to quarters." Lash said. "The long way, locking down as much as we can. Whatever we can do to make the Cardassian's lives difficult."
"I'm all for causing trouble," Piper said.
"Agreed. Take the long way to crew quarters, causing as much disruption as possible. We're engineers, we know how to break things just as easily as how to fix systems. The more chaos that ensues, the greater chance Starfleet has at regaining control."
Nothing in the Commander's orders said anything about not disrupting systems, only laying down weapons. Considering the circumstances, it would be easy to disrupt things and worry about repairs at a later date.
"Great," Piper said, happy to have some way of working off her growing anxiety. "Let's go."
"We should scrag as much of the public comms and sensor systems as we can. Make it harder for them to order people about," Lash suggested.
Steven nodded with his friends. "Agreed. Though, you should know, I'm not leaving when we are done. You giys can do whatever you want, but I'm staying until I'm dead, or Starfleet gets here and retakes the station and planet."
Piper grew serious. "That's definitely an option..." Her eyes grew wide. "Guys, remember that sentient crystal? I know where's there's some on the station. It's behind a force field for study, but it's still here. Do you think we could use it against the Cardassians?"
Steve replied first. "Even if we can't use them, we can keep them away from the enemy." He quickly tried to remember the location of the crystal. "Okay, if I remember correctly, we need to go up twelve levels and over to the other side of the station." He quickly started to climb the nearest ladder.
"Twelve levels. That's what, 700 meters down here?" Lash sighed and started up after Steven. "I hate cardio."
Engineering Suport Lab, Deck 1126
The Crystal Entity sat in a a suspended field, its yellow brown colouring washed out by the green of the field. The generator unit had what looked like three back up generators stacked next to the casing. Large warnings announced that under no circumstances were the field to be dismantled, or the internal temperature rise above minus forty degrees celsius.
After entering the compartment, Steve quickly moved to the door that led out into the rest of the station and not only locked it, but disabled the locking mechanism and then began welding the doors shut.
"I say we shut down the containment and let it grow," Piper said. "This is war, and if that thing has a few hours to grow, the Cardassians won't know how to get rid of it." At least she hoped so. Turvan was on the station when it was discovered, but she doubted he knew how to get rid of it. "I can remove the information from the main computer."
"Are you nuts!?" Lash's voice went up an octave. "That stuff shut down the entire station after three days. Three hundred people died in the shut down, and it infected at least a dozen more. Including my boss. No. If we're going to play with that shit, we beam it out to the Cardassians ships."
William stared at the various warning signs stating in no uncertain terms that the contents of the lab should remain where they were.
"I have to agree. If there were only Cardassians left, I might be willing to turn off the force-field. However, there's too many civilians left on the station. Unleashing the crystals would doom everyone on the station. Knowing the Cardassians, they'd probably just evacuate to the planet and blow this place up."
Piper groaned. "I hadn't thought about civilians staying here. But we can't leave it, and I don't think we can transport it to a Cardassian ship without someone noticing." She paused. "Could we?"
After he finished sealing the door, Steve turned and looked over the situation they were in. After a few beats, he shook his head and spoke aloud. "No." He moved around the containment unit, taking in all the warnings, readouts and equipment. "We can't move it and we can't drop the containment. I read about this thing when I first came aboard, or at least what wasn't classified. What I do know is, the instant we drop the containment, we die. Then, everyone else dies." He thought for a few more beats, then sighed, as if the only course available to them had just occurred to him.
"We have to ensure the enemy doesn't get in this room." He said the words as if they weighed a ton. "That's the only thing we can do." He looked to his friends. "We seal and fortify both the door and the jeffries tube access hatch, then use what we can in here to set up both transport inhibitors and a sensor mirage. If the Cardassians get in this room, it's all over." He wished it wasn't true, but, it was.
"Alright. Or maybe we just cook the stuff, kill it for good." Lash looked at it longingly. "But its seems too useful for that."
Despite not being the kind of work William had signed up for when joining Starfleet, he understood what was at stake.
"Fortifying the doors and access hatch shouldn't be too hard. The others aren't as cut and dry. There's enough ways to block transporters, we just have to come up with a way that's not too obvious, and doable."
Steve was about to say something to his roommate, for saying something so wrong out-loud, when William spoke first. Hearing the input, Steve started nodding. "Yes! Okay, William, seal that hatch strong enough to keep a Horta out. Piper," he said in a rush, looking over to his friend. "You are better at rewiring the sensors than any of us, that'll be your job. And Lash," looking back to his eager roommate. "You and I need to add more bulk to this door."
"Okay, sealing the doors is all well and good, but do you honestly think we can keep them out for weeks? They're gonna wonder why this room is sealed and break in," Piper chimed in. "Can we hide the thing behind a bulkhead? Make it look like the room is empty?" She went over to the bulkhead behind the thing. "It's not that big a move...I think."
Steve looked over the stasis equipment more closely. A grim expression on his face. "Look," he indicated a power coupling built into the underside of the unit. "This is hardwired into the station's power supply. If we had weeks to redesign the whole room, we could safely move it." He started to pace, thinking furiously. Finally, he came to a realization.
"Only one of us needs to stay here to keep the ruse up, once the internal sensors have been reworked." He paused before standing straighter. "I'll stay. You guys should go, get word out about the situation." He shrugged and chuckled. "Hey, I joined Starfleet for an adventure. This will certainly apply."
Pulling out his tricorder, William began to study the hatch and surrounding material to see how best to seal things off. Steve's comment came at a surprise. "I'm all for 'service before self' but I don't see how it's practical for anyone to safely stay behind for more than a day or two."
Steve grinned. "Don't worry about me, I grew up on stations like this. If need be, I can ferret myself away so good, I dont think even the Borg could find me."
"I think we're better off making this place look unused from the outside," Piper suggested. She didn't like the idea of anyone staying inside the room, even for a good reason.
"Good plan." Lash said. "Seal it up, then just to be sure, we can try and find someone with the right access, we can also adjust the blue prints on the system."
Steve realized that his friends were right. "Okay, Piper. Your idea, what do you want us to do?"
"Make it look unused, seal it up, and do as Lash suggested, alter the blueprints to show that it's unusable," she said.
Steve started to rumage through his toolbag. "Got ut!" He exclaimed as he pulled out an isolinear rod. "Ill take care of the blueprint." He moved over to a nondescript wall panel and, after running a tool over the surface, several soft clicks could be heard. Steve put the tool away and then carefully lifted the small panel off of the bulkhead and placed it on the deck.
Behind the panel was a terminal screen and a few dock ports. One, spicifically, looked like it would accomidate the rod that Steve was holding. "I meant to returnthis rod last week, after the work was done changing those unused offices, down on deck 476, into a gymnasium. As you know, every compartment on a space station has this terminal. Its used to instanlt modify the station's blueprint whenever a new section is built or redesigned.
He turned and slid the rod into the open cavity. Immediately, the computer terminal came to life. He began to type in several commands and then looked over at Piper. "I need another technician's auth code to finalize the change and your the nest highest in seniority here."
"Well, in for a penny, in for a pound," she said, entering her authorization. A second later, the system beeped to show the adjustment had been accepted and the sytem updated sucessfully.
"Well, lets hope thats enough," Lash said. "lets go report in before we're really missed."
After Piper logged off, Steve shut down all non-essential power to the compartment. Next, he entered a few algorithms that would make the rest of the power usage look like simple EPS storage. Once he was happy with the the work, he logged out of the system and then shut the terminal down. He then replaced the panel and secured it back into place.
"Alright, guys. I agree with Lash, mostly. I'm staying. This is my home, and I am going to do everything I can to make life miserable for those damn spoonheads! Any of you want to stay with me, I'll gladly take your help. Any who want to leave, I will never think anything less of you. The choice is yours."
Piper considered her options for only a moment. "I'll stay, too. Someone has to keep an eye on you guys," she teased.
[OFF]
Crewman Lash
Holographics Technician
DS5
[NPC by Soran]
Crewman Piper Grange
Ops/Air Filtration
Deep Space 5
[NPC by Wells]
Crewman Steve Phillips
Ops/Structural Engineering
Deep Space 5
[NPC by Tam]
Crewman William Huxley
Engineering
DS5
(NPC by Bryan)
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