Hair Brained Schemes - Part 3

Posted on Tue Nov 15, 2022 @ 10:01pm by Civilian Hydel Turvan & Captain Maritza Soran & Lieutenant Jason Haines

2,280 words; about a 11 minute read

Mission: Si vis pacem, para bellum
Location: Pangeae - Northern Continent
Timeline: After Hair Brained Schemes - Part 2

[ON]

It had taken a bit for Vakor to organize a team to go down to Pangeae. Jason was in pain strapped into his seat. He sat quietly until Vakor walked by.

"I can help your pilot get to the place where what Legat Turvan is looking for", Jason said, his head down respectfully. "Please, let me take the navigator seat in the cockpit and like I have done so far, I will faithfully bring you to the site. It will save you time and get you back on the station sooner."

"Of course, I'll give you control of the shuttle and I'm certain you won't attempt to escape or even sacrifice your own life by slamming us into the nearest cliff." Glinn Vakor said with obvious derision. "You're here only because Administrator Turvan believes you know the location of the portal beings. Don't make the mistake of over-estimating your importance." He warned.

"I don't need to fly this shuttle to show your pilot where we need to go", Jason replies. "but, you are in charge so if you want to spend hours upon hours looking when I can cut some of the time off the clock, I'll just shut up and enjoy the ride."

Glinn Vakor sat silently for several minutes as he thought about his choice of options. He figured if Jason did try something, then he'd be completely justified in shooting the Human in the back of the skull. It wouldn't be the worst way to spend an afternoon.

He decided to allow the Human the opportunity to prove his usefulness. "Fine." He said gruffly as he unlocked the Human's chair confinements and grabbed him by the arm, directing him to the vacant co-pilot seat next to the Cardassian pilot.

"Give him secondary access to controls. He is going to help guide us to the location of the site." Glinn Vakor said. "But maintain primary control over all over flight functions." He said in a warning tone moreso for the Human than the pilot.

"Aye, sir" The pilot responded, never taking his eyes away from the viewscreen before him.

Jason nodded to Vakor and then looked at the screen a moment or two.

"Ok, bring us 40 degrees to port", Jason said. "Roughly thirty-five kilometers ahead on that course we are going to come to a range of rather large hills. There should be a series of three large holes in the ground, staggered about five-hundred meters apart. We want the one with the largest diameter, but according to files, it gets rather narrow about fifty meters down, just large enough for a vessel of our size. Once things narrow, we have another three hundred meters to the floor of the cave that is supposed to lead to a temple of sorts."

The pilot, Glinn Dahovk, gave a look towards Jason that was a mix between aggravation and incredullity. He then turned his neck towards Glinn Vakor who gave him a brief, but definitive nod for him to carry out the directions.

"HQ, Victory Baron Five Six Three Hotel, request permission to adjust heading to 255 mark 120, Over" The pilot radioed to the OPS Controller monitoring their flight. It took several moments for the Controller to reply with an acknowledgement to the change in course.

"Well, at least if we're ambushed, they'll know where to find out bodies." Glinn Dahovk stated grimly.

"Don't worry, I'll be sure to put a dagger into this one's skull just before we meet a fiery crash." Glinn Vakor said mirthlessly.

Jason's mind drifted back a year. He had put a knife in a man's skull before. He remembered seeing the Vulcan's shock right before the knife plunged in. The moment brought Jason an intense satisfaction. After a moment he snapped back to the moment.

"I don't want to die in a fiery crash or with a knife in the skull. I hear both hurt a lot", Jason replied deadpan as he watched the navigation panel. "So, I am not going to lead you astray. It would not be prudent."

Jason's instructions were true. The descent of the shuttle seemed somewhat ominous. Jason had never been in a shuttlecraft that was descending into darkness straight down. Despite space being dark by nature the dark in the shaft seemed almost supernatural. A proximity alarm went off as the shaft narrowed. Jason shrugged as he could feel Vakor's scowl upon him.

Despite the continuing descent, time almost seemed to come to a stop. All in the shuttle, including Jason wondered just how deep the shaft went. After five minutes, the narrow tunnel opened into a moderate size cavern. A few moments after that, there was a slight jolt as the pilot skillfully set the shuttle down.

"HQ, Victory Baron Five Six Three Hotel, we have sat down within the cavern. I am activating a location bouy for emergency EVAC if necessary." Glinn Dahovk said into his console as he went through the shutdown sequence within the shuttle. After a few moments, the shuttle received a garbled and distorted response.

"Looks like the signal is pretty weak down here. . .wherever we are." The pilot replied as he tried to re-send the message.

"Fine, stay here and keep the shuttle prepped in case we need an immediate evac. Also, keep trying to establish contact with Battalion HQ." Glinn Vakor said as he grabbed his equipment and checked his weapon. "We'll maintain contact every 15 minutes. On the 20th minute, you are to depart immediately and detonate three quantum torpedoes within this cavern." The Security Chief ordered. He wasn't going to allow this area to stay and claim the lives of any other Troopers if this turned out to be a trap set by the Human.

'If you only knew', Jason thought, briefly breaking his mental 'bad-boy' state.

"Alright, so I take it you want me to go first?", Jason asked going to the shuttle's exit. "You know that way you can shoot me in the back if something in the dark scares one of your finely trained troops."

"Rest assured, I will give you the honor of staring down the barrel of my disruptor juuuuuust before I end your miserable existance." He said as he shoved him forward out of the back hatch. Glinn Vakor was followed by three more Cardassian Troopers as they activated their equipment and began to scan the area and flood it with light from their gear.

"Now what?" He asked the Human.

"Now, it gets a little iffy as Soran's notes started to get a bit lacking in detail", Jason said as he looked about.

There were three tunnels out of the cavern. Two were directly ahead of them and one was off to the portside of the shuttle about 30 degrees. Jason started walking towards the tunnels directly ahead of them, moving towards the left-hand opening.

Jason glanced about. Even in the lighted area it felt like something was watching them. The hairs on the back of his neck and his arms stood up. This feeling was almost exactly like the one he had on the station when he first entered the room with Turvan.

A rush of wind blew hard, and sent dead and dieing leaves rustling to the ground, blowing towards the cavern Jason was heading for. Frost formed on the vegetation in front of them, highlighting the path to the central tunnel.

"Gee", he muttered. "Which way to go?"

He looked back at Vakor, "This way. Watch your step, it could get slippery."

As he stepped forward, the leaves crunched under his feet. He paused and then swore he could hear whispering. Part of him forgot about the little plan to lure the Cardassians into a trap as he looked down the tunnel. The trap really wasn't much without Turvan here to 'enjoy' it.

Jason moved into the tunnel more with one hand on the edge of the tunnel. He shivered a little bit. The clothing that Vakor had provided him was very basic and just a few feet into the tunnel, the temperature dropped a decent amount.

"Just how much time have you spent down here to even know where to go?" Glinn Vakor said suspiciously. He didn't like the idea of following the Human so blindly; however, it appeared that the Cardassian sensor equipment was unable to connect to the satellites in orbit and thus could not properly provide any information about their current location.

"I haven't spent anytime down here", Jason replied. "As I told your boss, I gained access to Soran's files. It is how I knew this cave was here. As to which tunnel to take, it is a gut feeling combined with what we humans call eenie, meenie, miney, mo."

He nodded to Vakor then stopped and picked up a small rock and made a mark on the wall and then continued forward. He walked carefully in case the floor grew any icier. He wondered if he had gotten the right cave complex. Soran's logs hadn't mentioned any frost or major temperature change. Deep caves were chilly in general, but not enough to frost over usually.

He moved into the tunnel deeper and after about twenty feet or so, he paused. He could hear a chittering or perhaps something tapping on the rocks. All of a sudden it got really cold. Jason nearly jumped out of his skin as a pony sized creature, that could best be described as a spider appeared out of thin air before him. It was a mottled white, grey, and black color and had eight nasty looking legs and its mandibles looked sharp as daggers.

The creature lunged at Jason and he stumbled back, tripping over Vakor's feet. Rolling backwards, he came up to his feet as the Cardassian soldier who had accompanied Vakor stepped forward like a good soldier. He aimed his disruptor at it, but the 'spider' was quick and was on him before he could fire. The soldier cried out as the spider bit him in the shoulder and then he went silent as he turned into an icy statue.

"What is that!?" Glinn Vakor shouted as he raised his weapon and tried to target the creature that had spawned out of nowhere. He briefly glanced at the fallen Trooper, seeing that his entire body had turned into an unmoving statute of ice. Glinn Vakor grit his teeth and opened fired as he yelled commands to the other 2 Cardassians to do so as well.

"That is what we humans call a hostile target", Jason said, moving so he didn't get in the arc of fire or in range of the creature. "Not sure what the Cardassians call it."

Jason's attention was drawn back towards the main cavern as he heard more phaser fire and some yelling.

"Sounds like more company behind us", Jason called out after Vakor and his men killed the 'spider'. he started laughing a little. It wouldn't be long he figured before they would be over-run. His plan had worked, just not quite how he wanted. At least one senior leader of the Cardassians would be down and out.

Little ones came next. A dark scuttling shadow poured along the floor from beyond the reach of their lights, a thick curtain of many-legged sectioned bodies. They swarmed around the spider creature that was pulling back and swept towards Jason and the Cardassians, bodies rustling together into an ominous hiss.

"Guess this is what happens when you squish the wrong spider", Jason remarked as he cast a glance towards Vakor and then back to the spiders. "You know, given that I am going to die here one way or the other, not having a weapon and all, I have a confession to make. I told Turvan that there was a temple down here, which is true. I also told him that he had to make a number of blood sacrifices to get its power. That may or may not be true, I have no idea. Even if it isn't though, you, me, and your men are the first people he chose to be sacrificed. Something to think about if you get back to the station."

Vakor had the wherewithal to raise his disruptor to aim at Jason, but he was knocked off his feet by a small stampede of the smaller spiders. It appeared that his desire for revenge would be interupted by the crisis at hand.

Jason was then knocked to the ground as one of the larger spiders had managed to get the literal drop on him. Jason hadn't seen it coming from above. Jason tried to keep its fangs pushed away. He felt the smaller ones start to swarm over his legs as he fought. Then he felt a bit of pain in his shoulder as one of the spider's fangs managed to slide across and rip through his shirt and just a touch of his shoulder. Even though it was just a scratch, he started to feel immensely cold as even a bit of the creatures could cause pain and hypothermia.

As he continued to try to fight the spider off, he all of a sudden felt a somewhat familiar sensation. He had experienced it twice before. Once when he had been killed in the alternate dimension and the other time when his shuttle collided with the station.

'George', Jason thought.

There was a brief flash and then Jason was gone, leaving the spiders behind for Vakor and his remaining soldiers to contend with.


[OFF]


A Joint Post By
---
Jason Haines
DS5 Resident Beach Bum

&

Glinn Vakor
Chief of Security for Deep Space 5
Cardassian Empire

 

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