Hunt Meet
Posted on Tue Jun 30, 2015 @ 3:16am by Commander Caden Aldrex & Captain Isha t'Vaurek & Commander Caleb Ryan & Lieutenant Mikaela Locke & Captain Maritza Soran & Lieutenant Si'Lar Trellis & Ensign Jessica Mayhew & Tania
2,633 words; about a 13 minute read
Mission:
Eye of the Beholder
Location: Captain's Ready Room
Timeline: MD 3/1630
[ON]
They had wasted no time in summoning representatives of Security, Intelligence, and the Marshals. They could spare no more than two members each, occupied as they were with restoring order and managing the evacuation beyond.
"Thank you for coming," Isha said, noticing the peculiar glances they were directing towards her daughter and the Fae.
Caleb sipped his coffee and tapped his fingers nervously on the table. Under the table he flexed his leg. It was feeling much better, but the adrenaline was wearing off and he was starting to feel the pain ebb back in. He would manage, though.
“Is this the place for kids, ma’am?” Caleb asked, nodding in the direction of Eviess and the other little Romulan girl, whose form seemed to flicker oddly. He wondered about that.
"For the moment it is the safest place," Isha replied.
Caleb merely nodded. He had heard back from Aleczandra. She had gotten most of her classmates onto the Ferengi ambassador’s ship and she would be back on board by sometime tonight, depending on how long the line was. It was comfortable, though, so the Ferengi were not in a hurry. Caleb could have wrung their lobes for that, but that might not be…diplomatic.
Lieutenant Si'Lar Trellis made his way into the ready room at a delayed but steady pace. He knew that it was still the same day, but he had done so much in that narrow period that he wasn't exactly sure whether he was coming or going. In his hand was a PADD from docking bay chief. The various bays had been filled to capacity carrying out the sudden evacuation order. Even with the use of transporter enhancers and various vessels performing site-to-site beam-outs there were still thousands that were still onboard the station when it maneuvered out of the way of the planetary emergence.
The casualty reports were still coming in, but they were already in the thousands. Out of a station population of over 50,000, it was nothing short of a miracle that the deaths were in the low one hundreds. Most of the injuries and deaths came from crush injuries, either from structural collapse or from the sheer panic that erupted amongst the population.
Caleb nodded to the Trill security officer as he took his seat. “Things on track?” he asked. “Fisher got everything under control?”
Lieutenant Trellis' attention was focused elsewhere until finally he realized his superior officer was addressing him. "Uh, yes sir," Trellis responded, coming to attention while being addressed. Ordinarily, he would have been more cognizant of his surroundings; however, the recent disaster had taken his mind and stretched it in five different directions as he tried to keep a handle on all of the reports coming in from throughout the station.
“Good,” Caleb said, indicating Trellis should take a seat.
Seeing that Caleb had a coffee Aldrex suddenly felt a craving for one too. Before getting up he leaned towards Tania and asked, "Can I get you anything from the replicator? I mean, do you kind need food or drink?"
"What a pet you are," Tania purred. "How I long to taste the nectar of the Mentrish flower. I suppose honey with a little water would do," she said, treating him to a dazzling smile that would cut through any interference from the iron blade.
Aldrex smiled blandly and went to fill the order. He still wasn't sure whether to regard Tania as ally or enemy but he saw no reason to be inhumane to her.
"Ladies and gentlemen," Isha said. "We seem to have a problem, one that appears to be related to the newest solar system to be born into the Alpha Quadrant. Our guest, who was discovered by my daughter and the proprietor of the Box of Delights, is a visitor from another dimension. We have not been able to identify the location of Miss Ibalin in order to corroborate Eviess' story. We will treat it as true."
Caleb raised an eyebrow. “Extra-dimensional visitor?” he asked, studying the girl/thing beside the Romulan girl. “And Ibalin isn’t on one of the other ships?” One of the first orders given when things stabilized was for every ship to prepare a manifest so everyone could be accounted for.
No matter Isha's personal feelings about the woman, she put them aside for now. "Along with others, Miss Ibalin is listed as missing," she said. "We hope that in time all will be located and found alive. Meanwhile, we have a situation. Our guest has colleagues on board DS5. We don't know their location."
"I do," Eviess muttered.
Isha ignored Eviess' interruption. "We believe there is a second group of extra-dimensional aliens aboard, a group that opposes that of our guest."
“Opposes?” Caleb asked. “In what way? Are they responsible for this new system and the destruction it’s caused?” he asked. “Perhaps someone didn’t like the fact that Ms. Ibalin discovered their existence.” He looked pointedly at their extra-dimensional guest and then at Eviess, hoping the little girl wasn’t in danger now. He wasn’t going to let these aliens harm a child.
Lieutenant Trellis cleared his throat in order to chime in. "Ma'am, if I’m understanding this correctly, we believe that we are being visited by 'extra-dimensional' aliens...based upon the account of a child and the owner of the Box of Delight, who herself has been linked to various…'dubious' activities," he said as diplomatically as possible.
"In addition to the credibility issue, Ms. Ibalin herself is missing, thus we have no adults to corroborate the child's story," Lt. Trellis said incredulously. He looked around the room to gauge the seriousness of the situation. "I'm not sure why we are devoting such a substantial amount of station resources to a possible fable," he added.
Eviess glared at her mother, but she knew now was not the time for her to speak.
The emerald daggers of her daughter were not lost on Isha, but for now the safety of everyone else on the station was paramount, not just those in this room. Normally, knowing what was rumored about Trellis Isha might have been more dismissive, but right now his assessment was spot on -- on the face of it, at least.
Isha held out the gnarly star-metal knife to the Lieutenant. "Take this blade and tell us what you see." She was sure that without it he would see an ideal in his eyes, the same way they all seemed to. With the blade she hoped he would see the frail, birdlike creature beyond.
Lt. Trellis stood and accepted the blade from his commanding officer. He nearly dropped it in surprise as he tried to interpret what exactly he was viewing.
"Th--That's not possible!" Lt. Trellis said in absolutely disbelief. "You can't be Taani!" he said with great fervor. "This is some kind of mind control or telepathic deception!" he said as he dropped the knife back onto the table and reached haphazardly for his phaser.
Si'Lar had grown up in a traditional Trill home that saw historical tales as more than just entertaining, but sacred. As a primary schoolboy, he was able to recite from memory the tale of Taani and her battle against her wicked sister Rusalka. For this creature to appear to him in such a form went beyond deceptive; it was absolutely blasphemous.
Isha's lips narrowed. Rusalka! The creature had mentioned her, too. But Isha did not recall a mention of her in the legends she had known.
"On ch'Rihan she was known as T'eiilha," she said. "It seems that fables have their origin in facts. What more do you know of Rusalka, Lieutenant? She does not feature in Rihannsu lore."
Mikaela Locke glanced at her number two, Ensign Strauss, who stood next to her against the wall of the ready room. Strauss widened her eyes and shrugged her shoulders a little, confirming exactly what Mikaela had suspected. She didn't have a clue what was going on either.
"I'm very sorry, Captain," she interjected, "but folklore is not a particular strength of mine." She thought carefully about how to phrase her next sentence without coming across as overly rude or insubordinate. "Could you, perhaps, explain the legend that you're referring to here? For those of us who don't know," she added quickly, assuming that she wasn't the only one in the room who was struggling with the situation.
"Don't you have fairy stories on Earth?" Soran asked. "Cunning tricksters and agents of chaos? Sprites with improbable powers? Stealing the moon? Plaiting grass into dollies and swapping them for babies? Go dancing with them for a minute and find out you've been dancing for years?"
Isha sucked in a long breath before she spoke. "Fairy myths pervade all cultures. From what we have heard we are close to proving that they are fact rather than fiction. We have among us what can best be described,” she looked down at a PADD to see how the exo-anthropologists had described it, “as a Fae. She is powerful among them and deserves our respect rather than our skepticism."
"Thank you, sir." Mikaela nodded towards her CO before shooting a look of distain towards Commander Soren. "The more we've got to begin with, the deeper we can dig."
"What we do know is that...that the Fae -- no its, she, her, it -- Fae as an individual and collective term from now on," Isha said with a nod to the creature that was now sipping a cup of honey and holding her daughter's hand.
Aldrex added his two cents, addressing the junior officers. "No one's expecting you to wrap your minds around fairy tales come to life. I'm still working on it myself. What we have are two powerful factions who have brought their civil war into our home. People are dead and more will die if we don't stop them. So we'll focus on objectives. Objective number one is to find Yolanthe Ibalin, if she's alive. She may be able to give us additional information about these creatures. So all decks will be searched until she is found. Objective two, replicate small bars of iron and distribute them to as many security personnel as you can. If there are other methods we can use to see them in their true form then the science and engineering departments will get to work on that." The he turned to Tania and asked, "How many people on your side and how many on Rusalka's side are here on the station?"
"Everyone is on my side. How else could we have called the planets to us?" she answered unhelpfully.
"Captain, I suggest placing this...this...creature in protective custody, both for her own safety as well as anyone else that might come in contact. We still aren't sure to what extent her psychological capabilities extend through," Lt. Trellis stated. Although he had gotten over the initial shock of seeing what "appeared" to be Tania, he was still uncertain of what was real and what was some hallucination. Amongst his people, the never-ending debate was whether Rusalka was truly wicked or had been banished by her much more powerful sister Tania in a struggle for dominance.
"I agree," Isha said. "There have been too many strange happenings already."
Deftly she removed the Fae's hand from her daughter's and tugged the sulky Eviess away. "You have a lot of explaining to do," she told Eviess, "but now is not the time. Computer, transport Eviess to her room," she said, catching another set of emerald daggers as the computer complied with her order.
Tania noted the staid interaction between them. What fools they were to send the girl away! "My friends will be looking for me," she said to the group that remained.
“How are they able to hide from you? And how do you know they are here?” Caleb asked the…creature, Tania. “Do you have ways of discovering each other? That you’re willing to share?” He wasn’t sure how cooperative the creatures wished to be if they had gone to all this trouble to hide from them. “And how does the planet fit into all of this?”
Finally freed from Eviess' grip, Tania flexed her fingers. Slowly she raised her hand to her face and sniffed. "If you had been on the run for fifteen thousand years, as you reckon time, don't you think it would take evidence, true evidence, of the impact of your crime to bring you out of hiding?" she said, tucking her legs beneath her and resting her chin on the palm of her hand, "They will come. Like you, they will have seen the beacon we have lit. They cannot resist its pull any more than you can."
“Well, that is cryptically unhelpful,” Caleb muttered.
Caleb looked over at Caden. “It is going to be difficult organizing a deck by deck search that cannot be avoided,” he said. “Most Security personnel are swamped with the returning refugees and making sure there is no looting on the Promenade. If force fields are operational again, we may need to institute security quarantines until an area can be effectively searched. How are internal sensors? Yolanthe Ibalin is a rather unique alien species on this station. Can we narrow down her biological signature?”
Soran consulted a PADD. "In theory it should be possible for Ops to recalibrate internal sensors to get a lot more specific. If we can cross reference her medical files we could theoretically use the UTs to pick up her brainwaves if we needed to be really specific. The problem is that all the sudden movements have done a lot of damage to the inside of the station, especially the Promenade. We have maybe sixty percent coverage internally. So if she's not where we have coverage, then we still won't find her. And then is it worth diverting sensor processing from looking for the injured and the trapped?"
Caleb nodded, acknowledging the point. “No, you’re right,” he said. “Finding the missing or trapped should take priority. If we go with the force field segregation, it will slow resettling the returning refugees,” he warned. “We can’t open sections until we have searched them. I will want the Bokkai details loaded onto tricorders for scanning,” he told Soran.
Lt. Trellis merely sat by and listened to the others speak. He couldn't believe that his own department was advocating the use of vital station resources to search for one person. Entire sections of the station were inoperable or uninhabitable. Thousands of people were displaced, while casualty reports continued to pour into Security and Medical departments. The Trill security officer knew that this was a waste of resources, but he also knew it would be highly inappropriate to undercut his Security Chief in front of the rest of the station staff.
"Let's focus on how we find the friends and the enemies of our guest here. If she's not going to help us locate her friends that should be our first priority," Isha said. "Arrange to have her transferred to a holding cell. Then we'll discuss tactics."
“Yes, sir,” Caleb nodded. He tapped his comm and said, “Ensign Mayhew, I need two security officers to the captain’s ready room to escort an individual to a holding cell.”
“Yes, sir,” Jessica said.
Captain Isha t'Vaurek
Commanding Officer
DS5
Tania & Eviess
NPCs Louise
Lt. Cmdr. Maritza Soran
2XO/Chief of Strategic Operations
DS5
Lt. Si'Lar Trellis
Security Investigation Officer
Lt. Cmdr. Caleb Ryan
Chief Security/Tactical Officer
Ens. Jessica Mayhew
Security Officer
NPC Caleb Ryan
Lt. Mikaela Locke
Senior Intelligence Officer
Lt. Cmdr. Caden Aldrex
XO
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