File #6 - "Victorious"
#6 of Star Trek: Warrior - Legacy
Mysterious goings on, on both ships.
File #6 - "Victorious"
"Commander... Commander! Wake up!"
Commander Val'sha jolted awake as she looked up to see Zant crouched over her. She looked up into his large blue eyes and his concerned face.
They had both been removed from their environmental suits and appeared to be in the corner of a room on the ship with large bay windows that looked out across the stars to the Warrior and slowly spinning derelict wreck of the Republic.
"I'm awake Ensign!" she responded, looking up at him and trying to climb to her feet before finding it unusually difficult to stand. "Although I am unable to move..."
She could tell the Ensign was struggling to stand as well, he was crouched over her, seemingly fighting some sort of invisible force that was keeping them pressed to the ground.
"I know... this area of the ship seems to have problems with the gravity" he whispered, his voice hushed and lowered incase it drew nearby attention. "What happened?"
"It would seem that creature wanted us alive and brought us here, for what purpose I am unsure" replied Val'sha, still wrestling with the heavy feeling all over her body.
Zant sat down next to her, taking a moment to breath. As an Andorian, he was used to harsh gravity and climbing the ice that covered his homeworld, it afforded him increased upper body strength in order to cope with the harsh climbs on Andoria.
"I managed to activate the emergency beacon in my suit" he said, attempting to reassure Val'sha. "Hopefully the Warrior picked it up and are working on a plan to rescue us."
"That will not happen..."
The voice belonged to neither of them but the large creature that had attacked them in Engineering. He was sat in the far corner of the room, eclipsed by the low light levels so that he could hardly be seen. "It's not going to be long until it makes you do things."
His voice was low and ominous and both Val'sha and Zant looked at each other as the creature spoke. He was obviously sentient and able to withstand the effects of the gravity which crippled them.
"Why have you attacked us?" asked Val'sha very bluntly.
The creature let out a short chuckle and even the darkness, Zant could make out his large sharp white teeth which seemed to glimmer slightly under the starlight of a nearby pulsar. It made him somewhat nervous.
"Believe me, it was not out of choice..." he responded.
"What kind of an answer is that?" asked Zant, who mentally slapped himself after his outburst. Here he was, possibly about to get eaten and all he could do was challenge this creature and piss him off even more?
"You don't understand" chuckled the creature in corner. "I'm a prisoner on this ship. My will ain't my own."
Val'sha looked around, scanning the room gently with her eyes for objects that might aid an escape attempt. There were cups scattered all over the room which would seem to suggest that they were in the Mess Hall or Lounge of the Victorious.
"What do you mean!?" asked Zant, his irritation growing more quickly than his actual fear. If the creature had wanted him dead, he would already be dead judging by the size of him. "You attacked us!?".
"I'm a slave to this ship" muttered the creature as he looked out the window. "The ship tells me what to do and I've got no choice but to do it."
Val'sha slowly attempted to reach for a shard of metal on the floor nearest to her location while the creature was distracted. She hoped that she could use it and with one fell swoop, throw it at enough speed to impale this odd creature.
"What's your name?" asked Zant as he noticed what Val'sha was attempting to do and in a rare moment of understanding between the two, attempted to keep him talking.
The creature sighed, returning to look back out the window as his large black nose reflected the gentle starlight, in the background, the slight blue glow of the Warrior's warp drive comforting him slightly. "Lieutenant Commander Muraco, U.S.S. Republic" he said.
Val'sha grasped the shard of metal but found it impossible to lift off the floor, it had become like super glue, unable to be pulled away even with her enhanced Vulcan strength. It would have been near impossible for a human to survive the gravity.
Muraco just gave a short smile and chuckled slightly. "I don't think you get it, do you?" he asked, looking straight at the captives. "She's not gonna let you go. She's gonna use you, get into your head and use you to create more of her. That ship out there... don't have much time left."
Zant looked up, his white hair unkept and unruly. "Whose "she"?" he asked.
"Victorious" replied Muraco.
"Dammit, there is still something wrong with the shield grid..." Chief Engineer Amir Lazard was getting quickly frustrated with the repairs to the Warrior. The shield grid was continually fluctuating and he was completely unable to find any cause for this frustrating malfunction. Especially while the ship was toe-to-toe with a hostile vessel that was shooting at them a couple hours beforehand.
Chief Lazard was born in Iraq in the Middle Eastern region of Earth but had spent most of his life with his father in California, America. It was while he was living in San Francisco that he formed his lifelong desire to join Starfleet. He remembered being in awe of the parades at the academy while he worked at his father's shuttle maintenance business.
His father was disappointed when he chose to enter Starfleet Academy rather then continuing to work in his father's business with his two brothers.
He had not spoken to his father since they moved back to Mosul.
"Lyn?" he called out to one of the two technicians which were the extent of his Engineering staff. Three people to keep an entire ship the size of a Steamrunner Class running. It was ridiculous.
A blonde young lady poked her head out from one of the jeffery's tube junctions beside him. "Yeah?"
"Let's check the lateral shield generator, see if there is any internal polarization?"
The girl nodded with a smile. She was pretty and since he had come on board, she had gone out of her way to make sure that Lazard noticed her. He was considering asking her for a drink after their duty shift in his quarters but had decided against it as he did not want to compromise an already good working relationship.
"Captain?" Amir stood up when Captain Nicholson entered Main Engineering looking decidedly grubby. The lack of manpower to repair the Warrior showed that even the Captain had to get his hands dirty on occasion.
"Any progress Mr Lazard?" asked Nicholson as he found himself more and more comfortable with the command role. He had faced his first major challenge with the Victorious and been successful due to his unconventional thinking. He was feeling more confident now but still question himself.
"No Captain, there seems to be some sort of problem with the main computer. The damaged EPS conduits have somehow affected the control systems within the main computer and we having to run a lot of manual bypasses at the moment for a lot of key systems."
"That's going to slow down repairs." responded Nicholson as he looked over the large cross-section diagram of the ship on the back wall of Engineering. There were plenty of damage indicators, showing where the main EPS junctions had been damaged.
"At the moment, my team is trying to narrow down a problem with the lateral shield grid." Amir pointed at the locations of the generators on the diagram. "The shielding system is going on and offline and the main computer seems to be accepting false input at the moment. The shields keep going up because the computer is convinced that their is an armed threat nearby."
Nicholson shook his head, he did not like sitting in the middle of space, so close to contested Romulan territory with two useless Federation ships and no shielding to protect either of them. "It may be a problem with the shield control interface, we've been having main computer failures and reroutes all..."
He stopped for a moment, a peculiar smell filled his lungs. He looked over to Amir, whose dark eyes suddenly widened as he realised what that smell was...
Reactor coolant!
Amir rushed to the nearby console. "What the hell?" he said, looking over to the Captain. "Sir, the computer has diverted reactor coolant into the deck nine environmental controls!"
"What!?" shouted Nicholson but it was too late for him to respond as a powerful electrical arc of lightning shot out of the console that Amir was standing on and shot through his body causing him to stand their motionless, like somebody being electrocuted and unable to let go.
Nicholson attempted to rush in to save him but there was suddenly a very loud klaxon as the containment door around the warp core control part of Engineering suddenly slammed shut in his face, almost intentionally.
He began to cough as his lungs filled with reactor coolant.
"Bridge... *cough* Seal *cough* off Deck Nine!" he shouted while trying to make his way to the jefferies tube in order to climb off the deck.
He managed to get up the ladder before falling back down into the small fog of reactor coolant that now blanketed the floor of the deck.
He found himself unable to move...