Securing the Promenade (Part 2)

Posted on 02 Mar 2021 @ 6:12pm by Commander Calliope Zahn

Mission: M1 - Emergence
Location: Promenade
Timeline: MD 07 ~0915
984 words - 2 OF Standard Post Measure

Ayalou gripped her mother’s hand tighter. “Are we outside?” she asked her mother. All the sound was swallowed up and things far away were very small, but there was no sky. Her eyes fixed on a withered tree, it’s leaves desiccated paper.

“No, the ceilings are just very very high. We are in the promenade of a station.”

“What is a promenade?”

Mother shifted the baby in her arms as they moved with the other refugees. They had decided it would be best, if they were to leave their quarters and test out their supposed freedom as guests aboard the station, if they moved together. “I think it means parade place.”

“There’s a parade?” The girl shrunk. The only parades Ayalou had seen were military and the marching lines of sullen tones and artillery and show of strength all left her terrified and hiding in her mother’s skirts.

“There are no parades today.” In fact, most of the shops were locked shut. “There doesn’t look to be much of anything.”

There were very few people and most of the enormous space was roped off in the walkways, limiting folk to a particular square where the turbolift car had let them off. There was a sound of powertools and the voices of people working. They had arrived only the day before, civilian clean up crews tasked to the reopening of the promenade. Heaps and heaps of material goods were being collected and categorized from the abandoned shops under renovation, all of them being processed, labelled, and bundled for bulk resales in a big bazaar in the square. The unusual firesale attracted a few buyers from the small group of civilians who were looking to establish themselves first— early arrival was an opportunity for cornering the reopening market. Name recognition, market share… ironically, considering the UFP’s bias against sound capitalism, so much trade went through Starfleet stations— it paid to get your signage up first.

Pog had thought nothing of it, then, when the boarding agent had made him sign a disclosure form stating that he accepted the personal risks to self and property as the station was yet under basic functional repairs. And boy was he glad. “The greater the risk, the greater the reward!” He had quoted from the Rules of Acquisition as he had signed the disclosure. Now he signed an invoice for an entire lot of furnishings to be fitted into his shop as shelves and display racks and storage units and cases. With the furnishings and the inventory he could snap up right on site, he wouldn’t even have to have a first freighter delivery before he could open the doors to his place! The misfortune of others well over a year ago was now his windfall! “Pog’s Emporium will be open for business in just 36 hours!” The Ferengi was pleased.

The ragged band of refugees, having been given a change of clothing, still had a desire for certainly styled articles and objects more familiar to their daily use, but the frustrated communications had prevented them from being able to ask for these basic desires from those who had been assisting them. Some of the refugees now wore a mix of their original threadbare things and the gifted clothing from the Federates, while others had detested the offer entirely and opted to maintain their own wrappings. These now were sifting through the sale things in search of one or two proper articles to double their life’s wardrobe with.

Ayalou looked on curiously as Auntie Bel (who was not really her aunt except in all the ways that mattered to Ayalou) performed a charade of chewing on a stick, trying to explain through the use of gestures that they were in the market for a bundle of tooth care shrub cuttings, but the man she was trying to explain this too just thought she was saying she was very hungry and kept pointing them to the replimat.

It was then that the benign lighting of the promenade began to flash and the voice of the Federates’ computer started giving instructions that the refugees couldn’t make out. They grouped together as others froze with a kind of terror in their faces and proceeded to drop what they were doing and carry out the disembodied voice’s commands for where to seek shelter.

Ayalou’s father snapped her up so fast she felt her head and neck whip with the momentum before his hand went to steady her in his arms.

“What is happening?” Her mother shouted.

“Hide! Hide the children,” he snapped, looking around for any safe place.

Her father began to sprint towards a metallic planter wall that was filled with the dead trees. Ayalou thought he must have seen something, although her own face was buried in his chest where she could hear his heart pumping. Was mother with them? She didn’t look up to see. A ceramic planter above exploded from the inside out and her father shielded her from the rain of heated shards with his own body.

As was happening simultaneously in Medical far below decks, the attack plan included an attempt to take hostages as one method of trying to gain control, even though the bulk of the efforts were directed at the heart of Engineering.

A couple of dozen variously outfitted mercenaries and pirates came along the deck, ripping past the thin ribbon that had marked off the unopened Promenade and casting over tables as they sought out targets. Most of them began to pursue the running civilians while a team of three stony faced Romulans in unmarked gray outfits scanned the area for life signs.

“They’re here, just as the intel said they would be,” one of the agents said in Rihannsu, motioning for his fellows to take up positions in the hunt.