Cold Comfort pt 5: Split Forces
Posted on 06 Oct 2022 @ 10:10am by Command Master Chief Tāne HaiRoa & Commander Calliope Zahn
Edited on on 15 Jun 2023 @ 6:40pm
Mission:
M3 - Into the Deep
Location: DSSO 717
Timeline: M3 - Backstory, following Cold Comfort pt 4: Time Out
3452 words - 6.9 OF Standard Post Measure
Malmrose spat, a bloody red wad hit the deck of the rest area.
"Screw you!" he yelled but winced as the Breen jabbed at him with the rifle butt again. He pulled away and tried to shuffle back from his tormentor, but the bonds on his wrists and feet hampered him.
Rowle was next to him, laying semi-conscious on the deck. The pair of them had been bound hand and foot and dragged up to the command deck rest area.
Rowle had been severely beaten first and had eventually given up the names and number of their companions to the senior Breen, who identified herself as Jor, with the of rank of Ak'ched.
"Where are they hiding?" Jor demanded. "Tell me or we will hurt you again" The voice a guttural mechanical version of Standard.
"I already told you! I don't know!" Malmrose protested "I told you we kept moving around! We didn't have a particular deck!"
There were four other Breen, one of whom appeared injured, and was slumped on a chair, the one HaiRoa had hammered with the hatch door.
One of the others jabbed him in the ribs with the rifle butt again, another kicked him in the legs.
"I don't know where they are!" He yelled again. "We kept moving!" He had managed not to reveal the conduits so far. "We went up and down the ladders, we didn't stay put!"
"When is your ship returning?" Jor changed tact.
"In six days! I told you that! So did Rowle!" Malmrose lied again. They had questioned Rowle on the same thing and that was the timeframe he had given before they beat him unconscious, Malmrose had stuck to the same timeframe.
"You are lying!" Jor accused him. "You did not bring enough food for that long!" The Breen had found the supplies they had hidden, they were spread out on the deck before them.
"There are ration packs stored here, we were going to eat those!" Malmrose lied.
"Where? What Deck? What cargo bay?" Jor demanded and nodded to the Breen standing over Malmrose. That one hit him with the rifle butt again
"I don't know!" Malmrose cried out in pain. It felt like they had broken a couple of his ribs now. "I don't have the inventory!"
"You are lying!" Jor continued. "There are no rations here! When is your ship returning?"
"Six days!" Malmrose yelled back at him, pulling his knees up to try and protect his midrift.
Jor nodded to the two Breen, and they set to with rifle butt and boots. Malmrose tied to ball up, but the blows kept coming. He cried out in pain.
The beating went on and on, he felt another rib crunch as a couple of heavy kicks and he gasped for breath, each mouthful of air brought a sharp stabbing again his chest.
There was a snapped command from Jor and the blows stooped. Malmrose stayed huddled over but peered through slitted eyes at the Breen leader. Another, sixth, Breen had arrived, and they had their heads together in conversation. Then Jor waved the others away.
She approached Malmrose and leaned down towards him. "We have located your friends hiding place! They will be captured shortly, if they do not validate what you have told us told us, I will kill you." The words, flat and unemotional.
The Breen stood up and departed, speaking some command to the injured one, who sat up on the chair and leveled a pistol at Malmrose and Rowle.
Seven Seventeen, being nothing more than a storage facility with minimal other comforts or features, lauded many, many storage bays. In the looped corridors that formed around the core of each central deck, which chiefly featured power supply spine of the station and the two access lifts, there was little else besides the series of identical cargo bay doors, one after another in bland repetition.
The mind wanted something to grasp for a landmark but aside from simple letter and number demarcations painted out on the deck plating, there was little to be had. So any slightly dimmer light fixture, smudge or dent in the bulkhead, skid mark on the decking—any little differentiation the mind could find became the loudest visual feature floating in the oatmeal of the predictable.
As they stepped lively out of the clanking maintenance lift, the four armed Breen organized into a search formation, switched to night vision on their helmets, and killed the lights to the entire deck. The second man from point was holding a hand-scanner, which he was using to try to interpret through the ion static. Even with the interference, the signal he was homing in on was unmistakable in the display. A significant heat signature was the most helpful sign. Body heat sensing had been unhelpful with all of the false signals being given, but now their queries must have finally been broken by the bone chilling environmental settings and tried to use an unmistakable source of heat.
"Ahead, the third door from here," he told his companions, motioning to a bay labeled '7-41c'. They took up positions on either side of the oversized door as the point man switched them open and stood to one side. When there was no immediate reaction, they jammed the door open, so as not to be trapped, and filed inside in turns, rifles ready, clearly well versed in searching an enclosed space. They were so well trained at it, that someone on their crew had to have been ex-military.
They cleared the room systematically, covering the gaps between storage palettes and parts cribbing and closing back on the heat signal in one far corner on which they were again converging from four directions to allow for no escape. As the team approached, they found a ceramic dish over turned around a linked series of device batteries being purposely overdrawn, efficiently both creating a radiant heat source and a soft source of flickering light, which cast onto the walls the shadows of two huddled figures, heads bowed, shoulders wrapped together, seemingly warming their hands.
The raiders unloaded stun rays into the desperate forms and moved in to secure their newest catch.
Jor was in the Control Room, trying to monitor the search four of her crew were conducting on Deck Seven.
The Human station had an abundance of spare parts and useful equipment, which was why she had carried out the raid. They had discovered the facility several months ago, when crossing from Breen space to Ferengi territory.
But she had not dared to try and enter it, believing it would have an alarm system that would have summoned the nearest Federation ship. Her vessel was only a scout class and not designed for combat with a Starfleet battlecruiser. Besides she would need time to make a thorough search of the station into order to determine the most valuable components to steal.
The passing of the ionic storm through this location had given her all the opportunity she needed, at least three of four days uninterrupted access to the station.
But no sooner had they come aboard than they had found unexpected evidence there were Starfleet personnel already here. The reactor was in standby not shutdown mode, the atmosphere and temperature controls were active and there had been a still-warm beverage in the control room, at the very terminal she now sat at.
By an unfortunate twist, the very ionic interference, which masked her own raid, had equally blocked her from locating the Federation crew. Neither had they responded to her false claims of repairs. Although that had been unlikely to convince them, she had known from the start.
Despite several searches they had been unable to locate the Starfleet crew until they had tried to attack her own team. That had netted two of them and it seemed there were only two more still at large. Beating the information out of them had not been difficult, they were weak. Now it seemed the others had given themselves away by starting some kind of heating device. She had dispatched four of her crew to capture them.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a call from Gatah. He had allowed himself to be bested by one of the Humans and lost his weapon to them. She would punish him for that later, for now he could watch over the prisoners while her more reliable crew went after the others. She had also forbid him from killing either of them, as they would have some further value working in a slave gang.
"What is it?" She demanded
"Ak'ched, I beg to report the elevator is going up and down, I can hear it," Gatah said. "But no one is getting off."
That was odd, communications were unreliable due to the storm, but she should have heard something if her crew had already captured the others and were returning.
"Go and see what is happening!" She ordered Gatah "Leave those two, they are not going anywhere."
"I obey Ak'ched," came the reply
Of course you do, because you failed me and now you want to make amends, Jor smiled to herself. It would not reduce his punishment though.
The search team in bay 7-41c charged in towards the slumped figures.
"We have them! Can you imagine the take on three work-gangers and a female Orion?" Excited, the youngest and newest of the Raiders was launching himself in a one arm supported leap over a storage crate to get a better look at their new captures.
"Get the manacles!" The point-man snapped, mad for the trouble they'd had to go to, he kicked one of the bodies. There was a small whispering hiss and he looked down as some sand seemed to be accumulating on the top of his boot.
At the same moment, one of the heads rolled off onto the floor, spiraling loudly in a large circle before breaking into hemispheres along a center line- it was just a hollow resin lab containment sphere. The point man realized now that he had burst a seam on one of two seventy-kilo bags of polishing sand!
He ripped off the blankets the sacks were wrapped together in—it was actually just packing cushion material, around the sacks! Casting aside the wrappings, he forcibly shoved the eager younger raider with frustration. "It's a decoy!"
"They can't have gone far!" The shortest of the search team insisted. "The heat signal was fresh, so someone was just here to set it up. We should spread out!"
The four of them looked around to see if they could spot any trace of the Humanoids, when there was a flash and one of them dropped to the deck, lying motionless.
The other three instantly ducked into cover behind containers and storage bins.
"Where did that come from?!" one demanded.
"It must have been behind us!" another replied. "I was looking at the entrance doors and it did not come from there!"
"Must be deeper in the bay, we've got them trapped! Keep the door covered with your weapon, we will move towards the back of the bay!" He motioned to his shorter comrade, giving him a signal to move to the bay's left side wall— he would go to the right, then they would move deeper in. The other's helmet nodded in understanding.
They moved cautiously apart, staying low behind the available cover. After a couple of containers, the shorter one, sprinted across a short gap. He got two strides and there was another flash— he fell, mid-run and crumpled into the deck.
The senior raider popped up from behind his own container and fired off three rapid shots, spreading them apart across the area and using the brief reload time to look for a target. He dropped back into cover and scuttled to his right changing position. He had not seen any obvious hiding places, so where had they been shot at from?
With most of the Breen focused on the distraction on the decks below, Calliope risked the likely hood that deck five was cleared to make a run for a maintenance locker near the airlock. She still checked both ways and gave a quick listen at the intersection before she peeled down the hallway, a hover cart and a laser cutting/ welding tank in tow behind her, hot footing it as fast as her cold-numbed limbs could pump. Breathlessly, she rolled back the access door for the locker room the supply list had delineated as having what she so desperately needed.
Calliope switched on a tiny LED pen light and saw them. There were eight of them, all in a row, the silvery rubberized fabric glinting as each hung from a hook like a skinned body drained of its soul.
"EVA suits." She breathed, rushing to check one as fast as she could. The neck seal wasn't age cracked and there were good wrist latches for the articulating gloves. The oxygen reserve was in perfect condition but when she switched on the internal battery, it gave a drained readout. The typically twelve hour supply read twelve minutes.
"Of course." She laughed. "Of course it's age drained."
Was twelve minutes enough? She looked around at the other suits and started rough cutting another battery out of the next suit with a pocket knife she always had on hand- a Graduation gift from her mother. She kissed the engraved wooden handle of her knife with a soft "Thanks, Mom," and then read the power on the second EVA battery pack. It claimed just thirteen minutes of potential support. There was only one additional power series link on the EVA suit. Having no time to make significant modifications, Calliope couldn't take any more with her. Twenty five minutes, max. There was no way she could survive exposure on a Breen ship. She would have to make twenty five minutes work....
She took off her coat quickly, although not eagerly, letting go of the sweat-humidified body heat she'd been desperately clinging to. She had a thin hood still pulled over her volume of hair and left that on. It didn't make a lot of difference. Her ears had burned for a long time with the chill and now felt nothing at all. Quickly she pulled on the EVA boots and the connected suit, strapping the oversized pant legs around her ankles to draw it into place properly, then quickly ducked into the sleeves. The suit was deadly cold and she began hyperventilating before she could get her cold-deadened fingers into the fingers of the gloves. She spidered her arms around her own back, desperately pulling the enclosure shut.
Grabbing her knife and pocketing it in the suit's utility belt— seeing as it would be inaccessible to her if she'd returned it to her trousers pocket— Calliope then swiped one of the helmets and gave it a cursory check as well. The suit's auto sensors kicked on as she latched the helmet piece over her head and she adjusted to the fish bowl feeling of wearing it. Her breath made an instant fog on the glass as the little unit inside the suit started cooking up some heat and running a small diagnostic HUD on the frosty helmet glass.
As the freshly manufactured warmth struck, Calliope felt like nails were driving through all of her frostbitten extremities, and she swore like it too.
Gatah went out into the corridor, one of the cargo elevators was moving again, it sounded like it was going down now. He cautiously approached the lift area, the barrel of his stubby disruptor pistol swung backwards and forwards as he scanned the corridor using the search capabilities of his helmet. Not as powerful as the handheld version, but it should work adequately. There were no life signs or heat signatures in the corridor, although the search function was perhaps unreliable due to the ionic interference.
He reached the elevators and peered over the safety barrier. The left elevator was some four decks below and descending, it was empty!
He looked around the central dividing pillar into the right elevator, that was on this deck and was also empty. This was confusing!
He was about to check the rest of the corridor when he his helmet speakers relayed a metallic scraping sound and a heat signature bloomed on the right side of his visor. He whirled around, pistol barrel matching his turn.
Clambering out of a hatch in the wall was a male Human! It was the one who had attacked him, earlier, he instantly recognized the man's disfigured face, marked with strange black lines!
The barrel of his pistol swung through it's arc, his finger tightening on the trigger, just a few more degrees to go until he could fire!
Behind his visor Gatah's eyes widened. The Human was smiling at him, a strange grin, barring his teeth and sticking his tongue out, his eyes held wide open. It was almost a look of madness. The black markings on his face made the look even more unnerving. Gatah felt his resolve falter, what kind of strange Human was this?
Too late he saw the barrel of his very own rifle under the man's right arm. It was already leveled and aimed directly at him. Gatah tried to throw himself to the side and fire first but he was already off balance, and stiff from his aching ribs; his shot missed, it slammed into the bulkhead as he stumbled.
The Human did not miss, the incapacitating bolt tore into the Breen, throwing him back into the wall and Gatah crumbled in a heap.
HaiRoa quickly exited the ladder tube where he had waited in ambush, quietly closed the hatch behind him, crossed to the fallen Breen and snatched up the dropped pistol. A quick look up and down the corridor and he boarded the right cargo elevator.
He punched the button to descend and went one deck down, getting off on Deck Two, he hit the button again, sending the elevator down to Deck Nine.
He shoved the disrupter in the pocket of his jacket and set off down the corridor, jogging past a series of cargo bays to the next ladder tube.
He had hidden in the conduit down in the Cargo Bay on Deck Seven waiting for the Breen to investigate the lure Zahn and he had set up. Staying low, behind three containers at the back of the bay, he had managed to stun two of them before they knew it, then dropped back into the conduit and scuttled away.
Getting out in another cargo bay he had found a ladder tube and climbed back up to the top command level Deck One. Then sneaked out and got the elevators moving up and down, hoping it would bring any Breen who was up there, sure enough one had come out.
That was five he had seen, if Zahn was right about it being just a Scout Class ship there were perhaps a maximum of three more around. At least one, maybe two, had to be in the control room he reasoned.
Which was why he had not stayed up on the Deck One corridor after he had stunned the one there, he did not want to rush the control room door from the corridor and get shot himself.
There was a ladder hatch access in the bathroom behind the rest area next to the control room though and that was where he was heading now. He clambered up the rungs as quickly as he could, not sure how long he had before the two on Deck Seven who were still active came back up.
He reached the top of the ladder and placed his hands on the hatch wheel. It was stiff, he pulled on it but it barely moved, he tightened his grip and pulled again, the wheel turned but gave out a loud screech.
"Dammit!" He muttered instantly stopping. What were the odds it had been heard, he wondered. He waited a full minute then tried the wheel again, there was another screech, then it came free and he quickly spun it open.
He ducked down keeping the barrel of his rifle level with the bottom rim of the hatch and then pushed it open with the tip, ready to fire if there was anyone in the bathroom.
