What Next?

Posted on 09 Oct 2020 @ 5:12pm by Captain Mallory Thorne & Lieutenant Callisi Veera & Ensign Kat Walker & Ensign Cydwenn Sov

2,235 words; about a 11 minute read

Mission: Ab Intra
Location: Cargo Bay Two, Deck 27

"Lieutenant Veera, cover your ears," Kat spoke quietly, giving the T'susugi a moment to do so. Then ... A pulse, accompanied by a nearly ear splitting tone, blasted out from the wreckage in the middle of the cargo bay.

A silent scream, the sixteen security guards around the perimeter clutching their ears, dropping their weapons, the beings in them rend from their minds - as from those resistant but addled, plagued by beings - torn from their minds by the combined high pitched sound and electromagnetic pulse from the walker.

The ear splitting tone, was just that ear splitting which brought Cydwenn down to her knees, the pain was weird because it wasn't physical but your mind made it physical. Pressing her forehead to the ground, so that she could press as much of her hands and arms against her ears, to help keep the sound from penetrating her ears.

For Callisi, the pain was worse. The high frequency sonics caused her bones to hum, nevermind the ear-piercing shrill, as pain wracked her form from tip to toe. Then, proverbially, the lights went out. Well, only one light. The electromagnetic pulse knocked her prosthetic offline, and while it was going through the rebooting process it reminded Callisi of how much of her world depended on such a wretched thing. Blind in half her area of vision, which she only dared test when the pain let up.

When the sound stopped, the pain remained...although it was different now than before.

Mallory Thorne stood up slowly from where she had been on her knees. There was little to no memory of her falling, but it had happened because there she was. As she straightened up, she looked around. Her head held onto that lingering ache, but it felt like an echo now rather than an assault. It seemed she wasn't the only one who felt this way, judging by the way everyone else looked.

There were several officers in gold uniforms that seemed out of it far more than herself or the others, but the one that seemed the most unaffected was...

Kat Walker.

Mallory managed to adopt something of a "captain's" stride and walk over to the AI. "Report," she ordered, even if her voice sounded hoarse.

Kat had manifested her humanoid avatar by the time the pulse ended, and turned to face the captain, snapping into attention as the latter approached. "Ma'am!" She began, contemplating a moment how detailed to make her report, but deciding to go for a succinct summary. "The ship has been taken over by hostile beings controlling part of the crew, Lieutenant Sovok among them. He deactivated me some time ago. The possessed crew are rounding up free crew who are resistant to being taken over and locked them into this cargo bay, under armed guard."

"Lieutenant Veera reactivated me some minutes ago," Kat continued, "and told me to disable the armed security. I found a pulse of sound and electromagnetic pulse combined that can drive out the electromagnetic beings, and employed it. The security personnel should be back to themselves now, though I do not know how long the effects of this pulse will last, Ma'am."

Ringing. Distant voices. Muted sounds. Pain, but different. This pain hurt all over her body, it wasn't just the pounding behind her eye that she was used to. She opened her eye, and found nothing but darkness on the right side of her vision. A moment of panic, a quick gasp of surprise, and then a few breaths to center herself. She turned to her left, coming almost full circle until she came in front of the Captain, and she stopped.

"Captain." she said, slightly louder than normal, on account of the ringing in her own ears. Drooped ears at the moment. What she did, she still didn't feel right with in her gut. "I'll have a full report once this is behind us. I was taken to medical for the invaders to try to find a way to overcome our apparent resistance to their mental dominion. I was able to learn about them, but nothing tactically sound. Only social information. I apologize that I acted in your stead in the reactivation of the AI unit."

"Don't worry about it," Mal said with a dismissive wave. Her brow was slightly furrowed against thinking while aching that was going on. "Our primary goal is to take the ship back." She looked at Walker again. "Can what you did be replicated through the ship? Perhaps over the ship-wide comms, if we can get control of them?"

Kat considered for a moment, then shook her head. "The auditory component could be but not the electromagnetic pulse. I can rig your comm badges for a short range pulse that will work, but that will only work up to a few meters range."

"We have eighty some comm badges in this room." Callisi pointed out once her head stopped trying to kill her. "I'll stay behind, and watch the door. I'll keep my commbadge to signal if anything changes down here." a pause, "I may have lost half my field of vision, but I'm still a damn good shot. Provided the phasers the guards had still function. Or could be made to function."

The ringing was done, Cydwenn's eyes were blurry from a mixture of tears and the sheer pain of the ringing that went through her skull. But, something else happened, something that was tough to explain it was like she was whole again, but at the same time she was missing a part of her, "w what just happened, " she sputtered as she worked on trying to get her mind clear again.

"Ensign," Mal greeted the waking woman with a nod. "It seems that demons have been trying to possess us." Her explanation was said dryly. She knew that wasn't precisely the case, but it was close enough. "Ensign Walker here has given us some reprieve for the moment. We must capitalize on it." She nodded at Veera and then turned back to Walker. "So, can you tap into badges across the ships or only ours?" she asked, looking for confirmation before putting Veera's suggestions into her growing mental plan.

"I can try, but lieutenant Sabine, is at the ops station and, well she is very talented as soon as I do, she'll most likely know that we are trying to get access to all the badges, we might have better luck doing groups at a time," Cydwenn suggested, as she ran several scenarios through her mind.

"Madalene Sabine is among them, second guessing every decision and request she made of me. I'm unimpressed by her current condition. I don't think she's currently as competent as you think." Veera's assessment of her department head was blunt and to the point, recalling every conversation the pair ever had.

"Could she be possessed, like they were?" Cydwenn asked waving to the security that were still on the ground.

"Without a doubt. She was on the bridge apologizing to me as I was taken into custody."

"All I can do is transmit the pulse to all comm badges present in this room for use, Captain. The shipboard communication system is not allowing me access, I'm locked out as I presume everyone here is," Kat spoke.

Mallory was deep in thought for several moments. "We can't transmit the pulse outside of this room or wherever Ensign Walker is located. It would be best if we could hit the whole ship at once, because then we run less risk of one of them countering our efforts if no one is possessed any longer. Anyone have any suggestions on how to make that happen?"

"Possibly crawl around the ship using the jefferies tubes and seed the departments with the badges we have?" Callisi offered. "Though this isn't the entirety of the crew, there might be stragglers running down those who are still not under their control." the rabbitess thought, "If Sabine is still on the bridge, that'd leave Primary Ops understaffed. We could retake ops and see what control of the ship systems we could wrest from them. She had me open a link to a secondary terminal so she could, I don't know, observe the ship during a little disagreement her and Sovak had."

"But other than that, hitting the entirety of the ship at once without the aid of any of the Odin's systems seems daunting."

"Lieutenant, we are locked out of the systems remotely, but can you gain access locally? The comm badges allow you relatively safe passage through the ship," Kat mused.

"Relative, unless there's roaming security hunting packs." she countered, having to turn further than she expected to bring it into range for conversation. "As for gaining access, I won't know for certain until I'm there. Worst case, I can cut the ship's connection to the main computer core. Physically if needed."

Kat tilted her head slightly, forming a slight smile as all the comm badges in the room chirped once, the chirp of an incoming bit of data. "If you run into a possessed security team, tap your comm badge twice in quick succession and it will emit the pulse. This has an effective range of several meters at most."

"Would this be the same pulse accompanied by an incapacitating keening screech?" Callisi asked, as her lengthy ears twitched.

"Unfortunately, yes. Though not as loud as when I did it earlier. I am aware this is highly uncomfortable to you and you would wish to use it as little as possible, and I'm sorry I have nothing better for you," Kat spoke quietly.

"Ideas seem to be in short supply. Anytime I'd use this, I'd be on the floor screaming and half blind again." she took a breath, held it for a moment, and then turned back around to look at the captain. "I don't know how well I can imitate being possessed, and sticking to main halls should keep me off any sensor sweeps if they're looking for refugees. The best chance I have to hide is to hide in plain sight."

Callisi was silent for a moment, "Or, the fact that I'm undesirable to them coupled with the fact that every time the pulse is called on, I'd be half blind... maybe I'm not the best choice to go."

Mal offered a small smile. "I don't know that any of us are a best choice," she said. "We are all in a somewhat compromised state." She took a breath and rubbed the back of her neck. "What about the deflector dish?" she asked, her eyes moving between the three of them. "Could that in some way be modified to emit what we need?"

Callisi's brain started to work. It was hard to get it to turn off once a problem had been suggested. "Not by itself... not by..." she thought, and thought and ... "The Boson Plates. Okay you... you call them gravity plates but they're the same thing. It's a major system, runs through the entirety of the ship, and no one cares about monitoring it unless people start floating. It's a ghost system, no one really watches it." she actually perked up, ears straightening. "We broadcast the audio portion of the pulse through the ship-wide comm. Captain announcements and such. The electromagnetic half of it we can reconfigure the gravity plates to emit a low yield EM pulse through the floor."

"The only way to avoid it would be to be off the floor, but with the screech coming from the ship-wide PA..."

Cydwenn thought, "if I can get access to a console, I can cause some distractions keeping lieutenant Sabine and the bridge busy as they try and figure out what is happening," Cydwenn suggested looking around the small group.

The captain nodded encouragingly. "I think we have a plan coming together," she said with a faint, mostly-mirthless smile. She looked at the ensign. "I'm sure we can get you somewhere to make a distraction," she said before looking at Veera. "Then we just need to get you somewhere where you can access the systems, since we can't remote in from here. With the help of the now-freed security guards, we stand a chance since we'll have some weapons and be better prepared."

"I'm not getting a ping reply from my remote emitter, so I am limited to this bay, inside my wreckage's projector envelope," Kat motioned to the wrecked walker housing her AI core.

"Unfortunate." Deadpan and hand delivered. "Though, in regards to getting to where we need to be, have two of the guards escort me there. Under cover of a prisoner transfer."

"Last time I was brought anywhere, I went without a struggle. I figured it would be more valuable to learn what I could then be stunned or, worse, deemed not worth the hassle."

"Do it," Mal said with a nod to the latter part of the statement, then continued. "Perhaps the both of you. Get where you need to be to get this done. Take weapons and hope they're working, though hide them on your person while you're pretending to be prisoners." The captain waved a pair of security officers over so they could bring them in on the plan. "While you're doing that, we'll see what we can do from here..."

 

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