Ok... so, as always, I hadn't intended for this one to turn out... well, the way it did... but that's not surprising, is it? Anyway, I had planned to go off on this tangent then bring it back to the main plotline all in the same chapter, but, surprise surprise (Not), this thing went and took off on its own. It might be a little disjointed, as a result, and seemingly out of context, and I'm painfully aware of that.
(Wince)
Regardless, I hope that I'll be able to tie all this back in to the "primary" line by the next time out...
VI: Intruders
Hangar Bay 3
Athkatla Station
Dominion Command Headquarters, Amn Sector
“I can’t… (Gasp) can’t… breathe… (Huff) in this thing…” Dominion Sentry TK-421 pulled the heavy, matte-black ceramic helmet off his head, grateful for the ability to draw breath once again. Never again would he take something as mundane as continued respiration for granted.
“Better put that back on…” grunted TK-422, motioning towards the offending helmet with the business end of his assault rifle. “The Sub-Taar catches you out of uniform, you’re cleaning out latrines for a month.”
421 merely growled in response, but did don the bulky piece of armor once again. The instant the protective article was back on his head, its internal communications link crackled to life.
The voice of the sentries’ commanding officer was insistent; TK-422 could tell that much, even though the actual words were muffled by the immense helmet his partner wore.
"Yes, sir, it's all quiet here…” the other orc was saying to his superior, “no, sir, I haven't seen anything. Sir, if you want to know so bad, you could send down an infrared scanning team. Uh, no sir, sorry sir, I'll keep looking around. Out.”
The communications transmission had been cut off, but TK-421 was still grumbling. “Stupid know-it-all officers. I'd like to see you come down here and try to see out of this damn helmet. And I'll sit in my nice comfortable office and tell you how stupid and incompetent you are. One of these days -"
“Improper attitude, 421. I hear they shoot you - … gggcccckkkkk...”
“Hey… hey, you all right over there? What hap – ow!” TK-421 slapped his neck as if he’d just been stung, but that only seemed to make it worse. His vision began to swim, and his sense of balance went straight to hell. Before he knew it, he was wobbling on his feet, unsteady knees barely keeping him upright. He managed to get his hand to the side of his neck and grasped the antagonizing object – a… dart?
Finally losing the battle with the sinister poison quickly coursing through his system, he pitched forward, chin hitting the steel deck with a bone-jarring -THUD-.
A slight human figure, clad entirely in black, inched out from behind a nearby stack of supply crates. She slipped twin sidearms into the holsters at her hips, then whispered a terse message into her communications rig: “Area secured…”
-----
“Area secured…”
“Copy, Omega 2… we’re rolling…”
By the time Falynn and the rest of the Omegas arrived on the scene, Imoen had finished rifling through the pockets of the unconscious guards. She looked up as the squad approached and shook her head sadly. “Nothing useful,” she commented, then noticed her companions staring at the downed orcs. “Oh, don’t worry about them…” she said, casually, “they’re just… full of holiday cheer… and enough tranquilizers to down a bull elephant…” She winked conspiratorially.
Lynn was too busy staring at the tiny palm-top computer she held in her hand to notice the furtive gesture. “All right… second objective is to find ourselves a computer terminal… the schematics we’ve got say there should be one on the other side of this door.” She looked up, taking stock of the layout of the room and where her friends were situated. “How about it, sis? Cut us through?”
“You got it…” Imoen was already pulling a small pouch from her belt, retrieving a screwdriver, an ohmmeter, and a pair of needle nose pliers. Thus armed, she set to work.
The cover for the access panel was a joke – four flat-head screws, one at each corner. She spun the screwdriver in her hand, quickly unfastening the four connectors and exposing the delicate electronic guts underneath. Not even bothering to put the tool away, she bit down on the plastic handle, keeping the thing secured between her teeth, while trying not to salivate over everything else in the process. Her nimble fingers severed two wires out of the confused jumble within, then set about testing the cut leads for live current.
Satisfied with the readings she was getting, she stripped the wires of their rubber insulation, then twisted the copper remnants together. A slight electric shock started tingling sensations dancing across her fingertips, but she ignored that, instead returning her gear to its original storage pouch. She reached around to her back, hand closing around the grip of her M4, and bringing the weapon back around to where it would be more useful. Her thumb flicked the safety off. The carbine regarded her with a high pitched whine.
“Well?” Jaheira was champing at the bit… and, of course, trying hard not to show her anxiety.
Imoen straightened. She held one hand out, the index finger aimed upwards, as if she were about to make a point of some sort. “Wait for it…”
She cocked her hip to the side, bumping the door, and causing it to swing open, away from her, on its hinges. She grinned. “Simple!”
The Tethyrian rolled her eyes. “She’s like a five year old,” she remarked, to no one in particular, “I feel like we’re breaking some child labor laws or something… failing to give her a milk and graham crackers break every couple of hours when we’re on a mission…”
Imoen brightened. “There’s a thought… hey, Lynn, you wouldn’t, perchance, happen to have any graham crackers on you, would ya?”
“No.”
“Darn.”
-----
“Darn.”
Sub-Letek Hilusk Skas couldn’t read the Lieutenant’s lips, but he didn’t need to. The feed from the hidden (well hidden) security cameras in Hangar Bay 3 told him all he needed to know. There were humans in the base. Humans, a dwarf (or maybe it was a gnome or halfling), and an elf… maybe… possibly a half-elf (The orc didn’t know or particularly care for the distinctions between elves and their “mongrel half-breeds”).
“Daimon Brak!” he cried out, instead, rising from his station. “We have intruders!” He pointed a green-tinted finger at the surveillance monitors in front of him.
Daimon Sovechr Brak, commander of the Dominion station (captured months ago from the Confederation, actually), levered himself out of his chair and clambered to his feet. His heavy boots clanked loudly against the deck as he made his way over to the agitated Skas. “Intruders? Where?”
“Hangar Bay 3,” the junior officer replied. “They’ve just compromised one of the security doors and are working their way forward. Our reaction force stands ready. Shall I order them to deploy, Daimon?”
Brak pondered that one for a moment – after which a cruel smile slowly crossed his features. “No. Not just yet. I believe I know what they’re after… I’ll be in the Detention Area…”
-----
“Quickly, you two… where is the Detention Area?” Jaheira watched restlessly, unable to do nothing to speed the locating of their primary objective. Not the most patient of people, normally, she found it exceedingly difficult to merely stand by and let others bear the brunt of the work, even though, in this instance, their talents were far more suited to the task than hers.
Imoen kept herself busy, not even bothering to look up, but leaving her gaze locked on the deluge of text and imagery rushing in and out of her field of vision. Her eyes scanned page after page of information, sifted through sequence after sequence of diagrams, maps, and illustrations. “Working on it…” she mumbled over her shoulder. “Boo? What’ve you got?”
Minsc’s tall, beefy frame stood next to Imoen, but the man’s eyes were closed, as if he were asleep on his feet. His hands hung limply by his sides; not a single muscle moved. However, while Minsc himself seemed oblivious to the galaxy-at-large, the ultra-modern electronic equipment grafted to the right side of his head appeared to be humming away busily and lights all across the surface of the apparatus blinked on and off, seemingly at random. The most striking, and perhaps unusual, aspect of the scene, though, was the four-inch tall holographic projection of a hamster sitting perched on the Rashemani warrior’s shoulder.
The illusory hamster’s nose twitched; it reared up on its hind legs and batted at its snout with its forelegs – a normal enough pattern of behavior. Abnormal, though, was the voice with which the simulated creature spoke. “What a mess…” the hamster griped in the dulcet, contralto tones of a Calishite harem girl. “Looks pretty ugly, but we could probably get through via this route.” Another projection hovered in the air before the rest of the team, an overhead rendition of station blueprints. Bright red lines appeared superimposed over the blue floor plans, indicating a possible course of movement. “But there’s a catch…”
Falynn snorted, hardly surprised. ”Isn’t there always?”
“They know we’re here,” Boo continued, tacitly acknowledging the interruption, “and have erected force fields in these four sections.” Solid green lines now appeared on the holographic model, indicating blockages that would have to be somehow circumvented. “We’ll need to find some manner of disabling them if we’re to proceed further.”
“Can’t you take them out from here?”
“I’m afraid not, Major. The Dominion forces have already begun to lock down their main computer. I’m slowly being shut out from all important station functions. In another minute, I probably won’t even be able to call up basic stuff like this map.”
“Power conduits, then? Could we sabotage them?”
The hamster shook its head in a surprisingly human-looking gesture. “Negative. They’re buried too deep behind the bulkheads… and even if we could get to them, I would stronglystronglySTRONGLY suggest against tampering with high-voltage power lines.”
Lynn nodded. “Point.”
Imoen, still managing to remain her chippy, happy-go-lucky self despite the clearly worsening situation, chimed in. “Not a problem… the energy fields themselves might be pretty tough, but the bulkheads next to them are just your mundane, everyday steel and stuff… and steel bulkheads possess one important quality: they can be blown up.
Omega 1 rolled her eyes. “Im, that’s ALWAYS your plan!”
“It’s more of a philosophy. Besides, I’d hate to think I carried all this Composition E around for nothing.” In her hands were two small, perhaps an inch on each side, cubes of soft, grayish matter. She casually tossed both in the air, catching one, then returning it to flight as the other landed in her waiting palm.
“Sweetie, I don’t mind you practicing your juggling, but could we not play catch with the boom-boom stuff? Thanks, muchly.”
“Look. All I’m saying is that I’ve got enough of this junk to bring down a mountain, with plenty to celebrate with afterwards. We can blast our way through to the holding cells in no time. Might not be all that subtle, but hey, those stinking orcs never did appreciate the soft touch.”
Falynn sighed, not especially happy with the course they had resolved to follow, but unable to come up with anything better. “All right. I guess we’ll do it your way. Let’s roll… Minsc, take point…”
Boo interjected. “Actually, Major, if I could have one second more with this terminal…”
“What for?”
“Uh… you’ll see later?” The response was woefully cryptic.
Llyr blinked. “Erm… okaaaaay…” She winced. “I’m being asked to trust an electronic hamster… and I’m doing it… yeah, something definitely amiss here…”
-----
“Something’s definitely not right here… no one’s home…” Omega 2 remarked as she crawled out of the maintenance hatch. As soon as she was clear of the egress, her weapon was up and tracking. The fact that she was finding nothing was incredibly unnerving.
Behind her, Omega 1 echoed the sentiment, scanning the oddly darkened room for targets. No threatening silhouettes caught her attention. No blindingly bright torrents of fire assaulted her vision. “I don’t like it when nobody’s home.”
Omega 4 muttered his agreement as well. “Minsc does not like having to play Hide & Seek with Evil…”
Omegas 3 and 5 had just exited the hatch when a single light, high above, in the center of the room, snapped on, the old-fashioned incandescent bulb filling the room with an eerie glow, sending ghostly shadows scurrying about the walls and floor.
The demanding, insistent voice that boomed down, crashing around their ears, seemed to come from all directions at once; apparently, the room had some incredible acoustics, sharpening the grating aspects of the guttural sounds. “Drop your weapons! Drop ‘em!”
Falynn had to fight every instinct in her body which screamed at her to simply open fire until her weapon ran dry and hope for the best. Her teeth ground and scraped against each other as she whispered through a clenched jaw. “Stand fast… hold your fire…”
“Drop your weapons!” the voice ordered again. The room was no longer pitch black, just dimly lit, but even so, Lynn had a hard time seeing. She listened more carefully, trying to pinpoint just where the speaker was. She needn’t have bothered.
“Over there… against the far wall… they’re on some kind of walkway, maybe 15… 20 feet above the floor.” Jaheira was whispering in her ear. Made sense. The half-elf did have better hearing. Falynn nodded, almost imperceptibly. “How many?”
“A lot.”
The staccato series of clicks accompanied a platoon’s worth of weaponry being readied for action.
“Confederation Commander… if you have any concern for the lives of your soldiers, you will order them to safety their weapons and place them on the deck…”
Imoen’s voice was a nervous trill. “This is not happening…” Falynn risked a quick glance to her side. Her sister’s breaths were coming quick and shallow, fingers clenching and unclenching almost randomly around her weapon grips. Even the muzzle was wavering slightly.
“Well, this -is- a predicament… reminds me of this one time, waaaaay back…”
Falynn wanted to scream at the sudden outburst of absurdity. She barely managed to keep her temper in check. “Five? Not now.”
“Oh. Righty-o, then.”
“Your unit is covered from an elevated position, Commander… I will not ask you again. Refrain from doing anything stupid, and you may yet outlive the day.”
“I’ll bet…” Llyr responded, loudly enough that her voice carried through the poorly lit room. She barely managed to keep the quaver out of her speech. “Throw ourselves upon Dominion mercy, is it? I suppose you’ll just round us up and take us to one of your internment camps where we’ll be ‘reeducated…’ I’ll pass, thank you. Not looking forward to becoming one of those brainwashed sleeper agents your people are so fond of using.”
The commanding officer of the orcish unit growled his derision at Falynn’s choice of words. “ ‘Brainwashing,’ is it? Weeeell,” he said, exaggerating and lengthening the pronunciation of the word, even as his voice began to grow in intensity. “you call it what you want! You’re down there! We’re up here! You walked into the wrong goddamn room, Commander!”
Jaheira’s tone was as sharp and hard as cut diamond. “Spare us your inane chatter, orc. Shoot us and be done with it.”
Omega 2’s head whirled to the side, flashing the half-elven woman a betrayed look. No words accompanied the expression, clear indication that Two was scared beyond her wits.
“Shoot you? All right… if you insist… but first…” The orc chief snapped his fingers, a rather remarkable feat of dexterity given their size and general reputation for clumsiness. Somewhere, near the far left corner of the room, a door opened out onto the walkway. A shaft of light stabbed its way into the room, but was almost immediately eclipsed by the shadow of a hulking troll-kin guard.
The beast was massive, tall and broad-shouldered, covered in coarse hair. Even hunched over, its girth filled the doorway, blocking out almost all the light threatening to poke through from the room beyond. It shambled forward, knuckles of its left hand coming precariously close to scraping the deck as its bent-kneed stride carried it towards the orcish party. Its right hand and arm trailed behind, hauling a limp humanoid figure as cargo, dragging it roughly across the steel plates even as the bound captive struggled weakly to regain his feet.
From her vantage point, Lynn could see that the man was handcuffed, his hands locked behind his back. His ankles had been left free, but he seemed so weak that it didn’t much matter, anyway. The weakness would have come from the starvation. The prisoner’s uniform hung in tatters, mere scraps of shredded cloth instead of actual clothing. What little remained was draped over a sickly, emaciated looking form. The man’s arms were twigs - thin and brittle. His legs were little better. But the one thing she couldn’t see from where she stood was the man’s face.
Jaheira, however, seemed to be having no such difficulty. Her eyes were wide, unblinking, her expression as haunted and chillingly empty as the prisoner’s must have been.
“K… Khalid? Damn… damn you…”
-----
Like I said up above, I hadn’t originally intended to end it here, but the whole mess was getting long, and really… I think this works as a stopping point…
