-----
“Let’s just get back to work.”
Omegas One and Three traded blank looks and shrugged at the same time. Neither of the two was comfortable with the idea of a clearly-sick Imoen, but it didn’t take much to realize that there was nothing that could be done, circumstances being what they were. The sooner the mission was completed, the sooner it would be possible to render Imoen over to the care of qualified medical personnel with adequate equipment… or so the prevailing logic went.
Falynn sighed. She rubbed the side of her head; it still hurt. “Right. Where were we?”
Omega Two managed a small smile as she moved into position. She wore a small pouch around her waist, just below the small of her back. She snaked a hand around to it and undid the zipper. Her fingers quested around inside for a few moments before retrieving a small, thin ribbon charge. The explosive was about the width of a section of common, everyday adhesive tape, and was only a slightly bit thicker. It was designed to stick to surfaces, and especially to be crammed into the small spaces between a door and the wall around it.
“I was just about to use my ‘Universal Key,’ “ she said as she put the finishing touches on her work. She rested the detonator for the charge near the deadbolt setup for the door and stepped back. The radio trigger she would use to activate the charge sat ready in her right hand. “Charges set and ready, One. Stand back, Sis… lest a razor-sharp metal shard pierce your balloonish head.”
“Excuse me?”
Imoen snickered.
Falynn gave the rest of the unit a brief once-over. Everyone looked ready, except for the rookie. “Ensign, you might want to cover your ears for this.”
“Why? What’s going to happen?”
Imoen answered the question before her sister could. “I’m going to blow the lock, after which, the Sarge’ll be gracious enough to toss in one of these.” She held up a flashbang grenade. “The boom ought to disorient anyone inside and buy us a little time… about five seconds, give or take…”
Nalia looked skeptical. “Give or take how much?”
“Um. About five seconds.”
The comm tech groaned and rolled her eyes.
Raven clicked a forty-millimeter grenade into the breech of the grenade launcher slung under the barrel of her assault rifle. The weapon would be dangerous to use in close quarters, but it was still a good idea to keep it loaded (though safetied) when in the thick of a combat zone. “Anyway, we blitz in and shoot anything that’s green and still moving. Simple. Everyone got that? Good. Let’s hit it.”
The Omegas had queued up alongside the doorway that led into the complex’s command center. The door was, of course, locked, but the question was who had locked it last. Had the Dominion come and gone, and left as many obstacles they could for whoever came to mount a rescue operation, or were some Confed survivors still holding out behind that door, hoping desperately for their salvation? Without an open comm line to the inside of the control room, there was no way to know if the room was filled with friends, foes, or no one at all. That being the case, the rules of engagement had to stay non-lethal. The breaching charge wouldn’t kill, and neither would the flashbangs they’d be using to “prepare” the room. It would be up to them to take care of the rest.
Harlequin nodded to the rest of the unit. “Fire in the hole.” She jammed her thumb down on the button.
The detonator sizzled briefly, throwing off a faint skittering of sparks before triggering the charge. The blast was as loud as it was effective, cleanly shattering the durasteel deadbolts used to hold the door in place. Minsc rammed his shoulder against the door, punching it open; he spun away immediately afterwards, ducking back behind cover.
Valygar had placed his back up against the wall to the left of the doorway. He prepped a flash grenade, and, without moving from his defensive position, backhanded the explosive device into the room behind him.
* Whump! *
The flashbang exploded, and for two seconds, the room was filled with a binding three-hundred-thousand-candlepower white light and a hundred and sixty decibels of raw, ear-splitting noise. The squad was through the doorway almost immediately after the detonation, Raven leading the assault team in with a minimum of fuss and muss. She broke to the left immediately after clearing the door. Castle, traveling right behind her, secured the right side. Both troopers held their ground, their weapons swiveling back and forth, searching for threats as the rest of the unit filtered in. The entire room was considered “secure” less than fifteen seconds after Harlequin had toggled the charges.
Falynn flicked her helmet’s clear, duraplas faceshield up and out of the way, then ordered two of her operatives to hold the exits, while the rest of the team went about finding whatever there was to find in the control center. “Excellent job on the door, Immy.”
“Hear that, Vix? Someone thinks I’m excellent.”
The half-elf snorted disdainfully as she took up a guard post near the door they’d all just finished barging through. “Well, that makes two of you.”
Ignoring the spontaneous repartee, which, admittedly, did pull a smile out of her, Falynn set about assigning resources to where they were most needed. She turned towards Minsc and Nalia. The former was vigilantly glaring at the nearby doorway, the latter still appeared rather overwhelmed by the whole, big unfolding mess. “All right, you two…” the Major said, “there’s a lot of data waiting for us on those computer systems, so get a move on. I want everything you can snag, no matter how irrelevant it might seem.”
“We’re on it,” Boo replied, cracking her hamster knuckles. Minsc pulled himself away from sentry duty and let Boo go to work. “Never met a Dominion firewall I couldn’t cut my way through.” She grumbled as her intrusion algorithms sliced through a bit of badly-programmed, sub-par, software security as easily as a hot knife through butter. “Ugly, green bastards don’t know who they’re messing with…”
Falynn stifled a laugh. “Claws out today, huh?” she said in a touch of teasing accusation. “Evil little critter, aren’t ya?”
A breathy sigh. “For the last time… I’m not bad! I’m just… rendered that way!”
This time she did laugh. “Ok, Imoen, take Jan and try and get the base’s sensor network back up to snuff. Comm lines too, if you can manage it.” She turned back towards Nalia who had found herself a swivel chair behind one of the control center’s largest terminals, and was busily (and mostly obliviously) hammering away on one of the keyboards. “Ensign, if you get the chance, any help you could give us on getting outside communications back would be much appreciated.”
“Right, Major. I’ll see what I can do.”
The gnomish technician had set himself up behind another one of the control consoles. He’d quickly removed the screws holding the access panel in place, and was now poking a thin flashlight into the guts of the machine. He pushed clumps of wiring aside and jammed his bulbous nose inside, trying to find whatever damage had rendered the terminal inoperable. Imoen had crawled across to the other side, and inched her frame underneath one of the overhanging bits of machinery. Her head and the upper half of her body disappeared underneath its shadow, leaving only her legs sticking out, much the same way a mechanic working on a grounded speeder might have looked. “What about the base lockdown?” she asked, her voice muffled by the thin, electric torch held between her teeth.
“I’ll be working on that. Once we’ve got global control of the base’s systems, we’ll try and trap our orc pals someplace convenient, and if we can’t swing that, it’ll have to be Plan D…” She frowned. “Or E… or whatever we’re up to now.”
Imoen stuck her head out and smiled up at her older sister. “Cheer up, Lynn… we’ve still got F through Z plans.”
Falynn scrubbed her face with a hand. “One day, Im, I’m gonna give you a good slap.”
-----
Several minutes later, Jan and Imoen had managed to get the base’s internal sensors cranked back up to a decent resolution. A little bit of creative software engineering had also allowed them to splice the feed directly into the Heads-Up Displays projected by the team’s tactical headsets, giving them all real-time location reports on all movement in the area. The good news was that Omega Squad now knew where all the threats were. The bad news was that there were a lot of them. A lot.
“Lynn, we’ve got contacts lighting up all over the board. Big concentration of them are stuck in a series of security corridors a few levels up. Looked like they were going for the quickest way out. You caught ‘em just in time.”
“Lucky me.”
“I’m getting some high energy readings from that area.”
“Plasma torches, maybe… probably trying to cut their way out.”
“I’d put money on it. One of the security doors has already been breached, but they’ve got a few more to get through before they’re free and clear. Should keep them busy for a good while. Question is, do we go after ‘em?”
“No, not yet. But keep an eye on those sensor displays. Make sure that if they’re close to getting loose, we know all about it. Don’t lose ‘em, Immy.”
She scoffed at the implication. “As if.”
