Captivity

Posted on Thu Jan 12th, 2012 @ 10:01pm by Lieutenant Commander Sara Archer & Commander Jordan Gunning & Captain Vorn Krace

Mission: The Fate of the Swiftsure
Location: Pirate Vessel
Timeline: MD09 0925hrs

[ON]

The wind and dust bit into Sara's face as she tried to keep still. Except for the wind, it was a quiet night on a remote Cardassian outpost. It was unseaonally cold for this time of the year, with temperatures around 5 degrees. The Cardassians seemed to have mostly taken shelter, with only a few remaining. The Jem'Hadar numbers were still about what she suspected. Fortunately for Archer, the metallic dust in the air was interfering with the Dominion sensors like chaff. If anything was going to spot her, it was going to have to visually.

The young Ensign adjusted her binoculars, scanning the wall of the outpost once more. Satisfied that attention was elsewhere, she gathered her gear and made her way to the wall, keeping to the shadows. The operative was clad in a tight grey jumpsuit, allowing her to blend in to the shadows, but keeping her agile enough to move and fight. A tight hood came up around her head to cover her head and hair. The mission was simple; she had to infiltrate the compound and rendezvous with her partner, who was heading in from a different direction. Starfleet Intelligence had identified that this location held a critical communication relay that sent information from the front back to Cardassia Prime, and vice versa. While the system itself was fairly insignificant to the war effort, gaining covert access to this relay could provide crucial intelligence to the allies, intelligence that may just win the war.

With the wind howling, Archer fires her grappling hook high into the concrete wall. With the weather covering the sound, she worked her way up the wall, checking both sides for patrols before climbing over. With the nearest Jem'Hadar soldier far down the wall, her way was clear. Going up and over, she makes her way to the roof, finding an entrance through the ventilation. Slipping unnoticed through the halls, she hears a Cardassian voice at a security station. "Everything checks out clear. I'm starting my next patrol," the voice says in Cardassian to his communicator. Sneaking up behind him, Sara waits for the Cardassian to put away his communicator. Moving carefully, she reaches around him and snaps his neck, lowing him gently to the ground. Checking her map for the rendezvous point, she continues deeper in to the Dominion structure, moving silently to avoid setting off any alarms. Finally, she arrives at the storage room selected as the meeting point. There was no sign of her colleague when she opened the door. Instead, all she saw was a room full of crates and cargo containers.

With the area seemingly clear, Sara slipped into the hold. She had reached no further than the half-way point in the room when the boxes were suddenly shoved aside. Surrounding her were six Jem'Hadar soldiers, all of them pointing their rifles at her. Realizing that she was in a no win situation, she tossed her phaser to the ground and raised her arms to the back of her head. Jem'Hadar were not known for taking prisoners. She closed her eyes, ready to face death with as much dignity possible. But that death didn't come. Instead, she heard something she hadn't expected, something she never could have imagined, an all too familiar human voice. "Took you long enough Sara. I had almost given up, figured that you had got lost."

Ensign Archer turned around slowly as she opened her eyes, her hands still behind her head. Standing in front of her was someone she knew well, [i]very[/i] well, pointing a Starfleet type II phaser at her. "Allen?" was all she could mutter.

As the familiar shape moved towards her, someone else started saying her name. Another human voice, one that did not belong her, repeated her name again. "Sara?" the voice said. "Sara, are you alright?"

The intelligence officer awoke with a start, confused and disoriented. She was no longer in a Cardassian storage room. Nor was she surrounded by Jem'Hadar. She was in a cold, dark cell, with Jordan Gunning as company. She struggled to sit up, a splitting headache making it difficult to focus.

Jordan was sitting quietly in the middle of the room, the only sound besides Sara's mutterings had been the sound of a ball bouncing, first off the floor, then off the wall before landing with a dull thud in the Tactical Officer's hand. He hadn't asked where the ball had come from, assuming that it now stood as the last will and testament of some other poor soul that had found themselves down here.

"You okay?" He asked his friend as he moved over to her side. He had been periodically asking her the same question for half an hour with the hope of breaking her out of whatever nightmare she had been having but to no avail. "You were talking to yourself."

"I'm fine. I guess I was just dreaming," she answered, rubbing her temples. Looking down at her chest, she wasn't surprised to see that her communicator was gone. Nor was she surprised to find that her phaser was missing. "What happened?"

Gunning shrugged, "I woke up here about an hour and a half ago," he hesitated, "I think. God knows how you're supposed to work out the time in here. Anyway, I've heard people walking past the door but it's pretty much sealed tight. I can't see out and I don't presume to think that anyone can see in."

"Think again, Commander." The booming voice echoed out from speakers hidden somewhere high up in the room's walls. The voice said no more than that, and the two officers in the room were unable to locate any visible surveillance devices in the room.

"Well," Gunning said as he pushed himself to his feet, "that's reassuring. If you can see in then there must be a weakness in this cell. What is it? Want to tell me and save me the trouble?"

The voice chuckled. "The only weakness Commander, is that the little chamber you're in has very little in the way of an air circulation system. Don't worry, any vents going into that room are much to small for you to try to crawl through to escape, though. The only problem is that as soon as any of the nearby sections of this ship suffers an explosive decompression, your cell will most definitely be one of the first to vent its atmosphere. I believe you humans call it... an insurance policy." The two officers could almost hear the smile on the face of the voice's owner.

"Oh good!" Gunning found himself almost shouting at the disembodied voice which rang out within the cell. "Just when I thought this was going to be too easy!"

"I've tried searching for a way out," came a voice from a shadowy black patch in one of the room's four corners, from where the boots of a man sitting on the floor could just be seen. The moved as he force himself up onto his feet. The man looked as if he had been there for weeks. "Even the door is welded shut. The only way in or out is by transporter."

Gunning almost jumped out of his skin. It wasn't often that you could sneak an entire person by himself and Archer but yet they had. He had been quiet up until now but the dim lighting allowed Gunning to see enough of him to know who he was. "Varro?"

The man nodded. "I presume that you were sent from the starbase in the nebula to come and find me," Varro said. "I thought that you might, after the last set of star charts. Unfortunately," he spread out his arms. "I'm afraid you're now stuck here, like I am."

"Something like that." Gunning said, unwilling to give any more information to their captors who were obviously listening. "So there's no way out then? I assume you've already tried everything at your disposal?"

Sara took a careful look around the cell. Just like the disembodied voice told them, the ventilation duct was way too small for them, even for her to fit through. She walked along the wall, rapping on the bulkheads and listening for vibrations. "It sounds like our host was right. We seem to be on the edge of the hull." She gestured to the wall in front of her. She continued tapping along the wall, this time with a distinct timing consisting of dashes and dots. Do you see any panels or anything that might be able to be removed? Archer asks Jordan, hoping that he's kept up with old Morse code.

Jordan regarded his colleague with a wry smile as he realised what she was doing. Upon looking down, he realised that he was still holding the ball he had been playing with when Sara awoke. He bounced it once off the floor before beginning to knock out a reply on its hard shell. Nothing. We're fish in a barrel.

"Could you please stop tapping on the walls?" Varro asks from the corner. "That sound is really annoying."

Sara looks at Jordan and rolls her eyes. "Any ideas?"

"Honestly?" Gunning asked as he felt a strange tingle in his chest. For a moment, he thought he was having a heart attack as the tingle began to grow stronger until it felt like it was trying to burst out of his chest. He looked around his two companions. His eyes seemed to be playing tricks on him too. To the Tactical officer, it seemed as though they were glowing. Why were they glowing?

He glanced down at his outstretched palms. He too was glowing. The tingle became a full-on whine as the familiar feeling of a transporter enveloped him from all sides. Suddenly the tingle and the glow made perfect sense. Someone had found them.

--------------------
Lt. Commander Jordan Gunning
Chief of Security

Lt. Commander Sara Archer
Chief Intelligence Officer
USS Iapetus

Mister Varro
Tradesman, Star Charts Supplier