“What task is that?” Kaylee finally found her voice again, even though it came out a bit squeaky at first. She cleared her throat. “Who is your partner and why would you put countless innocent lives in danger?” The questions in her head came out audibly in a rush, and she told herself to pause and take a deep breath. She exhaled slowly, looking at her own mirror image, waiting for any answers or to see what her next move would be.

-Kaylee Baxter

“No one’s innocent sweetheart”, Kaylee said her disruptor steady and her eyes like ice as she eyeballed Iliana Ghemor. “No-one needs to die if you let me walk out of here with the Cardie”.

Iliana stepped boldly up to the blonde-haired spitfire. The Cardassian’s face was resolute, “I will go with you, the Prophets will be done”. Eddington went to stand to his feet but a warning glance stayed his advance. Rhan stayed stock still but tense and ready.

Kaylee snorted “Whatever turns your crank”. She kept a distance from the Cardassian woman but stepped to put Iliana between her and Delaney’s firing arc. “The Cardie and I will be leaving now. My partner will be monitoring your every move so unless you want dead people on your conscience you’ll clear the decks for us as we go and alert everyone to stay out of our way”.

Junior Gamemaster Conspiracy Theorist
OOC Feel free to have Luka turn up around now… and anyone else who wants to precipitate having the ship put in danger… cue evil laugh.

Laraan went unnoticed by them as she sat there on the floor, looking shakey. A bomb on the ship. Not again! Would they ever have a mission where the ship wasn’t in fatal danger? She was torn inside about whether or not to try and use her newfound power, but tempting though as it was, she had promised only to use it in imminent life and death situations, and this was not one of them. Not yet.

Ironically it was a situation where psychology could help more. To her knowledge the toughest people weren’t able to give themselves an injection, afraid of inflicting pain on themselves. Kaylee had a chance here, but Laraan wasn’t sure Kaylee saw it. Maybe a hidden clue?

Feigning a shakey voice Laraan looked at mirror Kaylee and said “Amazing you really look just like Kaylee.” and then she shot a quick hard look at Kaylee, hoping she would get the queue.

• Laraan, CNS

Luka approached the conference room, stopping her run a little while off and listening carefully to see what she could hear before getting any closer. She crept forward on padded paws, ears pricked towards the room.

Luka, XO

Distraction. Following what she believed Laraan’s logic, Izzy thought about maybe replacing this faux Kaylee with their own. Izzy didn’t think her distraction would work completely, but she had to try something. Suddenly she leapt at the faux Kaylee intending to take her down in a knot in a hand to hand fight if necessary. Being excellently trained in Jiu Jitzu, she might have a shot. Though, Izzy didn’t know the capabilities of her opponent, she had to do something.

Delaney, Sec

Hearing a scuffle, Luka burst around the doorway and assessed the situation. Seeing Delaney in the process of attacking what she assumed was the false Kaylee, Luka shot forward to join the fight and attempt to restrain the assassin.

Luka, XO

Kaylee had opened her mouth to speak, but all that came out was a combination of a gasp and a scream, as Isabel lunged at the mirror Kaylee, and simultaneously the door flew open and the XO burst in as well. It seemed as if time had slowed considerably. She found herself backing away from the scuffle, while moving herself subconsciously towards their guests.

-Kaylee Baxter

Iliana Ghemor was between Delaney and Kaylee making it impossible for the security officer to attack directly. As Delaney angled around the Cardassian a strange thing happened, a brown scaled wrist reached out and grabbed Delaney as the Cardassian blindsided her attack from the flank. Simultaneously there was a double flash in the room that momentarily blinded everyone. When they stopped blinking Kaylee, Iliana Ghemor and Delaney were gone.

Rhan shook his head clearing his eyes “They can’t have gone far,” he said checking readings on a wrist device, “They must have a ship nearby”.

At that instant, a massive explosion rocked the Athena…

Junior Gamemaster Conspiracy Theorist
OOC Being as this action is all happening simultaneously let’s assume that all threads feel this explosion and save me from having to retype it everywhere :-)

Ooc: You forgot that Luka joined the little scuffle and would have presumably reached Kaylee just as Delaney was trying to slip past Ghemor.

• Mir

OOC Missed them by this much “I....I” Didn’t forget :-) all will be revealed but in the meantime, people might want to try and determine exactly what just happened :-)
Ian

Luckily for Laraan she was already sitting on the floor, so the rocking of the ship didn’t harm her, not physically anyhow.

Kaylee had been moving slowly backwards as the ship lurched, and as she was in movement, the sudden jolt caused her to lose her balance and fall to the floor, landing on her hip and side with a thud, pain searing through her leg as the impact hit her. She grimaced and braced her hands on the floor, in case they were rocked again by any aftershocks.

Thinking quickly, she tapped her comm badge. =/\= Baxter to the Bridge, scan the immediate area for any ships or shuttles, they may be cloaked! =/\=

-Kaylee Baxter

Luka had been in rapid movement when the shock of the explosion came, and the shake sent her flying into the ground in a most non-graceful manner. The officer didn’t bother to stand before sending her comm message.

=^=XO to Captain and to Bridge. Mirror Baxter seems to be a mercenary or assassin of sorts. She has absconded with one of the Mirror individuals…=^= here she looked to her Kaylee for the name of the kidnapped woman she hadn’t met. =^=A woman named Iliana Ghemor, and our Isabel Delaney. They seem to have transported out. What is your status?=^=

Luka, XO keeping lines of communication open

=/\=Koraia here. I’m down in security. I was grabbing backup to help deal with the situation but clearly my timing was terrible,=/\= Koraia said with clear irritation. =/\=I’m just getting patched up and we’ll be up in a minute. For the time being I want to keep the intruder alert until we’ve established for sure that they are no longer on the ship. And I want science scouring over ever bit of sensor data we can get, both inside and outside the ship. Find them, now. Is it still safe to keep our remaining guests in the conference room?=/\=

Fl. Captain Koraia, CO

Eddington looked at R’han who nodded in silent assertion. Eddington then spoke to Luka, “We can help you more from our respective commands, mine on my ship and R’han on Risa, however, we’ll be fine here in the meantime.” Eddington shook his head ruefully, “Did I miss something or did it look like Ghemor was working with the other woman?”

Junior Gamemaster Conspiracy Theorist

Laraan got up and returned to her chair, giving R’han a critical look.

Kaylee managed to pick herself up from the floor. She looked around the room, her eyes settling to Eddington. “It certainly looked that way to me. Have you had any suspicions about Ghemor or noticed any strange behavior recently?”

-Kaylee Baxter

Eddington shook his head. “She’s the Emissary of the Prophets, she’s always acting strangely”.

Rhan snorted, “I never trusted her, she plays by rules none of us can fathom. The woman she’s with is a trained assassin and she has an accomplice, her mother” He shook his head to try to clear the dark spots in his eyes. ” That flash of light was a double banger, I suspect they beamed after the flash grenade went off. Where the hell did that explosion come from anyway?”.

Junior Gamemaster Conspiracy Theorist

Laraan was sure Luka would take charge of finding that out and taking charge of the situation, so she concentrated on digging deeper into this wild mix of a political mess they had stumbled in. She looked at Eddington.

“She didn’t put up any fight, she even looked as if she was expecting all of this, there was no surprise in her eyes when the assassin party entered the room, as if she recognized them. We are obviously in the middle of this now and this ship and crew are in danger. I need you to tell me everything about your emissary of the prophets, including how a Cardassian could have become the emissary.” she said.

• Laraan, CNS