Posted by Gamemaster Wolfe Of Chaotica (Senior Gamemaster) in Main Sim: Deck 7

Posted by Captain Molly Holloway (Chief Intelligence Officer) in Main Sim: Deck 7

Posted by Gamemaster Wolfe Of Chaotica (Senior Gamemaster) in Main Sim: Deck 7
Posted by… suppressed (9) by the Post Ghost! 👻
Molly tried to keep her head in the game as she jumped over tree roots, leaves, and other low-lying vegetation. The lush tree canopies of the rainforest towered high above her, allowing only a few stray rays of sunshine to light her path. After her… incident… with her training program Molly had found her access to it reduced, an arrangement she had made with the ship’s counselor. So as she ran through her habitual route among the trees, Holloway tried her best not to grumble in annoyance at her current situation.

It was then that the first jolt came, sending Molly flying forwards onto a tree. With a yelp, she braced herself for impact, but the impact never came. Instead, she found herself momentarily weightless staring at the dull grid of an empty holodeck.

Her zero G experience lasted but a split second, before artificial gravity kicking back to life. With the agility and technique of the expertly trained special ops officer that she was, Molly landed lightly on her hands, before rolling forward in a somersault and landing on her hands and knees.

Red alert sirens filled the air as the room lit up with the eerie red glow of the same warning. Something was wrong. Very very wrong.

As Molly got back to her feet and scrambled to get to the door, a new wave of blasts rocked the ship, sending the Intelligence Officer flying backwards, her body blinking out of consciousness as the back of her head violently hit the deck.

It might have been seconds, or maybe a few minutes before Holloway’s eyes opened once again to the red glowing holodeck. The alarms making her head ring. Inside the holodeck, virtually isolated from the outside world, Molly rubbed the back of her head as the world came slowly into focus. Lightheaded, Molly finally got up, and walked as briskly as she could to the door.

On standard power saving measures, the holodeck doors opened only enough for her fingers to side through them and manually open them, but it was enough for the noise from the corridor to fill Molly’s ears. Screams, cries, orders barked over everything else. Pushing the doors open, Holloway walked into the chaos.

It was a hellish sight. People running, bleeding, hurt… others laying on the floor, lifeless, taken too soon simply by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. “What happened?” Molly stopped a young operations ensign, his shirt tainted with so much blood he could be mistaken by a command officer. “Not sure, Ma’am.” Even in her workout clothes, it was clear to the young man who she was. “Hull breaches on several decks. We were thrown out of warp. Multiple injuries and causalities, as well as multiple explosions and fires across the ship… Ma’am? Are you okay? Do you want me to get you to Sickbay?” Molly blinked trying to get her vision back into focus. For a moment she seemed to get out of her daze. “What? No. I’m fine.” Was this just another nightmare? Taking her fingers to the back of her head once more, Holloway noticed the red liquid smeared on the tips of her fingers. She must have cut herself on the fall. “I should get to the Bridge. Thank you Ensign. Dismissed.”

With a polite nod, the young officer ran off. The fog in her vision seemed to be slowly lifting and Molly adjusted the holster of the faithful old Earth pistol she carried with her at all times. As fast as she could, she started making her way back to the Bridge not daring to think about what she would find before she could reach it.

Capt. Holloway, CIO

Being on deck 8, the area outside the holodeck had been spared the worst of the horror that now occupied the lower 15 decks of the Dresden. Still, the flickering panel lights, the half-open doors on emergency power and the littering of dazed and running officers betrayed the seriousness of their situation. At one intersection, the turbolift doors hung ajar, a plasma fire raging in the shaft, contained only by the emergency forcefields that were themselves flickering. The deck shifted, shuddering from aftershocks even more than twenty decks higher. Artificial gravity fluctuated, sometimes heavier, sometimes lighter as engineering teams desperately tried to reroute power from the destroyed EPS grid in the star drive. For some reason, emergency power didn’t seem to be functioning in quite the way it should. Two bodies lay crumpled in the corridor a little further on, blood pooling from the gaping cavity that had once been the head of a red-shirted lieutenant, his uniform scorched, along with the bulkhead above him, the duranium plating bubbled from extreme heat. Another, a little further along was missing most of his left shoulder, his arm scorched and melted a little further along, again with the bulkhead blistered by a sudden heat, scorching around it.

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Growing up, Molly had been taught the dichotomy between good and evil. Right and wrong. Heaven and hell. Visible over her sleeveless Starfleet issued undershirt the gold cross that had once belonged to her mother was a living memory of that distant past. And yet, while she understood the moral compass that drove most beings, she refused to believe that such a thing as eternal damnation would exist. Until now. Because now she was in it.

As her eyes caught the scorched remains of the two officers she felt nauseated. A rare occurrence when it came to Molly. She didn’t know whether it was the concussion speaking or the constant shifts in artificial gravity. Or both. Or something else entirely.

However, what struck Holloway as odd was the bulkhead directly over the bodies. It had bubbles… almost as if it had been exposed to extreme heat. Fire would not have done it, and she didn’t think anything in her immediate surroundings could have caused it either.

Walking towards the bodies, Molly kneeled beside them taking one of the officers’ tricorder, as another wave of nausea hit her. It was the smell… burnt flesh mixed with fresh blood… Holding her breath she scanned the bulkhead and the bodies, checking to see if anything would clue her in what had possibly have happened to the pair.

Capt. Holloway, CIO

The tricorder revealed residual energy that her extensive knowledge would recognize as disruptor fire on both the body and the bulkheads. The pattern was consistent with both Klingon disruptors and the further down with Cardassian phasers, but the signature had an odd phase variance that wouldn’t be familiar to her.

Molly furrowed her brow as she read the analysis relayed to her by the tricorder. Klingon weapons? Cardassian weapons? The last time ‘Romulans’ had attacked them it turned out they were Jem’Hadar with a stolen ship. Could these be stolen weapons? Was this actually a Cardassian and Klingon attack? Questions Holloway couldn’t answer but she needed to keep an open mind if she ever wanted to find what was going on. Not to mention… there was something wrong with the phase variance of the weapons’ signature. Molly eyed the tricorder suspiciously wondering if it was working properly.

The doors to the isolinear chip core flew apart as three black suited and helmeted humanoids stalked through, one carrying a grey-green case. They paused for a split second, seemingly shocked to be encountering anybody, before the one carrying the case pulled what was clearly a cardassian phaser pistol from his hip, and one of the others raised a klingon disruptor rifle. The third turned and raised his own rifle in the opposite direction, covering their rear. Coordinated, well trained, heavily armed. The familiar gold streak of Cardassian phaser fire struck the wall next to her as three bursts of green disruptor energy followed.

SGM

Diving to dodge the blasts, Molly slid on the blood pooling on the deck. Her hand instinctively reaching for her Hackathorn Special on the small of her back. She needed to back out of there, and she needed to do it now.

Unholstering the old Earth .45 caliber pistol, Holloway fired three shots, hoping the fluctuations on the artificial gravity didn’t make her life harder. As a highly trained Intel Officer, when Molly fired, she usually hit her mark. However, these were not her usual targets.

Capt. Holloway, CIO

The amount of technological advancement that went into the many varieties of extra vehicular suits used by any number of species across the alpha and beta quadrant was astounding. Most contained centuries of advancements that allowed them to absorb fantastic amounts of directed and disrupter energy while maintaining their integrity. There was an intense irony that despite all of those advances, all of that technology and all of the fantastical developments that had produced the suits worn by these opponents, no one had actually thought to consider providing a defense against high speed solid matter kinetic projectiles. The bullets tore through their suits like a hot knife through plomeek. One could almost feel the shock as the one carrying the klingon rifle fell to a knee, bright pink blood oozing from two not insignificant holes now peppering his abdomen. He stumbled, his hand reaching out to the nearest bulkhead trying to rise, before slumping to the deck. The one carrying the cardassian phaser fared better, the bullet striking the faceplate of his helmet cracking, but not shattering it. It ricocheted into the bulkhead next to him, his head snapping back from the force, but coming forward again as he fired twice more towards Holloway, his aim thrown off by the disorientation that now peppered his heads up display. The third had turned at the loud report from the .45, shocked by such an unusual sound. As he saw the one slump to the deck and the other fire blindly, he turned his own klingon rifle to the downed form and notched it to maximum before firing, vaporizing the form and leaving nothing but a scorched outline in the deck carpet. He slapped a device on his left hip, the sparkle of a golden transporter effect enveloping them almost instantly.

Molly could feel the heat as she effortlessly dodged the fire from the Cardassian phaser. Its owner clearly disoriented by her own attack, making her job much easier. And then the third one raised his rifle, and Holloway prepared for yet another volley. But it never came. Instead, she watched, horrified as the figure vaporized his teammate. In that moment, Molly was certain that these were not just Klingon rifles they were carrying. These were actual Klingons. Which in turn told her, the others were… Cardassians? Klingons and Cardassians… together attacking a Federation ship… It made no sense.

But the Dresden’s Intel Officer didn’t have a lot of time to wonder about the issue, as what looked like a transporter beam enveloped the two survivors and dematerialized them from the deck.

The container they had carried out of the isolinear core room lay abandoned on the floor. Contained within were dozens of chips from the main computer bank containing sections of the main federation database, but more importantly detailed blueprints and technical specifications for the Dresden, as well as several other Starfleet ship classes, including the Templar and Cutlass class fighters. There were specifications for Starfleet personnel and anti-personnel weapons, including the isomagnetic disintegrator, type II and III pulse compression phaser rifles, photon grenades and the newly released fourth iteration of the tetryon pulse launcher. It was clear whoever these people were, they had some not insignificant expertise at cracking complex encryption algorithms. What was odd though was that with the exception of the some of the more complex shipboard systems and the tetryon pulse launcher, there was nothing particularly propietary or top secret about the information stolen.

SGM

Molly jogged to the case one of the intruders was carrying, wondering what they group had been after. What she saw made her heart sink. Dozens of information chips, blueprints, ship specs, technology specs… not only from the Dresden and but form other ship classes as well. However, nothing of what they had taken seemed to be particularly secret. Holloway furrowed her brow. Cardassians and Klingons… the odd weapon’s signature… and now this… something was off, but Molly couldn’t exactly pinpoint what.

Closing the case and standing up, Molly took the chips. There was no way she was leaving them lying around for them to come back and pick up. On the wall, her image stared back at her from a powered down wall console, making Molly jump at the unexpected and horrific sight. She looked straight out of a horror movie… her hair, clothes, and pale skin covered in blood. Blood that was not even her own but from the two officers that had unfortunately been on the intruders’ path.

As she peeked into what was left of the isolinear chip core to see if anything else had been taken, Holloway tapped her commbadge, unsure of whether her message would reach its destination.

It was not immediately apparent that anything had been taken that wasn’t already in the box outside, but the floor was littered with isolinear chips and ODN relay control chips. The main computer terminal was flickering, warning of significantly reduced processing power from the missing chips.

=/\= Wright to Bridge, please come in. =/\= The change in her last name was still very recent and sometimes it was easier to just use the name everyone was accustomed to.

Capt. Holloway, CIO

SGM

Aside from the few mandatory Engineering courses Molly had had at the Academy, Holloway was definitely not an Engineer, and the terminals might as well be written in a long lost alien language. However, from what she could see nothing else seemed to have been taken. There was still the very pressing issue of the isolinear chips currently on the case needing to be returned to their original place – a task Molly did not know how to solve on her own. If she could get to the Bridge she was sure she could hand in the chips to one of the Engineering officers and have them fix it, so that was what she was going to do.

Walking back into the corridor, case in one hand, pistol on the other, Holloway hurried to try and find a turbolift that wasn’t on fire. Or at least, some other way of getting to the Bridge. Fast.

Capt. Holloway, CIO

There was a turbolift at the end of the corridor, the doors closed, which meant either it was functional, or completely without power. There was no sign of her pursuers, or anyone really, near her position.

SGM

The emptiness of the corridor made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. Molly wasn’t used to being completely by herself on a starship’s corridor and even though she knew why no one was there, it made her slightly uneasy.

Hurriedly, Holloway jogged to the turbolift at the end of the corridor, frantically looking in every direction, making sure the intruders she had met earlier wouldn’t decide to show up again. Especially when they had left without their stolen goods.

Briskly, still holding the case in one hand and her weapon on the other, Molly approached the turbolift doors hoping they would open. If they didn’t, she would have to find another way to get to the upper decks.

Capt. Holloway, CIO

The doors didn’t immediately part at her approach. A brief pause, then they opened far faster than one would think - fast enough that she didn’t even have time to react at the phaser beam lanced out from her black suited friend, striking her square in the chest. A brief moment of consciousness was all that was left to her as she followed her limp body down to the deck.

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The black suited man holstered his cardassian phaser, a smirk hidden beneath his polarized faceplate as he and his Klingon companion stepped out of the turbolift. It had been a quick turnaround, but logcal that they would be able to offer more surprise from the turbolift. Even a simpleton could deduce that she would attempt to use the only means of egress from this deck and return to her Starfleet companions. The Klingon stood guard, his rifle communicating his suspicion down the corridor. His companion snorted softly under his breath, still disgusted at being placed under the command of these stinking animals. He leaned down, touching the fallen woman long enough to slap the transport beacon at his side. He hoped the effort they’d gone through to acquire her. This thought followed him through transport.

SGM