Knock Knock.

Posted on Tue Jul 5th, 2011 @ 4:45am by Lieutenant Mnheia t'Llaiir & Cab-Cantos Hajj No & Walter Jones & Charlotte Ashcroft & Bruce Air (PNPC) & Jan Valentine & Morgan Pass

1,692 words; about a 8 minute read

Mission: Session 5: Rush
Location: The Warden

With all of the threats to the ship and to their well being, Jones had them pack up and leave the station. The longer they stayed in one place, the easier it was going to be for someone to find them.

They had been at warp for a day or two. If it wasn't for the ships computer he wouldn't know what day it was.

"Jones, I'm reading power fluctuations in the computer core, attempting to stabilize." Jan said.

"What the hell is it? Please tell me that it isn't trying to reformat itself again." Jones swung around on the chair and looked over the console.

"Wait, it's stabilizing on it's own, it might have been some of the new components readjusting themselves." Jan said.

"Ohh, everything went better than expected. Good Work Jan." The captain leaned back in his chair.

With no warning, on every screen in the ship starts to blink with the message "Override Enabled". The ship jerked suddenly, and then stopped. After the ship came to a halt, the main lights cut out, shortly followed by the emergency lights starting up across the ship. Across the sound system, an automated message starts to blare out, "Emergency power and life support on line. All other systems off line."

"I don't believe this, someone has hacked into to core, I'm locked out!" Jan shouted, pounding a fist onto the console.

"Now what, I'm heading down there with a wrench to start bashing things." Walt stood up and looked at everyone on the bridge, "Lottie keep an eye on things while I go down there."

"Don't go breaking my computers. I have an idea, but it's going to take a few minutes for me to implement it." Jan said, dashing off the bridge with a flashlight in hand.

"Great, just great," Lottie muttered slapping open fist at the none responsive controls. "This really isn't our day,"

A dark grey shuttle pulled in front of the warden, most likely custom built. It comes to a halt directly in front of the ship, and turned away, revealing a hatch opening, and a single figure in a zero-g suit floating out.

Lottie squinted: "What the hell is that?"

Jones stopped at the back door of the cabin and looked at the scene unfolding. "What the hell is going on here?"

As Jones looked on, the figure came closer and closer to the front of the ship. As the figure drew in, the face inside of the suit became clear. It looked female, and very much Vulcan.

"Jones, can you see...?" Lottie called still staring unblniking at the figure that drifted toward them.

After a blast of static came screaming through the speakers, a slightly distorted voice, not unfamiliar as of late, began speaking over the communications system. "Why hello again, Walter. I hope you didn't think that I would forget about you. I must say that you are in luck on this day, as I am having far too much fun to end this so early. I trust that no harm has come to your crew yet?"

Jones went to the window to get a view of who or what was coming at them. "We are doing pretty good" He looked at the Vulcan in the space suit "How are you doing?" Jones was obviously stalling for time. "Do you have our take out order?"

"Ah. I had forgotten just how witty you could be. Unfortunately, I failed to bring a case of whiskey for you and your crew. I hope that you can forgive me."

"Jones whoever the hell they are, keep them talking, I'll have us running again soon." Jan said.

"I bloody hope so Jan." Lottie replied lowly.

The comm started up again. " Jan? Lottie? I hope that it's alright to refer to you as such. I assure you that you have no worries at this moment. Relax. Take a deep breath. When I come for you, you'll know it's coming."



Over the speakers, the voice came to life again. "I felt that such a meeting should always include a gift. I, of course, wondered what kind of gift a crew such as yourself would enjoy, and admit that it was not a particularly easy choice as to what that gift should entail. However, it seems that fate itself knew what my desire was, and dropped such a gift in front of me on my way here." As the voice finished speaking, a spotlight from his ship shined upon the figure in the space suit. It was none other than the former communications officer, Mnheia t'Llaiir. "I suppose I should mention that she was going to kill you all for the bounty."

Over the sound system, the Vulcan's voice came over, frantic even by human standards. "What? You are giving me to them? They ruined everything! Bring me back! Please! I can't be lef..shhtkt......" Her voice cut to static, and then to nothing. She had now made it to the Warden's viewport.

Jones stared at the woman on the other side of the glass, and tilted his head a little bit, trying to take in what was going on. "Look, I don't know who you are or what you are at." Jones pointed at the woman. "I doubt she has much air left in there."

Lottie crossed her arms not liking this one bit.



The being in the other ship came across the com once again. "With the delivery of this gift, I must bid you farewell. You will see me soon enough. Until then." His warp engines spun up, and shortly thereafter, disappeared into the stars. And then, the Vulcan started knocking on the window. And she looked like she may have actually started crying.

"That was weired, anyone you know Jones?" Lottie asked

"Yeah, I think I do." Jones turned his head a little and looked at the woman "She was on our crew for a little bit.



Suddenly, regular lighting resumed, and the override message was lost in static as all the screens turned blank.

"What a strange person. Anyway, I've re-routed control through the engine's computer, a portable terminal and several tricorders linked together. Should I open a hatch for the 'gift', or should I just blast it with the disruptor cannons?" Jan said.

He turned and looked at Jan and then back at the Vulcan, then Jan, the Vulcan. "We do need a new space suit, though I doubt I have the body to fit in that."

"Oh fine, I'll open an airlock. Somebody better be ready for this person if it's all an act." Jan said, tapping the controls on one of the tricorders, which opened a nearby airlock for the Vulcan.

"I'll go," Lottie sighed drawing a distrupter from its holster and headed off the bridge to greet the guest.

Air tapped gingerly at the controls. Dropping the computers out while they were at Warp would have been catastrophic. Luckily the old bird had a scram actuator still functional. When the Computer interlinks when down the ship had dropped out of Warp on it's own and come to a complete stop. Whoever had done this had not tampered with the Engine's computers. Was that short-sighted, or by plan?

"Jan," He commed back, "I am going to need that engine computer back before I try any more Warp travel. I am not trying course corrections on the CPU of a Tricorder."

"These networked tricorders have enough processing power to run the ship on their own. And besides, without the main computer, your console is useless. I have control over the whole ship down here. It's a good thing I built that separate computer for engine management, the scram actuators were offline, so the EMC shut the engines down itself." Jan said.

Air was quite pale and there was a tremble in his voice, "Erm... I do hope you are joking, or the EMC had back up actuators. Other wise you might want to check your coils. We may have fused a couple... if not all of them... and it is time to buy a lottery ticket.... lot's of tickets."

The trouble with engineers is they though piloting was all about the controls, and the inter-flow matrix; that is could be broken down to numbers and mechanical interplay. Piloting was an art form. But it was an extreme art, and getting it wrong cost lives. Air knew better than most pilots the limits he could push a ship to. That was what being Nova Squad meant. It also meant knowing when NOT to push it. This bird wasn't going ANYWHERE till he got his computer back.

"Ah shit, we lost a few coils, the backup actuators were too slow. Ah well, no sense in staying stopped out here while I get the main computer back online. Hang on people, I'm gonna try to resume course at half impulse." Jan said, tapping away at the tricorders and terminal.

The ship gave a sudden lurch, a few shudders, and then settled down as it got underway.

"That wasn't so hard, now let's see what kind of disaster is lurking in the computer core." Jan said.

Air thought to himself, "So... we are travelling at one eight the speed of light, without sensors, or a decent helm interface, no engine control system, since it is being used to run the rest of the ship, and the engineer has walked away from the controls..."

He smiled as he stood up from the chair and addressed Jones, "Permission to run up and down the corridor screaming until we hit something, sir?"

"Oh shut up, Bruce, I have autopilot on. Besides, we're in empty space. Unless an asteroid decides to radically change course, or some idiot stalls his shuttle in front of us, we'll be fine." Jan said.

Bruce nodded his head, "In that case... I'll just walk up and down screaming."

"I'm going down to meet our guest. Jan you've got the bridge." Jones stood up and followed Lottie down to the airlock.

 

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