From The Depths

Posted on Sat Jan 29th, 2022 @ 11:01pm by Lieutenant Commander Tiandith 'Tia' Tobru

1,030 words; about a 5 minute read

Mission: Episode 4 - The Fires Of Hades
Location: Alternate Universe: Planet Kra'ki then Prime Universe: DS21

Tia was still reeling know the destruction of her cell. She had worked with them for years helping people escape their Dominion overlords but that came at a price.

When they were found their camp was obliterated, people were incinerated and others taken for interrogation.

In the corner of her shuttle, the Hildressen, lay one of her comrades. A Reman by the name of Skrel, lifeless. She had known him for 6 months now and since his escape from the mines of Repara II he had been hard at work helping them secure their own camp, their little civilisation with his engineering knowledge. Well, that was no more.

She closed her eyes as she tried to get some modicom of sleep. It had been a long few days running for their lives, trying to avoid Dominion patrol but that was the way it had been for the past 25 years since they had won the war.

Starfleet gone. The Federation dissolved. The powers that were at be now on the verge of extinction whilst those that served the Dominion flourished, well as well as they could do under strict rule.

Tia's head had just nodded downward as the sensor panel lit up. A faint notification of something strange in the neighbourhood. However, who were they calling?

Sluggishly moving over to the console she brought up the information that the sensors had collected. It was a faint energy signal from Kra'ki, a desolate planet that once housed a civilisation but not for a long time now.

Her shuttlecraft was an old girl. A 2371 model from the Cavalry. She'd kept up well for 25 years but a lot of care had went into her as she shuffled her way towards the orbit of the planet known as Kra'ki.

Tia spun around in her chair and slid along to the next station. The navigation station is where she ended up and brought the shuttle to a standard orbit above. She called up the sensor scans and it revealed an object down below emitting a low level power signature.

Throwing caution to the wind she beamed it up.

It was much larger than she thought it would be as it almost took up the whole transporter pad. The design was vaguely familiar but Tia could not pinpoint it. Almost like a forgotten memory, a briefing of years past possibly.

She pulled out a tricorder and scanned it more closely. Maybe a more detailed analysis would reveal some secrets.

Oh it did more than that.

Scanning it almost so intrusively seemed to anger in inanimate object.

The Hildressen began to shake as Tia's eyes spun around to look out the cockpit windows. A wallowing spiral of cloud and colour was the best fitting description of what she saw and she was caught in it.

Tia pulled a phaser from her hip and tried to blast the artefact, somehow feeling it was this that caused the start of this. There was an overload that followed the beam back and Tia dropped the phaser.

"Great... you protect yourself then." she grumbled as she propped herself up in the pilot seat of the shuttle.

She tried to fight the currents but it was like a little wooden ship caught in a whirlpool in the open seas. Unforgiving and unrelenting as she spun around getting swallowed up by this hungry space tornado.

As she hit the centre there was a flash. That's the best way she could describe it as everything then became calm and rested.

Tia had fell to the floor but upon picking herself up she looked from the windows to find herself inside somewhere. Yes, inside.

"Computer, identify location." Tia spoke.

"No." the computer replied.

Tia frowned and swore at her in El Aurian. Sometimes she wished she hadn't gotten a personality upgrade for the shuttle but sometimes it was nice to have some conversation.

"Language, Admiral. There are dead Remans present." the computer added.

"Classy as ever, Hildre." Tia rolled her eyes as she opened the rear of the shuttlecraft. She had her phaser ready, just in case as the design looked peculiarly Cardassian in nature.

Tia peered her head out, being ever so careful as to not trip any alarms but there was nothing, not even a single person present within what looked like a cargo bay.

She began to relax a little, but only a smidgen, she never truly did so and not for years now. There was always a danger over her shoulder, a Jem'Hadar hidden in plain sight with a Vorta puppet master above.

Over by a set of crates was a console, again looking quite Cardassian in origin but with strangely familiar data entry point ports.

She approached the console and took a wire from her long dark red coat and plugged it from her own old and battered tricorder and put the other end into the console.

Breaking the encryption was easy and unlike the Cardassian tech she had came to know. Her own Federation/Starfleet styled encryption techniques seemed to work a charm and she had data at her fingertips.

The year was still 2397 but it seemed Starfleet was in charge of this station.

Tia frowned in disbelief. Surely this was a trap? Some elaborate scheme to catch her off guard and get information out of her.

She called up the command manifest. Strange, a Betazoid in charge... and the uniforms looked totally different from what she had came to know 25 years ago. Again it gave her doubt and some pause.

Tapping her personal holoprojector she input some parameters and her clothing changed to a yellow Starfleet uniform of current 'apparent' design and she fashioned 2 pips on her chest. Bit of a demotion but she did not want to draw attention to herself. Ensign was too low, she wouldn't get anywhere but a Lieutenant was just enough authority and respect to get some answers if need be.

"Hildre, cloak my love." Tia spoke as she touched her ear.

"With pleasure, Admiral." she spoke back almost as if a sullen teenager had been sent to her room.

Tia rolled her eyes. She'd need to be careful here, one misstep could be disastrous.

 

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