The Return

Posted on Sat Apr 16th, 2022 @ 12:05pm by Captain Ivan Petrov & Commander Cyrus Cain & Lieutenant Commander Troy Marshall & Lieutenant Cael Maz & Captain Fergus Williams & Lieutenant Johnathan Anderson III & Lieutenant JG Melissa Jones & Lieutenant JG Karen Lamont & Lieutenant JG Kassandra Selin

Mission: S1 Episode 2: Caretaker, Part II
Location: Various Locations
Timeline: Mission Day 6 at 2000
2940 words - 5.9 OF Standard Post Measure

Bridge
Black faded to gray and then to the subtle blue and white light which had become familiar to him as a dream drifted into real life again. Captain Ivan Petrov rolled over onto his side and, only when he saw that he was face to face with Cyrus Cain did he understand that he was laying on the deck plating of the Bridge. Grunting, he shifted quickly into a position, sitting up. he looked at his XO who did the same, and their eyes respectively met those of other bridge crew now coming to as well. He felt fine; well rested, even. Pulling his massive frame to a standing position, he grabbed Cain's hand and pulled him up as well.

"Last thing I remember, I was standing on the farm listening to that damn banjo music." Petrov said, scratching his gray and white head.

Melissa woke up and began to check the systems. "Captain we have been unconscious for a period of three days. All systems are operational."

Rhen staggered out of the turbolift holding his head. "What happened? One moment I was at this farm it looked like then woke up on the turbolift floor in a pool of my own drool."

The Captain quirked an eyebrow at the Ensign but said nothing to question him. Just then, who knows just how everyone might find themselves.

"Three days?" he asked, frowning. "What's our position?"

Johnathan groaned slightly as he stirred from where he lay on the deck. It took him a few beats to fully regain his senses. He then climbed back to his feet and moved to check his console. "Captain, we...we haven't moved. We're still parked next to the array!"

"Lieutenant Marshall, are you awake back there?" the Captain asked, looking back toward the tactical station. "What happened with your team? Did you do anything to...piss them off?"

Troy regained his bearings. He looked at the Captain. "One of the holographic characters was preventing my team from searching. Things got...a little heated."

"Captain.... some of the Crew has not been returned." Melissa noted. "This is intolerable. I will not let those idiotic farmers, and their annoying music, abduct our crew."

"That's my job to worry about, Lieutenant." Ivan cut in, his voice authoritative and clear. He would have no repeats of Lieutenant Anderson's behavior from that point forward.

The door slid open as Williams stepped out. He looked like hell especially given one of his eyes was missing. " Sir." He said studying himself on the rail. His enhanced body had stopped the bleeding a while ago, but he must have lost quite a bit of blood.

"What the fuck happened to you?" the Captain asked, his face in a frown as he looked at the marine.

"No idea sir. Woke up like this on the marine gym floor. Last thing I can remember is taking a swing at one of the farmers. Body felt like I was hitting a blob of gelatin. " The grizzled marine hissed through his gritted teeth.

"Get down to Sickbay on the double. That's an order, Captain. Who knows what else might be ailing you after your ordeal."

Williams began to think of a reply, but simply nodded and headed for the turbolift.

Rhen took a seat at one of the auxiliary stations linking into tactical. "Why do they need our people for? What they too busy with their hoe down they forgot harvest season?" He asked.

Melissa compiled a list of missing crew quickly based upon the presence of their combadges. She then noticed something that made her eyes widen, and she tapped her combadge. "Ami!!!!!" She got no response. "Ami... Answer!!!"

"Calm down, Jones. Just because she doesn't have her combadge doesn't mean she isn't here." Cain said, shaking his head. "We have to remain rational."

Maz entered from the ready room, which is apparently where he was dropped off, "Well I have ruled out this being Q so there is that." he said fixing his uniform before going toward his station at science.

Kiera emerged from the conference room which was definitely not where she was supposed to be. Looking around she was relieved to see her husband Rhen, but didn’t see any sign of Lieutenant Selin so she proceeded to take Selin’s place at Intel. “There’s no sign of Lieutenant Selin onboard ship Captain, it also appears Lieutenant Vali is missing.”

"We don't know that for sure until we search this ship deck by deck." The Captain said, raising his voice so that everyone stopped their chatter and looked to him. The news that his daughter might be missing shook him a bit, but he remained in control of his emotions, unlike some people. "That is exactly what we're going to do until we know exactly who we do or do not have. Cyrus, take a census of Decks 1-5, Troy, record all the people on Decks 6-9, and Cael, you take Decks 10-15. Report back to me when you have the numbers, and pull any crew you need for it. Quickly, quickly."

"Aye aye." Commander Cain said, moving quickly toward the turbolift with immediate focus on the task at hand. "Lieutenant Jones, Mattison, you're with me."

Melissa nodded and followed the Captain calmly.

"Aye sir" The ensign from Intelligence replied. Part of him hoped Selin was gone as it would leave the door open for him.

Troy headed to the turbolift. He was going to his quarters for a proper uniform before conducting his search of the assigned decks.

Cael nodded. He closed down his station and moved toward the lift, waiting for it to arrive again so that he could begin his search.

Sickbay
Karen came in from the corridor. She had woken up lying there but and had a strange feeling. She was trying to remember something that was just on the tip of her tongue. She was not her normal self when she stepped in. She was visibly disoriented. "This thing is getting..." She paused. She seemed unsure of a word. "Frustrating," was the one upon which she finally settled. A gift for understatement.

"It's not how I saw my week going, I can tell you that much." Mika said, sitting in a chair in the Sickbay, looking a bit out of it. "Are you alright, ma'am?"

"I don't know," Karen said. "I feel like there's something I should remember but I don't." She walked over to a console and frowned. "What do you remember, Mika, between the farm and now?"

"Well, like most people, I was sitting in the field waiting for something to happen. I saw as your team tried to speak to the old man with the banjo and what happened to Johnathan." Mika answered, then standing up and straightening out her uniform. "Then, suddenly, I woke up here on the floor underneath your desk. To be honest, I'm a bit sore, but I don't remember anything else.

"It's been three days," Karen said with alarm. She hit her commbadge as she moved, "Dr. Rosen, report to sickbay." She grabbed a medical tricorder and returned to Mika, running it over the woman. "We need to get data from a fair sampling of people. It doesn't need to be everyone but one or two people might have idiosyncracies. We want to get the data as quickly as possible before effects have had much time to wear off so scanning first, analyzing later, starting with our own personnel. We're looking at body chemistry. We're looking at brain chemistry. We're looking at stomach contents and, really, we're looking thoroughly at everything. Get on the biobed for me, Mika."

"Oh...uh..okay." Mika said, sounding a bit shaken and more than a little uncertain. She climbed up as asked, being sure to keep her legs properly closed in the uniform skirt. "What are you looking for, exactly, Doctor?"

"Everything," Karen said. "We don't know why we were out for three days. If we were sedated, there will be traces of the sedatives left in our bloodstreams. If we were subject to trauma, there will be signs of that in the midbrain, the diencephalon, or the carotid sinus. If it were done telepathically, there are also certain neurological indicators." Karen began running scans. "You have no more reason to be worried than anyone else onboard, Mika. We all went through a common experience." That was, perhaps, less reassuring than Karen intended it to be.

" I think some of us had a different experience doctor. " Williams stated as he walked through the door.

"Apparently so," Karen said, setting the biobed to begin its scans of Mika even as she went to attend Williams. "Let's get you to a biobed." She reached an arm out to steady him. "Were you in combat with the entity?"

"Last thing I can remember was taking a swing at the farmer that had Revana. Then I was waking up in the marine's gym." the marine hissed as he sat down on one of the biobeds.

"Oh, your poor man." Mika said under her breath, looking at the wounded marine from her position on her own biobed. Her instincts told her to go and help, but she had orders to follow. "Maybe they took it as punishment then?"

"Then why wipe my memory. Most likely took it as a biological specimen. " the marine added.

"They wiped all of our memories, Captain." Mika responded, looking up at the ceiling. She struggled to recall what might have happened to her, but she couldn't. It was like she took a three day slumber.

"If there were any to wipe," Karen said as she set up the biobed, taking readings from Williams. "We might have been unconscious the entire time. The precision with which the eye was removed suggests that it was done clinically, not in the heat of combat. That also does make it easier to fit you with a prosthetic."

2200 Hours - 2 Hours Later
Bridge
Following the extensive search, all the present senior staff and then some were standing on the Bridge, some at their stations and still others floating to hear the news. Ivan cleared his throat and looked to the XO to deliver the unfortunate news. Cyrus, not pleased that the dirty job fell to him, cleared his throat and put on a stiff upper lip anyway.

"We have accounted for every member of our crew...except for two people. Lieutenants Selin and Vali are not aboard the ship. They must be back on the Array, though our sensors can't truly penetrate its hull."

Kiera looked towards Petrov and Cain. “Whatever it is they want from us, they obviously found it in Lieutenant’s Selin and Vali, question is just what are they looking for? Why take a pregnant woman?”

The marine XO chuckled slightly. " You really need to ask Petty Officer. "

Kiera offered Williams a glance. “Is it just Vali they want? the baby? For what reason? If they were planning a breeding program all the women from the ship would be gone, and why Selin? There’s something about the two of them that has obviously made them stand out from the rest of us.”

"Genetic testing seems to have been on the agenda, if I'm remembering correctly. Commander Cain said, reflecting on the conversation he'd had on the Array with the Captain after they had spoken with the old man. "It seems to me that these two crew might have had a genetic marker he was looking for."

"Speculation is pointless.. We must deal with the here and now. Retrieval of Lt. Selin and Lt. Vali. Preferably before both are damaged. Two options present themselves." Melissa noted. "Frist; I have managed to get a scan of the power source that holodeck uses to create the farm. It is a wide enclosed area. We can triangulate the power source with some probes and beam a retrieval team into the 'farm.'"

"The second possibility is to use shuttlecraft to attempt a marine penetration of the facility, however we have no intelligence on what could be waiting for them. Given that this intelligence rendered us unconscious at will, we would be at its mercy if we were to board this array without preparation. We must know how to prevent from being rendered unconscious."

"Dr. Rosen and I are working on extrapolating more about the mechanism by which we were rendered unconscious from scans we've taken of some of the crew. I'd also like to take some more," Karen said. "It might be useful in preventing it from happening again." She did not sound confident.

"Would you need to be aboard the Array to take another scan or do you just need to be close?" Cain asked then, crossing his arms under his chest.

"Sir, I'm talking about scanning crew members who have been rendered unconscious by whatever happened to us over there," Karen clarified. "Anything that can be learned from the array itself is probably more Lieutenant Jones's area than mine."

"Then lets have the two of you work together on that one, shall we?" he asked rhetorically, looking between Karen and Melissa. "Find us a way to become immune to whatever effect rendered us unconscious."

"I will give you my maintenance records for the time in question doctor. I have a full diagonistic subsystem in my core neural-interfaces. The data should allow you to expedite your research into a means of countering this entity's influence." Melissa noted. "I will provide this data to you and assist in developing a countermeasure."

"Thank you," Karen said.

"You have half an hour." Ivan said declaratively. "I hope that's enough time, considering medical has already been working on it. We are going back, and this time we will be armed. We will find our crew, and we will make this fucking creature send us back home."

"I have respect for Kassanndra Selin, Captain. She has endured hardship as well as I. I will not leave her nor Lt. Vali to this entity's whims." She noted. "I know what it feels to be at the mercy of insidious intent. I wish to personally retrieve her, sir."

Johnathan quietly stepped up to Ivan and came to attention. "Captain, request permission to be included in the rescue team. Kass...Lieutenant Selin, is very important to me, Sir."

Ivan looked at the man. He wasn't tremendously happy with him at the moment, if he was to be honest. Not only was he dating his daughter but he had also not comported himself well with the entity before. Nevertheless, he looked the man solidly in the eye and decided to be fair.

"Yes, Lieutenant. You will be there." he said, then he looked over at Troy whose fiancé was also missing. "You as well, son."

Johnathan felt a swell of relief flood through his chest. "Thank you, Sir," he replied respectfully. "I won't let you down again, Sir!"

"See that you don't, son. We can't afford to lose ourselves out here." Ivan responded, balling a fist. "We have to be strong."

Troy was prepared to return to the Array, this time properly dressed, equipped and armed. He was going to find Callie and take out whoever had taken her.

2230 Hours - 30 Minutes Later
Bridge
Karen returned to the bridge and immediately looked for Captain Petrov. "We have the results, sir," she said, sounding more confident than she had before. "We were kept unconscious through the use of a formula similar to thiopental but faster acting. If the transporter were perfectly calibrated, unconsciousness could have been induced instantly upon transport. Transport could have also been accompanied by an initial shock, of which no detectable traces would remain, that would allow the victim no time to regain awareness before the drugs became active. I don't believe the drug was inhaled this time but it could be administered that way. In any event, I don't believe the entity acted directly on our minds. I believe its apparent ability to render us unconscious was a matter of chemistry and its advanced transporter technology, against which transport inhibitors and filtration masks are our best defense. Given its advanced technology, I can't guarantee it wouldn't power through them but..." She shrugged. There were never guarantees in situations like this.

"Well, whatever they're dealing with certainly made themselves seem more powerful than they were, I suppose." the Captain said, sitting in the command chair with his one leg crossed over the other. He ran his leather-gloved hand through his beard and sighed, his mind working. "We should have the materials we need to get suited up straight away."

"Yes, sir," Karen agreed. "Better technology than ours but still just technology." Her mind went back to learning 23rd century history in school when the Empire's best and bravest had encountered so many strange, ascended god-like beings.

"Sir," Karen added, "Lieutenant Vali is pregnant and has recently had significant and risky surgery, in addition to whatever hardships she and Lieutenant Selin may have undergone sense. They may need immediate, on site medical assistance."

"You're saying you want to go, is that right?" the Captain asked. "That seems like the best course of action to me. In the meantime, have Dr. Rosen and your department work to find out what the hell they were doing to us over there for three days."

"Yes, sir," Karen agreed.

Petrov stood then and tapped his commbadge, his face stern and serious.

"Petrov to Marshall, Anderson, and Jones, meet me in Transporter Room 2 immediately. We're getting our people back."

END