A Blinding Light

Posted on Tue Apr 19th, 2022 @ 3:20pm by Captain Ivan Petrov & Callie Marshall & Lieutenant JG Kassandra Selin

Mission: S1 Episode 2: Caretaker, Part II
Location: Medical Facility Alpha-3, Ocampa
Timeline: Mission Day 6 at 1830
1632 words - 3.3 OF Standard Post Measure

Kass came too, groggy and ready to spit nails as her head pounded. "Ares" she moaned. The floor she was laying on was hard.

Callie awoke to find herself lying on a slightly more comfortable surface, she gently sat up not surprised to find that her stomach had grown a little more rounded than the last time she was awake. A monitor nearby was her first glimpse of her own medical condition, and if she interpreted it right she was now edging on sixteen weeks from four.

“Great, now where in the hell ...” she stopped talking to herself when she set eyes on Kass. “Kass?” She thought She might be imagining it. “Is that really you!?”

"Callie?" Kass groaned as she rolled to her feet in the cell. She took a look at her friend. "Ah... Callie?"

Callie nodded. “I know, if I read it right they’ve pushed me as far as sixteen weeks so far. I don’t want to be here to find out if they’re planning to push this pregnancy any further!” She sighed. “Are you okay?”

Kass nodded. "I do not know what they did to me, not yet but I am not their favorite person."

“The only reason I’m here is because they consider both my pregnancy and son to be goldmines of genetic information!” Callie shook her head. “I just want to get the hell out of here Kass!”

"I agree" came the reply from the Intelligence officer who began to search the room. She ran her hands and fingers over the walls. "I wonder if they took others..." She said softly.

Callie shrugged her shoulders as she looked around. “I don’t know, I haven’t seen anyone else. The only person I saw was a scientist last time I woke up, he said I’d be transferred to the planet soon.” She hung her head. “He also said he couldn’t guarantee the welfare of me or my son.”

"Well we will have to figure out a way to get out of here." Kassandra said softly.

Callie nodded. “Of course, sorry!” She started looking around, her instincts as an Ops officer leading her to look around for any panel she could pry off and tinker with. “If you find any panels let me know. I’ll see if I can get any information from these medical computers as well.

Kass nodded. She began to press at the walls.

The whole search was frustratingly looking fruitless as Callie tried to get some sense from the monitors in the room. “I more or less know why I’m here, but what is it they want from you Kass? There has to be a reason they chose you too.”

"I do not know. I am standard Terran ancestry. Nothing else." Kassandra replied with a shrug. "And I am not pregnant so, that clears me from that."

Callie nodded. “There’s obviously something they badly need, I just wish I had more to go on. I wonder ...” she offered a wry grin. “Let’s see what happens if they think one of us is dying ...” She tinkered with the medical monitoring systems and surely enough alarm bells started to go off. “Now let’s see who turns up!”

Within seconds, one of the wall panels opened up and in walked two young women in white followed by a portly man in a sky-blue coat. They were moving quickly, clearly expecting to find an emergency on their hands. Pausing, the three of them looked at Kass and Callie with surprised frowns.

"They're fine." the man said, breathing heavily. "False alarm."

"No, not a false alarm. It worked" Kass said and she dove for him.

"Yaaa!" came the shriek from the fat man as Kass descended on him. He was not only unprepared but seemed utterly incapable of competent self-defense. The nurses, on the other hand, had at least a head start and fitness on their sides. The darted together for the door and were gone in a few seconds, the door sealing behind them. The man, in her hands, struggled with considerable strength, though it had no training or direction. "Get off of me you alien mongrel!"

Kass locked her hands around the mans throat. "Mongrel I may be, but I am not going to let you keep us here!" She began to squeeze.

The man struggled and strained, his hands moving around her own as much as she could. Though he was stronger than her, she knew what she was doing, and he found himself slowly losing steam as he fought for his life. Eventually, he abandoned his effort to remove her hands from around his fat throat and instead grabbed hold of her side, digging his large fingers in as hard as he could.

Kass grunted but all she did was press her knee into his groin area.

The man gasped with what little air he had left and fell backward onto the floor. His eyes began to roll back in his head as he started to lose consciousness. His kicks and struggles gradually became weaker and weaker as beads of sweat formed on his forehead.

"You should have killed me" She hissed as she kept up the pressure.

His face shook and his eyes filled with a primal fear, like a man who understood that his life was truly over in a flash, in the twinkling of the eyes, and his body went completely limp.

Kass held on for a few more moments and then released her grip. She then began to search the man for things to use. She pulled a pass card from his belt.

“Just what we need” Callie smiled. “Downside is those nurses will have raised the alarm.”

"Good. I would rather die getting you out of here than stay here and be their pet test rabbit." Kass gave the corpse a kick and turned for the door. She knew they would come to take care of them soon enough.

“There’s no way in hell I’m letting you die Kass” Callie offered a brief smile. “We all get out of here, I promised Troy that no matter what I’d protect our son, I will do whatever I have to do to accomplish that. We’re Terran Officers no one brings us down! Let’s go!”

Kass swiped the card down on the reader. And it beeped and the door slid open. "Dumb, not sealing it from this side." She took the lead and stepped out of the room and looked around.

“So far so quiet” Callie looked at Kass concernedly. “Let’s try and find somewhere we can contact the ship.”

The hallway where they found themselves was long and had doors much like their own lining the walls in both directions. Though it was quiet…very quiet. Almost as if it had been evacuated. There was no clear indication of which way might take them out, if either of them would do so.

“Why is it so quiet?” Callie looked at Kass concernedly. “I thought they’d be trying to get us back in a room.”

Kass turned. "Go tear off the cloth from that mans shirt. Lets not give them the chance to gass us."

Callie nodded and went to get some material, she returned with a large piece cut in two enough to form a thick enough mask against any gas. “Here ...” She handed some to Kass.

Kass took it and wrapped it around her nose and mouth.

“This is so odd, where did those nurses go? And why haven’t we encountered more people?” Callie looked at Kass concernedly, “I don’t like it Kass.”

Imperceptibly, the vents within the room began to replace the oxygen with a clear and odorless chemical calibrated to correspond with their biology. Despite their rudimentary face coverings, they would only have a few moments of consciousness left. They would either slip into unconsciousness due to the chemical or for lack of oxygen.

Callie looked around. “I’m sensing more people behind each of these doors, maybe others they’ve brought here?” She looked towards Kass. She paused walking feeling a little light headed, she waited for it to pass before she moved a little further down the hall. “I found the nurses ...” She motioned through a window in some doors at the end of the hallway.

Kass's eyes narrowed as they focused on the aliens holding them prisoner. She was feeling dizzy now. She reached out and gripped Callie's arm. "Callie... are you ok?"

Callie gazed around at Kass. “Actually I err... I’m feeling pretty...” She paused as she dropped to her knees. “Dizzy...”

Still, no movement was made at the doors, for none would dare enter as the hall was filled with gas. At the windows, nurses and guards alike watched with curiosity as the two women began to falter.

Kass noted their looks and said "Callie... rest." And she used the last of her strength to pound on the windows, trying to find its weak point.

Callie was trying to fight the dizziness she was feeling but it didn’t take long before she was out cold on the hallway floor.

A few moments later, Kass was also out cold on the floor beside her.

Soon after the women were unconscious, the vents worked overtime to replace the gas with oxygen. As it did so, several guards in gas masks entered quickly and returned them to their medical beds. They secured them to the bed with wrist and ankle restraints and placed a guard inside the room. One thing was certain, the Ocampa scientists had learned from this experience that these Alpha Quadrant races were dangerous, and they wouldn't be underestimating them again.