Star Trek: Trident
A proud member of the Shared Universe Project
1.5 - Killing Time
By Brydon Sinclair
A proud member of the Shared Universe Project
1.5 - Killing Time
By Brydon Sinclair
Alert panels flashed and the dull male voice of the computer droned, though not being fluent in Kardassi, Nhylas didn’t have a clue what it was saying—but it probably wasn’t good for him and his team. He held the heavy phaser rifle firmly, stock against his shoulder, finger resting on the trigger guard, peering through the targeting receptacle. The five other members of his team tried to follow his example, each with varying degrees of success.
Ensign Parson was doing a decent enough job for a rookie officer, but she was leaving her right flank open. Crewman Foster was a little too gung ho for Nhylas’ taste, often wanting to take the lead and fire on anything that moved. Crewman ch’Parith seemed in his element, even if he did seem to like taking risks. Crewman Blue was a little jittery. Crewman T’Penna on the other hand was a model soldier, her movement precise and measured.
Together they moved through the arched corridors of the Cardassian ship. Parson’s tricorder chirped and the young woman looked down at the display. “Life-signs. Twelve meters ahead.”
“Number and type,” he asked, his voice low. He made a mental note to remind her that she needed to deliver all pertinent in short, quick sentence to limit the chatter.
“Um, seventeen…I think. All Cardassian.”
“Number,” he insisted again, an edge to his inquiry this time.
“Seventeen, definitely.”
Using hand signals, Nhylas directed his team to approach, three on either side of the corridor. They quickly acknowledge and moved forward. As they got to the door where the lifeforms were located, he signalled them to wait on either side. He nodded at Parson, who stood by the controls, for her to work the panel, then signalled for T’Penna and ch’Parith to flank him on the entry, then Foster and Blue, with Parson covering the rear.
Wordlessly he motioned for the ensign to hit the control. She did and the door opened swiftly. In half a heartbeat he was inside, rifle up and sweeping the storage room he found himself in. The Vulcan and Andorian crewmen close behind. Nhylas almost stopped short at what he found. Huddled in a mass near the far bulkhead were a group of Cardassian men and women, from elderly to infancy, all in tattered civilian clothing, all visibly startled and scared—a few were crying. As the rest of his team entered, he signalled for them to hold their ground.
He lowered his weapon and stepped forward. “I am Lieutenant Nhylas, of the starship Trident. We are not going to hurt you. Does anyone require medical attention?”
The huddled mass remained where they were, not moving, not speaking, staring at him as though he were some kind of monster about to devour them. He thought about moving closer, but if they were terrified of him at a distance, getting closer would only make them worse—a wounded animal was always most dangerous when it was cornered.
Just to the edge of his peripheral vision he saw movement. Foster saw it too. Before he could say or do anything, the rookie enlistedman aimed his rifle and opened fire. Almost immediately the others assumed a defensive formation. Blue followed Foster’s lead and began firing into the civilians.
“Stand down! Stand down!” Nhylas yelled, as he turned and moved to disarm the insectoid Nasat.
T’Penna raised her weapon towards the crowd and fired. Nhylas looked back and saw that a handful of them had drawn weapons, from blades to phasers. As a Cardassian woman in her late teens pointed a hand phaser at him, he leapt to the side as she fired. The beam caught his shoulder, but he gritted his teeth against the pain as he landed. He looked around to see Parson take a blast to the chest and go down, as a middle-aged man went at Foster with a vicious looking knife. Blue tucked up into a tight ball, the Nasat’s natural response to danger. T’Penna and ch’Parith were pinned down by heavy weapons fire, from Cardassian, Ferengi and Dominion disruptors. Nhylas’ shoulder was bleeding heavily, pain seared through his nervous system. He hefted his rifle and managed to fire off a couple of shots, before he too had to duck back behind what little cover he had.
A scream drew his attention to Foster. He saw the young human drop to his knees and slump to the deck, whilst the Cardassian he had been fighting with wiped Foster’s blood off on his trousers. In the blink of an eye, Nhylas aimed and fired. The crewman’s murderer dropped to the floor.
From the far wall, where the remaining Cardassians continued their onslaught, he heard a single woman’s voice rise above the din of phaser fire and shouting.
“For Cardassia!”
A second later an explosion obliterated the storage room.
As the blinding flash dissipated, Nhylas blinked the glare from his eyes and stood up. The blood and pain from his shoulder vanished when the storage room was destroyed. His Enayan physiology allowed him to recover from the brightness quickly, and he surveyed his team, as they all recovered and looked around the holodeck.
“Attention on deck,” he called, his voice echoing around the room. The five members of his team quickly assembled and stood stiffly. “We are all dead. Can anyone explain why?”
“We were going up against suicidal nutters!” Foster quipped, then added, “Sir.”
“Mr Foster, if that is how you feel, I’d recommend you book yourself an appointment with Counsellor Ha’naye.”
“Sir?”
“You fired first. From that the situation quickly descended into chaos—”
“That Cardie came out of nowhere! I saw him with a phaser!”
Nhylas stepped up closer to Foster. He was only an inch taller than the human and of leaner build, but his purple eyes flashed with anger as he leaned in close. He kept his voice low and level. “First, I won’t have bigots on my team. If you can’t handle that mister, I’ll leave you on Earth. Secondly, where was the order to hold and drop his weapon?”
He looked down the line of rookies. “We are Starfleet Security, not thugs or mercenaries. Our procedures and regulations exist to keep us and others safe—even a former enemy!
“In Cardassian space, we will come upon hostiles and innocents alike,” he continued. “You have to be able to assess the situation calmly but quickly, see who may be a genuine threat and who is just acting on fear. Our mission will be to help people, which means, making them feel safe, getting them whatever help they need, and rooting out those that would do them harm. Our new frontier is an uncharted one, the challenges will be numerous and they will be hard. On this mission, failure is not an option—if we fail, people die. It’s that simple.”
He took another look down the line again. “I’ll send you a copy of your performance review. See what went wrong and where you need to improve, and be ready for the next test. We’ve got another four weeks to be ready. Dismissed.”
With that, the ensign and four crewmen turned and headed out of the holodeck. They would head for the transporter room and return to the ship, at which point the next team of rookies would be beamed over to go through another randomly selected training programme. Nhylas intended to make full use of the dry-dock’s training facilities in the extra month they’d been given, he had a crew that needed to be whipped into shaped.
The holo-mesh suit—which was designed to give the wearer the sensation of non-fatal injuries whilst in the training programmes—felt a little tight across his chest and shoulders, so he flexed to try and relax it. One team down and he was left a little unimpressed, he hoped it wasn’t an example of things to come for the other teams.
END
