The Thunder Rolls

Posted on Fri Aug 28th, 2020 @ 11:42am by Lieutenant JG Shaille Levine & Lieutenant Commander William Gunnison & Linza (Lin) Esni & Lieutenant Alexis Aenera

Mission: Into The Delta Triangle
Location: Kessik III

The small sky panels in the ceiling showed that the sun had long since set and the room they were in had mostly fallen into darkness, aside from a soft glow from two small dimmed wall lights in the room. Shaille sat on the floor, her knees pulled up in front of her, recuffed wrists around her legs as she leaned against Will, Lexi on the other side doing the same.

An involuntary shiver ran through her as she drew in a deep breath. "Why haven't they come looking for us yet?" She asked softly. "It's been hours..." She cast a glance toward the still unconscious form of Farizah and sighed. "She should have woken up by now."

"She's breathing at least..." Alexis said softly in return, "If she's got a concussion she's in trouble, but maybe she just reacted badly to the stunner. Think the Captain's looking for us?"

"Don't react to what I'm saying," Will said very quietly as he kept his head down to prevent any sort of lip reading by anyone who might be watching, "but suffice to say Koh will be aware by now something's wrong. He's under orders to contact the ship and coordinate with them on a rescue if he thinks the problem is beyond what he can deal with on his own. I'm working on a way out of these cuffs myself."

He had an idea, based upon what he'd seen of the cuffs before they'd been put on him, as well as what he'd been able to feel from the limited examination with his hands. Back when he'd been teaching at the Academy, he'd once had a conversation with one of the other teachers who, among other things, taught an advance course to certain 4th year cadets (largely in the security and intelligence tracks, but to a few select others as well).

Among the things taught in the class was how to escape from certain situations if you found yourself captive to hostiles, and one particular situation involved cuffs that, if Will remembered correctly, bore a striking resemblance to what was holding the away team now. They had originally been used in law enforcement on several Federation worlds for a while, but had been recalled because of a defect that, if struck correctly against a hard surface, would inadvertently cause the locking mechanism to release. The only difficulty would be getting into position to hit the cuffs against a sufficiently hard surface to be able to release them (and that was, of course, assuming that these were indeed the type of cuffs in question) before their captors realized what was happening and could stop them (Will had a strong suspicion at least one of the two was watching them from a neighboring room, at least for the moment).

"I have a key." Alexis said quietly with a slight smile, "If it gets turned and you depress the studs on the opposite sides of the cuffs, they'll loosen." She shrugged, "I've got it in my left hand."

Linza had been watching them, but not doing anything else. She was waiting on Meka anyways, and didn't really know what to do with this group of people sitting there talking amongst themselves.

There was a moment where silence fell, an eerie silence, the calm before the storm so to speak, and then it was gone. The silence was shattered by the most ungodly of explosions, an explosion that felt like it rocked the very core of the planet. The ground shuddered through what felt like a series of earthquakes and the small glass sky panels above them ruptured, raining glass down over them.

Unable to help herself, Shaille screamed, holding her hands up above her head as the deep rumbles of falling structures marred the otherwise quiet evening. Somewhere in the distance, sounds of sirens could be heard. She could feel the walls behind them reverberating and threatening to fall. Without thinking, she turned around to Gunnison. "Cover Lexi!" she ordered as she crawled awkwardly the small distance between them and Farizah, using her own body to protect the still unconscious Bolian from falling debris.

Will managed to get into position to cover Alexis. "Believe me, this is awkward for me, too," he said to her as the building shook again. "Lt. Levine, if you can still get your cuffs off, now might be a good time to do so!"

"Don't worry 'bout it." Alexis curled up as much as she could to make the best use of her living cover, "I'm not much of an exhibitionist anyways."

Startled out of whatever daze she was in, Linza ran towards a small window and looked out, trying to find the source of the explosion. "What the hell is going on out there," she whispered to herself as she then turned and saw the glass falling. "Damnit," she stated before realizing that where they were all at wasn't meant to withstand all of this.

Glancing at the ones there, she wasn't sure what to do now. Meka wasn't here, and besides, this was her operation, not Meka's. "Up, all of you!" She noticed one was still unconscious and swore in a few languages. Grabbing the key to the cuffs of Will, she went over. "You run, I'll fire at you and it won't be on stun, got it?" She undid the cuffs. "Carry her. I'm not planning on anyone dying, even if I hate Starfleet with a passion."

She went and got her phaser and anything else she could. "Come on." She didn't even know where they were going to go, but here wasn't safe, and she didn't plan on dying today.

"Lin, is it?" Alexis gave the girl a medium-wide berth, her makeshift key still clutched in one hand, "It's not too late, even now. I know you hate the Fleet, but people need help right now. We're in the best shape to give that help to them. Let us loose and leave, we won't follow you, we need to help anyone who may be hurt by whatever just happened." She knew it was a risk, could get her shot again, but she had this gut feeling. Some little niggling suspicion that there could be a way to talk to this one, if the other woman wasn't here.

Not wanting to think on that now, Linza ignored what Alexis was saying. "Look, I just don't want to have dead hostages, okay? Let's just get out of here!" She wasn't liking the feeling of the aftershocks, and was having trouble already keeping her balance when they were striking.

Will had quietly noted that his katana had been moved off to one side, out of immediate site and forgotten by their two captors. With the woman known as Lin was distracted by what was going on, he quietly retrieved it and tucked it back where he'd been carrying it on him before, trying to conceal it as best he could. He then picked up Alani in such a way as to hopefully add a bit of extra cover for the sword. He knew now was probably not the best time to pick a fight - while he was no architect, the building they were in looked like it had never been that well-constructed in the first place, and the recent blast had certainly not helped any.

"Ladies," he said, "not to interrupt this lovely little conversation, but perhaps we would be best served by relocating it outside?"

As she started toward the door behind Lin, Shaille paused suddenly. "Take cover!" she shouted as the ground underneath them started shuddering violently again. She glanced around quickly, assessing the walls around them before grabbing Lin and pulling her back into the smaller room they had been occupying. Moments after Lin stumbled backward a large metal beam crashed down, effectively blocking them from leaving the room. "Get in the corners!" Shaille shouted again to be heard over the sound of the aftershock and the building falling down around them.

Before she could answer Will, the aftershocks started up again. Lin was pulled back from the door and back into the room. "The hell?!" But when the aftershocks got worse, she didn't question the fact that she'd been pulled back. "Thanks," she finally said as she got to a corner along with the one who'd pulled her from the door. "Has to be Starfleet that saves me." She looked around trying to find if there was any way out. "Paths out are blocked!"

"I've only got half a wall over here." A muffled voice stated from behind a slab of the roof, recognizable as Alexis as she fiddled with her cuffs. Insert the key and turn it. Dammit, need a bit a more leverage to keep it in place. She propped her hands up on a chunk of rubble, ever so delicately pressing down on the hairpin-cum-key, then reaching slowly with her fingers to the opposite sides to press down on cuff studs and the pressure on her wrists eased, "It looks like it leads to another room, but maybe we can get out this way?"

Shaille peered around the room and shook her head slightly. "This room seems to be fairly well reinforced, I'd suggest we stay here until we're sure the aftershocks have subsided. The last thing we need is to get caught under falling rubble. It'd put the kibosh on our escape plans pretty quick," she quipped with a smirk.

Glancing to where Shaille was at, Lin just nodded. "Head in there, best spot we've got." She made sure her prisoners were in there first before going in herself.

Once they were all in there, Linza looked for any of her communication equipment, trying to find out where Meka was in this mess. Finding what she was looking for, though it was barely functioning, she sent out a message, hoping Meka would answer. But she had a bad feeling about what caused this.