Captain Elric - Earth Spacedock
Elric floated through the many, still dark, Engineering decks aboard Spacedock, firing isolinear tag after tag from a pistol into drone after drone. Each drooling, unaware Borg straggler, on the brink of death, were quickly transported away to the Infirmary and by the time Elric reached Gravity Control he was out of darts. There, in the half-darkened room, he found Claire trying to get a console online.
"Don't move!" Elric said, taking out his autocarbine rifle and aiming it.
Claire turned around in shock, but was relieved when she saw who it was. "Oh, it's you. I thought you were more Borg, or, even worse..." she trailed. "Would you help me get this console going?"
"That is Starfleet technology, and you were under arrest for stealing," Elric recanted.
The woman nodded. "Oh, you were cute to try, Captain. But I have bigger problems, and they were no better helped by the station's main power going down."
"Like what? And where is the real medallion?" he pressed.
Claire shook her head while she worked. "What are you talking about? I gave it back to you," she replied, seconds before pausing. "Unless they took it?" Then she shook her head in disbelief. "Those damn hair-hacks," Claire cursed before turning to address Elric. "I showed it to them for just a second, trying to get them off my back with the old hand-is-quicker-than-the-eye trick. Seems like they were even quicker than I thought."
"Who? The Caitians that Vitath mentioned?" Elric said, lowering his aim. "She said they were trying to hurt you."
The other person sighed, unhappy and then defensive. "Ugh. That's right, Captain. The whole universe doesn't revolve around whatever you have going on at this station. You see, it's my father. We used to hunt alien treasures together with a small group, but now he's sent his goons after me because he says I abandoned him. But, it's more like I just realized he was dealing with some bad people all along."
Elric paused, thinking back to Raven and the tubules that struck his arm not too long ago. He then felt a tingly feeling in his left arm and pulled down his sleeve to examine. His arm was turning pale and something was bubbling inside. "Ugh!"
"What the hell happened to you?" Claire said, taking a tricorder off a table and scanning him. "You have nanoprobes in your arm. But they appear to be localized to just your arm."
The Captain took out an immunosupport hypo and injected his appendage. The bubbling seemed to stop. "How is that possible, unless Mirror Borg somehow sectionalize their assimilation nanoprobes? Not to mention they shouldn't be working right now? Damn. I should have never gotten close to that old man." He looked at Claire. "Never mind. I'll live. Help me get gravity back online; you're still coming with me."
"Well don't you know how to make a girl feel wanted," she smirked as they both went over to the gravity control deck, which was previously overloaded from a remote source.
Elric began getting backup systems online. Zeta floated off his right shoulder and began scurrying around, in place, in panic. *Click!?*
"He seems panicked for some reason," Claire noticed. "Are you an engineer, Captain?"
He shook his head. "No, but I wasn't a science officer either and I somehow manufactured all these omicron weapon attachment cells," he replied, opening his satchel and showing her a bag full of his accomplishments.
"Oh!" Claire turned their attention to the console. They both got backup systems online and gravity was restored to all the decks aboard Spacedock. The two immediately landed to the floor on their feet, without what some other people may prefer as the comfort of a gradual transition.
But another feedback pulse from their tampering exploded a section above their heads and reverberated throughout the station's backup systems. Elric quickly checked another control panel. "Damn. We knocked communications offline. I'll get an exocomp on it."
*Click! Chirp!* Zeta leapt back onto Sith's right shoulder in fear as the sounds of something in the vents took everyone's attention away.
And then, CLANG! CRACK! The noise echoed into the darkness of the control room and the surrounding, empty corridors.
"My father's Caitians." Claire looked at Elric. "They found me down here earlier, but I escaped them when the Borg attacked. There are way too many felines for one rifle and they're more cunning than the Borg."
Elric turned to her in disbelief. "So, what? We hide?"
"Use their tactic against them," she countered, pulling him toward the darkness. "Then we make our move. Trust me."
Seconds after they disappeared into nothingness, a Caitian male, LuKet, dropped from out of the ventilation shaft and into the Gravity Control centre. He began sniffing the air. With the Borg immobilized, his brothers and sisters lurking in obscurity and surrounding the entire deck, he knew he had finally cornered her.
---
Corridors
The Omega Operatives had noticed the return of gravity, and one of them reported. "Captain, gravity is back online. I'll run a quick scan just to make sure everything is... wait. Sir, Spacedock's communications are gone. Also, there are a lot of Caitians around here."
Sarah replied over the comms. "Caitians? What? Elric, are you still hearing this? Apparently one of the Omegas have detected Caitians running around. Oh, and Spacedock communications are down, too."
The omega called out to the other Omegas. "All of you, pair up. I don't like the looks of this."
Omega Operatives started searching around until the dozen of them were all in pairs.
Sarah waited, then broke the newfound silence. "Elric?"
---
Gravity Control
"Oh, I guess communications aren't totally offline," Elric realized just about to tap his commbadge to answer when the noise alerted LuKet.
The bigger Caitian lurched into the darkness and swung a backhand for Elric, but the Captain quickly fired an antiproton bolt into LuKet, sending him back into a far wall. Three more Caitians dropped into the Gravity Control room and shot out fists at them. Elric pulled around to aim, but his rifle was swiped out from his hands. Zeta leapt onto the face of one of the Caitians, sending that one to the ground.
"I thought the Ferasans were the aggressive ones??" Elric said as he blocked a jab and returned with a kick. He then kicked again, more forcefully, and sent his attacking Caitian to the floor.
Claire leapt up and forced a knee into the last Caitian's head, then, while in mid-flight, powered a downward kick into the feline sending it down. "Every species has its bad people, but, unfortunately, these guys get brainwashed." When she landed, she found that they were surrounded by even more Caitian siblings.
Zeta returned to Elric's right arm, and Elric and Claire backed into each other, holding fighting stances. "Think the Omega Operatives have a spray bottle?"
Admiral Nat joined Sarah's efforts and called. "Elric, are you receiving this? We are you?"
A spike of seething pain in Elric's left arm threw him to one knee, unable to respond to the hails from the Mephiles. The surrounding Caitians and Claire looked at him. "UGGGHHH!!"
"Tag her," LuKet said, menacingly as he walked back over to the group.
One of the other Caitians took out a gun and shot Claire with an isolinear tag, dematerializing her away. The loss of the woman next to him sent a hopelessness through Elric and he felt as if he was, yet again, unable to keep a hold of her.
With added adrenaline from the pain, he ripped the left sleeve off his uniform to expose his arm from the shoulder down. It was grey, patched with Borg technology, and appeared to be scattered with large, throbbing bubbles. From the edges of each patch came a sickening grey secretion.
"This man's nanoprobes are highly voltaic," Kova said, scanning Elric with a tricorder. It was then the Captain's satchel hit the floor and all the omicron weapon attachments fell out.
LuKet observed them. "The fool caused his own mutation from the radiation by those things."
"You're the fool," Elric struggled to say, having realized the lead Caitian was right. "If you think I'm going to let you get... away with— UGGGgggghhhHHH!"
The Caitians hesitated to attack when Elric jerked himself to the floor, on his back, in blistering, unconscionable pain. Zeta ran off in fear and eight tubules blasted out from his assimilated arm and pierced each surrounding Caitian. A bio-electrical current ran through the tubules and into the humanoid felines, forcing them all to feel Elric's pain. They were then fed the mutated nanoprobes which became accelerated and dangerous to their bodies.
"What... have... you done...??" LuKet looked at his arms and body which was quickly morphing chaotic, disproportionate mutations and growths all around him.
Horrified at what he had involuntarily done, Elric ripped the tubules out of his left arm causing more of the rapidly produced grey fluid to spew profusely out of his arm. The localization of the nanoprobes, accelerated by omicron radiation, was staggering and utterly gruesome.
"Uuuhhhhggg! Arrrggh!" With the other Caitians down, morphing and screaming in pain, Elric began dragging his own weakened body toward a shelf. He pulled out a phaser and then slumped back to the floor. Behind him, he could see the trail of drawn out grey matter his alien arm excreted.
An unrecognizable LuKet yelped in mere horror, feeding into the echoes of cries from his brothers and sisters. "What have you done to us?? What have you done?!?"
"I don't know??" Elric tried to answer, propping himself up against the shelf and programming his phaser into concentrated-cutting beam mode. "I have to.... Have to...."
Realizing what the mortified, increasingly heavy breathing human was about to do by aiming the phaser at his own shoulder, LuKet reached his own disproportionate, bubbling limb to his waist device and transported himself and all his now deformed Caitians off Spacedock.
"AAAAaaAAAAAAAHHHH!!!!!"
When Elric was done, both he and his severed extremity were transported away.
---
U.S.S. Mephiles
Jim called in over the comms. "The Caitians are gone now. Also, we're not detecting Elric, either. He's gone."
Sarah sighed and facepalmed. "Of course not. Tag the rest of the drones and come back, huh?"
Captain Nat deadpanned Krystal. "Caitians kidnapping Elric? Welp, that was totally expected."
---
Admiral Cid - U.S.S. Valhalla, Bridge
Later, the older human and Starfleet officer brushed his greying goatee for a moment and stepped forward on the Bridge of the Odyssey-class vessel. The view of Spacedock's lower section filled the large display screen.
"Lieutenant Arkane," he said. "Please contact Admiral Nat."
His Tellarite tactical officer nodded and tapped a few controls. "Sending sir."
When a connection was received, Cid began, "Admiral Nat, this is Admiral Cid. It's come to my attention the Valhalla has a visitor. I just wanted to let you know Captain Elric is in our Sickbay undergoing surgery. I'm told he's going to be okay. It would seem an overzealous Doctor on my ship had transported Elric off Spacedock during a chance discovery of his presence there. Just wanted to keep you in the loop."
Admiral Nat replied, "Well, finally some good news. Be sure to let us know when and if he condition changes; I'll be out on a bit of a mission, so you can keep in contact with my first officer, Captain Dennison, who'll be on the bridge shortly. He'll keep me informed."
"Will do. Good luck on your mission, Admiral. Valhalla out."
When the transmission cut, Admiral Cid nodded to Arkane that his task was over. Cid turned and sat in his command chair. He didn't approve of that Doctor making moves without his consent, but saving a Starfleet Captain definitely was a result he wanted. Either way, Cid would assist Spacedock in any repairs required during their crisis, drop the medical officer and the G'arto survivors off, and then return to the Valhalla's deep space missions.
