Second Place Winner Stardate 20501.26
The Package - Lt Raylen Vash
© 2005 by Federation Space and the author pen named Raylen Vash
WEEEERRRP! WEEEEERP! WEEEERP!
The scream of the Klaxon roused Raylen from his slumber.
“Sophie, kill the alarm.” Raylen mumbled quietly in his confused and groggy state as he placed a pillow over his head to muffle the noise attempting to fall back sleep.
The alarm continued.
Raylen realized that this wasn’t gonna work, and shot up his eyes barely open. “Sophie! Kill the alarm!”
The alarm ceased.
“I’m sorry sir, but it’s you’re ten hundred hour wake up call.” Sophie’s computerized female voice stated with a sympathetic tone.
“Thanks Sophie.” Raylen wiped the sleep from his eyes, running his hand over the empty half of the bed, the sound of the running shower helped to solve the mystery of her disappearance.
“Was wonder when you were gonna get up.” Sora smiled coyly, as she entered from the adjoining room, her form was well accented loosely wrapped in a finely embroidered emerald green robe, her red hair falling wildly over her feral Romulan features.
Raylen smirked, “When did you become such a morning person?”
Sora crawled into bed making her way towards Raylen, her enchanting green eyes locked with his. “The morning I started waking up next to you.”
She leaned in kissing Raylen gently on the lips, then without warning blindsided him with a pillow.
“Now get up, we got a job to do.”
The bridge of the Nomad was cleaner than usual, which was never a good sign, it usually meant that Deys had been up to something and cleaned up to cover his tracks. Jarrel was at the helm nodding along with the selection of Nausicaan Death metal raging through the bridges comm. system.
“Jarrel!” Raylen shouted over the music. “Jarrel!”
“What!” The large Trill shouted back without turning around.
“Where’s Deys?”
“Beats me ask Sophie.”
Raylen rolled his eyes, “Sophie, where’s Deys?”
The female voice of the computer chimed in. “Deys? I don’t think he would want me to tell you.”
“He’s hiding in his quarters isn’t he?”
“Yes.” The computer said reluctantly.
“Thank you Sophie.”
“You’re welcome sir.”
Raylen looked to his older brother. “How long till we reach Veras?”
“We still got about an hour to go, and we have a Feddy patrol on the outskirts so the crossing is gonna be tricky.”
“Set a wider course if you have to, I’m not in the mood to deal with federation watchdogs.”
“Already taken care of.” Jarrel’s tone indicating that everything was fine, and that he would rather Raylen go annoy Deys and let him enjoy his music.
Raylen turned and headed off the bridge.
“Let me in Deys.” Raylen stood impatiently outside his little brother’s quarters.
“Give me a sec.” The sound of engineering tools falling to the floor could be heard in the background of the panicked voice. The doors slide open a few seconds later revealing a trill in his late teens, the look of utter innocence etched across his face.
“What have you done to my ship now Deys?” Raylen stepped into his brother’s room careful not to step on any of the half finished experiments that littered the floor.
“Nothing major.” Deys ran his hand through his short cropped blonde hair, his eyes fixed on the ground.
“What would you consider not major?”
“Well, I tweaked some of Sophia’s subroutines; I realigned the deflector array, and um… modified the warp drive.” Deys mumbled trying to slip the last part by his older brother.
“You what?” Now Raylen was a bit perturbed.
“It only blew out a few manifolds.” Deys stepped further back into his room. “I’ll fix it. It should be ok as long as we stay below warp four.”
Raylen activated the communication system. “Jarrel.”
“What?” Jarrel shouted back over the comm.
“Keep her below warp four till the genius here fixes his mess.”
“Will do, this is gonna screwup our time table you know?” A hint of glee could be heard in Jarrel’s deep voice, he knew how much it irritated Raylen to be off schedule.
“I’m aware.”
Raylen deactivated the comm. and turned to Deys trying not to yell. “Fix it, quickly.”
The repairs to the warp drive only added 20 minutes to the trip, and now Raylen stood in the center of the bridge, a Vulcan cruiser loomed silently in front of them.
Raylen took a deep breath, “Ok, hail them.”
Sora activated the comm. system from her tactical station. “Their all ears.”
“So what’s the mission?” Raylen initiated conversation.
A reply came quickly, the voice of his client rang with the over modulation and unnatural octaves of someone using a voice encoder. “You will lower your shields, and we will beam our operative aboard, after which you will escort him to the transmitted coordinates. Upon your arrival you will escort the operative to meet his contact, where he will receive a package.”
“What is in the package?” Raylen spoke up.
The voice continued uninterrupted, “Once he has the package you are to return to this location, and await our arrival. Do you understand these instructions?”
“What is in the package?” Raylen tried again.
“All you need to know is that you are to guard the package and it’s barer with your life, the contents are unimportant. Payment will be received once we have the package.”
Raylen always felt better when he heard those words.
“Sora lower the shields.” Raylen had no fear of deception from the Vulcans they were always a safe bet for a smooth transaction.
“He’s aboard.” Sora chimed.
“We’re out of here.” Jarrel sounded off as he activated the warp drive.
“Ok let’s go have a chat with our new arrival.”
“This thing itches.” Raylen scratched at the false brow ridge of his disguise.
Sora slapped his hand away as he reached up to scratch it. “Don’t do that, you have to let it set.”
“What I suffer for my art.” Raylen said with a smirk.
“Ya big baby.” Sora gave him a peck on the cheek then gave him a quick once over. “You make a cute Romulan.”
“Thanks.” Raylen got up from his chair and clasped the metallic bands of his Romulan uniform. “You good to go?” He said looking over to their passenger.
The stoic Vulcan nodded. He hadn’t said much since their briefing shortly after his arrival. He was dressed in a Tal Shiar uniform, and to Raylen was indistinguishable from his Romulan cousins.
“We’re here.” Jarrel’s voice came over the comm.
“Let’s get this over with” Raylen led the trio down the short corridor, and onto the transporter pads. After giving his disruptor a quick once over he looked to Deys at the transporter controls.
“You got the security codes?”
“Entered and confirmed.” Deys smiled, “enjoy your trip.”
“My ship better be in one piece when I get back.”
Deys gestured like he couldn’t hear Raylen as he activated the transporter beam.
Raylen watched as his new surroundings appeared through the glowing haze of the transporter beam. Their insertion point was the dead end of an alley about two hundred meters from their pick up.
Raylen looked to Sora, and then to the nameless Vulcan. “Lead the way.”
The Vulcan consulted a small locator in the palm of his hand, and began his stroll. Raylen and Sora took up position at his flanks doing their best to imitate Romulan body guards.
The walk to the meeting point went smoothly; any opposition that would have hindered their progress were quickly wiped away by the Vulcan’s Tal Shiar insignia. It wasn’t long before they reached their destination, a small residence, which reeked of the standardized blandness of military housing.
“Wait here.” The Vulcan spoke quietly as he entered the domicile.
Raylen and Sora took up position along the sides of the door scanning the horizon for any sign of trouble, which fortunately never came. The operative emerged two minutes after he entered, a metallic case in his hand, and without a word set off for the extraction point.
“They’re coming around for another pass.” Sora shouted as the scout ship planted a series of disruptor blasts over their dorsal shields. “Shields down to twenty four percent one more pass like that and we’re gonna lose ‘em.”
“They’re too fast, we can’t out maneuver ‘em.” Jarrel informed Raylen as he spun the ship attempting to keep the strongest point of their shields pointed at the aggressor.
Raylen glanced over at the Vulcan standing on the bridge firmly gripping the metallic case. “This better be worth it.”
The Vulcan didn’t respond.
“Keep targeting their weapon systems. Shift all auxiliary power to shields.”
“We’ve caused minordamage to their disruptor array, their shields are holding.”
“Shifting auxiliary power to shields.” Deys entered the commands to boost the shield’s strength.
“Here they come again.” Raylen watched as the scout ship’s turned for another assault, its disruptors tearing through the ships shielding despite the increase in power.
“Shields down!” Sora cried out.
“There’s an energy spike.” Deys shouted excitedly.
Raylen knew what this meant and turned to the Vulcan and grabbed the case from him as the Romulantransporter beam whisked the carrier away.
“They’ve cloaked.” Sora announced.
“Don’t even say it, we’re at warp.” Jarrel didn’t need to be told when to run away.
“Deys, let’s get these shields back up. Sora scramble our warp signature. Jarrel keep up the good work.” Raylen headed to the back of the ship with his brother to assess the damages.
“Aren’t you the one’s always saying ‘the needs of the many out weight the needs of the few?’ so what if your operative got geeked we have the package the mission was a success” Raylen stood on the bridge the metallic case in his hand, the Vulcan cruiser filling the view screen once more.
"Your mission was to protect the package and it’s Carrier with your life.” The encoded voice betrayed no emotion on the part of the speaker.
“Ok, fine, we’ll cut our rate. Keep thirty five percent for the loss of your operative.” Raylen was being generous.
“You do not seem to understand, the operative was the package.”
“Whoa! Back up.” Raylen was blown awayhow dumb this all sounded. “You had me risk my life and the lives of my crew so your operative could take a little vacation into Romulan space to pick up some useless case, for what! The thrill of the adventure?”
“The case was not the only item the operative acquired on that planet.” The client decided to come clean. “He had received the katra of one of our fallen spies, which could expose the entire network if he is interrogated.”
“Dammit, why didn’t you tell us before?” Raylen had no idea what the heck a Katra was, nor did he care.
“It was unnecessary as long as you followed the parameters of your mission. We didn’t anticipate your failure.”
Raylen felt his pride taking hold failure did not sit well with him. “We’ll be right back. Sora cut the channel. Jarrell set a course; we need to pick up a package.”
“This is ridiculous. There is no way we are gonna catch up to them.” Jarrel turned his chair to face Raylen. “They’ve got too big of a head start, and they‘re cloaked.”
Raylen smirked, “We don’t have to catch them, we know where they’re going.” Raylen pulled up a planetary directory report.
“That’s the same planet we got that useless briefcase from.” Jarrel wasn’t convinced. “Why would they go there?”
“It’s the only Romulan military installation in the sector.”
“So?”
“So, if it was me and this prisoner is as valuable as they’re making him out to be, I wouldn’t trust a battle wounded scout ship to make it safely to an interrogation. I’m sure they’ll hold him their till a warbird arrives.”
Jarrel looked at his little brother in disbelief. “You better know what you’re doing.”
“Don’t I always.” Raylen patted his older brother’s tattooed arm.
Deys emerged on to the bridge. “Shields are back to sixty five percent, we should have about ninety within the hour.”
“Excellent.”
“Um, Raylen?” Deys ran his hand through his hair; a tell Raylen knew meant he had an outlandish suggestion. “I was thinking about the modifications I made to the warp drive, and I think it could help us out here.”
“Oh yeah?” Raylen was skeptical, most of Deys experiments required weeks of repairs after their execution, although he did have a success or two under his belt. S.O.P.H.I.A. for instance.
Self orienting positronichumanoid intelligence accessory, Sophia for short was an adaptation Deys made to the ships computer system, essentially an artificial intelligence capable of maintaining the ships functionality with little interaction from the crew. He developed it after reading a series of articles on some doctor’s experiments with androids and positronic matrixes. Raylen thought the addition worked out great, although at times Sophie’s “personality” could be a bit counterproductive.
“What does it do?”
Deys took a deep breath and began his explanation. “Ok, I call it Flashpoint, catchy huh?” Deys smiled. “I thought of it after I read Prof. Rellic's essay on the effects of Tau band gravitons on a subspace membrane. By concentrating the particles through our deflector array in conjunction with the proper warp field modulation we could create a subspace fissure that would allow us to make a brief, albeit far, jump to any location within that point’s Corian matrix.” Deys saw the confused look on his brother’s face. “We can instantly travel from one point in space to another, with some restrictions of course. It’s kinda like a wormhole, only …not.”
“And this will work?” Raylen was not impressed; he had heard similar promises from his brother on countless occasions.
“I’ve run the simulation dozen’s of times, it’ll work, but I’m having trouble modifying the warp field to achieve the proper frequency.”
Raylen was always amazed that Deys’s could rewrite the laws of the universe with out batting an eye, but when it came to using a hyperspanner he was next to useless. Raylen sighed, “I’ll help you, but let’s get these shields back up first.”
“We are entering their sensor array. Scrambler activated.” Sora activated their false transponder; if anyone was looking they would appear to be an Orion freighter.
“Masking our warp signature to match.” Deys tweaked the frequency to compliment the deception.
“We’re being hailed.” Sora announced.
“Open a channel.” Raylen didn’t want to seem suspicious.
“Unidentified Freighter, please transmit your Merchant ID, and the commodity you are carrying.” The Romulan voice sounded apathetic, as if he did this all day.
Sora transmitted one of the dozen Orion codes in their possession. “We are carrying holosuite components for Targus three.”
Silence.
“You are clear to proceed.” The voice came back with the same bored tone.
The trip through the Romulan system took only a few minutes, with a brief pause to avoid visual confirmation of their deception from a small fighter patrol.
“Their’s our friend.” Sora indicated an icon representing the wounded scout ship. “You were right.”
Raylen leaned over her shoulder “Was there ever any doubts.” The two exchanged a smile, before Raylen turned to Jarrel. “She’s all yours.”
Raylen and Sora headed to the back of the ship to dig out his Romulan get up.
“Beam us here.” Raylen indicated a location outside of the base’s perimeter.” They’ve probably changed their access codes so beaming in to the base won’t be possible, but with these pattern enhancers you should be able to pull us out with out a problem.”
“Once we are down there find somewhere to hide till our signal, we shouldn’t be long.” Raylen looked to Jarrel who was still skeptical about this whole mission.
“Don’t worry bout us, you just focus on getting your ass out of there in one piece.” Jarrel confirmed his reluctant support.
“Ok then, let’s do it.”
Sora and Raylen took their position on the transporter pad, and with a final thumbs up from Deys they were on the surface.
The two set to work quickly, Sora deactivated a section of the perimeter force field with an expertly place E.M. charge, and the two bandits were inside the base within seconds of touching the ground.
The pair made their way towards the detention area at top speed, being sure to avoid the security camera’s that littered the base. The prospect of being seen even though they were in disguise was not very appealing.
The detention center was well guarded. Two check points, an array of security cameras, and automated defense turrets waited to greet anyone who desired entrance.
“This doesn’t look promising” Sora whispered with a smirk looking towards Raylen knowing exactly what he was going to say.
“I have a plan.” Raylen whispered.
Accessing the detention center’s main computer node was a lot easier than Raylen had anticipated. A quick trip through an underground maintenance tunnel, knock out a pair of guards, whose reaction time was far below that required to activate the alarm, and they were in.
Raylen had disassembled the outer plating protecting the computer’s delicate innards and jury rigged his PADD to act as a console interface. He had already managed to crack the intrusion countermeasure that secured the slave nodes controlling the defense systems of the detention center.
“All done.” Raylen whispered excitedly, “Let’s go.”
Raylen and Sora hurried through the maintenance tunnels emerging just out side the detention center. Checking his chronometer Raylen began his count down.
“5….4….3….2…1.”
The turrets set into motion dispatching the four guards at the door.
Raylen and Sora sprinted for the entrance; the unmistakable hum of an imminent overload could be heard from the disruptor turrets.
“Thirty seconds.” Raylen shouted, as Sora dispatched a Romulan guard posted near the cell controls. “Which cell is he in?”
Sora accessed the console, and pointed to far cell. “There.”
A disruptor blast streaked through the air nearly taking her arm off. Raylen retaliated burning a searing hole in the Romulan as he made his way into the detention center.
“Get the pattern enhancers up. I’ll hold them off.” Sora shouted leveling her disruptor at the door. Raylen didn’t hesitate he knew there was only about fifteen seconds left before the prison became a smoldering pit. Raylen arranged the pylons in a tight triangle.
“Get over here.”
Raylen looked over at the Vulcan his face was relatively calm the disruptor fire in the next room failing to jar his emotions free. Sora dove into the cell coming to an abrupt stop as she collided with the wall a barrage of plasma just missing her. Raylen quickly activated the enhancers.
“Deys! Get us out of here!”
Raylen’s wish was granted two seconds before the disruptor turrets detonated taking the prison, and a sizable chunk of the base with them.
Raylen shook free the odd sensation of transporting onto a ship traveling at high velocity and took a seat at the command station.
“We’ve got two scouts on our tail, we got a slight jump on them, but they’ll over take us soon.” Jarrel said in his usual pessimistic tone.
Sora took her seat at tactical, “That patrol we crossed earlier is diverting its course to interce…” Sora’s voice cut out as her sensors relayed some disturbing information. “Raylen! A warbird just dropped out of warp, it’s on an intercept course.”
Raylen knew they were toast, he looked over to Deys who despite the dire situation was smiling, and he knew why.
“Get the damn thing ready.” Raylen said reluctantly.
Deys excitedly began entering commands into his console. “Sophia access the Flashpoint files, and enter the variables into the navigation computer.”
Jarrel turned his chair. “What’s going on?”
“Just hold her steady, and I’ll do the rest.” Deys stated forgetting his rank in the sibling hierarchy.
“It’s gonna work, just aim for the reticle, and keep it tight.” Raylen tried to ease his older brother’s temper. “It’s one of Deys experiments.”
Raylen sensed Sora, and Jarrel’s disbelief. “I helped him.” The statement didn’t seem to have the calming effect he had hoped.
Sora turned back to her console. “Scout ships closing. If we are gonna do something, let’s do it.”
“Deys.” Raylen inquired.
“One second, have to set our destination.”
“They’re locking disruptors.”
“Here we go.” Deys activated the main deflector, which projected a stream of purple particles which seemed to
bend the universe into them creating a brightly lit white sliver where space seemed to separate.
“There go now.” Raylen shouted.
Jarrel accelerated; unfortunately the procedure took one second too long. A disruptor nailed the rear shields sending the ship into a tail spin as it careened through the tear in the subspace membrane.
“Hold tight!” Jarrel cried as he attempted to keep the ship from tearing itself apart. The crew was tossed around the bridge as the inertial dampeners began to fail, showers of sparks spraying from several of the ship’s consoles.
A loud roar ripped through the ship as its nacellewas ripped from the starboard side of the ship leaving only a jagged set of pylons to mark its place.
“We’re almost out.” Deys shouted over the commotion. “Ten more seconds.”
Raylen could see the darkness at the end of the tunnel of light, as the vibrations continued to tear the ship apart.
“We’re….out.” Deys said excitedly as the vibrations ceased.
“This ain’t where we are supposed to be.” Raylen looked out at the white and blue orb that was growing in front of them. This fact however became secondary as Jarrel exposed the real problem.
“Engines are out, I can’t stop.” Jarrel tried to force the controls to work. “Raylen get back there, if you can just get me some power to the maneuvering thrusters I think I can manage a crash landing.”
“I’m on it.” Raylen ran to the back of the ship grabbing his engineering tools.
Prying loose the bulkhead Raylen set to work ripping out wires and fused conduits attempting to redirect enough juice to facilitate Jarrel’s maneuver. Raylen could see what needed to be done he just hoped he had enough time to do it.
He borrowed wires and capacitors from every system minus life support, what would it matter if they couldn’t replicate lunch if they burned up in the atmosphere of some strange planet. Beads of sweat began to form as the heat shielding of the ship made contact with the atmosphere of the alien world.
“Just one more connection.” Raylen reassured himself as he connected a large red wire into the main engine power exchange, which promptly burst to life.
“There you go now set her down.” He shouted down the corridor.
Raylen braced him self in the small engineering crawlspace as the ship screeched through the air, a violent jolt rocked the ship as it made contact with the hard surface of the planet, but the ride wasn’t over. The ship continued to move skidding in slow circles down a steep incline, the uneven surface savagely tearing into the hull. The whole trip ended abruptly as a large stone
spire tore through the side of the ship, the sudden loss of velocity sent Raylen flying across the room.
Raylen took a moment to assure himself that the ship had indeed stopped before he rose to his feet and stumbled to the bridge. Everyone seemed ok, which allowed Raylen to focus on the real problem. Through the cock pit window he could see the vast plain of ice and snow stretching before them, but that wasn’t the worst of it. In the distance Raylen could make out a ship with an unsettlingly familiar design. Breen.
“We’re in trouble guys.”
