IKC FHew 7C6110
Bug Hunt – Bugs
by HoD Ro' Matlh & Sogh HoS Matlh & Sogh Germite Ephilom & Soghla' HIchop Matlh & Soghla' Terri (Tell) Hope & Soghla' Jared & Soghla' Marie St. Helene
Post Details
River Bank:
Germite and two marines looked to the far ridge, above Tell's team. A figure could be seen standing on the crest.
"Who is that?" Germite asked rhetorically. He picked up his communicator. "Germite to F'Hew. There's an unidentified figure on the hill above Tell's team. Can you swoop in and run a scan on him?"
,'. FHew to away team, We are reading nothing on our sensors. We are coming in lower to... ,'.
There was a sudden noise of disruptor fire. Multiple repeated shots from one of the other teams.
,'. FHew to away team. Contact has been made by the central group. All teams converge! ,'.
There was the sound of an explosion, possibly a grenade, echoing through the valley.
Germite looked at the warriors. "All right, let's go!!!" He watched as the Klingon warriors sprang into action. He was hard pressed to keep up with them.
Ridge base:
HIchop, Tell, and their Marine looked at the figure above them.
"One of the colonists?" the marine hazarded.
Tell looked at the readings on her tricorder, useless, didn't tell them anything.
"No. Whatever it is doesn't register," she replied with disgust. "Though I would make a guess and say it's what were looking for. Can we get anywhere near or above it with out being seen?"
The Marine scanned the ridge. There was a natural gulley up the cliff that they could follow, but it would be easy to observe their progress.
"Not without detouring a couple of Kelicams north," he replied.
There was a sudden noise of disruptor fire. Multiple repeated shots from one of the other teams.
,'. FHew to away team. Contact has been made by the central group. All teams converge! ,'.
There was the sound of an explosion, possibly a grenade, echoing through the valley.
"What the hell was that?" Tell shouted above the din reverberating around them. "Right lets get moving and try to meet up with the others."
Centre line:
May'bel and a marine had been digging for some ten minutes. Even Marie had condescended to join them.
They kept at it for another five minutes when the marine threw up his arms in disgust.
"There is nothing here! Give me that."
He snatched the tricorder of Marie. Not being a crewman he did not understand the dangerous action this could prove to be. He glanced at the device and frowned.
"This is broken," He snarled, stabbing at the device with numb fingers. "It says the human should be all around us in a 20 metre circle."
“Precisely,” Marie said, the disgust palpable in her voice. Her mood had not been helped by being forced to manual labour and this stupidity only served to poison it more. “All around us. And probably in lots of little pieces. Keep digging until you find them all.”
"For that to happen she would have to have gone po-"
The snow erupted and something turned the marine into an explosion of red mist. For an instant Marie was blinded as the spray covered her snow goggles in gore. She wiped at them with stiff fingers; all she achieved was to smear them more.
May'bel was luckier, if you could call it that. he could see the apparition rising from the snow. With a sweep of his leg he buckled Marie's legs dropping her on her back in the snow.
She wrenched her goggles free. Struggling to orientate herself, she saw May'bel crouch, and realised it was he getting her out of the way.
She turned to look at what May'bel was reacting to. It looked like some sort of insect, though it stood 3m at the shoulder, and was part nightmare in design. It's carapace was a mottled grey white, helping it blend into the snow. It seemed to be all insect legs and bladed claws. In one hand it held a black metal object, undoubtedly a weapon that had reduced, first Ranger Izzy and now the Marine, to nothing more than particulates.
A Federation officer might have attempted to give some sign of peace or initiate communication or something. But May'Bel was not a federation officer. He was a Klingon warrior. His allies were unaware of the threat, he had a crewman to protect, and the smell of his comrade's blood was sharp in his nostrils.
Dropping into a crouch, his twin disruptor pistols flowed out of their holsters with practised smoothness and he unleashed a volley of rapid-fire shots towards their assailant. Marie could hear from the sound of the disruptor bolts that both weapons were cranked up to maximum power.
His first shots were wild, relying on the power of the disruptors to do the damage. They hit parts of the creatures heavy hide and, appart from some crackling noise, had little obvious affect except to draw the creatures attention.
It did not use its gun. Whether this was because it needed to reload, or because it prefered to fight hand to hand, May'bel couldn't guess. It rushed towards him, but in doing so gave the Klingon a clue as to it's vulnerable part. Eyes, antanae, mouth, he began to place his shots more carefully.
This pulled the creature up short initially as a good shot too of one of it's antanae, but it had many spare and the reprise was only momentary.
Marie had no time to think, just to react. Seeing the insect’s attention caught by May’bel’s fire, she dove forward and rolled. The snow crackled underneath her but took most of the brunt of the manoeuvre. She came up on the left of the insect, between its abdomen and thorax. She shoved the barrel of her disrupter into the carapace joint and fired.
The creature shuddered and for a moment there was a smell of burning flesh. But still the creature was not down. It spun to the left and with one claw pierced through Marie's stomach.
But the onslaught was enough now to disuade this attacker. With a sudden leap it jumped away from the stricken Marie and still firing May'bel. The Jump carried it a good 20 feet from them both where it suddenly burrowed into the snow.
Marie's breath rattled. She knew immediately a lung had been torn by the attack. Blood flowing freely from the gaping stomach wound. In the strange way that people have at these moments she became intensely aware of what was around her: hot blood bouncing like tiny rubies of the frozen snow; May'bel running towards her in slow motion, still firing at the place the beast had vanished; pain lancing through her with every breath; the sharp relief in the spatter pattern in the place she had stood when the marine had been 'Popped'.
Strangely, she still held the disruptor in one of her limp hands while the other held the teleport tagging device they were to use on the bodies for transport.
Now that she had time to think, the self-recriminations flowed thick and fast. Why the hell didn’t you just run? Why didn’t you let May’bel attend to all that Klingon machismo stuff? Who do you think you are; a hero?
She knew the answer.
It was said you could take the child out of Nouvelle Nouvelle Caladonie but you couldn’t take Nouvelle Nouvelle Caladonie out of the child. Back then, it had been ingrained in her from an early age that you did not abandon a fallen comrade; not if you wanted someone to stand by you if you went down. May’bel hadn’t fallen but that thing had already killed the marine and now it was standing it’s ground despite everything the Klingon threw at it. Marie reacted before she could think; reacted like she’d been trained to do all those years ago.
Did she regret it now? Pain told her she should but deep down...? Deep down she knew she’d done the right thing. Not that she would ever admit that to anyone.
So now, while her breath wheezed and she tried to hold her guts inside her skin, she tried to think of a plausible explanation for her actions. Sheer stupidity was the best she could come up with.
May'Bel was standing over her in a few moments. He dropped one disruptor for a moment, still maintaining fire with the other. The free hand then snatched a spherical device off his belt, and firmly depressed a switch on it. It began to beep as he tossed in into the hole where the thing had vanished.
May'Bel leaned over Marie for a moment, shielding her with his body. A second later there was a deafening "THWOOOMPH", and the hole where the creature had vanished erupted into a massive crater, sprinkling dirt and snow, and small rocks over a wide area.
May'Bel still snatched his other disruptor up, and held both out - watching for movement. He knew this was an enemy not to be underestimated. It seemed however that whatever it was had been burrowing under the snow to get away.
"May'Bel to F'Hew! Contact! Two down, one dead. Enemy is strong, fast, well armed, and resistant to disruptor fire. Recommend extraction!"
,'. Roger that, May'bel. Atmospheric ionization is breaking up your comms signal. We can't get a quantum lock with out a more didicated fix. Can you make it back to the LZ? ,'.
May'bel thought he could make the twenty minute gjob back to the drop site but one glance at Marie made it clear she had barely minutes if she remained still. His eyes shifted slightly from the open wound to the bloodied hands trying to hold it closed and the device she held in them; a disruptor and a Teleport Tagger.
May'Bel holstered one disruptor with a smooth movement.
"Hold tight," he told Marie. "You're taking the shortcut home!"
He clasped his hand over Marie's clenched fist - drawing a groan as it nudged her wound. He pressed firmly down on her thumb with his own, activating the transport tag.
Then he stood and took a step back.
"May'Bel to F'Hew. One casualty tagged for transport. Other is unrecoverable."
He watched the nearby snowdrifts for movement as Marie vanished in a red shimmer.
"Will attempt to make it back to the LZ on foot."
He paused a moment to scoop up the marine's dropped disruptor rifle, lying a few metres from where he'd met his end. One side was sprayed with purple blood, but otherwise seemed to be mostly undamaged. And May'Bel needed all the extra firepower he could get.
Holstering his other pistol, he cranked the rifle's power up to maximum. Then he started moving briskly back along the way they'd come - watching for the slightest sign of movement from the snowdrifts nearby.
,'. Fhew to May'bel. Hold your position. We have the other teams moving to you now. Primary objective is complete, tertiary objective is failed. We still need to make secondary objective: identify the aggressor, either through sufficient data scan or a dead body. ,'.
May'Bel wondered whether to question the order, wondering if they'd understood his earlier communication. He was in a live combat zone. The thing had put two thirds of his team out of action in moments, and shrugged off a dozen high powered disruptor shots. And they wanted him to hold the position against it.
No, he thought. It was a death order. But Klingons warriors took death orders. That was the price of not being afraid.
Drawing his D'k tahg, he deftly ran the point along one of the grooves in the rifle, cutting the lines to the charge suppressor. An old soldier's trick for a last stand. It meant the mechanism could no longer judge power settings, and would simply load the induction coils with all the power they could take. Shortened the life dramatically and was prone to overload. But perfect for a last stand.
I should have taken a second grenade, he thought calmly. One with a dead-man's-switch.
He re-sheathed the blade and braced the weapon against his shoulder. Then he watched, and waited... listening for the slightest movement.
Time to die.
...
After the cold of Iapetus the heat of the transporter room was a welcome relief. Unfortunately, the increase in body temperature also meant an increase in blood flow. Hands grabbed at Marie's blood stained clothes and lifted her firmly, but not unkindly, off the pad and began to carry her to one side of the room. Her vision was swimming and she felt a hypospray against her neck.
As the darkenss began to claim her she heard someone saying, "Find Germite or HIchop and get them back up here."
Pain flowed away; a haze enveloped her. She felt like she was floating in a warm sea. As she slipped away, a previous comment came back to her. Before it had been made as a jest, a slightly nasty one at that. She regretted it. Now she really would like to lie down snuggled in Tell's arms. She could die peacefully like that.
...
Germite had been with his team converging on the threat. He felt a hand slap him on his back and someone say, "I found him."
A moment later he found himself on the transporter pad in the FHew. He looked around and saw the casualtiy. Someone pulled him off the pad, "She's over here."
Germite followed the warrior to Marie. One look and he knew it was bad. He took a deep breath, "All right, I need some space."
He pulled out his tricorder and conducted a quick scan of Marie, "At least you got her out in time."
He opened the trauma kit and pulled out a protoplaser. He ran the protoplaser across her chest, "Okay, she'll live, but we need to get her to a more advanced facility to finish her treatment."
The Klingon nearest him shook his head, "We are in the atmosphere, so we can't even beam her to Prometheus station. If she were a Klingon, we'd patch her and let her fight ot live, or left her to die in the field. She is human, so we pulled her back, but her life is tertiary to the mission."
"That being said," the crewman added lifting her up carefully, "We can't have her cluttering the transporter pad. I will carry her to the infirmary where you can practice whatever federation incantations you need to do."
by HoD Ro' Matlh & Sogh HoS Matlh & Sogh Germite Ephilom & Soghla' HIchop Matlh & Soghla' Terri (Tell) Hope & Soghla' Jared & Soghla' Marie St. Helene
Post Details
| Title | Bugs | |
| Mission | Bug Hunt | |
| Author(s) | HoD Ro' Matlh & Sogh HoS Matlh & Sogh Germite Ephilom & Soghla' HIchop Matlh & Soghla' Terri (Tell) Hope & Soghla' Jared & Soghla' Marie St. Helene | |
| Posted | Mon Mar 04, 2013 @ 11:26pm | |
| Location | Iapetus -L'Grande Hunting Reserve | |
| Timeline | 0800 hrs Local Time |
Germite and two marines looked to the far ridge, above Tell's team. A figure could be seen standing on the crest.
"Who is that?" Germite asked rhetorically. He picked up his communicator. "Germite to F'Hew. There's an unidentified figure on the hill above Tell's team. Can you swoop in and run a scan on him?"
,'. FHew to away team, We are reading nothing on our sensors. We are coming in lower to... ,'.
There was a sudden noise of disruptor fire. Multiple repeated shots from one of the other teams.
,'. FHew to away team. Contact has been made by the central group. All teams converge! ,'.
There was the sound of an explosion, possibly a grenade, echoing through the valley.
Germite looked at the warriors. "All right, let's go!!!" He watched as the Klingon warriors sprang into action. He was hard pressed to keep up with them.
Ridge base:
HIchop, Tell, and their Marine looked at the figure above them.
"One of the colonists?" the marine hazarded.
Tell looked at the readings on her tricorder, useless, didn't tell them anything.
"No. Whatever it is doesn't register," she replied with disgust. "Though I would make a guess and say it's what were looking for. Can we get anywhere near or above it with out being seen?"
The Marine scanned the ridge. There was a natural gulley up the cliff that they could follow, but it would be easy to observe their progress.
"Not without detouring a couple of Kelicams north," he replied.
There was a sudden noise of disruptor fire. Multiple repeated shots from one of the other teams.
,'. FHew to away team. Contact has been made by the central group. All teams converge! ,'.
There was the sound of an explosion, possibly a grenade, echoing through the valley.
"What the hell was that?" Tell shouted above the din reverberating around them. "Right lets get moving and try to meet up with the others."
Centre line:
May'bel and a marine had been digging for some ten minutes. Even Marie had condescended to join them.
They kept at it for another five minutes when the marine threw up his arms in disgust.
"There is nothing here! Give me that."
He snatched the tricorder of Marie. Not being a crewman he did not understand the dangerous action this could prove to be. He glanced at the device and frowned.
"This is broken," He snarled, stabbing at the device with numb fingers. "It says the human should be all around us in a 20 metre circle."
“Precisely,” Marie said, the disgust palpable in her voice. Her mood had not been helped by being forced to manual labour and this stupidity only served to poison it more. “All around us. And probably in lots of little pieces. Keep digging until you find them all.”
"For that to happen she would have to have gone po-"
The snow erupted and something turned the marine into an explosion of red mist. For an instant Marie was blinded as the spray covered her snow goggles in gore. She wiped at them with stiff fingers; all she achieved was to smear them more.
May'bel was luckier, if you could call it that. he could see the apparition rising from the snow. With a sweep of his leg he buckled Marie's legs dropping her on her back in the snow.
She wrenched her goggles free. Struggling to orientate herself, she saw May'bel crouch, and realised it was he getting her out of the way.
She turned to look at what May'bel was reacting to. It looked like some sort of insect, though it stood 3m at the shoulder, and was part nightmare in design. It's carapace was a mottled grey white, helping it blend into the snow. It seemed to be all insect legs and bladed claws. In one hand it held a black metal object, undoubtedly a weapon that had reduced, first Ranger Izzy and now the Marine, to nothing more than particulates.
A Federation officer might have attempted to give some sign of peace or initiate communication or something. But May'Bel was not a federation officer. He was a Klingon warrior. His allies were unaware of the threat, he had a crewman to protect, and the smell of his comrade's blood was sharp in his nostrils.
Dropping into a crouch, his twin disruptor pistols flowed out of their holsters with practised smoothness and he unleashed a volley of rapid-fire shots towards their assailant. Marie could hear from the sound of the disruptor bolts that both weapons were cranked up to maximum power.
His first shots were wild, relying on the power of the disruptors to do the damage. They hit parts of the creatures heavy hide and, appart from some crackling noise, had little obvious affect except to draw the creatures attention.
It did not use its gun. Whether this was because it needed to reload, or because it prefered to fight hand to hand, May'bel couldn't guess. It rushed towards him, but in doing so gave the Klingon a clue as to it's vulnerable part. Eyes, antanae, mouth, he began to place his shots more carefully.
This pulled the creature up short initially as a good shot too of one of it's antanae, but it had many spare and the reprise was only momentary.
Marie had no time to think, just to react. Seeing the insect’s attention caught by May’bel’s fire, she dove forward and rolled. The snow crackled underneath her but took most of the brunt of the manoeuvre. She came up on the left of the insect, between its abdomen and thorax. She shoved the barrel of her disrupter into the carapace joint and fired.
The creature shuddered and for a moment there was a smell of burning flesh. But still the creature was not down. It spun to the left and with one claw pierced through Marie's stomach.
But the onslaught was enough now to disuade this attacker. With a sudden leap it jumped away from the stricken Marie and still firing May'bel. The Jump carried it a good 20 feet from them both where it suddenly burrowed into the snow.
Marie's breath rattled. She knew immediately a lung had been torn by the attack. Blood flowing freely from the gaping stomach wound. In the strange way that people have at these moments she became intensely aware of what was around her: hot blood bouncing like tiny rubies of the frozen snow; May'bel running towards her in slow motion, still firing at the place the beast had vanished; pain lancing through her with every breath; the sharp relief in the spatter pattern in the place she had stood when the marine had been 'Popped'.
Strangely, she still held the disruptor in one of her limp hands while the other held the teleport tagging device they were to use on the bodies for transport.
Now that she had time to think, the self-recriminations flowed thick and fast. Why the hell didn’t you just run? Why didn’t you let May’bel attend to all that Klingon machismo stuff? Who do you think you are; a hero?
She knew the answer.
It was said you could take the child out of Nouvelle Nouvelle Caladonie but you couldn’t take Nouvelle Nouvelle Caladonie out of the child. Back then, it had been ingrained in her from an early age that you did not abandon a fallen comrade; not if you wanted someone to stand by you if you went down. May’bel hadn’t fallen but that thing had already killed the marine and now it was standing it’s ground despite everything the Klingon threw at it. Marie reacted before she could think; reacted like she’d been trained to do all those years ago.
Did she regret it now? Pain told her she should but deep down...? Deep down she knew she’d done the right thing. Not that she would ever admit that to anyone.
So now, while her breath wheezed and she tried to hold her guts inside her skin, she tried to think of a plausible explanation for her actions. Sheer stupidity was the best she could come up with.
May'Bel was standing over her in a few moments. He dropped one disruptor for a moment, still maintaining fire with the other. The free hand then snatched a spherical device off his belt, and firmly depressed a switch on it. It began to beep as he tossed in into the hole where the thing had vanished.
May'Bel leaned over Marie for a moment, shielding her with his body. A second later there was a deafening "THWOOOMPH", and the hole where the creature had vanished erupted into a massive crater, sprinkling dirt and snow, and small rocks over a wide area.
May'Bel still snatched his other disruptor up, and held both out - watching for movement. He knew this was an enemy not to be underestimated. It seemed however that whatever it was had been burrowing under the snow to get away.
"May'Bel to F'Hew! Contact! Two down, one dead. Enemy is strong, fast, well armed, and resistant to disruptor fire. Recommend extraction!"
,'. Roger that, May'bel. Atmospheric ionization is breaking up your comms signal. We can't get a quantum lock with out a more didicated fix. Can you make it back to the LZ? ,'.
May'bel thought he could make the twenty minute gjob back to the drop site but one glance at Marie made it clear she had barely minutes if she remained still. His eyes shifted slightly from the open wound to the bloodied hands trying to hold it closed and the device she held in them; a disruptor and a Teleport Tagger.
May'Bel holstered one disruptor with a smooth movement.
"Hold tight," he told Marie. "You're taking the shortcut home!"
He clasped his hand over Marie's clenched fist - drawing a groan as it nudged her wound. He pressed firmly down on her thumb with his own, activating the transport tag.
Then he stood and took a step back.
"May'Bel to F'Hew. One casualty tagged for transport. Other is unrecoverable."
He watched the nearby snowdrifts for movement as Marie vanished in a red shimmer.
"Will attempt to make it back to the LZ on foot."
He paused a moment to scoop up the marine's dropped disruptor rifle, lying a few metres from where he'd met his end. One side was sprayed with purple blood, but otherwise seemed to be mostly undamaged. And May'Bel needed all the extra firepower he could get.
Holstering his other pistol, he cranked the rifle's power up to maximum. Then he started moving briskly back along the way they'd come - watching for the slightest sign of movement from the snowdrifts nearby.
,'. Fhew to May'bel. Hold your position. We have the other teams moving to you now. Primary objective is complete, tertiary objective is failed. We still need to make secondary objective: identify the aggressor, either through sufficient data scan or a dead body. ,'.
May'Bel wondered whether to question the order, wondering if they'd understood his earlier communication. He was in a live combat zone. The thing had put two thirds of his team out of action in moments, and shrugged off a dozen high powered disruptor shots. And they wanted him to hold the position against it.
No, he thought. It was a death order. But Klingons warriors took death orders. That was the price of not being afraid.
Drawing his D'k tahg, he deftly ran the point along one of the grooves in the rifle, cutting the lines to the charge suppressor. An old soldier's trick for a last stand. It meant the mechanism could no longer judge power settings, and would simply load the induction coils with all the power they could take. Shortened the life dramatically and was prone to overload. But perfect for a last stand.
I should have taken a second grenade, he thought calmly. One with a dead-man's-switch.
He re-sheathed the blade and braced the weapon against his shoulder. Then he watched, and waited... listening for the slightest movement.
Time to die.
...
After the cold of Iapetus the heat of the transporter room was a welcome relief. Unfortunately, the increase in body temperature also meant an increase in blood flow. Hands grabbed at Marie's blood stained clothes and lifted her firmly, but not unkindly, off the pad and began to carry her to one side of the room. Her vision was swimming and she felt a hypospray against her neck.
As the darkenss began to claim her she heard someone saying, "Find Germite or HIchop and get them back up here."
Pain flowed away; a haze enveloped her. She felt like she was floating in a warm sea. As she slipped away, a previous comment came back to her. Before it had been made as a jest, a slightly nasty one at that. She regretted it. Now she really would like to lie down snuggled in Tell's arms. She could die peacefully like that.
...
Germite had been with his team converging on the threat. He felt a hand slap him on his back and someone say, "I found him."
A moment later he found himself on the transporter pad in the FHew. He looked around and saw the casualtiy. Someone pulled him off the pad, "She's over here."
Germite followed the warrior to Marie. One look and he knew it was bad. He took a deep breath, "All right, I need some space."
He pulled out his tricorder and conducted a quick scan of Marie, "At least you got her out in time."
He opened the trauma kit and pulled out a protoplaser. He ran the protoplaser across her chest, "Okay, she'll live, but we need to get her to a more advanced facility to finish her treatment."
The Klingon nearest him shook his head, "We are in the atmosphere, so we can't even beam her to Prometheus station. If she were a Klingon, we'd patch her and let her fight ot live, or left her to die in the field. She is human, so we pulled her back, but her life is tertiary to the mission."
"That being said," the crewman added lifting her up carefully, "We can't have her cluttering the transporter pad. I will carry her to the infirmary where you can practice whatever federation incantations you need to do."