This Wasn't In The Plan

Posted on Sat Aug 15th, 2020 @ 7:06pm by Lieutenant JG Shaille Levine & Lieutenant Commander William Gunnison & Linza (Lin) Esni & Lieutenant Alexis Aenera

Mission: Into The Delta Triangle
Location: Kessik III

The bodies materialized in the room near them, unconscious and unresponsive. It hadn't been hard to get out of her cuffs given that Lin hadn't tightened them again before leaving, so she at least had the ability to move freely, but with Lexi unconscious again she had no ability to remove the cuffs of the others. Instead, she once she knew the others were at least alive and would wake up soon, she started using her time pacing around the room, looking for anything that might give them an advantage.

Lexi groaned as she came back to consciousness, her head pounding in what she quickly came to realize was in rhythm with her heartbeat. Shot again, for the third time was it now? Or just the second? She couldn't think straight and she partly opened one eye without moving, "Kill me now, please... Stunner migraine."

Lin watched the others beam in and smirked, glad they were all unconscious. She then heard the others, one walking around and one talking. "Oh lookie, someone is awake," she finally said as she looked out at them. Her eyes turned to the one walking around. "I'd sit back down if I were you."

"Or what? You'll stun me again?" Shaille retorted, the anger in her voice quite clear. "We are Federation citizens and we are Starfleet Officers! Holding us against our will is illegal and our ship WILL be looking for us. So do yourself a favour and let us go."

Will slowly came to. He knew that he was likely breaking one of the cardinal rules of any sort of fighting by turning your back on a potential opponent, but he was worried about what had happened to Lieutenants Aenera and Levine, and figured that the best way to get to them if they were being held against their will was to actually allow this Meka woman to take him and Alani to them by carrying out whatever plan she was working under, and that meant not allowing Meka to know of their suspicions. He could only hope that she would not realize he'd turned his body just enough to take any phaser blast at an angle and not directly (while hoping that she wasn't going to use some other method to try to incapacitate them besides an energy weapon set on stun).

He remained quiet, listening while opening his eyes just a bit to evaluate his situation. He noticed that he wasn't in the marketplace, though he heard several voices, one of which he definitely didn't recognize and another he definitely did, that of Levine. He wasn't restrained - yet - though he knew it would probably only be a matter of time before that changed. He noticed that his sword wasn't on him, and figured that he would likely have been stripped of his comm badge and phaser as well. Moments later, though, he did feel a slight vibration against one leg and smiled. Back on the Astraea he'd hidden a small transponder inside his coat that could be activated quickly (which he'd quietly done when turning to go with Meka) and, if not deactivated within a few minutes, would send a signal back to the shuttle. He'd left instructions with Koh that, if said signal should be picked up, to assume that the crap had hit the fan and that the away team was in trouble and in need of assistance. Koh was to work on tracing the signal back to its point of origin while notifying the Astraea and following any particular instructions they might have.

“Shhhhhhhhhhhhh,” Alexis hissed at the raised voice, opening one eye fully with a wince at the migraine, “Look, I don’t know who you are, but seriously, what do you want?” She levered herself onto one elbow, “I get that you’re floating over holding us as prisoners and that’s all well and good, yay you, but part of every nefarious plot is that you want something from us or plan on giving us to someone in exchange for something and maybe if you just tell us what you want or what you’re planning on doing with or to us, we can get things rolling.” She brought her shoulders up as she instinctively tried to raise her hands, but they were still locked behind her, “Just please, no more with the shooty-shooty?”

"Has it not occurred to you that I sure as hell don't care that you're Starfleet? I don't care who the hell you are actually. What I do care about is someone or a group of someone's coming in and trying to change or destroy or whatever else you're doing to what I've setup." Linza glanced at the unconscious ones and sighed. "I swore to myself I'd never deal with Starfleet again, and now we have an entire damned away team of you here!"

She gripped the phaser tighter but didn't fire it at anyone. "What do all of you want with this place anyways?"

Alexis glanced at Shaille, then at Will who was apparently playing unconscious and who would possibly technically outrank her and the definitely unconscious Farizah would would definitely outrank her. She cringed back from the phaser, then sighed, "We're looking for a Cardassian named Tejar, used to be an overseer on Bajor. Obviously, you're not him, nor is your partner out there, so unless you work for him, in which case you're going to shoot us, or you just have a grudge against Starfleet like you do, which means you may be just as likely to shoot us anyway, then you have absolutely nothing to fear from us. We just want to find him, take him and get off this planet and we'd be out of your hair."

"Tejar? So that's his name? I'd been wondering about that. No, I'm not him, but he's been trying to step all over my territory down here, and I won't stand for it." Lin glared at Alexis, who seemed to be doing all the talking. "And, I might have something against Starfleet, but considering I once wore one of those damned uniforms?" She looked at the combadges she'd set on the table and picked one up. "How do I know you wouldn't just report my location to them the moment you left? I did steal one of their shuttles and quite a big stockpile of their weapons..." She wasn't looking at Alexis, but at the combadge in her hand.

Meka slipped into the room quietly. "You know you can't trust Starfleet Lin," she said quietly. "They wouldn't know how to tell the truth if their lives depended on it." Reaching out, she plucked the commbadge from the other woman's hand. "You know, these on the other hand will fetch a pretty penny. Yelkim has had a few customers asking about comms devices recently." She gathered up the rest of the commbadges and the phasers before she turned to Lin. "I'm gonna take these over to Yelkim. The last thing we want is someone trying to think they're smart or using comms signals to track our location. We can work out what to do with them later," she finished, with a jerk of her head indicating she was talking about the away team.

Glaring at Meka, Linza watched her leave. "Guess you're right," she said quietly, fiddling with the phaser again in her hand, looking at the team that Meka had beamed in. "Whatever to do with all of you..."

"We can make a deal." Alexis blurted out, "If you want immunity for anything, I can talk to the right people. But whatever you do, don't kill us or they'll hunt you across the Quadrant. Negotiation is the best way out."

Shaille watched Meka as she took the commbadges and walked out of the room. "She's not your friend," the blonde Starfleet officer said quietly. "I'd watch my back if I were you."

Snapping her head back to the other two, Lin glared at them just as she did Meka. "No deals, now zip your lips or this phaser will go off again, maybe at the both of you." Carefully, she watched Shailee. "Not my friend? I've known her nearly as long as I've been here. Saved each other's necks more times than I can count. Now shut up!" Though, the statement from Shailee made her feel a tiny bit uneasy.