Chapter IIb: On Your Own

This is the thread for the away team that was left behind: M1-K3 and Zephyr

---

M1, you are still on the ships stripped down bridge with Ensign Myers and your hostage, if you want to consider the man that. You can hear sounds from outside the bridge that sound like an airlock. Someone is entering the ship and for whatever reason, they are not using transporters but instead are making the extra effort to enter manually.
The ensign with you lifts her phaser towards the door behind which the sounds are originating. About a minute later (Let me know if and how you want to prepare in that minute), three humanoid shapes in dark vacuum tight suits enter the bridge. They are all holding Consortium style laser rifles, aiming them at you but not firing right away. "Let our brother go and surrender. If you follow our orders, we will not end your lives!"
Myers looks at you, M1, silently asking you whether she should shoot or surrender.

Zephyr, you also hear the airlock sound behind you, outside the cargo bay. Lt. Felt looks nervous, his hands a re shaking as he lifts his phaser towards the door. You hear heavy steps in the corridor which abruptly stop right outside the cargo bay door. Two of the strange animals let out deep vibrating screams, as if to warn whoever is outside of your presence.
You hear a loud, heavy knock on the door and a coarse male voice, muffled by the door, yells: "Step away from the children, throw your weapons towards the door and put your hands behind your head. In five seconds, we will come in and shoot anyone who is still armed."
Felt’s eyes twitch between you and the door. With a shaking voice, he whispers: "We have a lot of cover in here and they’ll have to come through the door. We can take them!"

The door opens and two humanoid figures, one much taller and heavier than a human, the other around human height, dressed in black vacuum tight suits step into the room, both wielding Consortium issue phaser rifles.

The larger one quickly steps between you and the "children" as he called them, which are still larger than even him.
He turns towards his comrade and lets out a series of clicking sounds to which his comrade responds in the same fashion. Your universal translator lags slightly behind in the translation, indicating that this language is not in the data banks and it is deciphering the language at the same time as translating. The large humanoid ordered the smaller one to "handcuff the prisoners", which the other one confirmed. He is now stepping towards you, Zephyr, holding out a pair of maglock handcuffs.

The larger one bends over the "children" lying weakly on the ground to inspect them. He turns towards his comrade and explains: "We must perform the procedure soon. We might not have enough time to return to the station."

"Stop talking, meatbag!", the smaller humanoid suddenly barks at you. He puts the handcuffs around your wrists and closes them, then he turns towards Felt, who holds out his hands for him with an unsure expression. He quickly gets cuffed as well.

The larger one reaches into his pocket and pulls out what appears to be a Spacefleet Communicator. He activates it and says: "Two meatbags secured. Ready to beam them into a holding cell. We will join Tox and then climb back into our ship. The children are dying. We need to test the meatbags as soon as possible."

There is no further warning before you feel the characteristic sensation of a Consortium transporter and suddenly find yourself in a small room, not unlike an Ensign's quarters on a small Consortium ship like the Potential. It is completely empty, except for a simple bed. The replicator in the wall has been deactivated. Lt. Felt is not with you and you are still handcuffed. You can hear faint sounds from behind the closed door.

Outside of your cell door, you can hear some voices but they don't speak your language. It's the same clicking language that you heard before but without your badge, there's no translation. Suddenly, you hear a human voice, female. You think it's Ensign Myers' voice but you can't understand what she's saying. She sounds scared.

Laser Feeling: While you are inspecting the replicator, trying to figure out if you can get it back to work, you think about what your kidnappers might want. You remember those "children" and how they were dying. You realize that something was also very wrong with the man you encountered on the decoy ship. And you remember what your kidnapper said about testing. You realize that they must be trying to save their children from dying to whatever it is that's killing them and that the cure is related to the people they kidnap.
You don't know exactly what the procedure is that they were talking about but you are convinced that you don't want to find out, at least not first hand.

You don't get to think in peace for long. It took you a while to get the replicator working again and only ten minutes after replicating the tea, you hear steps outside the door of your "quarters". Someone will be coming in just a few seconds.

Lorq, it has been a few weeks since the attack on your ship. You have been serving for a few years now on the USS Sigma under Captain Ery-An and despite all the prejudices against your species, you managed to become the ship's doctor.
It had been a regular day when the Sigma responded to a distress call in an insignificant system. You weren't on the bridge, so you don't know exactly what happened but somehow, a boarding party managed to get onto the ship and took a large number of your crewmates captive, you among them. Since then, you've spent most of your time in one prison cell or another. You're only allowed to leave the cell rarely to help your kidnappers with medical exams on their people or other captives. You don't know exactly what they're doing to their prisoners but you've seen a number of your former crewmates join them, which usually results in them ignoring you and acting as if they don't even know you. You've also noticed that the entire pirate crew, including the people they took out of the Sigma's crew, seems to be stricken with some sort of disease. You've seen their conditions get visible worse even over just these few weeks. They turn pale, their hair goes gray and they grow frail, sometimes appearing as if they can barely stand upright. You've helped the pirates sometimes with decreasing those symptoms but most of the time, they rely on their own doctors.
Today, you have been taken out of your cell again and moved to the sickbay of the Consortium ship that you are held on. You have been told to perform the "standard tests" which means they have captured new people today. The standard tests are nothing complicated: a blood sample, a DNA test, hormone analysis...

As you reach sickbay, a woman is lying on one of the stretchers. She's wearing a Consortium uniform - yellow, to indicate security - but you've never seen her before.

---

Alex, after being taken from your ship, you've been moved to another Consortium ship of different but similar design. There, you've been held captive for a few weeks by now. Occasionally, someone comes to the room you're held in to bring you food but that's it. Today, you heard unusual movements outside your room and, most surprisingly, from inside the room next to yours. Someone in there appears to have been working with electronics. They have also been speaking to themselves - in your own language, even, instead of this strange clicking that the pirates use to communicate amongst each other.
Later, you even thought you heard a replicator noise from that room, but that's impossible. The replicator in that room should be shut off just like it is in your cell.
Suddenly, theres steps outside your room and not long after, the door opens to reveal a pirate in a full-body vacuum sealed suit that hides his face. He points a rifle at you. "It's time to get tested again!", the man behind the mask says very slowly, almost as if he has trouble speaking or is in pain.
You've been "tested" once before when you arrived here. Not that you remember anything. They took you to sickbay, gave you some sort of sedative and you woke up back in your cell afterwards...

---

Zephyr, the door opens and you barely have time to hide your replicated food before the pirate (it is the same large guy that you already met on the decoy ship, still wearing the vacuum suit) enters. He seems to not notice the reactivated replicator.
He's pointing a Consortium issue phaser rifle at you. "We need to test you, meatbag. Do not resist or I will be forced to stun you."

Alex, you are being led out of your room. As you leave the room, you see another pirate standing at the door of the room that you heard the noises from.
That pirate suddenly fires his phaser rifle into the room.

Zephyr, the man shoots his rifle, not quite at you but close. Definitely a warning shot. "Stop talking and come with us. We have doctors! We have another use for you."

As you follow him out of the cell, you encounter a woman who is being led out of the room next to yours by another armed pirate. Together the two of you are led through the corridor

Time has crawled for Lorq. He fears that his crew believe him a traitor, but he is only trying to help. Everyone needs medical help when they are sick.

When brought to the medway to do the tests he speaks to his patients hoping to calm them down.
I am Lorq. The tests I am doing are harmless. I am just doing baseline testing. I fear however that some illness is stalking this ship. I am going to try and neutralize whatever has you unconscious. Maybe we can make some plans.3d6

( 3, 3, 3 ) = 9

Edited as I put with instead of without

I am Lorq. A friend. Do not react as the guards think you are unconscious. If I touch your shoulder act asleep. Who are you? Are there more of your crew here. Most importantly...do you have a plan to get out of here?3d6

( 1, 2, 6 ) = 9

Lorq:
The woman stirs lightly and opens her eyes. She looks around the room and sees the guards standing there with guns, observing you. She stops moving and closes her eyes again.
"Ensign Myers, USS Potential. Our away team got captured. I'm sure the Commander is on the way to get us back.", she whispers.

You complete the scans and don't notice anything unsual. She seems to be healthy, except for the mixture of tranquilizers and stimulants in her blood.

---

Alex, Zephyr, the guards keep you moving forward but they don't seem to care what you are talking to each other about.

3d6

( 1, 4, 5 ) = 10

Laser Feeling: The scans that you're performing on new arrivals, the secretive operations they perform without your presence, the steadily worsening condition of the entire crew. By now you've pieced together that they're willingly infecting many of the arrivals with something that lets them control new arrivals to recruit them into their crew. And this infection also continuously makes them sicker

You give the Ensign a tranquilizer injector without anyone noticing. Although you haven't been allowed to test any of the infected crew, you're fairly certain that any tranquilizer that would work on a normal human will also work on them

The two of you are being led into the ship's sickbay where you see a Meringue doctor leaning over a woman that Zephyr recognizes as Ensign Myers. He appears to be performing some standard health tests on her while two armed guards watch from a distance. One of them is human, the other is not but they are both very pale, the human more than the non-human who's skin has a light blue tint to it.
The guards look up at you for a moment but don't pay you too much attention.

Lorq, the door opens and two of your captors in vacuum sealed suits lead two people into the room. You recognize Lt. Comm. Lloyd. A man is with her, wearing a Spacefleet science uniform. One of the two pirates that led them here speaks to you in their clicking language that is quickly translated by his comm badge as: "Two more subjects to test. And be quick. The children are dying!"

Zephyr, listening to the symptoms, you've encountered some diseases that are similar but nothing so far that's exactly the same. The closest you've seen for this progression is an infection with C'torran muscleworms, a parasite that eats away at the host from the inside, but the symptoms don't quite match. This would also not explain the way everyone appears to slowly go white.

Alex, the guards seem impatient. They're not necessarily aggressive at the moment but you feel they're going to break up your conversation soon to get the doctor back to work

Lorq, you finish up the tests on Ensign Myers, who still pretends to be unconscious.

A guard walks up to Alex and Zephyr. He points his phaser rifle at them. The translator in his comm badge relays his clicking as: "Meatbags, lie down on the empty operating tables. We will need to sedate you for the tests. We will not harm you"

Laser Feeling: They are not going to tell you any more details unless they feel that for some reason it is absolutely necessary. They know that "meatbags" most likely won't consent to being infected with a parasite, so they're trying to hide what exactly they're doing. If you want them to give you more information, you'd need to somehow convince them that telling you will make things easier rather than harder

Lorq, they haven't allowed you to do tests on infected people, only on new arrivals before they got infected. Recollecting the type of data you have gathered for them, you are fairly certain these tests you performed were to establish whether prisoner and parasite are compatible.

Alex, because of the LF, you can choose to change your action if you want

Lorq, you share your information with the other two, until the large humanoid guard steps up to your group, phaser rifle aimed straight at Zephyr.
"You two, lie down on the other beds right now! Doctor, tranquilize them and start testing. Start with the new arrival. We don't have much time!"

You don't have to sedate them but in order to trick the guards, you'll have to do a Feelings roll. You are prepared and you can get an extra die for help but it'll still be difficult. If you want to, make a roll, if it's too risky for you, I'll let you change your action

Laser Feeling: The guards seem to be on edge around you all, so showing them you're not aggressive and that you're willing to cooperate will put them a bit more at ease.

The guards speak amongst each other for a moment, using their clicking language. It is not getting translated for you so none of you are able to understand what they're saying but after a few seconds, one of the gaurds turns towards you and says: "Female, you may stay awake during the tests but we will sedate the other meatbag. Doctor, begin!"

Lorq, you sneak the injectors into the other character's pockets, then you sedate Zephyr. Over the next hour, you take some blood and skin cells to run tests and analyses on them, you test muscle responses, eye reflexes, scan their brainwaves and hormone levels.
Alex, you observe during all of this. The tests that are run on you are not painful, the worst are minor electric charges to stimulate your muscles but even they don't hurt.
All results come back as normal. Lorq, you don't notice anything our of the ordinary with either of them but you notice two guards inspecting a viewscreen displaying the data and they seem to be excited about something. They are only speaking in their strange language without a translation, however, so you can't tell what exactly it is that has them excited.

Alex, Lorq, do you want to do anything else during the tests?

There's not a lot lying around that you can use but you do find a reactive agent that should make the effects of the tranquilizer a bit faster. You quickly add a few drops to each of the syringes. Just as you finish, a guard turns around and lifts his phaser rifle at you. "Doctor, female, you leave now. We will take the male to his cell in just a moment!"
He doesn't seem to have noticed you fiddling around with the tranquilizers.

Laser Feeling: They have found Zephyr suited for infection and are planning to infect him once you're gone.

Do you want to change action or keep it this way?

"He will wake up in his cell. There is no need for you to observe, meatbag!"
The guards seem to appreciate the way you're acting so they lower their guard and don't aim their rifles at you anymore but they're still insisting that you leave.

A guard leads you away to your cell. They seem relaxed around you but they still keep an eye on you.
Lorq, you are also being escorted to your cell.

Are you planning on doing anything during the next hour after being taken back?

After a while, both of you would hear heavy steps in the corridor outside your cells. Alex, you hear the door to the room next to you in which Zephyr was kept open and the steps enter it. A moment later, the steps exit the room, the door closes and they walk off.

---

Zephyr, you wake up back in the room that you were in before you got taken to the medical exam. You feel a bit groggy, most likely from the anesthesia, but otherwise you feel fine. The replicator in the room is still working. Your captors seem to have not noticed that you fixed it.

Alex, Zephyr, when you talk, you can just barely understand each other

Alex, Zephyr gives you some quick tips on how to make the communication work and you attempt to put them into action. You open up a control panel by the door and dis- and reconnect the wires behind it.
Not being experienced with electronics, however, you must have made a mistake because suddenly, your hands get burned lightly by an electric discharge and the power in your room disappears, leaving you standing in darkness.

Lorq succeeds at fixing up his communication system and it connects to Zephyr. Alex, your room is not connected to the communication but you can hear it through the wall.
Alex, a guard knocks angrily at your door. "Keep it down in there! We can communicate later. We're busy now!"

It doesn't take long for your room door to open. A guard walks in, phaser rifle in a sling over his shoulder but not in his hand. As he walks in, you don't get the feeling that he's expecting any tricks. He looks rather disgusted by the mess. "What the hell happened here?", he yells out (translated by the universal translator from their clicking language). "That shouldn't have happened!"

The man looks at Zephyr confused, then grabs him by the shoulder. "Come with me! I'll have to have someone check you out!", he grunts as he pulls him to his feet. He seems to not quite know how to react to your actions but after Alex yells at him, he pauses again. "Fine, let's have your friend have a look at you!"
He drags you behind him towards Lorq's door and opens it. He throws Zephyr in and follows after him. He puts one hand on his rifle but still doesn't look particularly alarmed. "Doctor, the female says he is suffering from a fever. Is there anything you can do?"

Yes, Lorq's cell is very close on the other side of the hallway. I would say you can hear this

Lorq, the guard doesn't pay any attention to you and you manage to inject him before he can even react.
The man tries to shove you off to the side but the increased dosis you gave him knocks him out almost immediately. Zephyr, you struggle to reach for the rifle and when the guard falls to the ground, you hold it in your hand.

The guard doesn't seem to have a key card or anything else that might help with opening the door. The corridor is empty, so you can easily move over to Alex' door. When you arrive there, you see that the door is not properly locked, only set to a mode where it cannot be opened from the inside. You don't need a key card or password or anything to open it from the outside. You can just release her.

I think we should check to see if any other doors are locked in the same way we may be able to add to our party. Then try to get a message out and maybe find a place to hold up.

I'm assuming everyone has some training with weapons and unarmed combat.
The double fist punch is definitely part of the Academy curriculum

You stay together, sneaking through the corridors. Most of the doors are unlocked so you can easily inspect them. They are all empty. Eventually, you reach a door that has been sealed teh same way as Alex' door had been - impossible to open from the inside, but unlocked from the outside. When you open the door and look inside, you find Ensign Myers in there, sitting on the bed and looking at you all as the door opens. She appears scared but also relieved when she recognizes Zephyr and Lorq.

Suddenly, you hear clicking from further down the corridor, translated into a shout: "What are you doing in that cell?"
When you turn towards the source of it, you see two guards in vac suits, possibly the same you saw earlier in sickbay, with phaser rifles aimed in your direction. You can tell they're going to open fire.

The guards seem confused for a moment but don't lower their weapons. They're not convinced. One of them looks at Zephyr and asks him - in the click language, translated to you by the translators: "What is going on?"

Zephyr, the pirate walks up to you. He's not aiming at you anymore but he looks confused. "Shouldn't you be in your cell? What is going on here?" He's still not quite in melee range but he is close enough that Zephyr or Alex (Lorq is in the room already) could try to jump him. If you're too slow, he might get a shot off however.

The pirate squint his eyes. He let's out a series of clicking noises at Zephyr that are not being translated. He seems to be very suspicious of you and wants to test Zephyr.

The pirate that Zephyr hit sinks to the ground, stunned by the phaser beam. The other one looks at your group, apparently confused. He doesn't reply to Zephyr's clicking or gives any indication as to whether what Zephyr said makes any sense at all but then decides to turn back and run the way he came from.

Myers steps out of the cell. What is the plan now? Do you think we can take over the whole ship?", she asks while she helps you move the unconscious pirates into the room. And no, I haven't seen them at all since back on the broken ship when we split up. I hope they're okay.

You've definitely seen pirates in vac suits so they must be around. Let me know which part of the ship you want to investigate.

As you make your way through the ship, you are lucky and don't encounter any more pirates, which makes you think this ship is currently running with minimal crew. You also don't find anymore rooms that are used as prison cells and therefore no prisoners. YOu could try to find if there's an actual brig on this ship but you at least don't find one on your way to the hangar.

You reach a hangar bay and find a small runabout in it. It appears damaged. You can't make out the extent of the damage from the outside. If you wanted to find out, you would have to get inside and try to start it. There's also a large, opened box with vac suits in it in the hangar bay. The box is half empty but there's still six suits left.

Lorq, it takes you a good amount of time. Like any Spacefleet officer, you have studied this kind of thing at the Academy but that was years ago and you haven't done much with machines like this since then, but after a while, it comes back to you. The ship has some damage but nothing too serious, so you manage to get it to work after a while. In case you want to escape in it: it would be able to make a long distance journey but it wouldn't be able to outrun the pirate ship you are on at the moment.

Suddenly, the comm system starts up and a harsh clicking sounds through the cargo bay. You are all unable to understand it but it doesn't sound friendly. Then the lights around you flash Yellow Alert.

They must have noticed your escape

Meyers looks at you for a second, slightly confused. "Um, thanks for the offer, but I think I prefer the phaser."
She takes position next to the door.

Lorq, you try to send out the distress signal when the runabout computer suddenly locks you out. You must have triggered some sort of security system and it requires authorization by a high ranking officer from the USS Verdun.
Zephyr, you're sitting at the terminal for a while. You're trying to override the sensors but it's not working. Eventually, the same thing happens that has also happened to Lorq. The console gets blocked and requires a USS Verdun officer's authorization to reconnect.

You slowly make your way through the corridors. This ship is of a very different design than the Potential, so Zephyr, you wouldn't know how to get to Engineering. However, Lorq and Alex, the Verdun, while not identical to the Sigma, is very similar in design so you quickly get to Engineering without encountering any pirates on the way there. You reach the door to Engineering but you can't tell from the outside whether there will be people in there or not. What do you do?

The door opens on its own. Everyone positioned at the door sees that there are three people in there in total. One who appears to be working on a terminal and two security guards with phaser rifles. As the door opens, one of them shoots at you but misses the door by a little bit. The other one raises his rifle and aims at you, ready to shoot any second. The third one that had been working at the terminal ducks under a table to hide

LF: He is also infected by a parasite.

Before the second pirate can fire his phaser, Zephyrs blast hits him right in the chest, stunning him and taking him out of the fight. Almost at the same time, Meyers shoots the second one and he falls to the ground motionless as well.
The third person is still hiding unter the table. As far as you could see, he was not armed but there are two unconscious guards with phaser rifles right next to his hiding spot

The man will look at you with a neutral expression on his face and yell some unpleasant sounding clicks at you but he will come out of his hiding spot, raise his hands and he does not attack you... yet

What do you want to do?

Meyers aims her phaser at the man who growls at her but still does not seem willing to risk an attack.
"Should I just stun him? Make sure he can't make trouble?", asks Meyers.

Lorq, you manage to send out a beacon broadcasting your location as well as any other information about your situation you want to send. Let me know.

Although you did your best to hide your access point, it will only take them a few minutes at most to discover that the beacon has been sent from Engineering

OK message is sent on repeat. I am going to try and lock this terminal to prevent the message from being stopped.
I suggest we leave here and maybe go back to the shuttle bay. Maybe defend it, or if things go bad we can try an escape.

It's possible to enter your specific life signs into the computer to make an exception for them when scanning for people. If you do that, the computer will not detect your location when scanning for you but the pirates can very quickly remove this block if they discover it.
You could also try to reboot the whole sensor array, taking it offline for an hour or two. You would need authorization by a Verdun Engineer, however, or you would have to hack your way into the system

Alex, you don't have to roll for that. He's not resisting

Lorq, you set it up so that the information gets transmitted on repeat and you manipulate the sensor so it won't pick you up. If you're lucky, that will keep them from finding you at least for a while.
But they will notice the beacon and they will probably send someone down to Engineering to check it out. You should probably hide

Lorq, you check Engineering for alternate entrances and find that there are many. While there is only one door, access tunnels lead from here to.everywhere on the ship. If the pirates are willing to climb through them, they would easily find their way to you.
Zephyr, you try to access the intercom but accidentally set off a hacking alert.
The three of you, as well as everyone else on the ship, hear the ship explain how there was an unauthorized access to vital systems from main engineering.
Now they definitely know where you are

Laser Feeling: The ship so far appears very understaffed. There should be many more pirates around than there are. It almost seems as if they want to let you move around the ship, probably to lure you into a trap. You have the distinct feeling, however, that the bridge should also be mostly clear