509: Blown Away

by -=/\=- Zanh Liis
80916.21
Awhile after Bring Out Yer Dead!

-=Lestath City: Klaestron IV=-

"Talk about kickin' the tires and lighting the fires!" Reece loudly whispered to Zanh.

She could only sigh in reply.

Dabin Reece was many things but quiet and sneaky he was not- and therefore trying to keep his presence here unknown was proving to be a real challenge.

True, they wanted to create a huge diversion; but only at the right time. She did not want him creating any other kind of scene before the opportune moment.

She put her finger to her lips and then pointed again, up and then left, indicating one last time what he was to do.

Reece responded by rolling his eyes dramatically and then sticking his tongue out at her.

He knew his job, he'd do just as he was told when the moment came. *Ye of little faith,* he thought.

They had followed the tracking information for Dane and company and ended up at the back of what appeared to be some sort of large, private medical complex.

Avoiding a multitude of vehicles and people coming and going, they located the cargo hauler that Dane had been driving.

It was now parked with its back end up against a loading dock. The moment they'd arrived, Dane began the heavy lifting of moving the coffins out of the back of the van and onto anti-grav gurneys. One, he found, he couldn't lift alone, and so he finally insisted that the greasy bartender- whoever he really was, offer a hand.

Zanh knew that they couldn't just walk in the door along with Dane and his friend. There were guards stationed on either side who had accepted a whispered password to allow admittance; a password that Zanh obviously didn't know.

Stunning the guards with phasers would likely set off a chain reaction that could only hurt their cause.

No, they needed a good, old fashioned look-over-there, and Liis knew just how to create it.

She gave Reece a gentle shove in the right direction, and made her way stealthily along. She removed a workspace cover from the surface of the street and climbed down into it before securing the heavy metal plate over top of her again.

As she hid below ground level, her mind skipped the track it was on and returned to another covert mission she'd been on in the past.

It also was a rescue mission in a time line gone wrong, but one with a very different target...

-=Flashback: Alternate Timeline 2376: Jump #17. Location: Romulus=-

She waited, crouched down behind a waste reclamation dumpster, for his signal.

This was taking too damned long.

She considered going in after them, her feet literally tapping against the ground with anxiety.

Just when she was about to disobey yet another direct order and go for it, she heard the sound and knew this was it, his signal.

He whistled six notes this time; she had to move.

It was a sound lost to everyone amidst the noise of the crowded street scene; only audible through her earpiece. She knew the tune, and it meant that he was in over his head and needed his partner as back up.

Liis' mind raced with the lyrics that would have completed the tune had it been sung and not whistled, her mind working a hundred different lines of thought in that one instant as she burst forward, phasers drawn and blazing.

Return fire ricocheted all around her. Now that she'd given her position away, Taris' goons were more than happy to return her greeting with disruptor blasts that were capable of creating a particularly painful death for their target, once acquired and hit.

*Damn it, O'Sullivan, I swear,* she thought, grumbling over the fact that he had overruled her request to go into the building to fetch Salvek herself. It seemed that he had been doing fine, until they were actually almost out of the complex and then, something had gone very, very wrong. They must have decided to just make a run for it...and this was the result.

She saw her partner now across the alley as he threw Salvek to the ground and ducked down over him, shielding the engineer with his own body.

[Beam out!] Keiran shouted the two word command at Zanh, at such volume a hum of feedback rattled her earpiece.

"Nothin' doing, Danny Boy! You stay, I stay!"

She continued firing, dodging several close hits, rolling on the ground and trying to use whatever cover she could find on the dead end street as she tried to reach them.

[Arm...and...can't beam...damn...ou... woman...eam...out... NOW!] O'Sullivan screamed, intermittently drown out by the sound of the fight. His eyes flew open wide with horror as he saw her make her move.*Oh, no you didn't-*

Liis screeched, fired both of her weapons at once as rapidly as she could and dove across the divide.

She managed, somehow, to land with a thud right on top of him and the very confused Vulcan.

"Insubordination!" Keiran barked.

Salvek fought his way from underneath the pile and grabbed for one of Liis' weapons, which she quickly relinquished so she could do something else.

O'Sullivan seethed as he continued to fire at their assailants and Liis adjusted the settings on her own transporter armband to compensate for the load of three people instead of one.

A moment later, all three lay in something of a heap on the deck of the bridge of their small Jump ship, Polaris.

"Court-martial." O'Sullivan bellowed. "You're beggin' for it."

"Bite me!"

She righted herself and took the helm. "And you're welcome." Within seconds they had changed course, and jumped to high Warp.

"That is your partner?" Salvek asked, eyebrow raised sky high.

"Aye, Sir. That she is."

She is...hostile." Salvek commented as he found his footing.

"You've no bloody idea, man." O'Sullivan sighed. "No bloody idea a'tall."

-=End Flashback=-


Zanh heard the heavy door to the loading dock creak closed and knew all of the cargo and people that had been in it were safely inside. She signaled to Reece over the comm.

[GO!]

[Stand by for the Earth-shattering kaboom,] Dabin advised. He set the charge beneath the cargo vehicle, and then ran at top speed out of the alley. [Duck and cover, Liisy, or kiss your ass goodbye. ] He couldn't see her but hoped she'd found someplace to do just that. [... Three, two...]

*One,* Liis counted down in her mind and right on schedule, the charge under the cargo vehicle set fire to it. Alarms began to ring off.

[Oh. SHIT.]

[WHAT?] Liis demanded, as she threw the cover off the access tunnel and climbed out, lost amidst the chaos taking over the scene.

[Um.]

[UM? UM! What does-]

Reece hadn't counted upon the tree limbs that hung low nearby...or the prevailing cross breeze which was unusually stiff this evening for this time of year on Klaestron...

[Um, the building is on fire.]

Liis swore. Loudly.

[Reece, find them and get OUT.] His standing orders were to locate as many of their team as possible and signal the Sera, which should, with any luck, be in orbit by now. But Reece knew that there was no way that he, or Blane, would leave the surface without their Captain in tow.

Fire control squads materialized a moment later and began to douse the vehicle conflagration and the areas of the building to which it had spread.

Just as Liis hoped, all emergency exits were activated by the external fire suppression systems which were on heat sensors and had been activated by the explosion.

She hurried in through the nearest emergency exit, just in time to watch a bunch of Klaestron dressed in white lab coats come running out.

No one paid her any mind, until she saw one young woman frantically running from room to room, peering in half-open doors.

The woman ran into her, and was puzzled by Zanh's presence here but not as shocked as Liis would have expected to see a Bajoran in civilian clothing running around a secured Klaestron scientific facility.

"Hey, are you one of the ambulatory volunteers? You need to get out, there's some sort of emergency."

"Yeah, I will. I was...looking. For a friend. Maybe you've seen him? He's tall, about a hundred eighty-seven centimeters, blond hair, blue eyes. Human. And he talks funny. Kinda' sounds like this." Liis twisted her words into the signature O'Sullivan lilt, and the girl's eyes grew wider.

"I was...looking for him myself. They told me he was on his way to discharge to be sent home, but I couldn't find any record of him," the young woman sounded worried. "I hope he is all right."

*You and me both, sister,* Liis thought. "Will you help me look for him?"

"Yes, if you tell me something first." The girl leaned close to Liis to ask a forbidden question directly into her ear, to be sure she'd be heard without yelling over the wailing alarms. Then she leaned back and looked at Liis expectantly.

"Carrick," Liis answered. "His name is Carrick."

-=Meanwhile=-


Dane took advantage of the chaos around him, heading through the very first set of doors he came across which were marked with the symbol he knew meant 'restricted'.

When he came in through those doors, he was not prepared for what he saw.

Row upon row of beds with people, in various stages of consciousness, strapped down to them. There were two people in white coats who were attempting to secure the situation.

"You must all stay in your beds," a woman was shouting, "if you want to be discharged and go home, you have got to be patient."

"We're not going home!" One of the more lucid inmates shouted. "We're going to Harvesting!"

"There's no such thing as Harvesting," the large male orderly frowned, injecting the patient with a hypo. The man in the bed ceased his screaming, but another across the room picked up where he had left off.

"Yes, there is! I used to pick up the organs for transport before they locked me in here, too!"

The female orderly injected the second dissenter with a hypo as well, and as the room was finally silent again, Dane realized that both of the Klaestron employees were now staring right at him.

"Who the hell are you?" The male demanded.

Dane put on his best confused expression.

"Delivery. I'm new, I got turned around, looking for the morgue."

"The morgue is two floors down," The man approached Dane slowly, not believing a word he was saying.

"Here, let me show you the way." He moved toward Dane, but Dane knew he was still holding the hypo. He bolted.

The man slammed his palm into a large flashing button on a panel in the wall and activated the intruder alert alarm.

It joined the chorus of other alarms- fire alarms and those of wailing rescue vehicle sirens outside.

-=Two floors down=-


TC Blane had waited until their traveling coffin came to a halt and had been left behind before cautiously climbing out of it.

Now, he was hacking into the computer console that was positioned on a desk across the darkened room, trying to figure out where they were- and how to get out.

As the klaxons wailed on, inside the coffin she was still laying in Landry Steele raised her head slowly.

"Five more minutes, Mom. Just five more minutes..."

--------------
-=/\=- Zanh Liis
Commanding Officer
USS Serendipity NCC-2012