Ensuing Chaos

Posted on Feb 16, 2016 @ 12:58am by Captain Kassandra Thytos
Edited on on Feb 16, 2016 @ 12:58am

Mission: Promethean

"Ensuing Chaos"

(Cont. Resurrection)

* * * =/\= * * *

Location: LAVENZA II

Stardate: 2.16.0216.2034

Scene: Laboratory


**Trust Barton to leave me holding the bag, getting stuck with the difficult job.** Kassandra thought uncharitably as she picked herself up from the ground, coughing on the acrid smoke of burning electronics. She reached for her pulse rifle, pleased to find her sensor nets were now working perfectly. At least she’d be able to see things going to shit.

“She’s going to blow!” Jake’s voice came from the other side of the room, taut, full of tightly controlled dread. Kassandra swore under her breath. To the side of the room, her sensor nets picked up Saul Conniston, trying to unobtrusively leave in the confusion. She was on him in a flash, her legs kicking his knees out. As he hit the floor she drove her boot into his throat, just hard enough to let him know she meant business.

“You ain’t going nowhere. You ain’t such an idiot that you’d go wanderin’ with all those beasties unless you had some way of trackin’ them. I highly doubt they’d hesitate to tear you limb to limb, even you bein’ the father of the year an’ all. Where is it?” She jammed the pulse rifle in the middle of his head, and rummaged through his pockets. “Come on, you mutant sack of crap. You don’t wanna die down here do ya?”

“Why on earth would I have something like that, Captain? It would hardly be a security feature to unleash all my experiments if I had something as convenient as a way of avoiding them lying around, waiting to fall into the wrong hands,” Conniston said condescendingly. His tone of voice annoyed Kassandra, and she dug her heel and the barrel of the pulse rifle just a little bit deeper to reinforce to Conniston who had the upper hand.

“Even with all your delightful mutations, you ain’t a match for your creatures, Conniston. Do you really expect me to believe you’re willing to go blindly into the corridors and just hope you ain’t gonna run into any of them? No, you gotta have some sort of failsafe in place so that they won’t kill you.”

“Perhaps they’re programmed not to attack me…” Conniston choked back. “But I find their company preferable to yours, at any rate. Why don’t you let me go, Captain? I would owe you a great debt. Just imagine what I could do for you later… Give you your sight back, for a start. Or I could make you stronger, taller, faster-”

“Do I got the word ‘chump’ tattooed on my forehead or somethin’? I ain’t lettin’ you go, and you’re comin’ with us, so you might as well give yourself the best chance of gettin’ out of here in once piece.” She hauled him up to his feet, and pushed him towards the door. To her side, Eve and Aerdan were supporting the naked form of Thomas Varn between them. Kassandra glared at them. “No. No. NO. Hell no. We are not taking that thing with us.”

Eve gave Kassandra a look as though she’d just dropkicked a baby, and Aerdan levelled a no-nonsense stare at her.

“That *thing* is *Thomas Varn*, and he did not ask to be… born… for lack of a better word. This Thomas Varn never made the choice to sacrifice himself, and therefore has a right to live, regardless of what we think of his resurrection, or the potential ramifications. We’re not going to let him die, simply because we think he should be dead.” Aerdan said solemnly, locking eyes with Kassandra. She stared back, trying to wrap her head around the clearly deep philosophical question of ethics he was clearly trying to convey, and then decided that understanding it really didn’t matter, since that had nothing to do with her objections.

“Counterpoint, sir. He was made by Conniston. For all we know, that means he’s a tickin’ time bomb, possibly in a quite literal sense. He might not even be Varn mentally, he might have some sorta brainwashing which could make him turn on us at any moment. Let’s not make irrational decisions based on our feelings, sir,” Kassandra challenged him. To her surprise, Aerdan didn’t immediately pull rank on her, instead, he looked… Sad? Kassandra was taken aback.

“This isn’t your decision to make. He’s coming with us. We are not leaving him to die. Now, if your misgivings have a basis in fact, we’ll deal with it. I’ve absolute faith you’ll be able to take care of things. If it ends up they don’t, then -” the Andorian twitched his antennae for emphasis, and winced, one hand going to the splinted appendage.

“Then I’m going to feel like a ragin’ bitch for bein’ willin’ to let Fluffernutter here die?” Kassandra supplied, feeling a little sulky, but knowing she’d have to get over it. The Andorian seemed amused by this.

“I wasn’t going to put it precisely that way,” he said with a wry twitch of his lip.


“Gotta be blunt with me, sir, or it’ll go right over my head.” Kassandra stripped her snow suit off and tossed it at Thomas, and motioned for him to put it on. “Come on, Zombie. Nothin’ more undignified than a winged, newly-undead science man runnin’ buck nekkid through an arctic base that’s about to blow up. Get our asses on the move, Sir?”

“I think that sounds like a perfectly reasonable idea. I’ll, take care of Thomas. Jake… Take care of.. er... Jake. Kassandra will take point with Conniston, Eve, you’ve got the rear.” The Andorian said, heading towards the door. Kassandra hauled Conniston up to his feet and pushed him none-too-gently out of the laboratory door. The Scientist didn’t seem too bothered by his situation, seemingly pleased with the proof of concept of his twisted ideas, even if the machine itself had been destroyed. Still, Kassandra wouldn’t trust him further than she could throw him, and she was sure that all his mutations must have some sort of purpose. No doubt they’d find out sooner rather than later.

The trip through the tunnels was much different this time around - with the scattering field gone, it was no longer just fuzzy patches of light and dark where anything could be lurking. Instead she knew dimensions, composition, texture, everything there was to know about the spaces they went through she knew, and it was comforting. They seemed to be making better time than they had on the way down, and the really nasty creatures seemed for the most part to have realized that they needed to leave the facility, and had made themselves scarce. Or maybe Conniston had built in an innate restraint in his creatures where he was concerned.

Kassandra wondered idly if she could test this theory by asking the newly risen Thomas Varn to take a swing at Conniston. If he couldn’t, or wouldn’t hit the mad scientist, then she could be reasonably certain that he was one of Conniston’s creatures. Commander Jos didn’t seem concerned, or even particularly guarded as he walked next to Thomas. Kassandra shook her head sharply. No. Not Thomas. Whoever it was walking with them, she refused to think of him as Thomas Varn. Thomas Varn was dead. He’d made his choice, he’d protected the love of his life, and he’d died. If this new creature was Thomas, it negated the significance of Thomas Varn’s sacrifice.

“Tell me, Captain, what do you think of my device?” Saul Conniston had not shut up since they’d left the labs. That was really the damn problem with geniuses, Kassandra thought sourly to herself, they could never seem to exist without loudly announcing that they were a genius. As though everyone else could possibly miss it.

“I don’t,” Kassandra drawled back, drawing it out several syllables. This had the desired effect of annoying the man.

“Come now, Captain. You’re not a brainless behemoth like one of my creations. You might not be exactly *bright* but you’re smart enough to at least have SOME thoughts on it.” Conniston slowed his walk, and she prodded him hard with barrel of her pulse rifle.

She did indeed have some thoughts about it, but Kassandra had no desire to give the man the satisfaction of admitting it. Her thoughts were more pragmatic, less esoteric, than those of her fellow crew. She was more concerned with how his machine could be abused. She envisioned some sort of horrible scenario where Starfleet Marine Corps got their hands on it. She knew at least one or two of the brass that would take such a device to mean that they no longer needed to worry about casualties, and she could see herself and other Marines stuck in some sort of twisted cycle of karmic death and rebirth.

“That’d be above my pay grade,” Kassandra spat an impressive wad of phlegm onto the floor next to Conniston’s foot, and was rewarded by a look of disgust and a quickened pace.

* * * =/\= * * *

Scene: Corridors

Time Index: Several minutes later.

“Nope, ain’t no way we’re gettin’ up that way, the lift’s jammed, an’ the fire down below’s consumin’ all the oxygen. We’ll be passed out before we got anywhere. What we really need to do is get back up one of those air shafts that go to the surface, but it’s gonna take a long time, we’ll probably have to take a few different ones to get back up to the surface.” Kassandra said as she re-entered the main junction the rest of the group was standing in.

“We aren’t going to be able to free climb that duct, it’s too steep, and it’s too wide to for us to wedge ourselves against the side and walk up,” Aerdan frowned, looking up the air duct. “Ideas?”

“I could try rabbitin’ up the elevator shaft up to the next level anyway, an’ see if I can find the top a the duct?” Kassandra offered.

“No, we should stick together, the last thing we need is to get separated.”

“Link our arms back to back and hope that gives us the reach to walk up the duct?” Kassandra offered.

“Get the fan going fast enough it blows us up to the next level?” Jake suggested. Kassandra snorted and smacked her fist into one end to demonstrate what she expected the end result of that would be.

“Such a shame none of you little birdies can just fly to the top,” the scruffy Crichton said, his voice laden with sarcasm. Eve suddenly snapped her fingers.

“But we can. Thomas, do you think you’d be able to fly up that duct? If we gave you rope or something we could get you to tie it off at the top, and then we’d all be able to make our way to the top easily,” she looked at the man. He looked rather ridiculous in Kassandra’s suit. The legs were far too short, and the top wouldn’t fit no matter what they did, so his chest was bare. He still seemed as confused as one would expect to be after being unexpectedly resurrected in the middle of a giant mess, but he nodded pensively as he eyed the duct. Kassandra made a noise of objection, but grew quiet as she met Eve’s stare. Instead, with a grumble, she set about prying off wall panelling with Jake to try and procure enough material to make a makeshift rope.

* * *=/\=* * *

NRPG: Ehhh. It petered out at the end. But at least we're moving?

Brought to you by:

Alix Fowler
As
Kassandra Thytos
A woman who wishes that she'd volunteered to freeze her butt off on the surface.