From: Jasmina Grosic (jgrosic_at_yahoo.de)
Date: Thu May 01 2008 - 13:33:54 PDT
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"Don’t mess with the Maksa … or the Anaqueen… and if the oldest trick in the book is the only thing you’ve got going for you, go for it! Or: Don’t be afraid of overly-specific, too long, titles!" (continued from "It’ll All Get Better in Time")
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Location: GATEWAY-2
Stardate: 2.80501.2022
Scene: Promenade
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When the security teams arrived on the lowest level of the promenade they noticed nothing unusual at first. True, they did realize that the place was oddly deserted, but other than that there were no signs of the purported riot.
Suddenly there was a hissing sound from above which quickly grew louder as the object that caused it was plunging closer to where they were standing. Trella looked up, yelled “look out” and jumped backwards, and after a second of shock, so did the other members of the security team. Something landed with a clatter and thud then several pieces of what used to be an enormous leather-covered barbershop chair lay scattered on the spot where the security team had been standing instants earlier. The officers looked up once again and saw that the core group of rioters had worked their way up the spiral of the promenade and had now reached the third floor and were in the middle of taking apart Maksa’s Barbershop.
“Let’s get up there,” Trella ordered, “and remember, we don’t want *any* casualties!”
The teams began jogging up the spiral and when they reached the scene of the riot they found the Klingon barber fending off the rioters with two mek’leth knives.
“Come and fight me, if you have the courage,” he snarled at the dwindling crowd. Most of them had decided that maybe the barbershop wasn’t the right outlet for their aggression after all and were in the middle of moving on to the next shop.
“That’s what I thought,” the Klingon said as none of the rioters stepped forward to accept his challenge. “Nobody messes with the Maksa!” He leaned against the doorframe of his establishment, satisfied to watch the rioters continue to wreak havoc elsewhere.
“Everyone, stop this right now!” Trella raised her voice over the excited cries of the rioters. Some turned to look at her, others ignored the security officer and began tearing the plating of the adjacent shop’s front apart.
“All right,” Trella said, raised her phaser and shot straight up into the air. Even though the sound was not as impressive as the bang of an old-fashioned gunshot, it still got everyone’s attention. The rioters let the storefront be and formed a circle in the middle of the walkway.
The other members of the security team – also with their phasers drawn- formed a ring around the rioters, careful to leave enough space for them not to feel too threatened.
A tall Bajoran disengaged from the group and took a few steps towards Trella.
“Oh, you’ve come to shut us up, right Starfleet? Wanna put us all into the brig?” He asked and pointed at Trella with an accusatory outstretched finger.
“Well, you *were* throwing chairs at people and looting stores,” was the first thing to say that crossed her mind.
“And with good reason! We are sick of being lied to!” The Bajoran was talking himself into a frenzy, spurred on by the cries of “Yeah” and “That’s right” rising all around.
“We’ve had three different Starfleet people head this station in the last few months.” The Bajoran was counting them off on his fingers as he spoke. “The first put us under martial law, the second defected to the dominion and the current one reinstates martial law again. We won’t take this any longer!”
“I understand that you’re all very upset,” Trella tried a pacifying tone, “but demolishing all those shops isn’t going to help matters. And a lot of your anger stems from being misinformed. I’m sure if you’ll give us the chance to explain everything…” she was interrupted before she could finish the sentence.
“No more explanations! No more lies!” The Bajoran began to chant and soon the other members of his group joined in.
“This is pointless.” Trella sighed and addressed the members of her team: “OK, let’s arrest them. Take them to the brig. We’ll wait till they’ve calmed down and then we’ll try to reason with them once more.”
As the security teams advanced on the rioters, the chants grew louder.
The door to the closest turbolift opened and, unnoticed in the chaos, Anaqueen Spankryz stepped onto the promenade.
“Will you all shut up!” She shouted and everyone looked at her in surprise. “What has gotten into you people?” She went on, her hands on her hips and a look of disappointment on her face. She spoke so fast and with such determination that soon even the ones who had been voicing their disapproval before finally shut up and listened.
“When has looting and beating stuff up ever solved anything? Look at all of you! You’ve managed to revert to the barbaric people we used to be in the past in mere hours. And all because you refuse to think for yourselves and believe everything they feed you on some shady newscast! Did even one of you think to check that story with the Starfleet medical database? You’ve all had a rough couple of months, things did get out of hand here on more than one occasion and we’ve made mistakes. But our purpose here is still to serve and protect all of you. How can we do that if you don’t work together with us? I know we need to earn your trust again, but if we cannot at least agree on the basic rules of coexistence, than how will we be able to defend this station against the dominion when the time comes to do so? Go home, go back to your families and think about the way you want this station to work! If you want to drive us out, if you want anarchy and chaos and everything that’s
basically an open invitation for the dominion to come here and reinstall ‘order’, you can still come back and riot some more tomorrow. But if you think that Starfleet deserves the benefit of the doubt, and that we all *together* can get through this, then you’ll leave the nice Klingon” here she nodded at Maksa, who grunted back at her, “and all his colleagues alone. I’m sure they won’t press charges as long as Starfleet helps repair the damage.”
Maksa, feeling a little uncomfortable to be singled out as the unofficial spokesperson of the shop owners, just because the others were still too afraid to come out of their shops, nodded. And for good measure, he grunted some more.
The rioters slowly disbanded after that, as if the fight had been taken out of them and there was simply nothing left to do but comply.
“That was a bold move,” Trella said as she approached her interim commanding officer. “What are we going to do if they *do* return tomorrow?”
“I doubt that they will,” Anaqueen replied.
At that moment, the lights on all fifty floors of the promenade went out and the temperature dropped to near freezing point. The one Breen among the former rioters smiled underneath his helmet. For a second or two he thought about removing the helmet so that his already matted hair could get a bit of fresh air, but then thought better of it – it just wouldn’t look right, a Breen without a helmet – and with uncombed hair, no less.
“What the…?” Trella said.
Just as Anaqueen tried to contact engineering, they heard the sound of two sets of feet quickly approaching. The first person to arrive ran into Maksa, almost fell to the floor and struggled to regain his footing.
The emergency lights kicked in to reveal it was Jake Crichton. Just then the owner of the second set of footsteps arrived on the scene. A man who looked just like Jake Crichton.
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Scene: A corridor
Time Index: five minutes before
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Jake was running to catch up with the man – if it was a man – who had taken on his form. While he ran, the most prominent thought on his mind, apart from the obvious ‘catch the bad guy’, ‘contact security’ and so on, was mostly this:
‘Really? He’s taking on the form of the man that’s chasing him? That’s the oldest trick in the book! I guess, as soon as we run into a group of people, he’s going to take me by the head like some cartoon character clown and do the old switcharoo so many times that nobody will be able to say who is who. Then he’ll probably tell someone to shoot at me. It’s so stupid that it just might work.’(1)
Jake was gaining ground on the man running away from him, but when he rounded a corner and arrived on the promenade, the lights went out.
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Scene: Main Engineering
Time Index: five more minutes before
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Crewman Pollard approached her station in environmental control with a steaming mug of herbal tea in her hands. She liked working alpha shift and arrived ten to fifteen minutes before her colleagues most every morning. Of course, the gamma shift crew was still there then, wrapping things up, but she had arranged it with her colleague so he left ten minutes early and she had the place to herself then to settle in and enjoy her first cup of tea. She needed those ten minutes alone to get ready for the day, and if she didn’t get them, she got cranky.
So when she got to her station that morning to see someone already sitting at it, inputting commands at near android-speed, she felt more than a little irritated.
“Good morning,” she said in a voice that meant quite the opposite.
The man at her terminal turned around and nodded. It was the Chief Engineer.
“Oh, Sir, I wasn’t aware you worked alpha shift this week,” she mumbled.
“I don’t.” He replied and turned back to the controls. “I’m just doing some tests. You’ll have your station back in a few minutes, crewman!”
“Alright, I’ll just go assist Ensign Gonzales then,” she said and turned.
***
Thierry Gonzales was discussing the enhancement of the station’s shields with his superior officer when Molly Pollard joined them.
“How did you get here so quickly?” She said to Crichton instead of a greeting.
“Crewman, I’ve been here for over an hour.” Jake raised his eyebrows.
“Then who’s the man sitting at my station?”
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NRPG: Tag everyone. I guess it’s time we caught the saboteur, isn’t it?
Ran: I hope I did OK with Anaqueen – deus-ex-machina-style ;)
(1): Like Krusty the Clown did with Homer (after graduating clown college) and Kirk did on Rura Penthe.
Jasmina Grosic «jgrosic_at_yahoo.de»
Lieutenant Trella Palandora
Chief Security Officer
GATEWAY STATION - 2
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