Into the Welds

Posted on Thu Feb 29th, 2024 @ 11:41pm by Ensign Sheldon Parsons & Lieutenant Victoria Cross & Lieutenant Axod Qo & Lieutenant JG Leighton Romanowski & Ensign Mei Ratthi

Mission: Stardust and Sin
Location: The Welds, Hukatuse Tagumik
Timeline: Mission Day 2 at 2115

[The Welds]
[Hukatuse Tagumik]
[MD 2: 2115 Hours]

Though they'd only been on the station for a few hours, it felt like the Starfleet away teams had been on Hukatuse for days. So much had happened that it was hard to believe that, only a scant three hours prior, everyone had been safely tucked away aboard the Sojourner. But as the hours had passed aboard the station, events had unspooled at an alarming rate, leaving some imprisoned and terribly injured while others had gone outright missing entirely.

Commander t'Nai -- in conjunction with Hukatuse's Governor -- had worked to free those who'd been thrown in The Hole. The incident had begun with a simple misunderstanding that transformed into a major crime, which landed Timmoz and his team in the station's prison. And while the Governor had agreed to free the Orion and his compatriots, their release didn't take place until after a brutal prison-yard brawl. With the team free, Timmoz had been rushed to the station's Infirmary, where Doctors Zamaya, Wang, and Marwol worked quickly to stabilize the flight controller enough to be moved back to the Sojourner.

The Starfleet doctors had accompanied Timmoz back to the ship in hopes of saving Timmoz' life but the situation looked quite grim. Meanwhile, Cross' injuries -- not nearly severe as the Orion's -- had been attended to by Hukatuse nurses and the woman was released in much better shape than she'd arrived. But "better shape" did not mean "perfect shape" and the Operations officer would no doubt struggle with some of the healing still left to be done. But at least she'd been patched up enough to accompany Romanowski, Qo, Parsons, and Ratthi on their (hopefully) last assignment of the mission.

Learning of the lead to Kaldri obtained in The Hole, t'Nai had ordered the quartet into the Welds to find her. This part of the station existed in the lawless welds between various structures that made up Hukatuse. For in these junction points of mismashed structures and technology lived all manner of beings who sought not to be found or bothered. Even the station's Enforcers didn't come down to this area, the Governor considering this particularly dangerous part of the station not worth the effort to search.

Parts of The Welds' outer skin frequently broke apart, exposing the innards of the area to the vacuum outside. And while patch jobs were done from the outside, it often took days or weeks for repair crews to get to them. Meaning that those who lived down here risked exposure to airlessness and extreme cold on a routine basis. As the Starfleet team entered the area -- clad in protective gear they'd purchased in The Exchange before heading down here -- they saw the occasional alien darting away from them down the twisting corridors that made up this place.

If they were to find Kaldri, it wasn't going to be a random encounter in a hallway. It would take intentional searching to track the Kazon down and who knew what they would run into along the way. Luckily -- under the leadership of Lieutenant Cross -- the Starfleet team had their tricorders and hand phasers on hand to aid in the effort.

To say but Victoria was happy to be outside of a maximum-security prison would be an understatement. Though the nurses had done a good job to treat her more serious injuries, namely broken ribs and a fractured orbital bone, she was still gravely bothered by the events that had transpired. Timmoz was injured, severely, leaving Victoria in command of the the away mission in his absence. With communicators and hand phasers handed out, she had taken a moment to get her breath and bearings, before turning to her crewmates assigned to the mission.

Victoria ran a hand through her hair, and spoke." I think for the sake of safety and efficiency I think we should all stay grouped and put our heads together. The brawl doesn't need to derail the mission. We need to find leads, we need to get Kaldri, we need to get back on the ship. So let's gather what we do know. We know that the brute in the prison called her a saboteur, and she is a point of consternation among some in the station. Did you find out anything on your end of the investigation before the fracas?"

"Only that Kaldri had been treated at the infirmary for some injuries she had sustained. Then she was arrested. Aside from that, we weren't able to learn much before they brought you and Lieutenant Timmoz into the infirmary," Leighton offered to his superior before he looked over to Axod in case he was forgetting something.

The Doosodarian listened as Victoria and Leighton spoke. He met Leighton's gaze. "That's pretty much the whole of it." Axod nodded his head. "That Doctor Zamaya wasn't an easy nut to crack." He added, fiddling with his tricorder to ensure it was working effectively. His smooth forehead furrowed as he fumbled with the device in his gloved hand.

"I spoke with a woman in the prison," Mei spoke up then. "She said she'd met a Kazon, I assume it was Kaldri, but that she'd been taken by the Enforcers in the morning. I don't know which morning. She also said something like, 'if she had known to go to the Welds like Zdzisław said', but then she didn't say anything about it after that. There was a bit of a commotion going on. It upset her before I could get anything else out of her. I don't know if Zdzisław was in the prison or out of it. I don't suppose any of you have heard of him?"

"Zdzisław, I haven't heard of him, but he's a good lead as any. It wouldn't be out of the question to assume Kaldri has good mates and people on her side. That being said, I think our best option right now is to pound dirt and ask questions. Be wary of the airless areas, we have our protective gear on for a reason. This place is a patch job hellhole dwelled by only the desperate. If Kaldri is hiding, logic dictates it must be here."

Victoria pulled on her vacuum helmet, before turning to Mei, looking through the transparent face screen of her helm. "Ms. Mei, were you given any description of this Zdzisław fella?"

Mei shook her head. "No. All I got was the name. No sense of race or gender or anything. I wanted to ask more, but like I said. The woman I was talking to was distracted. She didn't seem to think much of Kaldri, either, assuming that's who she was talking about at all. The server I was talking to at the bar seemed like he knew her, too, but I didn't get the chance to ask before station security showed up."

"At least we're connecting all the dots," Parsons spoke up from the rear of the group, eyes having been glued to his tricorder. He wasn't the most comfortable person in social situations -- made even worse confronting the dangers of the station -- but he could interact well enough when work gave him a reason to. "I'm picking up signs of life down here. A bunch of them, actually," he said, looking to Cross by means of reporting. "The problem is, there's some sort of scattering effect happening down here. I don't think it's from any kind of artificial generator or anything. Just all the metals and magnetic fields in this area wreaking havoc on sensors.|

"I can give us a general direction to the highest concentration of beings though," Parsons explained. "But we might have to walk around a lot to find them. Maybe this Zdzisław person is wherever they are?" The engineer pointed to the right and made a curving motion with his arm, indicating the team should follow the corridor around its bend.

"Alright, crew, let's move on. Lots of ground to cover down here."

As the away team had cautiously navigated the decrepit corridors of The Welds, they'd been struck by the sheer magnitude of the station's disrepair in this particular area. The walls were patched together with salvaged scrap metal, and the floors were littered with debris -- it was as if no one bothered to maintain any semblance of repair down here. This particular section of Hukatuse seemed to groan and creak under its own weight, as if barely holding itself together. Despite the danger, though, the team had a job to do and so they navigated the maze of corridors until they'd finally come upon the settlement Parsons had been detecting an hour earlier.

As their eyes drank in the scenery ahead, it was apparent that the living conditions in the settlement were appalling. Makeshift shelters made from scrap metal and salvaged materials offered little protection from the cold and the air was thick with the stench of decay and desperation. Barrel fires provided the only source of light and warmth, casting eerie shadows on the faces of the aliens that passed by. The away team was met with wary glances from those inhabitants, who seemed to blend in and out of the shadows as they went about their business. Unlike the denizens up in the main areas of the station, these people were armed with heavy-duty weapons: rifles and long swords were commonly seen slung over shoulders or across backs.

Despite the grim surroundings, the away team pressed on, determined to find Kaldri and complete their mission. They knew that time was short as every moment spent down in The Welds increased their risk of encountering danger. With their phasers at the ready, they continued their search, hoping that their efforts would not be in vain, but no matter where they looked, there was no sign of the Kazon they'd been sent after: only aquatic-looking face after other exotic-looking faces. It was clear that a visual search alone wasn't going to lead them to their quarry. But their tricorders, however, might as, all at once, they all began to trill, a message appearing on screen...

[Kazon lifesign detected]
[Lifesign confined to 100 meter radius]
[Further localization is not currently available]

"She's here," Parsons said, both shock and relief in his voice. Their tricorders all said the same thing but somehow, vocalizing it helped relieve some of the anxiety he'd been feeling over the last hour. "Not sure exactly where but she's definitely here," he vocalized, trying to reassure himself more than anyone else. Their trip down here might not have been in vain after all.

"Great work on the scans, Parsons, we'll be home before you know it. Ms. Mai, Mr. Axod, I think the four of us should stay together for the sake of safety, seeing as splitting up has proven a bit disastrous earlier. She's within walking distance, so maybe we would do our best with some focused tricorder scans, though I know we have some issues with interference. Try adjusting the sensor frequency in your tricorders to account for the interference."

She removed her tricorder from her belt and began to program it, accounting to the best of her ability with guesswork related to the metals in the surrounding area of the station.

Axod nodded in his helmet. "An old colleague of mine introduced me to a mystery-themed cartoon from Earth's 20th century, Scooby Doo. Ever heard of it?" He smiled widely. "Anyways, according to that cartoon, your logic about not splitting up seems pretty sound." He shrugged playfully and then returned his gaze to his own Tricorder and kept his eyes on the readings."

"Yeah, I haven't had great luck with splitting up on Away missions so far," Mei said, occasionally glancing at her tricorder as she examined the corridors around them. "I didn't really interact with Kaldri. If someone else did, where do you think she would have gone? Somewhere where there are more people to hide among, or somewhere with fewer people so she can be alone?"

"My interactions with her were brief. But she seemed like a loner," Parsons spoke up, eyes still glued to the screen of his scanner as he thought back to his interactions with the Kazon woman on the Waverider. "She also seemed concerned about us getting hurt as collateral damage because of her."

"That's because," a slightly muffled voice came from the side, "you people don't know when to leave well enough alone." The voice was husky and dark but there was also, perhaps, a hint of wry sarcasm? "If your Doctor Wang hadn't insisted on taking me back to your shuttle for treatment, you all wouldn't be wrapped up in this mess now. Speaking of which: what the hell are you doing here, anyway?"

There she was: Kaldri, standing there with hands on her hips and a snarl across her face. The clothes -- well, "clothes" was charitable for they looked more like rags -- she wore were dirty and full of holes. A hood was oddly pulled up over her head but did little to hide the misshapen helmet of clumpy hair situated wreathing her crown and face. A weapon had been drawn but the Kazon woman was not currently directing it at anyone. It was held loosely at her side as the woman looked over the team before her.

"Malik sent word that people were asking around about me," Kaldri named the bartender and power broker from the Gravity Well. "Said you wanted to help me but he couldn't be sure you were on the up and up. Wasn't until some of you got badly hurt while asking about me that he knew you could be trusted. Which is why," her snarl turned into a smirk, "you weren't immediately gang-shanked when you decided to come down here looking for me." Ah, so that explained why no one had stopped the Starfleeters from rooting around down in the Welds.

"You doing OK there, Jo? Heard you got beat up pretty bad," the Kazon asked, tossing a pointed chin Victoria's way -- only she didn't know the woman as Victoria, only "Jo," the name she'd given at the bar. "Captain Brimson's a friend of mine," Kaldri clarified. "Should have kept drinking with him. Might have avoided your little trip to the Hole."

"Maybe, but my luck doesn't usually work like that. Ms. Kaldri, my name is Lieutenant Victoria Cross of the USS Sojourner, where I'm the acting Chief Operations Officer. This is Ms. Mei, Mr. Parsons, and Mr. Axod. The reason we braved the Welds and all we've been through today is we need your help. We know you led Subrek away from the moon recently, but his ship is too much for us to take on without a plan, and a plan works best with information. You know about Subrek in ways we don't, and if we work together, we can understand how he came into the possession of such advanced technology."

"Ah," Kaldri's smirk became a snarl again. "So you're not here to try to help me. You're here to help you. And here I thought Wang's assertions of altruism just might be for real. You know," she actually tsk'd, "I could have flown around that moon at low altitude and then gone to warp on the other side. But I flew right past his ship so he'd be incensed enough to go after me instead of you." There was a hardness to her eyes now, visible even in the flickering flames from the fire barrel she stood near. "Malik said I probably shouldn't trust you. Maybe he was right."

"Maybe," Mei spoke up suddenly, "there there are advantages for both of us. This doesn't have to be a zero-sum game, with one side winning everything and the other losing everything. For whatever reason, Subrek wants both of us- you, and the lot of us from Starfleet. He's a lot stronger than we anticipated, but then, a lot of our information about the Kazon is out of date. You could help us figure him out, and in return, we can provide you with something you need. Medical care, maybe, or a new wardrobe, or a lifetime supply of popsicles. I don't know. But we have a common enemy and a lot we could gain from each other if we learned to trust each other. We might not all be as altruistic as Dr. Wang, but we do our best. And if, in a couple of weeks, you can't stand the sight of us anymore, you can tell us to bugger off and drop you off at the nearest port. Sound reasonable?"

"Pop...sicles?" Kaldri's brow furrowed in confusion, the Kazon unfamiliar with the term.

The question was let go, however, as the gears in her mind almost visibly worked on Mei's proposed thinking. Face cast in alternating flame and shadow, the woman's eyes narrowed as she regarded the Starfleeters, her thoughts dwelling on the offer. Truth told, she'd been rather cornered down in the Welds: Malik had exerted his influence to get her released her from the Hole -- possible because she failed to actually steal anything -- but the sensor-dead areas of the station -- perfect for hiding from Subrek's bounty hunters -- weren't exactly comfortable living. And without a working ship or money to book passage, she was rather trapped on Hukatuse. These people were offering her a way out.

The idea of a mutually beneficial exchange must have been appealing because, after several long and quiet moments, Kaldri's snarl once again de-escalated into a smirk. "Fine. I'll help you with your problem if you help me with mine. But," the Kazon holstered her weapon and held up a finger in warning, "good medical care, plentiful supplies, and a ship -- not a drop off -- would be just the first set of asks if I'm going to tell you what I know. If you people can make that happen, then you have a deal. But let's not dally, hmm? It's fucking cold down here and I haven't eaten properly in two days. Just one question," she said, eyebrows lifted. "How're you going to get me back to your ship? Can't exactly parade through the Exchange on the way to the Docks."

"No sensors down here means we could use the transporter," Parsons offered, speaking up from the back of the pack.

"Food, clothing, anything you could want is on the Sojourner. I wouldn't dream of asking your assistance without offering you some in turn. Starfleet reciprocates, you'll just have to talk to the Captain I'm sure he'll accommodate your need for a ship." She turned to Mr. Parsons. "That's right. Without them scanning for a transport signature, we could give 'em the slip." She's tap the combadge on her vacuum suit. "Sojourner, this is Lieutenant Cross, down in the lower levels. Can you get a fix on my combadge signal? We've found Kaldri, and we have five to beam out."

=/\= A joint post by... =/\=

Ensign Sheldon Parsons
Engineering Officer

Lieutenant Victoria Cross
Assistant Operations Chief

Lieutenant Axod Qo
Chief Counselor

Lieutenant JG Leighton Romanowski
Operations Officer

Ensign Mei Ratthi
Science Officer