Thinking Outside of the Box

Posted on Wed Dec 12th, 2018 @ 11:21pm by Petty Officer 1st Class Abril Hirano
Edited on on Thu Dec 13th, 2018 @ 12:02am

2,829 words; about a 14 minute read

Mission: Season 1 Interlude I (E2.5)
Location: Memory Theta, Overwatch, Deck 2, Brig.
Timeline: ID 0 – 03.17hrs

It was the Vulcan again.

This was not good.

Abril yawned and turned over on the cot, shifting this way and that to make herself comfortable – knowing that each detail was a movement in a dance that was important not to let her captors understand as choreographed.

With Vulcans – that was exceedingly hard.

The captive Petty Officer had attempted to engage the Vulcan Marine Guard in casual conversation sporadically over the past 3 days, as part of a gambit to glean information that may be used to end the enforced incarceration in this dismal cell on her own terms – without resorting to the fatal mechanism that the perplexing Lt Commander Kazyah Linn had left open to her.

She glanced over the top of the E-Pad at the recumbent man she had been ordered to kill as he slept – her unwilling (willing?) proponent in this nefarious game of smoke and mirrors and wondered (not for the first time) how it came to be that the man could so easily escape into sleep when locked in a standard Starfleet containment cell with a woman who had been coerced to become his reluctant assassin?

The set-up stank of Lt Commander Kazyah’s twisted gamesmanship.

In the short time she had known the Starfleet Spook, she had come to dislike the man intensely, abhorred his methodology and was pathologically convinced that she would sooner die herself than ever lend her efforts to a man like that.

Abril flensed a perfect eyebrow and thought to herself, “Ya verás “, then returned her attention to what she had been reading.

Edmund Dantes looked upon his wedding party and turned his moistened eye to his brilliant bride.

““…I cannot help thinking it is not man’s lot to happiness so easily” she read, “Good fortune is like the palaces of the enchanted isles, the gates of which were guarded by dragons. Happiness could only be obtained by overcoming these dragons and I, I know no how I deserved the honor of becoming Mercedes Husband.””

’ El dragón indeed.” She murmured thoughtfully as the E-pad they had allowed her automatically sensed the progress of her iris and scrolled the classic story down its slim screen.

“What was that prisoner?” the Vulcan guard – who had so far steadfastly resisted the urge to divulge anything as remotely juicy as her name – demanded in a stiff authoritarian tone that spoke of duty and protocol.

Abril chuckled and waved a hand in the general direction of the shimmering Class 9 forcefield she knew ran, not only across the tantalizing, inviting aperture that separated accused from jailer, but through and behind every surface that made up her prison.

“De Nada!” Abril sighed – genuinely ignoring the Vulcan – whom she found tedious after their time together. “Just something I read.” She dismissed with a smile she showed only to the wall.

Everything was a show when you were under observation.

As an experienced Brig – Officer no one knew this fact more keenly than Abril and she was strongly of the opinion that her captor had placed her in this situation with this exact knowledge in mind. She forced herself to recap and bring each fact to the forefront of her mind and consider it separately from its inference to its other.

Maybe that way she could divine the Starfleet Intelligence Officer’s twisted purpose and gain some leverage in this one – side race.

Fact – She had been abducted by means so fantastically, scientifically improbable and at distinct danger to her own person by a teleportation intercept thought inconceivable by even the most Savant Academics.

What did this tell her?

Supposition - That Lt Commander Kazyah Linn was serious in his intent, not without considerable resources and clearly a megalomaniac with narcissistic tendencies and a sociopathic regard for the chain of command.

“In short – a typical Starfleet Intelligentsia Officer.” Abril allowed within the confines of her mind where her captor could not infer.

This told her nothing. Linn was, in all probability, a trained and habitual dissembler and probably unable to differentiate between actuality and the continuum of untruths that he was required to inhabit and spin.

Fact – This is obviously a Black Site.

This one was easier to substantiate. The substitution of Starfleet Marines into the duties normally suborned to Starfleet Security – such as the guarding of prisoners – was one such tell. One did not task the highly specialized descendants of the 22nd Century M.A.C.O. with the banal duty of Facilities Securement – unless whatever was locked away there was;

1. Really, Really Important to the Federation

2. You were singularly devoted to ensuring anyone who viewed that thing would not exploit that facilities life – support facilities any longer than was finitely possible.

“Which,” Abril thought as she rubbed her tired eyes and set down her E-Pad, “Tells me exactly what I already know – none of which helps me at all.” She remonstrated as she drew the thin coverlet over her as her guard maintained her constant vigil.

She turned over and tried to let sleep take her, but for a time her focus and her eyes lingered execrably on the hand-phaser she had been left with, the means with which to kill a fellow Starfleet Officer.
===============================================================================================================================================================================


She dreamt that she was the protagonist prisoner, incarcerated in the desperation of the island fortress of Chateau d”If.

“Can all this force be summoned on my account?” thought she as she shifted on her filthy cot of moldering straw and blinked despairingly at the accusing shaft of light that stabbed her waking eyes from the high redoubt of the oubliettes’ only window, some 12 feet above.

“Whither are you taking me?” She asked aloud in the lonely cell. A rhetorical plea from someone who expected no answer in their wretched debasement.

To her surprise it seemed that the incorporeal voice of Kazyah Linn that drifted whisperingly from the mildewed walls, as if an embodiment of the cruel disinterest of her Gaol was taunting her from the waking realm.

“You will soon know.” Came the reply, knowingly.

“But still”— Abril started.

“We are forbidden to give you any explanation.”

Hirano, trained in discipline, knew that nothing would be more absurd than to question subordinates, who were forbidden to reply; and so, she remained silent.

Abril gathered her filthy shift around her naked legs and wailed, Comrade,” said she, “I adjure you, as a Starfleet Officer and a policeman, to tell me where we are going. I am Abril Hirano, a loyal NCO, thought accused of treason; tell me where you are conducting me, and I promise you on my honor I will submit to my fate.”

Suddenly someone who looked like her tormentor was there in the cell – instead of the uniform of Starfleet Intelligence Lieutenant Commander – he wore the uniform and insignia of a Gendarme Adjoint 1ère Classe of the Gendarmerie of the Napoleonic era.

“You are a native of Starfleet, and a Policeman, and yet you do not know where you are going?” the apparition chided as he lazily cleaned a nail with his bayonet.

“On my honor, I have no idea.” Abril whimpered – at odds with her waking character.

“Have you no idea whatever?” the Linn Gendarme scoffed sheathing the blade and making a show of inspecting the dejected prisoner properly for the first time.

“None at all.” Abril prostrated her ignorance, chafing at that disproportional emotional surfeit that accompanied dreaming.

Kazyah / Not Kaz pursed his lips and shrugged with Gallic indolence.

“That is impossible.”

Abril launched herself forward, hampered by the manacles hindering her ankles and grasped desperately at his Trous.

“I swear to you it is true. Tell me, I entreat!”

The Gendarme looked down with and shrugged with dispassion, as if he had stepped in something untasteful. “But my orders.” He offered noncommittally, bored now.

“Your orders do not forbid your telling me what I must know in ten minutes, in half an hour, or an hour. You see I cannot escape, even if I intended.” Abril implored, feeling the corners of the cell begin to warp, a sickness in her gut as her vision dimmed and the sense of reaching something important slipping away…

Kazyah Linn’s dispassionate whisper was the last thing she heard as the darkness drew a close around the tableau.

“Unless you are blind, or have never been outside the harbor, you must know.”

===============================================================================================================================================================================
Abril woke up with a start, clutching the coverlet to her chest in a cold sweat – her mouth uttering the following words before sinking back into a dreamless slumber.

"I do not."

Corporal Khoval marked the incident in the Brig Security Log and went back to studying her copy of “The Starfleet Marine’s Comportment.”

==============================================================================================================================================================================

It was the Saurian.

This was good.

By her reckoning 3 days had passed in the cell. Abril had spent many long hours guarding prisoners in the Brig of the USS Erskine and knew that one of the metronomic sounds that punctuated that day was the Sanitary Unit cycling its replicator module at precisely 17.55hrs each day.

The toilet had made the dump – cycle precisely twice during her incarceration, so it must be day three.

She rubbed her eyes blearily, she must have fallen asleep again. With little more to do than sleep, eat, defecate, read fictions on the E-Pad they allowed her to pass the time with and try to ignore her cellmate that she had to murder – there was scant little to do and she found herself napping at inopportune times.

Frowning she glanced at the E-book and tried to make sense of when she’d dozed off.

“” Abbé Faria entreated” I regret having helped you in your investigation and said what I did.” He remarked.””

“” Why is that?” Dantès asked.””

“"Because I have insinuated a feeling into your heart that was not previously there: the desire for revenge."”

The Saurian guard raised his purple head dolorously as the prisoner rose from the cot and made her way across the small cell and splashed water on her face. Instantly alert the predator – race Marine studied every nuance of the Petty Officer’s movements, alert to deceit.

Abril yawned and stretched as she dried her face from a small jet of air that issued from a recess in the wall panel and suddenly issued a sudden out-rushing of air of her own.

Her hand flew to her lips and she blushed “Perdóneme !!’ She giggled and made her way to the San and yanked down her prison coverall - squatting down over the bowl.

The Saurian Marine – Sergeant blushed a deeper purple on his snout mottles and looked away.

That’s when it happened.

==============================================================================================================================================================================

The funny thing about being a Brig Officer aboard a starship is that you meet the most interesting people.

Having what is, admittedly, a rather long time each day with nothing else to do apart from watch that person to the exclusion of anything else – you tend to notice things about them over time and the things they do to fill the small world they inhabit.

For example – an interesting point of interest is the inner workings of Matter Replicators and their janitorial relationship to waste removal.

In the 20th Century and Barbarian era – worlds, defecate waste products produced by carbon – based entities were removed from their immediate vicinity upon ejection by a system universally known (but not a-typical to any one genus) as “Plumbing.”

Obviously, the physical transfer of waste by tubing or other channels was both a woefully messy & inefficient process - redundant upon a 24th Century vessel whose inhabitants had mastered Warp – flight and Matter-Transference technology.

It was also obviously not the medium of choice when employed placed in a 6 x 6 x 6-meter cell, completely enclosed by a Security Force-field – built under the design premise that nothing goes in, nothing goes out, without the Jailor controlling the process.

Which poses a problem that can get very, very progressively unpleasant over a short period of time.

The system in its place is, by necessity, a small replicator unit, tasked with taking excreta from various races, compiling it into bio-matter (the neutral building block of the replicator) and storing that waste in an finitely compressible form until ordered to transfer to the Ships central Biomass tanks (in most cases) or, in the case of a Brig San – Unit Replicator – de-compile that bio-matter in a safe and inert process each day once the small, enclosed system reached its daily limit.

A process that, to take into account station maintenance cycles and the intestinal flora of humanoid prisoners, occurs roughly at 17.55 hrs. (give or take for galactic Time over Distance) once each day.

===============================================================================================================================================================================
Abril smiled at the blushing Sgt Zrakk and whistled a jaunty tune as the massive Saurian struggled to both keep an eye on his prisoner and in his discomfit avert his bifurcated gaze.

Another thing you learn as a Jailer when enough time has passed, is the panoply of species, racial, moral and religious behaviors, each that are typical to each race.

For example, how Saurian Males find Female Human genitalia in general and method of procreation in particular, abhorrently disgusting and their own tribal mores forbid them from interacting with their own females when undergoing the cycle of shedding – a function considered akin to the human act of defecation.

Interesting stuff like that….

===============================================================================================================================================================================

(Excerpt from the Investigative Log of SFMC Warrant Officer Jal Darret - ID 0 – 19.23hrs)

Containment Cell 7a suffered a containment breach at 17.55.27 hrs, occasioned by a violent matter energy event of uncertain origin.

Whilst the blast that caused significant damage and the concussive effect was initially contained by the Class 9 security force – fields in place – the exact timeline of events was difficult to reconstruct from visual records and the subsequent debrief and testimony of Marine Gunner Sergeant Zrakk as the space beyond the intact Security Field was filled with a noxious smoke that obscured the scene for 12.7 second until atmospheric compensator pumps engaged and fully cleared the cell – saving the life of Starfleet Intelligence Officer Reno, whom had been incapacitated by the initial blast and was in danger of asphyxiating from secondary toxic emissions.

Forensic evaluation of the crime – scene indicates that the Cell’s Sanitary Replicator Unit had been tampered with. Nominally, like every other fixture in a Starfleet Series Gamma Securement Facility, all fixtures and fittings are considered tact and hardened from interference.

Supplemental to this standard (and key to this investigation) is the erroneous presence of a Type IV Hand - phaser present in the cell with the prisoner. Records show that the paradoxical presence of this small – arm can be attributed to the Office of Starfleet Intelligence – who have declined to explain the weapons presence in contravention to Security Accords beyond that it was part of a training exercise for a potential Intel – Asset.

What is apparent is that, at some point during her incarceration, the prisoner/asset (Whose identity is similarly obscured from this investigation courtesy of SFI privilege) was able to use the hand phaser to make a pin – point penetration into the housing of the Sanitary – Unit that accommodated the Replicators heat exchange unit.

As previously stated by this investigation, such a situation is normally outside the design parameters of the Gamma series Cell – by dint of divesting the prisoner of any item deemed capable of harm to themselves or the prison environment – but I digress.

The emission likely went unnoticed by the sensor grid, as it was conceivably of such short duration of the lowest power setting, and may have been obscurated by the fact the prisoner had developed a habit of regularly using & running the Cell’s sonic shower at its highest setting for long periods of time over the three-day period that she managed to remain contained.

Fragments found in the vicinity of the blast - event suggest that the prisoner somehow managed to mate the power cell of the contraband hand-phaser with the heat – exchange unit and re-purpose an E-Reader Pad (previously though to be secure due to no input/output port capability), to reprogram the unit to transmute the biomass accumulated in the unit to pure plasma – with the energy lent from the fatal discharge from the Phaser’s power-pack.

The resultant explosion had the capacity to interfere with the phase – harmonics of the cells Security field in the rear – quadrant of the cell as the local array attempted to rotate & compensate. During this cycle the resultant Plasma – emission melted a hole in the cladding of the cell wall and afforded entry to the crawlspace beyond.

The prisoner is now thought to be at large within the Jefferies Tube infrastructure of this station, but SFMC is supremely confident that her chances of escaping the facility are negligible and are confident that Security Teams will apprehend the fugitive and return her to a more stable – penal environment within the hour.

These are my preliminary findings as duty Investigative officer.

SIO / WO1 - Darret. J.S. / SFMC FORCOM.

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