The admiral replied. "We've got that covered over here."
Admiral Nat - U.S.S. Mephiles
The admiral sat there in his command chair, and turned to Burt to have him contact the transporter room, but as he did, Pevro, a Hierarchy, and the ship's chief intelligence officer and second science officer, got the admiral's attention. "Sir, we've got a transmission for you in your ready room, top priority, and classified under the temporal prime directive. It's about Scott."
Nat's expression lowered as everyone on the bridge turned to face him. "Oh... ok then. I'll be in my ready room, then," he continued turning to Sarah, "could you take over here for a moment?"
Sarah nodded and the admiral disappeared into his ready room while Sarah hopped over to the command chair, talking over the comms. "The admiral's disappeared into his ready room, so I'll take over from here. What were you all doing again?"
The Omega Operative - Earth Spacedock
The Omega sighed. "Beaming Krystal up. She's in zero-g now, so take special considerations when you beam her over?"
Sarah replied over the comms. "Of course. Krystal, let me know when you're ready."
Sarah replied over the comms. "We'll... lower you in slowly?"
They beamed Krystal into the transporter room on the Mephiles, still in zero-g. The transporter officer, still under the affects of the usual gravity, looked up. "Alright, I'm gonna restore the gravity on the pad very slowly..."
The transporter officer laughed. "Yeah, they didn't waste any time messing with the gravity on this ship. Even tied it into the security systems; boarding parties find themselves stuck to the floor pretty quickly."
He motioned to the door. "I believe the captain is waiting for you on the bridge?"
The admiral sat down at his desk, and pressed a button on his computer terminal, bringing up a certain temporal agent from the distant future. Nat sighed, as though he already heard from this agent numerous times before. "What is it this time?"
The agent replied. "It's about Scott, actually. I just wanted to let you know, he didn't just shoot that ship down under orders from "you"..."
The admiral deadpanned the temporal agent on his viewscreen. "He did it under orders from you, of course. What else should I have expected... which leaves a question; why?"
The temporal agent replied calmly. "To prevent the 3 Na'kuhl agents on the U.S.S. Sally from destroying your ship, killing the rest of your crew, and thus inadvertently allowing the Alliance and their alternate universe counterpart to maintain the link between the two universes, taking over the alternate Milky Way, and then coming back for the rest of you and not showing any mercy about it, either."
Admiral Nat threw his hands up in the air. "There are so man better ways to do that, you know. Why not just send agents of your own too--"
The agent stopped him. "We're spread too thin as it is, admiral. We couldn't spare them."
The admiral glared. "Yet you couldn't spare us? We are temporally capable, you know; the Firestorm and Mephiles alike are both equipped with temporal drives! Hell, we've even got the Chronostorm in spacedock, still fully functional! What's stopping us from using that ship's temporal transporters!?"
The temporal agent deadpanned Nat. "Did you before?"
Nat sat back down, calming down a little. "Of course not, and since we didn't do it before, we won't do it later... I really hate temporal mechanics sometimes, you know?"
The agent shrugged. "You rescued Scott from that timeship, the Reality. From that moment, you were involved."
"Yeah, I guess you're right..." replied the admiral, "although it can get pretty irritating sometimes. I take it you want me to pull some strings so Scott's "mutiny" goes unnoticed...?"
The temporal agent answered. "Well, more or less, I suppose. Just that you let him go after discovering evidence of his actually being innocent, you know? Be sure to let anyone else involved know what I told you; at least, what they need to know."
"Of course. Anything else?"
"Let Sarah know that not everyone that was on the Sally died there; many of them were saved by us to be recruited as temporal agents. Oh, and I might recommend you track down that changeling; she's got the AU U.S.S. Sally sitting around in one of those Dyson Spheres, and all the crew imprisoned throughout the sphere in question. You might want to get them out of there."
Nat answered. "Finally some good news, then. Nat out." He closed the channel, and sighed.
Elric floated through the many, still dark, Engineering decks aboard Spacedock, firing isolinear tag after tag from a pistol into drone after drone. Each drooling, unaware Borg straggler, on the brink of death, were quickly transported away to the Infirmary and by the time Elric reached Gravity Control he was out of darts. There, in the half-darkened room, he found Claire trying to get a console online.
"Don't move!" Elric said, taking out his autocarbine rifle and aiming it.
Claire turned around in shock, but was relieved when she saw who it was. "Oh, it's you. I thought you were more Borg, or, even worse..." she trailed. "Would you help me get this console going?"
"That is Starfleet technology, and you were under arrest for stealing," Elric recanted.
The woman nodded. "Oh, you were cute to try, Captain. But I have bigger problems, and they were no better helped by the station's main power going down."
"Like what? And where is the real medallion?" he pressed.
Claire shook her head while she worked. "What are you talking about? I gave it back to you," she replied, seconds before pausing. "Unless they took it?" Then she shook her head in disbelief. "Those damn hair-hacks," Claire cursed before turning to address Elric. "I showed it to them for just a second, trying to get them off my back with the old hand-is-quicker-than-the-eye trick. Seems like they were even quicker than I thought."
"Who? The Caitians that Vitath mentioned?" Elric said, lowering his aim. "She said they were trying to hurt you."
The other person sighed, unhappy and then defensive. "Ugh. That's right, Captain. The whole universe doesn't revolve around whatever you have going on at this station. You see, it's my father. We used to hunt alien treasures together with a small group, but now he's sent his goons after me because he says I abandoned him. But, it's more like I just realized he was dealing with some bad people all along."
Elric paused, thinking back to Raven and the tubules that struck his arm not too long ago. He then felt a tingly feeling in his left arm and pulled down his sleeve to examine. His arm was turning pale and something was bubbling inside. "Ugh!"
"What the hell happened to you?" Claire said, taking a tricorder off a table and scanning him. "You have nanoprobes in your arm. But they appear to be localized to just your arm."
The Captain took out an immunosupport hypo and injected his appendage. The bubbling seemed to stop. "How is that possible, unless Mirror Borg somehow sectionalize their assimilation nanoprobes? Not to mention they shouldn't be working right now? Damn. I should have never gotten close to that old man." He looked at Claire. "Never mind. I'll live. Help me get gravity back online; you're still coming with me."
"Well don't you know how to make a girl feel wanted," she smirked as they both went over to the gravity control deck, which was previously overloaded from a remote source.
Elric began getting backup systems online. Zeta floated off his right shoulder and began scurrying around, in place, in panic. *Click!?*
"He seems panicked for some reason," Claire noticed. "Are you an engineer, Captain?"
He shook his head. "No, but I wasn't a science officer either and I somehow manufactured all these omicron weapon attachment cells," he replied, opening his satchel and showing her a bag full of his accomplishments.
"Oh!" Claire turned their attention to the console. They both got backup systems online and gravity was restored to all the decks aboard Spacedock. The two immediately landed to the floor on their feet, without what some other people may prefer as the comfort of a gradual transition.
But another feedback pulse from their tampering exploded a section above their heads and reverberated throughout the station's backup systems. Elric quickly checked another control panel. "Damn. We knocked communications offline. I'll get an exocomp on it."
*Click! Chirp!* Zeta leapt back onto Sith's right shoulder in fear as the sounds of something in the vents took everyone's attention away.
And then, CLANG! CRACK! The noise echoed into the darkness of the control room and the surrounding, empty corridors.
"My father's Caitians." Claire looked at Elric. "They found me down here earlier, but I escaped them when the Borg attacked. There are way too many felines for one rifle and they're more cunning than the Borg."
Elric turned to her in disbelief. "So, what? We hide?"
"Use their tactic against them," she countered, pulling him toward the darkness. "Then we make our move. Trust me."
Seconds after they disappeared into nothingness, a Caitian male, LuKet, dropped from out of the ventilation shaft and into the Gravity Control centre. He began sniffing the air. With the Borg immobilized, his brothers and sisters lurking in obscurity and surrounding the entire deck, he knew he had finally cornered her.
The Omega Operatives had noticed the return of gravity, and one of them reported. "Captain, gravity is back online. I'll run a quick scan just to make sure everything is... wait. Sir, spacedock's communications are gone. Also, there are a lot of Caitians around here."
Sarah replied over the comms. "Caitians? What? Elric, are you still hearing this? Apparently one of the Omegas have detected Caitians running around. Oh, and spacedock communications are down, too."
The omega called out to the other Omegas. "All of you, pair up. I don't like the looks of this."
Omega Operatives started searching around until the dozen of them were all in pairs. Sarah waited, then broke the newfound silence. "Elric?"
Sarah shrugged. "Gotta beam you somewhere with gravity, don't we? Also, I hear there's a situation developing on ESD. You might want to be here to hear about it from the Omegas."
She reached to a comm panel again. "Elric, you're not hearing this, are you?"
Admiral Nat emerged from his ready room, and turned to the security station. There was Nausicaan in Omega armor, minus the helmet, standing there; he turned to the admiral as though waiting for orders. Nat motioned to him. "Go free Scott from the brig; his arrest has been cancelled. Temporal orders, obviously."
The Nausicaan walked out into the turbolift and disappeared from the bridge. Nat motioned for Sarah to vacate his chair, and then sat down as Sarah hopped back over to the first officer's chair.
"Oh, I guess communications aren't totally offline," Elric realized just about to tap his commbadge to answer when the noise alerted LuKet.
The bigger Caitian lurched into the darkness and swung a backhand for Elric, but the Captain quickly fired an antiproton bolt into LuKet, sending him back into a far wall. Three more Caitians dropped into the Gravity Control room and shot out fists at them. Elric pulled around to aim, but his rifle was swiped out from his hands. Zeta leapt onto the face of one of the Caitians, sending that one to the ground.
"I thought the Ferasans were the aggressive ones??" Elric said as he blocked a jab and returned with a kick. He then kicked again, more forcefully, and sent his attacking Caitian to the floor.
Claire leapt up and forced a knee into the last Caitian's head, then, while in mid-flight, powered a downward kick into the feline sending it down. "Every species has its bad people, but, unfortunately, these guys get brainwashed." When she landed, she found that they were surrounded by even more Caitian siblings.
Zeta returned to Elric's right arm, and Elric and Claire backed into each other, holding fighting stances. "Think the Omega Operatives have a spray bottle?"
"What the hell is going on?" Krystal asked, reminding everyone on the bridge she was there. "One minute we're dealing with Borg, then we immediately jump into another crisis?"
Admiral Nat shrugged. "Well, look on the bright side. Turns out Scott's blowing up the Sally was actually the best thing he could've done considering a bunch of variables none of us knew about, so he's free now."
Sarah laid back in the first officer's chair, mumbling something to herself, then motioning to Krystal to sit in the extra seat. "Well, it's not Borg, or Undine, or the entire Alliance, just a bunch of Caitians. Besides, we've got the Omegas keeping an eye out now, and the rest of the Omegas, and all our compliment, of, like, 50 MACOs all on ESD guarding everything important, so there's a plus."
Admiral Nat looked like he just got an idea. "Actually, Burt, contact one of the MACOs we sent to protect Admiral Quinn. We can probably use the MACO's comms to set up a communications link to spacedock while ESD's communications are down."
Krystal just shrugged.
"I admit I'd feel a bit better if I was on the Bridge of the Lexington," she said. "Then I'd feel like I was able to do something. But with the damage she took during the battle... I got nothing."
Krystal shrugged.
"Not my fault an anti-tachyon beam is power intensive and we were shooting at a massive target," she defended herself. "If it was a normal size cube we probably wouldn't be having this discussion."
A spike of seething pain in Elric's left arm threw him to one knee, unable to respond to the hails from the Mephiles. The surrounding Caitians and Claire looked at him. "UGGGHHH!!"
"Tag her," LuKet said, menacingly as he walked back over to the group.
One of the other Caitians took out a gun and shot Claire with an isolinear tag, dematerializing her away. The loss of the woman next to him sent a hopelessness through Elric and he felt as if he was, yet again, unable to keep a hold of her.
With added adrenaline from the pain, he ripped the left sleeve off his uniform to expose his arm from the shoulder down. It was grey, patched with Borg technology, and appeared to be scattered with large, throbbing bubbles. From the edges of each patch came a sickening grey secretion.
"This man's nanoprobes are highly voltaic," Kova said, scanning Elric with a tricorder. It was then the Captain's satchel hit the floor and all the omicron weapon attachments fell out.
LuKet observed them. "The fool caused his own mutation from the radiation by those things."
"You're the fool," Elric struggled to say, having realized the lead Caitian was right. "If you think I'm going to let you get... away with— UGGGgggghhhHHH!"
The Caitians hesitated to attack when Elric jerked himself to the floor, on his back, in blistering, unconscionable pain. Zeta ran off in fear and eight tubules blasted out from his assimilated arm and pierced each surrounding Caitian. A bio-electrical current ran through the tubules and into the humanoid cats, forcing them all to feel Elric's pain. They were then fed the mutated nanoprobes which became accelerated and dangerous to their bodies.
"What... have... you done...??" LuKet looked at his arms and body which was quickly morphing chaotic, disproportionate mutations and growths all around him.
Horrified at what he had involuntarily done, Elric ripped the tubules out of his left arm causing more of the rapidly produced grey fluid to spew profusely out of his arm. The localization of the nanoprobes, accelerated by omicron radiation, was staggering and utterly gruesome.
"Uuuhhhhggg! Arrrggh!" With the other Caitians down, morphing and screaming in pain, Elric began dragging his own weakened body toward a shelf. He pulled out a phaser and then slumped back to the floor. Behind him, he could see the trail of drawn out grey matter his alien arm excreted.
An unrecognizable LuKet yelped in mere horror, feeding into the echoes of cries from his brothers and sisters. "What have you done to us?? What have you done?!?"
"I don't know??" Elric tried to answer, propping himself up against the shelf and programming his phaser into concentrated-cutting beam mode. "I have to.... Have to...."
Realizing what the mortified, increasingly heavy breathing human was about to do by aiming the phaser at his own shoulder, LuKet reached his own disproportionate, bubbling limb to his waist device and transported himself and all his now deformed Caitians off Spacedock.
"AAAAaaAAAAAAAHHHH!!!!!"
When Elric was done, both he and his severed extremity were transported away.
Admiral Nat - U.S.S. Mephiles
The admiral sat there in his command chair, and turned to Burt to have him contact the transporter room, but as he did, Pevro, a Hierarchy, and the ship's chief intelligence officer and second science officer, got the admiral's attention. "Sir, we've got a transmission for you in your ready room, top priority, and classified under the temporal prime directive. It's about Scott."
Nat's expression lowered as everyone on the bridge turned to face him. "Oh... ok then. I'll be in my ready room, then," he continued turning to Sarah, "could you take over here for a moment?"
Sarah nodded and the admiral disappeared into his ready room while Sarah hopped over to the command chair, talking over the comms. "The admiral's disappeared into his ready room, so I'll take over from here. What were you all doing again?"
The Omega Operative - Earth Spacedock
The Omega sighed. "Beaming Krystal up. She's in zero-g now, so take special considerations when you beam her over?"
Sarah replied over the comms. "Of course. Krystal, let me know when you're ready."
Winning.
"Well... good news is I'm free and clear," she said. "Bad news is I'm spinning in place... as ready as I'll ever be I guess."
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They beamed Krystal into the transporter room on the Mephiles, still in zero-g. The transporter officer, still under the affects of the usual gravity, looked up. "Alright, I'm gonna restore the gravity on the pad very slowly..."
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He motioned to the door. "I believe the captain is waiting for you on the bridge?"
Admiral Nat - U.S.S. Mephiles, Admiral's Ready Room
The admiral sat down at his desk, and pressed a button on his computer terminal, bringing up a certain temporal agent from the distant future. Nat sighed, as though he already heard from this agent numerous times before. "What is it this time?"
The agent replied. "It's about Scott, actually. I just wanted to let you know, he didn't just shoot that ship down under orders from "you"..."
The admiral deadpanned the temporal agent on his viewscreen. "He did it under orders from you, of course. What else should I have expected... which leaves a question; why?"
The temporal agent replied calmly. "To prevent the 3 Na'kuhl agents on the U.S.S. Sally from destroying your ship, killing the rest of your crew, and thus inadvertently allowing the Alliance and their alternate universe counterpart to maintain the link between the two universes, taking over the alternate Milky Way, and then coming back for the rest of you and not showing any mercy about it, either."
Admiral Nat threw his hands up in the air. "There are so man better ways to do that, you know. Why not just send agents of your own too--"
The agent stopped him. "We're spread too thin as it is, admiral. We couldn't spare them."
The admiral glared. "Yet you couldn't spare us? We are temporally capable, you know; the Firestorm and Mephiles alike are both equipped with temporal drives! Hell, we've even got the Chronostorm in spacedock, still fully functional! What's stopping us from using that ship's temporal transporters!?"
The temporal agent deadpanned Nat. "Did you before?"
Nat sat back down, calming down a little. "Of course not, and since we didn't do it before, we won't do it later... I really hate temporal mechanics sometimes, you know?"
The agent shrugged. "You rescued Scott from that timeship, the Reality. From that moment, you were involved."
"Yeah, I guess you're right..." replied the admiral, "although it can get pretty irritating sometimes. I take it you want me to pull some strings so Scott's "mutiny" goes unnoticed...?"
The temporal agent answered. "Well, more or less, I suppose. Just that you let him go after discovering evidence of his actually being innocent, you know? Be sure to let anyone else involved know what I told you; at least, what they need to know."
"Of course. Anything else?"
"Let Sarah know that not everyone that was on the Sally died there; many of them were saved by us to be recruited as temporal agents. Oh, and I might recommend you track down that changeling; she's got the AU U.S.S. Sally sitting around in one of those Dyson Spheres, and all the crew imprisoned throughout the sphere in question. You might want to get them out of there."
Nat answered. "Finally some good news, then. Nat out." He closed the channel, and sighed.
Winning.
"Don't move!" Elric said, taking out his autocarbine rifle and aiming it.
Claire turned around in shock, but was relieved when she saw who it was. "Oh, it's you. I thought you were more Borg, or, even worse..." she trailed. "Would you help me get this console going?"
"That is Starfleet technology, and you were under arrest for stealing," Elric recanted.
The woman nodded. "Oh, you were cute to try, Captain. But I have bigger problems, and they were no better helped by the station's main power going down."
"Like what? And where is the real medallion?" he pressed.
Claire shook her head while she worked. "What are you talking about? I gave it back to you," she replied, seconds before pausing. "Unless they took it?" Then she shook her head in disbelief. "Those damn hair-hacks," Claire cursed before turning to address Elric. "I showed it to them for just a second, trying to get them off my back with the old hand-is-quicker-than-the-eye trick. Seems like they were even quicker than I thought."
"Who? The Caitians that Vitath mentioned?" Elric said, lowering his aim. "She said they were trying to hurt you."
The other person sighed, unhappy and then defensive. "Ugh. That's right, Captain. The whole universe doesn't revolve around whatever you have going on at this station. You see, it's my father. We used to hunt alien treasures together with a small group, but now he's sent his goons after me because he says I abandoned him. But, it's more like I just realized he was dealing with some bad people all along."
Elric paused, thinking back to Raven and the tubules that struck his arm not too long ago. He then felt a tingly feeling in his left arm and pulled down his sleeve to examine. His arm was turning pale and something was bubbling inside. "Ugh!"
"What the hell happened to you?" Claire said, taking a tricorder off a table and scanning him. "You have nanoprobes in your arm. But they appear to be localized to just your arm."
The Captain took out an immunosupport hypo and injected his appendage. The bubbling seemed to stop. "How is that possible, unless Mirror Borg somehow sectionalize their assimilation nanoprobes? Not to mention they shouldn't be working right now? Damn. I should have never gotten close to that old man." He looked at Claire. "Never mind. I'll live. Help me get gravity back online; you're still coming with me."
"Well don't you know how to make a girl feel wanted," she smirked as they both went over to the gravity control deck, which was previously overloaded from a remote source.
Elric began getting backup systems online. Zeta floated off his right shoulder and began scurrying around, in place, in panic. *Click!?*
"He seems panicked for some reason," Claire noticed. "Are you an engineer, Captain?"
He shook his head. "No, but I wasn't a science officer either and I somehow manufactured all these omicron weapon attachment cells," he replied, opening his satchel and showing her a bag full of his accomplishments.
"Oh!" Claire turned their attention to the console. They both got backup systems online and gravity was restored to all the decks aboard Spacedock. The two immediately landed to the floor on their feet, without what some other people may prefer as the comfort of a gradual transition.
But another feedback pulse from their tampering exploded a section above their heads and reverberated throughout the station's backup systems. Elric quickly checked another control panel. "Damn. We knocked communications offline. I'll get an exocomp on it."
*Click! Chirp!* Zeta leapt back onto Sith's right shoulder in fear as the sounds of something in the vents took everyone's attention away.
And then, CLANG! CRACK! The noise echoed into the darkness of the control room and the surrounding, empty corridors.
"My father's Caitians." Claire looked at Elric. "They found me down here earlier, but I escaped them when the Borg attacked. There are way too many felines for one rifle and they're more cunning than the Borg."
Elric turned to her in disbelief. "So, what? We hide?"
"Use their tactic against them," she countered, pulling him toward the darkness. "Then we make our move. Trust me."
Seconds after they disappeared into nothingness, a Caitian male, LuKet, dropped from out of the ventilation shaft and into the Gravity Control centre. He began sniffing the air. With the Borg immobilized, his brothers and sisters lurking in obscurity and surrounding the entire deck, he knew he had finally cornered her.
Sarah replied over the comms. "Caitians? What? Elric, are you still hearing this? Apparently one of the Omegas have detected Caitians running around. Oh, and spacedock communications are down, too."
The omega called out to the other Omegas. "All of you, pair up. I don't like the looks of this."
Omega Operatives started searching around until the dozen of them were all in pairs. Sarah waited, then broke the newfound silence. "Elric?"
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"Heard you wanted to see me?" she asked.
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She reached to a comm panel again. "Elric, you're not hearing this, are you?"
Admiral Nat emerged from his ready room, and turned to the security station. There was Nausicaan in Omega armor, minus the helmet, standing there; he turned to the admiral as though waiting for orders. Nat motioned to him. "Go free Scott from the brig; his arrest has been cancelled. Temporal orders, obviously."
The Nausicaan walked out into the turbolift and disappeared from the bridge. Nat motioned for Sarah to vacate his chair, and then sat down as Sarah hopped back over to the first officer's chair.
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The bigger Caitian lurched into the darkness and swung a backhand for Elric, but the Captain quickly fired an antiproton bolt into LuKet, sending him back into a far wall. Three more Caitians dropped into the Gravity Control room and shot out fists at them. Elric pulled around to aim, but his rifle was swiped out from his hands. Zeta leapt onto the face of one of the Caitians, sending that one to the ground.
"I thought the Ferasans were the aggressive ones??" Elric said as he blocked a jab and returned with a kick. He then kicked again, more forcefully, and sent his attacking Caitian to the floor.
Claire leapt up and forced a knee into the last Caitian's head, then, while in mid-flight, powered a downward kick into the feline sending it down. "Every species has its bad people, but, unfortunately, these guys get brainwashed." When she landed, she found that they were surrounded by even more Caitian siblings.
Zeta returned to Elric's right arm, and Elric and Claire backed into each other, holding fighting stances. "Think the Omega Operatives have a spray bottle?"
Sarah deadpanned. "Caitians. Lots of them."
Nat reached for the comm panel. "Elric, are you receiving this? We are you?"
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Sarah laid back in the first officer's chair, mumbling something to herself, then motioning to Krystal to sit in the extra seat. "Well, it's not Borg, or Undine, or the entire Alliance, just a bunch of Caitians. Besides, we've got the Omegas keeping an eye out now, and the rest of the Omegas, and all our compliment, of, like, 50 MACOs all on ESD guarding everything important, so there's a plus."
Admiral Nat looked like he just got an idea. "Actually, Burt, contact one of the MACOs we sent to protect Admiral Quinn. We can probably use the MACO's comms to set up a communications link to spacedock while ESD's communications are down."
To make a long story short, Burt did.
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"I admit I'd feel a bit better if I was on the Bridge of the Lexington," she said. "Then I'd feel like I was able to do something. But with the damage she took during the battle... I got nothing."
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Winning.
"Not my fault an anti-tachyon beam is power intensive and we were shooting at a massive target," she defended herself. "If it was a normal size cube we probably wouldn't be having this discussion."
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Winning.
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"Tag her," LuKet said, menacingly as he walked back over to the group.
One of the other Caitians took out a gun and shot Claire with an isolinear tag, dematerializing her away. The loss of the woman next to him sent a hopelessness through Elric and he felt as if he was, yet again, unable to keep a hold of her.
With added adrenaline from the pain, he ripped the left sleeve off his uniform to expose his arm from the shoulder down. It was grey, patched with Borg technology, and appeared to be scattered with large, throbbing bubbles. From the edges of each patch came a sickening grey secretion.
"This man's nanoprobes are highly voltaic," Kova said, scanning Elric with a tricorder. It was then the Captain's satchel hit the floor and all the omicron weapon attachments fell out.
LuKet observed them. "The fool caused his own mutation from the radiation by those things."
"You're the fool," Elric struggled to say, having realized the lead Caitian was right. "If you think I'm going to let you get... away with— UGGGgggghhhHHH!"
The Caitians hesitated to attack when Elric jerked himself to the floor, on his back, in blistering, unconscionable pain. Zeta ran off in fear and eight tubules blasted out from his assimilated arm and pierced each surrounding Caitian. A bio-electrical current ran through the tubules and into the humanoid cats, forcing them all to feel Elric's pain. They were then fed the mutated nanoprobes which became accelerated and dangerous to their bodies.
"What... have... you done...??" LuKet looked at his arms and body which was quickly morphing chaotic, disproportionate mutations and growths all around him.
Horrified at what he had involuntarily done, Elric ripped the tubules out of his left arm causing more of the rapidly produced grey fluid to spew profusely out of his arm. The localization of the nanoprobes, accelerated by omicron radiation, was staggering and utterly gruesome.
"Uuuhhhhggg! Arrrggh!" With the other Caitians down, morphing and screaming in pain, Elric began dragging his own weakened body toward a shelf. He pulled out a phaser and then slumped back to the floor. Behind him, he could see the trail of drawn out grey matter his alien arm excreted.
An unrecognizable LuKet yelped in mere horror, feeding into the echoes of cries from his brothers and sisters. "What have you done to us?? What have you done?!?"
"I don't know??" Elric tried to answer, propping himself up against the shelf and programming his phaser into concentrated-cutting beam mode. "I have to.... Have to...."
Realizing what the mortified, increasingly heavy breathing human was about to do by aiming the phaser at his own shoulder, LuKet reached his own disproportionate, bubbling limb to his waist device and transported himself and all his now deformed Caitians off Spacedock.
"AAAAaaAAAAAAAHHHH!!!!!"
When Elric was done, both he and his severed extremity were transported away.