Star Trek: Rapture - jefferies-tubes

Rai slipped his gangly ass self into the tubes and began to crawl. It was a good thing Romulans had incredibly memorisation ability or else he wouldn't have remembered the ship layout at all. "We are going to engineering. There is also a computer core, but I think engineering is where we can hijack the systems. We'll need to scale a few decks," Rai told his team, mentally planning the shortest route in his mind. He just hoped they wouldn't meet any pirates here.

Lisa led her team down a different path. From studying the ship’s layout, she knew the Bridge was this way. She crawled quite quietly. “We’ll need to climb a fair few decks to get to the Bridge. Let me know if you need a moment to rest.”

As soon as they entered, the schematics of this ship indicated that from the shuttlebay to the bridge, the trek would be approximately an hour and five minutes. But these were the weaklings at Utopia who were testing to see how far and long the climb would take. The officers in here were seasoned professionals. And could probably make it in 40 minutes.

The one time he found himself grateful to be so small was in the tubes. He followed along behind the superior officers with a practiced dilligence.

Weaklings indeed. Lisa was extremely fit. She had ran marathons before, she could certainly survive some crawling. Before long, she got to a ladder to climb between decks, which she started climbing.

"The junction to the bridge is down there, my team please follow me and we'll get to engineering. Good luck, Lisa," He wished his colleague well before heading to the ladder to climb upwards towards engineering.

The banter was beginning to make its way up the small crawl space, and to add to it. The dimly lit area was not designed for combat. “I’m telling you, this ship is beyond advanced. There appear to be an entire array of holographic crew men in addition to the fighters. It’s quite fascinating.” Said the Gorn in his gruff voice, it very much echoed.

3

Ressa reached into her medkit and pulled out one of her hypos of sedative after hearing the voices. She crawled behind Lisa, ready to find these people and sedate them, quickly.

Rai froze when he heard the noise, but his limbs were so damn long that he couldn't turn around, he could only move forward. He grabbed his phaser and started to shuffle on his stomach and elbows through the tubes, being as quiet as possible in hopes of sneaking up on the pirates at the other end of the tubes.

They were quickly getting closer and eventually they could see the shadow of someone who wasn’t supposed to be here. “Hey! What the devil! Shoot at those people!” He said with no hesitation and using Disruptors, they quickly lit up the tubes with green beams of light. Shooting below the officers in the tubes. As they were beneath the away team, they had the advantage of aim. But each were impacted by the darkness of the tube.

4

He knew he should have brought the lucky Torre'vnau family disruptor! Rai fired with his stupid little phaser, oh once he got his hands on those pirates he was going to pry those disruptors from their hands.

3

4

Cory nodded, following Rai and the rest of the team as the other team went through to the junction, silently before he heard another voice in the distance. It sounded like it was coming from the junction and then... oh, shoot! Quite literally. He leaned back against the tubes, because there wasn't any way he would be able to safely shoot past Rai and the others that were in front of him in the tubes.

Lisa, who was more towards the front, pulled out her own phaser. It was set to stun though. She began to look for a place to aim at the attackers.

"They have disruptors-- How?!" Rai was surprised these pirates had such weapons as he was unaware of a Star Empire garage sale. Rai ducked his head and moved as close as he could to the wall in an attempt to give his fellow officers an opening to help shoot. He was resisting every urge in his body to just throw himself down at the pirates and beat them with his bare hands, prying the disruptors from them by force. Little did he know his brother had done something very similar a few months prior.

Now not only were they being shot at from below, but from above as well. But some of the hits from the away team were hitting, grunts were heard, followed by the tumbling and landing of a body below on the floor. But what stopped one line of fire, was replace by two more.

Rai knew how strong disruptors were and was not about to get vaporised, but he would be damned if he let anyone shoot his ex-Tal Shiar Romulan ass with his people's own weapon! He wanted to scream and be very un-Starfleet, but he kept his mouth shut. If this was the Free State Navy he would have been shouting so loudly the Borg would hear him. "These damn veruuls," He cursed under his breath, so frustrated all they could do in their current position was shoot. He wanted to tackle! Punch!

He waited at the back patiently, his phaser was drawn as he knew he was imminently capable of defending himself, but he let the experts take care of the situation first.

After Rai had moved closer to the wall as well, Cory saw an opening between them where he could fire at the attackers below and shot through it with his phaser, hoping to get something while also leaning back himself still to give others the clearance Rai had just given him.

2

And just when they believed things were getting worse, with a whoosh. The enemies in the tubes were beamed right from the area. To a totally different section of the ship.

02:44

The tubes were quiet again.

"Those bastards!" Rai stopped his fire and swore a bit more under his breath. He was really looking forward to wrestling the disruptors from the bad guys' hands, but perhaps that would come later. "Engineering team, we shall proceed, everyone else to the bridge with Lisa," Rai's voice returned to the typical calm from before, but internally he was fuming. Anyway, he grabbed the ladder and began to scale upwards towards engineering.

“Well, now they know we’re here. Security will be even tighter. Everyone be on their guard.” Lisa also had to go up, seeing as the Bridge was the highest deck. She climbed with ease, the ACOS not even breaking a sweat.

He followed along behind the team, partly amused and partly worried to see his friend so emotional, this must be brining back some bad memories for him.

Rai was pretty pumped about this. He couldn't wait to wrestle the disruptors from the enemy's hands. Anyway, he proceeded up towards the engineering section, not entirely sure what they would see. "I expect engineering will be guarded, it seems like an essential area and plus the pirates probably don't know their way around Starfleet ships much less an experimental one."

"Is there any special tactic we should use? Or a certain setting on our phasers?" He asked with a calm face and flat tone he uses when trying to be professional.

"Stun is Starfleet regulations so use that. We want to subdue the enemy non-lethally. I do not want to see anyone dying here," Rai instructed as he climbed closer and closer to the engineering deck. He showed no signs of nervousness as he moved, being cautious but also calm and collected.