MSNPC D'Hariv - Can I Please Have One Plan Go My Way For Two Minutes?
Chris Taylor
((Sick Bay, Deck 7, Afalqi))
The updated plan required knocking out everyone in Medbay to reduce the number of people who could be sent out to circumvent D’Hariv’s escape. Nurine in particular had security clearance enough to shut down the pods, and could do so with a thought if it came to that.
She opened the main door into the middle of a conversation. The lead physician and the ringleader’s nephew, speaking out of view of the observation beds and the patients lying prone within. The door closed behind her.
Pesho: … chance of this getting any better?
Before Nurine could answer, D’Hariv spoke with rushed breath.
D'Hariv: Code Seven! There’s a man down in the transtube conduit in Section Four!
The shape-changed Romulan had lost some of her ability to pinpoint the source of sounds with the rounding of her ear-tips. But their inner workings, evolved to hear in thinner atmospheres than she one she was currently breathing, had been spared the surface-level alteration. She could clearly hear murmurings on the other side of the room. Voices her fellows likely could not. Voices speaking in Federation Standard, a language she knew well from her time aboard the Artifact.
Munro: Is there anything we can do?
K’Wara: Response
Yet another escape route was needed now. She’d use the Da’al instead as living chaff. Keep near enough to them that the Starfleet personnel, with their corrupted scanners, couldn’t tell her altered DNA apart from theirs.
In the event she couldn’t neutralize Nurine in some other location, there remained one guaranteed way to get the pods clear of the ship. All of them.
The boy put his hands to his head, having given in to despair at a hopeless situation.
Pesho: Another one! What are we still doing here?
Nurine waved him silent with a clinician’s sneer and looked to the woman she beloved to be a xenobiologist whom she’d been introduced to at a shipbuilder’s symposium.
D’Hariv: Medtech Ligee was wounded in the attack. I thought he was alright, but then he collapsed after we got out of the transtube. Paracortal hemorrhage. ::Anticipating Nurine’s question:: I thought it best not to use communicators under-
Munro: Tarsan -
Then, with unanticipated rage, a Betazoid was in the room. He lunged toward her, and on his face, in his eyes, was something she recognized. A cold rage not his own.
D’Hariv: .oO(Rithaak.)Oo.
She’d never get her boot knife up in time, so D’Hariv raised the hypo which had never left her hand. Pesho and Nurine moved to defend their fugitive home from the invaders. Both of them reaching for improvised weapons of their own. Before they could do anything, they were stunned out by a Human woman in a red jacket.
But she had no line of fire to D’Hariv. Not with the man charging at her.
Munro: Grab him!
The yellowshirt was young, had lost the advantage of surprise, and was barely trained in personal combat. Perfunctory self-defense at best. She batted aside his strikes and took control of the fight. In four moves, she would have him maneuvered into a Vulcan Neck Pinch. Step Two, use his body as a shield and ram against the gunner. Step Three, Hypo her. Step Four, take on the last woman standing free. Presumably the team's Security contingent.
K’Wara/Tarsan: Response
The Human woman rumbled the stratagem by pulling back her subordinate. The wince of pain on the Human’s face did not go unnoticed.
Munro: What are you doing, Tarsan?!
A name given too freely. D’Hariv would be more careful with her own.
K’Wara/Tarsan: Response
Anything the man told her which had been acquired telepathically, either from herself or her dead compatriot, would be thrown out in a Federation court of law. Making capture by Starfleet a far more favorable outcome than the Nascaik. Not that it would stop the other officers from foiling her immediate plans in the present, now that he could state who and what she was.
So, on to an entirely new backup plan, then. (The rate at which she was cycling through them was admittedly becoming the littlest bit irksome).
D’Hariv lowered, but did not abandon, her hypo. Brushed a loose bit of wavy burgundy hair from her red-grey brow brow to present a more respectable face. For now, she would play the humbled adversary.
D’Hariv: If you came to this ship seeking a Romulan spy, you have found her.
Munro: Romulan?! So this is what the device was for? What could Romulans want from the Da’al?
D’Hariv: Somewhere on the planet below, a Da’al woman is fighting for her life. I contrived with her husband to deliver her to the treatment which her own government would or could not provide. I won't deny, however, that I am curious as to what other medical wonders might lay buried down there. Nor that coming here in an alien vessel had distinct advantages. In plainer words, I needed a patsy.
A truthful answer, if not a complete one. One that would give the Da’al government reason to lay claim to her to enact their own justice, and bog down any potential legal quagmires.
The Commander sighed and looked at the other woman. A furless humanoid with feline eyes. D’Hariv was aware of only one Federation species with those dual signifiers. But didn’t that species have a third distinguishing trait? Her eyes darted downward. Looking for a tail that was not there. But not so low or for so long that she’d be at any further tactical disadvantage.
Munro: Keep your eyes on her :: to Tarsan :: What else did you get from the Romulan? :: lowered :: Your file, it suggested that you had no telepathic
abilities?
D’Hariv heard every word. Did this fellow really have no powers? The evidence of her own eyes said elsewise.
K’Wara/Tarsan: Response
D’Hariv: Yes, I killed her. I take it your people are responsible for neutralizing the doomsday weapon which she left behind on the Da’al homeworld? When last we spoke, she was monitoring its progress, or lack thereof, from this vessel.
Oh, the look on her face when she realized it hadn’t gone off! Delicious!
K’Wara/Tarsan/Munro: Response
D’Hariv: You have my congratulations, and thanks. Whatever comes next, I want it stated for the record that I had no knowledge of that bomb prior to the vessel’s launch. And that I executed its creator to avenge its creation and prevent her trying anything of the like on the Afalqi’s crew. I stand apart from such barbarism.
She filled herself with the righteous indignation that had led her to the decision to kill Rithaak. She could not let herself dwell on certain other topics. Not now. Not with a telepath of any strength in the room.
K’Wara/Tarsan/Munro: Response
D’Hariv: Your Betazoid will tell you that I am speaking the truth. I understand empathy to be a passive skill. ::Diplomatic tone dropping to a harsher octave:: But I warn him that if he tries to intrude upon my mind more actively, he will not enjoy the sights that I show him.
K’Wara/Tarsan/Munro: Response
She set the hypo down. And the medkit as well. Palming from the latter one of Rithaak’s little surprises. It was thin and small enough to fit between two fingers.
D’Hariv: Oh, this? A general anaesthetic. Harmless. I did have to knock a fellow out nearby. Someone might want to go retrieve him. He’s likely to fall into the transtube if the Nasciak fire on us again. He's over that way.
She pointed to the seamless door she had just come through with two fingers. Following through in the motion, she flicked the pilfered device as one would a throwing knife. It struck a seemingly featureless area next to the door. Something within exploded, the door shot open, and all the lights went out.
D’Hariv grabbed the medkit and ran for the door. Vanishing around one side of it.
K’Wara/Tarsan/Munro: Response
TAG/TBC
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MSNPC D’Hariv
Posing As ???
As Written by
Lieutenant Imril
Engineering Officer
USS Artemis-A
A240110I12