Lt JG Imril - Into The Dark
Chris Taylor
((Holodeck 1 - Deck 2 - USS Artemis-A ))
Bancroft: …So just to clarify, the appropriate time to throw one’s phaser at a target is… never?
Storm: Can I couch my answer with an ‘almost never’? In tactical, ‘never’ is a four-letter word. But definitely don’t throw it at a dancing spider. Trust me—it escalates quickly.
Imril: At the very least, a good time to throw a phaser us after you’ve set it to overload. Or if it’s going to explode all on its own.
Storm clapped three times. Then, the holodeck kicked into gear.
The tidy grid and training targets melted away like stage curtains dropping, replaced with a rocky cavern like unto so many that Starfleet away teams had explored (or been trapped within) over the centuries. Light and mist playing off of each other among the darkened columns of stone. Fang-like stalactites and stalactites stood a hungry vigil before three darkened tunnels.
In the middle of it all stood Storm, one hand raised with the pose of a dabo girl eagerly leading the next round of suckers to the wheel.
Storm: Welcome to the actual drill … drill … drill …
Her words reverberated through the cave system.
Storm: Echoes. Because why not add ominous acoustics to phaser practice?
Bancroft: ::dryly:: Ah. So this is where they’ve been hiding the spooky murder cave from every horror holofilm. Good to know. (Know… know… know…)
Imril tested the echo with a few taps of their feet. But they would learn no secrets of the place's acoustics, thanks to the wind which whipped up to drown out any results of their experiment.
It howled through the stone mouths of the tunnels, puppeting Storm’s hair. She barely flinched. But then, she knew how much wind to expect because she had programmed it, or given instructions to whoever had.
Storm: Sounds will play tricks on you in here. Don’t trust them. Your phaser has been set to cause a sharp sting if you’re hit. It won’t harm you, and it won’t stun you, but you’ll definitely feel it if you’re hit. The simulation will end if I hit both of you or if either of you hits me. Any questions?
Bancroft: Yes, I have a question. What happens if I shoot myself? Entirely accidentally, of course. Do I get to leave ‘Lieutenant Storm’s Spooky Cave of Horrors’ early?
Imril was thinking about ways out too. Not that escape was the objective, here, but old habits died hard. They were already analyzing the sounds of the wind as it bounced off the walls. The movements of Storm’s hair. In a cave, airflow told you where the exits were. Assuming this cave was programmed to behave like a real cave.
Storm: Catch as catch can.
Then she lifted her phaser and shot an outcropping above their heads. Shards of red-hot shrapnel flew out from the stone, flares in the semi-dark. A classic misdirect that gave her all the distraction she needed to disappear into any of the three tunnels.
Imril raised their hand over their eyes to shield them, and when they brought it back down they were already thinking of how they could take advantage of the rocks as well. What setting would they have to turn their phaser to superheat the stone and redirect the wind?
Roy coughed, squinting through the particulate chaos, then swiped dust from his tunic. He looked to make sure Imril was alright before succumbing to the dust once again.
Bancroft: ::sneezing:: Can’t decide which stings worse – the shrapnel, or the abandonment. ::sighing:: Alright partner, buddy system or divide and conquer?
The wind had died down quite a bit in the wake of Storm’s vanishing act. Almost as though it had been planned that way. They tapped their foot again, and this time they got some echoes. But not particularly helpful ones.
Imril: Splitting up would just give us both twice the footsteps to be confused by … by… by… Better to focus on just hers … hers… hers…
Storm: Response
Bancroft: Right, strength in numbers. Plus, I want a witness when Storm inevitably ices me and claims it wasn’t personal.
Imril stepped into a new position. One out of shot of the three passageways. Coincidentally out of echo range.
Imril: I'm pretty sure our progress is being recorded. I promise not to laugh at the replay.
Storm: Response
He cast a crooked grin Imril’s way – part solidarity, part gallows humor – and stepped forward, selecting the center tunnel. The one with the least light, of course. Imril followed after, stepping softly as possible in Starfleet-issue footwear designed to maximize durability and (to a lesser extent) comfort at the expense of stealth.
The temperature dropped as they entered, like the cavern was exhaling through clenched teeth. The air thickened, damp and strangely intimate. Their footsteps no longer echoed – they were muffled now, swallowed up by stone and silence.
Imril took up the right side of their quiet march.
They walked in wordless tandem, Imril listening for any clue the air might provide. Their weapon was half-raised, and the safety was off. Its aiming light was deactivated as well; it would serve Storm better as a target than it would Imril as a guide. The stingy cavelight would have to do.
They were relatively certain that Betazoids had no increased capacity to see in the near-dark.
There came a sudden rustling. A sound against stone, soft and quick. Off to the left.
Roy turned and fired. A stream of directed fire-light, and then a gasp of steam and odor. Burnt moss.
He turned back toward Imril.
Bancroft: ::quietly:: Okay, new rule. If I shoot anything else inanimate, you’re allowed to stun me and carry on with a more competent partner.
Imril: New new rule. Less talking, more listening.
As amusing and tension-breaking as Roy’s banter usually was, in this place voices breaking through the muffling effect could only do the pair trouble. Every word spoken had to count. Lt. Storm had all the advantages in this, her custom-made hunting ground. Why give her another?
Storm: Response
Ahead of them, the cavern began to widen. Opening up into another chamber, one which could be the nexus of another series of intersections. A miasma of fog, strips of pale and ribbony light, danced slowly from one side to the other. Illustrating, if weakly, the roomy contours they were about to enter.
Suddenly, the ribbons shifted. Like the writhing bands of a night-time aurora moving to different magnetically-advantageous vantages from which to claim charged particles. They could have been unsettled by a fresh gust of wind. But it also could have been a Storm that stirred them up.
Storm/Bancroft: response
Imril stepped their phaser setting up to Heavy Thermal. Then signaled to Roy with their free hand; telling him to move to the left upon entering the new cavern. A second signal indicated that they would take the right side. A third said not to go too far from the opening, to start. Imril didn’t want to lose sight of him, or vice versa, as they secured the chamber.
Storm/Bancroft: response
TAG/TBC!
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Lieutenant JG Imril
Engineering Officer
USS Artemis-A
A240110I12