Commander Jo Marshall - Gift Horse Up the What
Jo Marshall
((Observation Bay, near Engineering Annex, Gibaria Outpost))
Simple order given, no elaboration necessary. Jo was right behind her officers, grabbing for the canister with one hand while firing with the other. She fired over her shoulder in the general direction of the crimson eyes, not expecting to stop it but expecting to annoy it. The sound of claws on the metal deck plating, slipping on the shrapnel, grew closer with focused enthusiasm.
Jo hit the shuttlecraft ramp between a run and a controlled fall, spun on her heel and fired once more at the creature now crossing the bay toward them with a burst of speed, galloping on all fours. She entered inside in approximately the same way cannonballs enter brick walls, something connected hard with the edge of the compartment racking—her ribs, specifically, at a guess from where the sudden bloom of pain radiated—earning a Bajoran curse word for flavour.
The ramp closed. The snarling thing on the other side scraped against the ramp as it closed, and not for the first time, Jo was grateful—with a breath to the Prophets if she'd had one to spare—that the thing didn't have thumbs to operate the ramp control.
Kovar: I am currently powering up the shuttle, Commander. It would seem that remaining here is no longer an option.
Marshall: Noted. ::Her hands found her hips as her lungs climbed down from her throat.:: Good call.
Fenn: ::tapping at a nearby console:: Shields, communications, transporters and warp drive are disabled but they left weapons online for some reason.
Kovar: Well. ::He raised both eyebrows:: The decision to leave the phaser systems intact has proven to be unexpectedly prudent. With that in mind, I believe the question before us is fight or flight.
Marshall: Freeze doesn't seem to be one of the options, so let's hear where we're at. What can we do from here? Can this thing even take off?
Fenn: Well… I guess we have three options: one, go back out there and fight that thing. Two, use the shuttle’s phasers to shoot it but we risk taking out half the facility. Three, we fly this thing to another dimension and risk encountering the rest of its pack.
Marshall: It's hard to pick just one solid option with an unlimited risk of death and dismemberment.
Kovar: Response
Fenn: I’m not sure I’d recommend any of them particularly.
As Maezel moved to the front of the shuttle, Jo peered out of the forward viewport from where she stood. The creature with too many teeth circled the craft with patience born from an appetite that considered them a deferred meal rather than an escaped one. Unfortunately, it showed no signs of having a prior engagement elsewhere.
Fenn: That thing seems to be making itself at home.
Marshall: Settling in to see if we crack this tin can open for it. ::She exhaled, then switched gears.:: Shooting half the facility out from under us doesn't appeal, and I'd rather not have another face to face encounter with that, or the same kind in the masses. Which leaves a fourth option nobody's thought of yet.
Kovar: Response
The creature still stalked them outside, as Jo turned the problem over in her head. Transport was an option, but could they go through the interference caused by the fluctuating dimensional shear? Unlikely. It wasn't beyond the realms of trying, and if she could get through to the Gorkon… Fenn spun around in the pilot's chair with spiking energy, an idea floating, and checked its tenability before giving it air time.
Fenn: Commander, Kovar, sorry to interrupt but I have an idea!
Marshall: Let's hear it.
Fenn: Back home, my family uses these sonic devices to repel aggressive animals from our mining equipment. They emit a high frequency sound that creatures with a heightened sense of hearing cannot stand. That thing out there looks like a predator to me and I’m guessing it has the hearing of a hunter species too.
Jo nodded along with the plan as it came together. Mining equipment had featured as background noise on her colony, and she'd grown up learning what navigational deflectors looked like with the housing off, learned which components ran hot and which were good to lean against on a cold night. The particulars of the harmonics the emitter arrays produced were something else. Fenn's instinct was good. The deflector array on the Type-9 had more than enough output range to make life extremely unpleasant for the auditorily sensitive.
Glancing at Kovar, she wondered if they needed to sort him some ear defenders out.
Marshall: The emitter range on this model should be more than enough frequency variance to find something it won't enjoy. ::She moved to pull up the deflector array specs.:: Good thinking. What do you need to make it happen?
Kovar: Response
Jo stepped back and let Fenn and Kovar work, blending science and engineering, as Jo kept half of her attention on the viewscreen where the creature continued to circle, and half on the deflector output readouts. She found herself checking over the emitter calibration with a little nostalgic familiarity—crouched in the dirt on a cold Volan III morning, ozone and machine grease. Considerably higher stakes than a drill head there, though.
Fenn: It’s ready, Commander. Kovar, you might want to cover those Vulcan ears.
Kovar: Response
Marshall: ::Nodding once,:: Light 'em up.
The effect was near immediate; the creature flinched as though they'd physically reached out and struck it, swiping those razor claws at nothing, and backing away from the hull of the shuttlecraft in furious pain. When Fenn increased the power and it finally turned and fled the bay, Jo watched it go with a small sense of satisfaction that didn't feel earned. Unfinished, maybe. Waiting for the next thing.
Fenn: ::turning off the pulse:: Kovar, are you ok? I hope that wasn’t too uncomfortable for you?
Kovar: Response
The bay sat empty and quiet, the large and alarming creature had recently vacated. Not only had they managed to secure themselves a handheld harmonic resonation device and EVA suits that could shield them from the worst of the dimensional radiation, they now had a functioning shuttlecraft on the stable side of a dimensional boundary. Whether that was considerably good luck or being prepared for something much worse, Jo wasn't sure yet, but she was too long in the teeth to look a gift horse up the rear.
Whatever the hell a gift horse was. It seemed thoroughly irresponsible to her to give someone an equine unprompted.
Taking in the state of everything—all of them mostly intact—Jo took a breather, leaning against the edge of a console and folding her arms over her chest. Her ribs twinged.
Marshall: So, ::she lifted fingers as she went,:: functioning shuttle, dimensional shear array intact, weapons online, deflector array with more range than advertised, harmonic resonator, EVA suits rated for dimensional radiation, subspace generator, and… ::She glanced down to the side.:: One vine in a canister I'm calling an asset until proven otherwise.
Kovar / Fenn: Response
Marshall: I'm not on the side of believing these Kobliad scientists didn't modify a Type-9 shuttle for the aesthetic. ::She gestured at the shear array housing above their heads.:: This thing was always meant to go through. They built themselves a way back before they went. Smart really.
Kovar / Fenn: Response
Marshall: We've got an impulse powered shuttle. ::She glanced at the display beside her head.:: Half powered. It's dark. There are likely hostile extradimensional predators behind us and a destabilising gateway in front of us. ::An exhale, and then there it was.:: What do we need to do to get this thing ready to cross over?
Kovar / Fenn: Response