It's Rala McClane!
Posted on Mon Aug 24th, 2026 @ 6:13pm by Lieutenant Rala & Captain Calypso Skyie
6,682 words; about a 33 minute read
Mission:
Die Hard: Chimera Edition (main)
Location: {Orgrann skyhook station}
Timeline: Concurrent with "Terror on the Orbital Express"
Tags: Rala,combat,CQC
Rala strode through the corridors of the station, making her way toward the docking port that led back to the Chimera. Her horns still itched.
Technically it was the skin around the base of the horns that itched, but she’d always thought of it as ‘my horns itch’, and she scratched idly as she walked.
Just as she approached a corner, she heard voices from ahead. She turned the corner just in time to see a pair of figures step into a side corridor at the next junction. She started to run to catch up to them, a question forming in her throat, but something made her remain quiet. She quickened her pace, keeping her footfalls soft, and as they stepped into a side room, she managed to get close enough to make out what they were saying.
“...the Starfleet people secure?” one was asking.
“All except the lizard,” the other replied.
Rala frowned, ears dipping. ’Lizard’? she thought. They must mean me, but what do they mean by ‘secure’?
She heard the sounds of containers being opened and rigid objects being moved around, and risked a peek though the open doorway.
Thankfully, neither of the figures were facing her. “So what’s the word?” the first figure asked, shuffling through an open crate looking for something.
“Proceed as planned,” the second said as he removed something from another crate, his body preventing Rala from seeing what it was. “Find the lizard. She goes back to the rest of ‘em...” the figure turned slightly, slapping the object held in one hand into the opposite palm, finally allowing Rala to see it: A weapon. “...or else.”
Rala’s eyes widened and she backed slowly away from the door as she felt her heart begin pounding. Shit. She didn’t know exactly what was going on, but whoever these people actually were and whatever they were doing, it was deliberate. They apparently had the rest of her crew, her kinatra, captive; were actively looking for her; and would not likely be kind if they found her.
She backed away from the door as quickly as she dared; four paces, five, six before she turned and jogged away as silently as she could.
She didn’t notice the door that her proximity had been keeping open now sliding closed; nor, by extension, the two people on whom she’d been eavesdropping noticing the sound, glancing at the door, and then at each other.
The door hissed open behind where she was as the two men came out the door that had inexplicably just closed and they looked down each way before they looked at each other with a shrug, "All right, let's find her." They knew better than to not keep an eye out on the corridors, starting to move in the same direction that Rala had gone, but took a stop at one of the large displayed, keying it to life and activating the internal sensors. "That's the conference room, everyone else is still there.. Select Starfleet identification, Jorsh, and there we go." One signal, moving away from them at a moderate pace. "We can cut her off at this corridor right here. Easy. Set your weapon to heavy stun, if two shots can't take her down, we shoot to kill." The display keyed off, the two set off at their own jog, taking a turn to cross over to where they figured Rala would be going to next.
Rala hurried through the corridors, retracing her steps to where she'd left the others while simultaneously trying to think of how she could help them one she got there. Tactical training, Rala, she thought to herself, we all got some. Information. I need information. What information do I have access to right now? Inventory. What do I have? Uniform. Combadge. Jekka root twig. No phaser. No swords. No—” Her thoughts were interrupted as she turned a corner and found her path obstructed.
The two men got there mere seconds ahead of the Draakri, almost running into her and they started to raise their weapons, "Freeze!" "Hold it there!" One pulled the trigger too early, shooting the ground first in his rush to try to stun Rala.
Suddenly finding herself face to face with the two hostiles made Rala take a startled half-step back before she fully processed the situation. Then she spun, feinting that she was about to run while lashing her tail at their weapons, hoping to at least disrupt their aim if not disarm them.
Rala continued her spin, rounding on them once more. She grabbed the one on her left by his gun hand, keeping the weapon pointed anywhere but at her, and hauled him toward his companion, knocking them together and throwing off the other’s aim again. She kept up the momentum, bouncing the first one off the wall behind her as she spun, ending with his body between her and the other man, his back to her, her right hands drawing beads of blood with the clawtips as she held his gun hand and wrist, her upper left arm snaking under his and up behind his head in something resembling a half-Nelson, and her lower left hand coming up to press clawtips against his throat.
“Something tells me you’re not supposed to be here,” she growled into his ear, keeping an eye on his companion and making sure he couldn’t get a line of sight on her, “and that you’ve got something to do with why I can’t contact anyone via comms. I don’t suppose either of you would care to tell me why?”
“For Holy Orgrann.” The man grinned in triumph as his partner plucked a grenade from his pocket and hit the activation studs, dropping it at the feet of all three of them.
Rala’s eyes widened as the device clattered to the floor. She didn’t know how much delay its fuse had, but she definitely didn’t want to stick around to find out. She shoved her captive toward his companion, raking claws across his throat and scalp as she did—more out of frustration and the chance that it would distract him than with intent to kill—while simultaneously wrenching harder at his hand and wrist, twisting the weapon out of his grasp and drawing more blood in the process. She released him, snagging the falling weapon as she pushed off of him, propelling him into his companion for a third time and launching herself around the corner she’d come from, putting as much distance and mass between herself and the grenade as she could before—
A WHUMP struck Rala from behind and sent her sprawling. She tried to turn it into a smooth roll, but fetched up painfully against the corner of a doorway with her back. She winced, groaned, and finally looked back toward the site of her confrontation as she got back to her feet.
There wasn't much left to the two Orgranni, neither body moving after the detonation of the grenade. Their gear seemed to be a mix of destroyed, one flung-out arm with an intact binary comm unit, clearly how they communicated with the rest of their fellows.
Rala stepped back to the corridor junction, grimacing at the scene and feeling her stomach twist. What was supposed to be a steadying breath was immediately regretted; she could taste things in the air that shouldn’t be there. She blew the breath out to clear her mouth and nostrils, bent down to retrieve the communicator from the man’s limp wrist, and dashed away.
It was an odd miracle, of sorts, Rala thought, that so many cultures designed their spacecraft and stations with some equivalent of a Jeffries tube. Even most of her own species’ more recent permanent space construction included them.
Not only had she found one, but by divine providence or blind luck, it had been unlocked. She’d crawled in, closed it behind her, then made her way what felt like halfway across the station, taking more-or-less random turns. Now she was laying on her back, still in the maintenance tube, fiddling with the alien communicator, making sure she could listen in without transmitting.
“Kilor, kilor, what is the status of your hunt?” The comm crackled, then fell silent for several seconds, “Kilor? Dammit, we need an update! Did you find the lizard yet or what?”
Oh, he found me, alright, Rala thought. She almost voiced the thought aloud, but she didn’t want to risk transmitting by accident; better to let them wonder for a bit longer. Next step, figure out where I am, and what my options are.
She concentrated, trying to mentally retrace her path all the way back to the port where the Chimera was docked, building a mental map as she did. Her sense of distance in the unfamiliar station, but most of her turns had been at right angles, so she was fairly confident of her sense of direction. After a moment, she nodded to herself, reasonably confident she could find her way to both the docking port and where she’d left the others, although she wasn’t planning to go straight for either.
Strapping the communicator to her first left wrist, she rolled over, and started crawling again, choosing her directions more thoughtfully than she had before.
Rala let out the breath she’d been holding. She crawled through the maintenance tubes for around a minute, and then had spent another twenty or thirty seconds with her ear against a hatch. Silence. Silence was good.
She carefully opened the hatch.
The room beyond was empty. Good. Empty was good.
She crawled out and closed the hatch behind her, then looked around. She was in a utility room of some sort; a smallish space, shelves lining the walls holding various tools and supplies, a basic worktable in the center, a medkit on the wall near the door...and attached to the wall between the medkit and the wall, a map.
She hurried over to it, finding what looked to be the ‘you are here’ marker and tracing a clawtip across the surface. It wasn’t a complete map, only showing the deck she was on, with no details on what most of the rooms were, and she couldn’t read the legend, but she felt reasonably certain in her guesses about a few markers, such as vertical access points in the maintenance tubes to reach other decks.
The radio crackled to life, "Sesta, move around to the port side of the corridor, Alev, to the starboard side. She's moving through the accessways."
"Copy."
"Copy."
"She's now holed up in utility room Three. I'll continue to monitor while you move in."
Rala had just paused in the process of stripping out of her uniform top to remove the wrist comm, which was getting in the way of her sleeve, when three conversation came from its tinny speaker. The station’s environmental settings weren't particularly warm, but all the excitement—none of it any of the fun kinds—had caused her metabolism to increase, and she was starting to sweat.
She listened to the brief exchange, frowning. They're tracking me, she thought, resisting the temptation to transmit a response of her own. Either via my life signs, or— as she finished stripping off her uniform top, her gaze fell upon her commbadge. She had no idea whether these skekzhapa were actually tracking the badge like a federation ship or station would, but it would be the simplest way. She gave it even odds and, seeing no benefit to making their job any easier, left it attached to the garment as she tossed it aside.
Knowing two more of them were closing in on her, she strapped the comm back to her wrist, then quickly scavenged a few items she thought may be useful from the supplies in the room before ducking back into the maintenance tube and closing the hatch behind her.
Three minutes later, Alev's voice came back over the comm, "She's not here, her jacket is, though, four arms."
"Look around, you idiot! It still shows she's in there."
"You come down here Deset, this room isn't big enough for a florgat pen! Her insignia is still on the jacket."
There was cursing that started over the comm, then got cut off as the comm was keyed off, then back on again, "Well then, get in the maintenance tubes. That's the only way she wouldn't have been seen by the two of you. Both of you, go! Find her or Salven is going to kill you if I don't get to you first!"
A smirk appeared on Rala’s face as she realized that they had, in fact, only been tracking her by her combadge. She’d stayed close enough to the hatch to hear, just barely, and now scurried back, ducking around the first corner, knowing she had at least two more people hunting her that she’d need to deal with before she could move freely.
Hunting me. The thought irked her, and it took her a few seconds to figure out why. She found herself silently snarling and realized it was an instinctual reaction. She may be in their territory, but if anyone was going to be hunting, it should be her.
Well, she thought, recalling her newly updated mental map, they may be following me, but there’s more than one way to hunt, and my evolutionary ancestors were ambush predators. She moved off toward one of the vertical junctions, pausing to listen for her pursuers, making just enough noise as she went to keep them on her trail. Once she was almost too slow, barely making it around a corner as a bullet shot past her, making her pick up her pace.
Reaching the vertical junction, she quickly scrambled two decks up the ladder, opening the hatches as she went and leaving them open. She climbed off the ladder at the second deck up, moved aside...and waited, listening carefully.
One of the two looked up the vertical shaft that Rala had gone up, leading with the muzzle of his pistol, then withdrew when he saw nothing. There was a brief argument that wafted up the shaft, the words echoing into mush before they reached up to where she was perched, then there was silence and another sound that sounded like a curse in Orgranni. The sounds of footsteps moving up the rungs as quietly as possible. Finally the head of one of the two pursuers popped up right in front of her, his eyes opening as he tried to bring his gun up quickly.
The first thing he noticed was probably Rala’s face, glaring at him. The second thing was her translated voice saying, “Wrong turn.” The third, between her face and his, was the barrel of the phaser she’d appropriated earlier, already aimed at the hatch opening he’d just occupied. The fourth was the briefest flash of light from the energy weapon, and then nothingness.
The limp body fell down the tube, the yelp of the second as it impacted him on the way down was audible, then there was a large thump and the clatter of a weapon hitting the ground as well. There was heavy breathing from a few meters away that Rala could hear.
Rala peeked over the edge, leading with her stolen phaser, ready to haul herself back at the first sign of immediate danger. She’d been hoping the falling body of the one would knock the other off the ladder; it hadn’t, but it had been an excellent distraction: He was only just looking back up at her, and didn’t have his weapon at the ready. She sent a phaser blast at him, missed, but quickly adjusted to his flinching dodge—Thanks for that game of Velocity, Valleroy, she thought—and fired again, sending his limp form tumbling down the ladder just like his companion.
Rala held there, stolen phaser aimed down the maintenance shaft, until she was sure that neither of them were moving. Once she was certain, she climbed back down, checking on them. Both were still breathing, both had assorted bruises from their falls. One’s forearm was bent unnaturally, clearly broken.
She gave an unsympathetic snort and removed the roll of dark grey utility tape she’d appropriated from the storage room from her tail, and quickly bound their ankles with multiple wraps of it. She removed their wrist comms and weapons, setting them aside; then bound their arms behind them, forearms parallel, each hand at the opposite elbow, which also served as a basic splint for the broken arm. Lastly, she wrapped a few layers of tape around their heads at different angles, binding their mouths shut while careful to leave their noses clear.
She stepped back and checked her handiwork. She’d used up most of the roll of tape, but they wouldn’t be going anywhere or calling for help; she’d tell the Orgranni authorities where to find them later. If we get out of this mess. She dismissed the thought. There was no way these skekzhapa were getting away with whatever they were planning; not if she had any say in the matter.
She snorted again and turned to the items she’d relieved them of, just as the comms crackled to life. “Sesta, Alev, report.” There was a pause, then when nobody responded, the same voice spoke again. “Sesta? Did you get her? Alev? I swear, if you two don’t respond to me, I’m going to beat the ever-living shit out of you when I catch up with you!”
A grin appeared on Rala’s face, and she picked up one of the wrist comms from the two unconscious figures next to her, still reluctant to transmit from the one she’d picked up earlier. She tapped what she figured was the transmit stud twice, hearing clicks from the one on her wrist as she did.
“Alev? Sesta? Was that you?” crackled the voice again. “Get your shit together and tell me what’s going on, dammit!”
This time Rala pressed and held the transmit stud, giving a low, throaty chuckle before saying, “Apologies. Sesta and Alev are currently...” she glanced down at the unconscious forms at her feet, “...unavailable to take your call.”
There was silence over the comm, an ominous silence. Then, finally, "I see. So it's you and me. Why don't you come out to play, lizard? You and me, winner take all." His voice growled over the communications, "Except you're not going to win, so you can hide all you want, or come to deck 4, corridor twelve. Your choice."
“Even assuming I decide that is a good idea, friend,” she replied, shoving as much sarcasm into the last word as she could, “I don’t exactly know where that is.”
"All you have to do is look at the upper right corner of the corridor sections." His voice was condescending, "And they said that Starfleet was smart."
"I can read and write five languages,” Rala shot back. “If Orgrann was fully part of the Federation, maybe yours would be one of them." She was exaggerating a bit, but the Academy had taught her enough to get by on a handful of Federation worlds.
The sigh was long as it came over the comm, “Look at the symbols. There are both our numbers and what the Federation called ‘Arabic’, which we were assured is the universally known ones. Come, or die like the rest will.”
Rala’s eyes narrowed at that final comment. She’d known they were up to something nefarious, and that they’d been willing to die for it, but she’d been holding out hope that their plans had been something less bloody. But now...
She examined the weapons the latest two mooks had been using. They were slugthrowers, an odd choice for use in space given their propensity for collateral damage and limited, relatively bulky ammunition. She had a little experience with slugthrowers in general, thanks to her innate curiosity toward mechanical contraptions in general, and while these were technically an unfamiliar design for her, the basic principles of designing a handheld mechanical firearm meant it didn’t take her long to figure out the basics.
She pressed the transmit stud again. “Congratulations, skekzhap, you made a mistake.”
"By sending incompetents to deal with you? Yes." He replied.
“You’ve actually made several, but most pertinently...” An audible growl accompanied her next words. ”You. Threatened. My. Family.” She signed off by smashing the two spare comms with the butt of the phaser, hoping some of the sound would be transmitted as she did. She still had the first one she’d taken, so she’d still be able to hear any of their chatter, but she was done talking to them for the time being.
Clearing the ammo from both firearms, she fairly quickly identified the firing mechanism and, almost as importantly, the safety catch. She left one of the weapons on the deck, then reloaded the other and made sure it had a round chambered; then she set the safety, taking the gun and spare ammo and, for lack of a better option, taped them to the base of her tail. Standard duty uniforms really need more pockets, she mused, climbing back up to the deck above the storage room she’d looted and setting off through the tubes again.
Another few minutes had passed as Rala wound her way through the maintenance tubes. She’d cautiously peeked out at one point to check what deck she was on—sure enough, alongside what she assumed was Orgranni writing, there were labels in Federation-standard Arabic numerals denoting deck and corridor numbers that she’d been too distracted to notice as they’d come aboard, and she’d made a mental note to be more observant in the future—finding herself on Deck 4, the same level the hostile Orgranni had wanted her on, and thus not where she wanted to be.
Then it had been back into the tubes, to the nearest vertical junction, and back down a level, to the deck she’d started this unplanned adventure on. Now she had her ear pressed to the slit of a barely-opened tube hatch, listening for any activity outside. When she was confident there was none, she slipped out of the tube, closing the hatch behind her, and moved silently to the nearest corridor junction to get her bearings.
She knew she was on the same deck as both reception area where she’d been separated from the others, and the docking port where the Chimera lay awaiting the baryon sweep.
That thought gave her pause. Whoever these hostiles were, and whatever they wanted, they’d clearly been planning this attack for some time; taking over control of a station like this shouldn’t be easy, nor should completely blocking all communications except their own. Had the promised baryon sweep been a trap all along? Or had they simply been a convenient ransom, in the right place at the wrong time?
Either way, the fact that there had been no sign of activity from the ship—which she knew hadn’t yet been completely empty when the comms went down—meant that at least enough of the Orgranni ‘workers’ helping them prep had actually been hostiles that were either keeping the few remaining Chimera crew busy, or had managed to fully secure the ship.
Tessa was still packing up sickbay.
The thought hammered its way to the forefront of her mind, and she felt her heart rate quicken, her tail begin lashing angrily, her irises contract, and an involuntary growl begin bubbling up in her throat—the first signs of Raxxuka.
No. Not again. Rage is not the answer. She closed her eyes and took a deliberate, slow breath, pushing the instinct back down.
I am in control of my whole self.
Not soul.
Not mind.
Not body.
But the mergence of all...
She’d never expected to need the litany she’d learned so long ago, and she didn’t remember the entire thing at first, but as she mentally recited the words, line after line with the rhythm of a steady drumbeat, the rest floated up from the depths of her memory as if they’d been awaiting a summons just beneath the surface.
Her body calmed, still tensed like a bowstring, but no longer one at full draw. She refocused on her immediate surroundings.
According to the label at the corridor junction, this was Deck 5, and if her innate sense of direction was accurate, she was relatively certain of her location.
To the right, a path deeper into the station, and most of her kinatra; to the left, a path that would lead her back to the docking port, the Chimera, and Tessa.
She looked to the left, and hesitated for a second. Then two. Then three. Dammit, Rala, Tessa can handle herself, especially on her own ship, against these idiots. And she's not alone. One upper hand gripped the matching lower wrist in her usual nervous tic. Hang in there, kin'tra. Show them why they shouldn't have fucked with the Baroness of Heart's Forge.
She clenched her jaw, let out a tense breath, and turned to the right, toward the rest of her kinatra and the fools who thought threatening them had been a good idea. Rebecca...Jenna...Kally...Calypso...
I’m coming.
She’d been moving silently for several seconds, stolen phaser at the ready, when her thoughts lurched slightly. She still considered the Captain one of her dearest friends, but ever since the emergence of her telepathic abilities there had been a...soreness...surrounding the spot where her thoughts of the older woman resided; the process had been painful in more ways than one, and part of her resented Calypso for insisting on teaching her to shield then and there, rather than giving her a dose of psi blockers and letting her scorched mind and exhausted body rest first, as would have been done on Draakrona in a similar situation.
But not this time.
This time the only discomfort at the thought of Calypso was that someone she cared for was in danger, and she may be the only one able to help.
So naturally, it was at that moment that her luck ran out.
A sharp crack came from her right and a round impacted the wall just ahead of her, followed immediately by another crack and a sudden wrenching pain in her right hip and her first right hand. She yelped, involuntarily jerking her hand up and stumbling into the bulkhead to her left, her stolen phaser clattering to the deck nearby.
“Stop right there!” ordered a voice from a broad side corridor she’d bene passing on her right—the same voice she’d heard on the comm. “Gotcha now, miss lizard. Kick the weapon towards me, on the ground.”
Rala pushed off the bulkhead, wincing at the pain in her hand and hip. She looked down at her hand, seeing small rivulets of purple blood from what looked like small shrapnel wounds around her knuckles. She realized she’d gotten extremely lucky, and the bullet meant for her had struck the phaser with enough force to wrench it at least partly from her hand and slam it into her hip; had the weapon been even a few centimeters in any direction, she’d be crippled and severely injured right now.
She clutched her wounded hand in its opposite and limped over to the fallen weapon. There was a blackened dent in the side, and a spark came from it when she kicked it in his direction. Only after that did she finally look at him properly, forcing herself not to make any sudden movements that might provoke another shot from the gun he had aimed at her.
I want to see your hands-“ He started as he took one quick glance at the clearly inoperable weapon, ”All four? - of them.” He seemed momentarily confused, but shook it off after that brief conclusion, “In the air, now!”
Rala grimaced and slowly raised her hands while saying, “That was simultaneously a very lucky and a very unlucky shot. Probably would have crippled me, if the phaser hadn't gotten in the way.”
"Can't have everything," He grinned, his teeth clearly visible as he was now most assured that he had her caught. Now… Where was the nearest airlock?, he took his eyes off her for a half second to look, spotting the telltale glowing panel that was Orgranni law on space vehicles. “Come this way.” He kept his gun pointed at her as he backed up, making sure she was following him.
Rala cursed under her breath, frustrated at herself for not capitalizing on his all-too-brief distraction. She limped forward, giving the damaged phaser a moderate berth, knowing that the energy contained within could be extremely dangerous were it to be released all at once.
An idea floated to the surface of her mind, and as she took another step, she swung her tail in a slow, broad sweep away from the phaser, hoping the motion would be taken as a balancing motion. With her next limping step, as she passed the damaged weapon, she swept her tail toward it and, as the tail swept behind her legs, sped it up, sweeping it forward along the floor while simultaneously twisting her body to the side and trying to fling herself out of his line of fire. Her aim was good, and her tail slapped into the phaser and flung it toward him, hopefully distracting him, odor at least making him flinch, and throwing off his aim.
Another crack rang out as Rala continued her turn into a spin. As she went, her second left hand tore at the gun attached to the base of her tail, yanking it free of the tape that was holding it there.
She almost didn’t notice a sudden sting on her left cheek as she spun. She disengaged the safety and, as she came around, pointed the gun in his direction and squeezed the trigger several times.
The Orgranni staggered back, then fell to the deck, his own firearm clattering to the floor as it fell from his grasp and multiple dark splotches spreading across his clothes. Rala kept the gun trained on him as she moved closer, using one foot to drag his weapon away from him, but he simply made a weak gurgling sound before going limp. Only when his breathing ceased did Rala lower the gun.
As she did, she noticed a slight burning sensation and a feeling of wetness on her left cheek. She raised a hand to investigate and found an oblong, shallow streak of damaged flesh a few centimeters long that stung at even a soft touch. Her only guess as to the cause was that the Orgranni’s shot had grazed her as she’d turned away.
That thought brought another: Why hadn’t he fired more than the one shot? Her stunt hadn’t been that fast; he should have had time for at least two. Curious, she bent down and picked up the gun near her foot to examine it.
An empty shell casing was protruding sideways from the ejection port: It had jammed.
She almost dropped the firearm in shock, realizing just how close she’d come to death and how lucky she’d been—multiple times—to avoid it. She took a shaky breath, carefully clearing the jam and emptying the gun of its ammunition and reengaging the safety on the one she’d fired before leaning against the nearest wall and slumping to the floor.
Come on, Rala, she thought, get back up. There’s still work to be done. But her body refused to cooperate. She glanced over at the body of the Orgranni, lying still on the decking a few meters away, and the realization that she’d just taken a life—deliberately, for all it had been in self-defense—settled on her, and she felt her gorge rising. She looked away, closed her eyes, and fought it down, mentally reciting her litany again.
It took two full repetitions of the passage before Rala felt in control of herself again, and then she raised the wrist comm to her mouth and pressed the transmit stud. “Are there any other extremist skekzhapa out there who’d like to try getting in my way?”
Several seconds passed, and then an unexpectedly familiar voice sounded from the device. “This is Valleroy. Is that you, Rala?”
She blinked in surprise, then pressed the transmit stud again. “Yes, Sir.”
“Report, Lieutenant.”
“Sir. Two hostiles dead by their own doing, trying to take me with them. Another two injured, unconscious, and restrained in a maintenance tube junction somewhere. And...” she continued, her voice still slightly unsteady, “...I just took out another one, who’d been giving orders. I ditched my combadge a while ago; they were using it to track me. I have some minor injuries, but nothing serious.”
"Understood," Mark said. "Everything should be contained by now on the station. The terrorist leader is down. I’m in the station control center, working on sorting things out here. Report to the captain in the conference room and see if you can contact the ship. We have a medical emergency there and will need to get Doctor Kellerman and Lieutenant Jade back to the ship. Go with them and anyone else here that the captain can spare and help out those already on the ship."
Rala had been about to respond when another, even more welcome voice cut in, and a weight lifted from Rala’s heart. “This is Skyie. Rala, skip the conference room, just make sure the path to the ship is clear. If you can make contact with anyone on the ship, do it. Better yet, if you can get Sickbay systems and transporters back online, beam Kally and Jenna straight there.”
“Aye, Captain,” Rala said, getting to her feet with a groan. Her back and hip ached, her hand and cheek stung, but none of those mattered as she swapped the gun’s partially-expended magazine for one of the full ones she’d taken earlier and moved off toward the docking port.
Before too long, Rala was approaching the docking port. She paused at the last corridor junction, listening, then peeked around the corner when all she heard was silence.
The hatch was closed, but where she’d expected to find guards, there were none. She listened in all directions for a few seconds, but heard only the hum of station machinery.
She raised the wrist comm. “Rala here. Docking port’s closed,” she reported. “No sign of hostiles. If there were any guards, they’ve left, either called away to deal with us, or trying to hide somewhere in the hopes they can slip away later.”
She approached the hatch, turning to the control panel on the wall nearby, and keyed the wrist comm again. “Valleroy, you said you’re in station control, right, Sir? The docking hatch is locked. Can you override it from there?”
“Stand by,” came the reply; then a few seconds later, “I think I got it. Should be unlocked now.”
As he spoke, the main symbol on the screen changed colors. Rala pressed what looked to be the ‘open’ button, and the hatch obediently swung open, allowing her access to the short tunnel that lead to the Chimera’s own docking port—which was also closed.
“That did it, Sir,” Rala reported back, moving forward into the tunnel. “Chimera’s hatch is also closed. I don’t know if this wrist communicator can get through both hulls, so I may lose contact here.”
“Understood.” said Valleroy, his voice already beginning to sound more grainy.
Rala stepped up to the Chimera’s docking hatch. Without her combadge, she wasn’t surprised that it remained closed, but when she opened the cover over the access panel, she saw that it too was locked. She frowned, and proceeded to type in her access code, at which point the hatch obligingly slid aside.
The corridor beyond was empty, and fully lit. Rala immediately went to the nearest LCARS panel and placed a hand—without thinking, her injured one—on it. “Computer, recognize Lieutenant Rala, Chief Operations Officer, authorization Rala Four-Two-Delta-Victor. Show me the status of the ship’s major systems and locations of everyone on board.” The panel chirped, and started filling with information. She skimmed it, noting the information she was looking for, then said, “Computer, restore power to all Sickbay and Transporter systems; then track my position via my life signs and open an internal comm channel to the Bridge, routing it to whatever intercom speakers are near me.”
When it chirped that the comm line was open, she took off at a slightly lopsided jog down the corridor, speaking as she went. “Henry? It’s Rala.” She resisted the urge to ask about Tessa. “The group from the station is returning with a medical emergency; sorry, but I don’t know what kind yet. I’ve just reactivated power to Sickbay, get down there. I’m headed to Transporter Room Two to try to save them the walk.”
“On it,” came the professionally brief reply.
“Computer,” she said again as she went. “Reactivate external communications.”
Chirp.
“Group channel, myself and every member of the Chimera crew on the station.”
Chirp.
“Rala to station team; the ship is secure, power restored to Comms, Sickbay, and Transporters. Stand by for transport directly to sickbay.”
Various sounds of acknowledgement sounded from the speakers as she entered the Transporter Room and stepped up to the console, quickly finding and targeting the signals of everyone there, targeting open spaces in Sickbay, and energizing the transporter beam before slumping back against the wall.
Rala winced as the bruised muscles in her back pulled, no longer dulled by adrenaline. It ached, her hip ached, her hand stung, and her cheek burned, all reminding her that she should probably visit Sickbay herself. Heaving herself off the wall, she stepped out of the Transporter Room and began walking down the corridor, limping slightly.
She was nearly there when Tessa appeared around a corner from the other direction already at a jog and, seeing her, picked up her pace with a smile an exclamation of “Lady Rala!”
“Tessa!” Rala said at the same time, smiling in turn and increasing her own pace, meeting just outside the Sickbay door.
Tessa threw her arms around the Draakri, eliciting a wince and a sharp groan from her muzzle as her bruised back muscles were strained once more. “It’s good to see you too, kin’tra,” she wheezed.
Tessa quickly released her, looking over her visible injuries. “What happened?”
“It’s been a long day.”
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