[Trapped in a program....]
As Rylan unslung his rifle from his shoulder and headed towards the damaged turbolift, D`Tarik, who had been scanning one of the strange, black balls he had found earlier, questioned "So, Rylan...au going to the computer lab?"
"Ie.... got any better ideas?" Rylan answered with a question of his own. The lift doors opened and he stepped in as DT spoke next.
"Ie...I come with au, and so does Katara. We don't split up." the smaller of
the boys insisted.
"Fair enough." Rylan agreed with a slight nod of his head.
"Katara?" DT holds his hand out, waiting for her step on. Katara immediately
stepped into the lift, and stood a little behind Rylan. Still studying the scanner in her hands, waiting for it to suddenly churp, she quietly said a hann'yyo to the Medical officer as he stepped in last.
Not sounding exactly sure if this would be the best course of action -- but Elements knew it was better to do something then sit around waiting for the program to change -- Rylan called out to the lift, "Umm...computer core!" And with a shakey little hitch and rattle, the lift slowly decended. At the
jolt and rumble that the lift gave off as it began it's travel, Katara sood a little closer to Rylan, passing a worried glance upto him. Rylan, though wondering if the lift was going to crash himself, managed to flash the girl a confident smile as he tries to take her mind off the lift they were on by focusing her on something else. "What's the reading's saying?" he nodded towards the scanner she held.
"Umm...." she hesitated, sounding almost ashamed of what she was about to say, "I have na clue...."
Ry grins, and glances at the scanner's screen, "Well, it's okay...'cause there's na-thing being read." he winks, "As long as it doesn't beep, we're home free."
D`Tarik, seeming to ignore the pair, is still scanning over his own find. "None of these readings make any sense....." the medical officer says almost to himself.
"What's with the ball, DT?" Ry asks curiously.
"Umm...it's a black ball...?" DT supplies hopefully.
Ry raises a brow and smirks at that. "Ie, I can see that. What's the reading's saying about it?"
"I don't know, Rylan. It doesn't make any sense....." the smaller of the boys stops speaking suddenly as the lift slows to a rattling halt. Bringing the rifle up and ready to fire if necessary, Rylan positions himself in front of the door. As the doors open, he slowly steps out his eyes scanning the corridores for any signs that they were no longer alone. He travels a little further down the hallway, then motions for the others to follow him. "None of the doors are marked." he states quietly to the others. We'll just have to try them all and hope we come upon the computer lab soon."
After a few unproductive moments of not locating their destination, a large, black ball with little tubes sticking out all over it floats out from around a corner. It notices them at once and stops, hovering in the air a few short feet away. Rylan takes aim, then squeezes the trigger. The ball itself doesn't move but the shot is pushed away from it, a mere fraction of an inch before the disruptor bolt would've met it's target. The party of three Rihans felt themselves being pushed back from some unseen force. Not hard, just a warning that only made them take a couple of steps back. Not paying heed to this warning at all, Rylan positioned himself in front of Katara - just in case - and fired again.
The shot, even though well aimed, completely misses the object as the disruptor bolt once more seems to bend away from it's target. D`Tarik seems
to notice before the others do; the strange, almost non-existant glow from the orb. Making a sudden leap at the other two, D`Tarik knocks Rylan and Katara into a room, just as the strange, black ball retaliates by fireing more of those odd little balls that DT had found earlier. Five of the deadly little balls nail D`Tarik in the leg before he could bring himself fully into the room for cover. Biting back against crying out in pain, D`Tarik pulls his injured leg into the room, allowing the door to close and seal them all in safety.
Rylan, with his face squished into the floor, mumbles, "Uph... hank-hoo.....an I et up ow?"
"I don't know where these outbursts of bravery come from..." D`Tarik painfully annouces, then quickly rolls off of the pile of people when he discovered his hand in a rather unfortunate place on Katara's person.
Katara pushes her self up, and fixes DT with a look, before she notices that he's hurt. "Elements! Are au going to be okay? Can I help...?"
Rylan stands, dusting himself off, then looks over at this annoucement from the barmaid. Pointing to DT's bleeding leg, he offers, "That's gonna' take more than that cream au got, DT."
D`Tarik looks down at the damage done, "I can't fix...." he stops to count in disbelief, "...*five holes* in my leg till we get back to med lab. Except maybe stop the bleeding..." he adds, reaching a shaking hand into a labcoat pocket to pull out a hypo, then injects the contense into the upper thigh of his wounded leg, once more clamping his teeth down on the inside of his lip to keep from sounding weak in front of the girl. Hearing Rylan's comment, he tried to smile at them both, "Ie...I know....ow..." the smile quickly dies as he grabs on to his leg out of reflex.
"Au know, au might want to think about na doing stuff like that....." Katara smiled gently, trying to humor him to take his mind off of the pain.
Rylan, more concerned at this point how that thing had managed to come up on
them without warning, asked the girl quietly as he headed for a computer terminal within the room, "Na beeps from that thing before it appeared at all?"
Katara shakes her head, "Na beeps...." then hesitates as she noticed she must've dropped the scanner outside when D`Tarik shoved her into the room, "...at all." she finishes quietly. "Did au hear any?" she asks him, wondering if she had missed something that he didn't.
Rylan, calling up the ships diagram, pinpoints their location in relation to medlab, and answers with a shake of his head "Na...which means we won't have warning at all then."
"Au know..." DT begins, having trouble speaking because of the pain, "...uh...will holograms work to heal a wound like this....maybe we should....baracade the door....."
"Do au think that will help?" Katara looks uncertainly from one boy to the other, not sure what to do in this kind of situation.
Rylan, having found what he was looking for on the computer screen, turns back towards them, his eyes searching the room's walls. "Ie...well if holograms can hurt, they can heal too." Finding what he was searching for, he heads over and opens a low pannel. "Can au crawl for a little way, DT?"
"I'm na sure if they can heal a wound this bad....." D`Tarik protests, "if
that was true medlab would be a hologram ya know?" He pauses, winceing in pain then answers Ry's last question, "Eh.....I can drag my leg...."
"Ie...well, Medlab is three decks down." Ry motions towards the narrow access tunnel. "If au can crawl through here, when it widens out I can carry au."
"I would much rather wait for my own medlab..." the Medical officer protests
again, "I don't trust holograms at the moment..."
Rylan sighs at that. "And ninte medlab is shut down at the moment, remember? Even if we do get out of here." he motions to the room around them. "At least, it will be better then being crippled I say."
"The way the holograms are acting....." D`Tarik pauses and shakes his head, "Na way am I going to use that stuff to heal myslef." then finished almost sarcastically, "Am I makeing sense yet?"
Katara, not sure what to do or say, only looks from one boy to the other as they argue. Figureing they both had more experience, and hating to take sides in an issue she didn't understand in the first place, she stays quiet. Rylan, glances at her hoping that she would've at least tried to persuad DT to listen to reason, but seeing that she wasn't about to say anything, he drops his shoulders in defeat. "Au'rh the doctor...it's ninte let." he sighed, "But we can't just hole up in here forever...." he trails off, letting his next thought of *The next program might be even worse* stay in his own head, instead of letting it hang omniously in the air around them.
Moving a few desks and chairs in front of the doors to block it, he heads back towards the access tunnel. "Au two stay here. I'm going to try and get to the computer core."
"Hmm....I would say splitting up is a bad idea..." D`Tarik interjected, "but at the moment we don't have much of a choice...maybe Katara should go with au." he looks up at the girl. Trying not to look hopeful, Katara looks over to Rylan, knowing that it would be up to him to make the final choice.
Rylan smiles to Katara, but doesn't agree to that plan. "As much as I'd like that, I don't think that would be a good idea. Na with au wounded, DT. Au shouldn't be left alone..."
"Ie." D`Tarik looks down unhappily, and still trying to cover the pain, "Okay..."
Rylan gives a brave wink to the girl then crawls off into the tunnels. After a few moments, Katara questions, "Umm...au don't think those things got into the access tunnels do au?"
"Ah...." despite the pain he was in, he tries to comfort the girl, "they looked too big for that. Don't worry, Rylan will be fine."
Katara nods then looks down at his leg. "Do au have anything else that will help au with that?"
"Na. Na I don't..." he grabs his leg in pain again and adds apologetically, "Don't know how I can help au when I'm like this...if something came in...."
"I don't think something will." she smiles, though looked just a little frightened, "Rylan baracaded the door rather well...." She hesitates as her statement doesn't sound so sure even to herself. Sighing she adds, "Wish I knew more of what I'm doing...."
"Ie, well....I will save you anyway if I need to...Na matter how hurt I am." He says bravely, trying to smile again. After a silent moment to hold back the pain, he tries to take their mind off the situation at hand, "Well...what kind of field did au want to go in to at the Academy?"
Katara looks sheepish at that question and she shakes her head, "Au'd laugh if I told au...specially now...." she glances towards the baracaded doors.
"Na. It's ok...tell me..." he weakly smiled again, "I bet au'rh na going to say a scientific field."
Katara hangs her head, and admits quietly with a shy little shrug, "Na. Security, actually." she glances back up at him, then quickly looks away again, "Na very good at it, it seems...better think about some other field, I guess."
"Well au have na training, so don't worry Katara....." he wincs in pain in mid sentence, then reaches into another pocket to take out a tube of pills. He dry-swallows four of them, then nods to himself, "There...maybe that will
help...."
"Can I try and get somethign for au...?" she asks worridly, glanceing around the room, "I could rip that cusion off that chair and au could use it for a pillow..."
"Ie...please..." He nodded. Katara nods and smiles, then crosses the room to the chair, glad that she can finally be of some use. Unseathing the small kalen she wore at her belt, she uses it to pry the cusion off the chair. As she placed the pillow under his head, D`Tarik spoke again, wanting to take his mind off the pain, "Now..umm...I'm sure au will make a fine security officer." he smiled, then tried to make a joke of their situation, "Just don't take advice from the Dehno of this ship..."
That only served to bring the look of worry back to Katara's face as she glances back to the access tunnel Rylan had disappeared through. "There was more than io security officer surely...."
"Well Katara..." DT explains, misunderstanding the girl, "I'm talking about the Daise...."
She suddenly turns those worried and almost frightened eyes back to him, "Ie...." she interupted, "The Daise, a seasoned officer with whole units under him....and they all died...." her eyes traveled back to the tunnel, but she doesn't say anything further.
"Ie....well...." DT finally understands her worry, and tries to calm her
again, "Rylan will be fine Katara. He can take care of himsel -- ahh!" he grabs his leg agine, then says absently, "It feels weird...having actual holes in my leg....."
Immediately, she turned her attention back to him, "I'm sorry it hurts so much." she sighs, "Wish I knew what to do to help..."
"That's why I went in to medicine." DT explains, "I figure it helps more to heal then to kill....I don't like seeing any io suffer....."
"Na io likes to see others suffer." she smiles back, then adds with a shrug, "Security helps prevent people from causeing violence."
"Ie, well violence happens too often...thus why I say it's better to heal then to kill." he states again firmly, then looks up at her and tries to smile again, "But security is good to have around..."
[Meanwhile...]
After a few moments of moving though the crawlspace, Rylan came to a wider part of the access tunnel and stood. Taking ahold of the ladder ahead of him
he starts to climb down, intent on getting to the medlab to find something of use despite the protest from D`Tarik. Rylan figured that by the time he got back, DT would be so out of it from the pain, that he wouldn't care one way or another how his leg got healed; so the trip wouldn't be wasted. After a
long climb, he finally stands on the deck that claimed medlab, and heads off down the tunnel that brought him the closest to his destination. A short crawl-through later, and he opens the pannel, then peeks out into the hallway beyond.
Just as he was convienced that the hallway was clear, something moves swiftly right past him. Drawing back into the tunnel, he bit back the words, 'What
the hell...?' before they could inadvertantly leave his lips. Listening closely, straining his ears for the slightest sound, he waited to see if the whatever-it-was had noticed him, quietly bringing his rifle in a better position to shoot, though he doubted now that the fvadt weapon would do him any good.
After a moment Rylan peeks out again, and sees three black blurs run around the corner. Nothing but vauge, huminoid shapes from the half-second he had seen them. He waited a bit longer, then figured that whatever it had been, had gone somewhere else completly. Knowing that DT was still in that room with holes where his flesh should be, Rylan slowly emerged from the tunnel.
Holding the rifle ready to fire, Rylan crept close to the wall, heading in the opposit direction from the corner that the whatever-they-had-been had disappeared around. At least Rylan was still heading in the right direction for medlab.
Not far from the corner that he himself would have to go around, a small, human shape jumps down in front of Rylan, seemingly from the ceiling. The
form is shiney and black, but has no other details at all...no face, no finger nails, no ears,. No identifing marks of any kind. Just simply shiney and black.
Rylan levels the rifle at the creature's 'face' but remains perfectly still. The button on the trigger almost all the way down, just a little more
pressure and it would fire. He remains perfectly still, waiting to see what the thing will do, and is surprised when it makes a weird buzzing sound. The buzzing almost seems to have a pattern to it...as if it were attempting to communicate. Rylan raises a brow, then slowly shakes his head once. Slowly,
speaking the words very precisely, he tells it, "I don't understand ninte language...." hoping that whatever-it-was had some kind of translator. But the creature didn't respond at all.
After a few moments of this bizzare 'stalemate', Rylan takes a slow step down the hall, continueing on his way to the medlab. Still keeping close to the wall, and still aiming the rifle at the creature, he watches it closely for signs that it would attack. He got a couple steps away, when two more of the
creatures suddenly appear in front of him, blocking the way. "Hanev...." he whispered, startled. He steps out from the wall to walk around them, and they hold their arms out to prevent him from continuing. Knowing that time was growing short for D`Tarik, Rylan pauses and looks from one creature to the next. Calmly, though he's feeling just a little frightened by this time, he warns, "My friend is hurt. Au either let me pass, or I'll bath the walls of this corridor in whatever passes for blood within au."
[In the barricaded room]
Katara casts another glance to the tunnel entrance, wondering what was taking so long. "Shouldn't Rylan have been back by now? I mean...how long does it take to pull the plug on a computer?"
"A long time...." D`Tarik answers, looking up at her again and trying not to feel the pain. "Hmm...he's got to find a panel.......it could take some time...he will be..AH!!" he grabs his leg, as if that could stop the pain at
all
Katara looks worried, but unsure what to do, "If au have a cell grafter, I might be able to help....or a patch to at least cover the wounds so the air doesn't irritate them so much....."
"Na...." he shakes his head, "I don't have that....I was na prepared for all
this....maybe...we can do this....the old fanshioned way........I could put some gauze in them...."
Katara thinks for a moment, then looks around the room for something suitable. Finding nothing but chairs, she uses the kalen to cut the fabric up into stripes, tieing them together to make them longer. Crossing back over to him, Katara kneels and uses the strips of fabric cover the holes in
his leg, tieing them securely in place.
"That's good thinking! Ow....told au....au might want to look into the medcial feild. Imprivisation is very importent when it comes to that." he smiles weakly.
The girl wrinkles her nose a little, "I don't like to put my hands inside other people. Somehow... that's just na appealing to me...." she trails off.
"Well, now a days au don't usually have to put your hands *in* people." DT managed to briefly cast an amused grin despite the pain, "Au just have to know what to use to keep from doing that." then trying once more he persuades
her gently, "There are plenty of killers out there.... that's why the universe needs more doctors." he weakly smiles again.
"Ie...well...there are plenty of killers out there," she nods in agreement,
"that's why au need security to stop them before they continue on their killing sprees."
"But there are already plenty of people to do that."
Katara glances back to him, "Well...it takes more years of study to do what au do. Au have probably been studying for years before au actually attended Academy. I didn't have that oportunity to study all that..." she shrugs, and looks back towards the tunnel again, growing impatient, "I could never pass the entrance exams for the medical school at the Academy, so I'll take what I can get and be happy with that."
"Ie... well, always aim your sights high." he pauses then continues, "I think au need to be challenged. Anybody can be a killer. It takes a true mind -- which I think au have -- to be a healer....that was a compliment..." he
grabs his leg and winces again.
"Hann'yyo...." she looks slightly uncomfortable, "but it's na for me. I'm na smart like au are. I spent most of my life working, not reading books. I didn't have the time to learn all that au did. Some of us are na allowed that kind of luxury."
"Ie.....but if au started now......" he paused, seeing that she seemed to be growing defensive, "I see talent in au, but do what au will...I just really hate to see potential go to waste."
"And how am I supposed to start now?" she asks frustraited, "I still don't have the time. I work most of the day. I have na time for studying...not untill after I get to the academy, anyway. And then it would be too late."
"Na it's na! It's never too late! And there's always time.... I'm sure ninte uncle would love for au to start studying. Au could really move up in the world..." he paused again, seeing the look she was giving him, "Forget it...sorry...I'm ....never mind...." he shakes his head and lies back down.
Having grown more uncomfortable at the mention of her uncle, she finally looks away from him as he stopped talking. "Au think that do au?" There was a long pause before she continued, "And just who do au think assigns me working hours in the first place? I work two shifts a day at the bar, simply because he doesn't have to pay me anything." she simplifies the situation, still not looking at him, "Au think he wants me to study?" she shakes her head, " Au don't know my family...or my...." she looks down, then
back to him, "Or my situation. I appreciate that au think so highly of me....but na every io does."
"Well give it some thought Katara." he nodded, seeing that she wanted to, but
for whatever reason was holding back from doing so, "I would be more then happy to teach au." Seeing that she was about to protest that, he added quickly with another weak smile, "And if ninte uncle had a problem with that, I could send orders down to the bar to give au the time. But it
doesn't matter....I understand more than au know." He pauses, and shakes his head, "I'm going to try and sleep, but think about what I said. I see talent in au. Really...." he grabs his leg again, the pain enough to bring tears to his face.
Katara looks frightened that he's in so much pain, "Maybe Rylan was right. Maybe au should've gone to the medlab...even if it is a hologram. Au could've healed ninte self by now." But D`Tarik doesn't answer, only lays there silently, in too much pain to talk. Growing truely alarmed by that, Katara shakes her head and walks over to the same computer terminal that Rylan had used earlier, and sees the diagram with the path to take clearly outlined. Heading towards the tunnel, she informs D`Tarik decisively, "I know he wanted me to stay, but au need help. I'll try and hurry, okay?"
"Don't go....I don't ....want to be left....alone...." he passes out.
Katara, frightened now, looks undecisively from the tunnel back to him. Wondering if he was still alive, she headed over and put a cheek close to his face to see if she could feel his breath.
|