Star Trek: The Next Generation – Souvenirs
Written By: Commander Cody CC-2224
CHAPTER 36
The Deck 10 corridor hall was bustling with a handful of uniformed crew personnel when Felicity, Elizabeth, Ben, Nan, and William surreptitiously stepped out of the Guest Quarters in single file, with Ben leading the way, as well as the entire escape objective. Each of the girls had donned their cloaks. Ben made sure his light blue coat and neckerchief was straightened properly, and his signal whistle in its proper place around his neck, while Felicity made sure that William's coat was straightened, too.
With Ben in the lead the children made their way to the aft part of the deck until they were within spitting distance to the main turbolift. When the lift came within incident-free reach, each of them stepped inside and the automatic sliding doors shut.
"Deck Four," Ben recited rather fluently. A pneumatic rush of air sounded across the lift, followed by a resonant hum as the lift made its ascent toward the designated deck level.
"Remember to act casually, and keep your apprehensiveness in check," warned Ben. "Otherwise the crew can get pretty suspicious of us, and you never know who's in league with Mr. Riker at this moment."
Felicity nodded. "We understand," she rejoined.
Ben turned to Elizabeth. "Elizabeth?" he asked.
Elizabeth nodded a little timidly. God help us, she prayed to herself.
After nearly half a minute the turbolift almost abruptly ground to a halt and the sliding doors sprang open. In single file, Ben led his friends out of the lift and into seemingly unfamiliar territory in the Deck 4 corridors.
"I thought Decks Four and Three were not of any interest," said Elizabeth a tad skeptically.
"Who told you that?" inquired Ben.
"Don't you remember?" Elizabeth tried to recall to him. "Miss Counselor told us that."
"Really. Well, if she told you that, there must have been a rather good reason for her to say so."
"Could it be that this particular deck is off limits to most children?" asked Felicity.
"Well…" rejoined Ben rather hesitantly. He didn't want to mention out loud that Deck 4 was where the weapons locker was, for fear of nearby personnel hearing about what they were saying at this very minute.
"This way," called Ben quietly as he and his friends made a right turn to a T-junction.
Main Bridge, 1105 hours
The Bridge was bustling with activity as usual when Capt. Picard made his semi-formal entrance from the main turbolift. Worf, while manning the security console and being the nearest to the captain, was the first to make his gruff professional greeting.
"Ah, Captain," greeted Worf gruffly and curtly in a rather militaristic manner.
"Mr. Worf," responded Picard as professionally as he could as he briefly stood his ground in a semi-relaxed manner while observing everything on the Bridge.
"How were the negotiations?" inquired Worf.
"They are beginning to show signs of…gradual progress," rejoined Picard rather vaguely.
"Hmm…" put in Worf rather skeptically with a skeptical face. He was immediately interrupted by Data.
"Captain," he began. "I find this curious."
"What now, Mr. Data?" Picard inquired briskly as he motioned over to one of the station monitors on the starboard side of the bridge where Data was. He peered over one of the LCD screens on Data's the console board.
"Internal sensors indicate five human children roaming across Deck 4, grouped together," Data recited fluently. A sensor cam motion image still, which was taken from a video recording, popped from the right bottom area of the computer screen. The left subtitle read in small, bold-faced, thick block letters CAM 04 and a right subtitle in the same font read DECK 04. The bottom subtitle displayed the stardate in the middle of the screen. "Their civilian outfits correspond to late 18th century fashion," Data continued as he clicked a few touch-buttons, thus generating picture IDs of each of the children. He turned his android head to Picard. "I believe it could be our guests, sir," he concurred right away.
Ensign Kevin Bates, alerted looked up from his helm. "Where?" he asked quickly. "Can I see 'em?" he asked quickly, as he slid the console to his left side in a counterclockwise direction and rushed off to the station monitor area where Data was. Keswick followed suit out of immense curiosity, as he shoved his NAV console in a clockwise direction.
Picard immediately turned to Worf? "What's on Deck Four?" he inquired suspiciously.
"Um…mostly living quarters and storage areas, sir," replied Worf, looking half-confused and acting a little as though Picard didn't know his own ship.
"It is also the area where most of the ship's arsenal is currently stockpiled," put in Data.
Picard was tense for a moment. "The weapons locker," he concluded almost stiffly.
"Yes, sir," Worf replied emphatically, giving a militaristically curt and stiff nod.
Picard's mood was seriously pensive as he considered the current alarming situation at hand. Worf could sense it too. So he had in mind a possible suggestion. "Sir, I recommend we raise a Level Ten force field around the entranceways to the weapons locker," he said.
"No," Picard articulated lucidly.
"Sir?"
"Not yet." Picard's voice was brisk. He had fairly founded suspicious that the force field would injure the children; and though he had thoughts of the possibility of them stumbling into the weapons locker, he was hesitant to implement drastic measures unless he had absolute surety of said likelihood. "Keep all deck sensors scanned on our guests," he ordered. "Let me know if something…unusual…has come up. I'll be in my Ready Room." Picard immediately left the bridge and headed to the room.
Both Bates and Keswick had their eyes on Data's station monitor. Bates in particular continued ogling at the grouped picture IDs.
"Wow," forced Bates rather humorously. "They are so cute; they're like little angers. Did you know that?" He lowered a bit as he briskly faced Keswick. "Did you know that?"
"I can see your point about them being…cute," concurred Keswick. "As to whether they are…'angelic'…that remains to be seen. At the present stage they do not fully possess angelic powers in the usual sense of the word…"
"It's a metaphor, Kes," Bates interrupted exasperatedly in a half-humorous manner. "A metaphor. Don't you even know what a metaphor is?"
Bates had a thought that Keswick had an inordinate tendency to take things a little too seriously. Or too literally.
It was only later that Capt. Picard arrived back on the Enterprise. By that time, the children had already made their destination to the storage areas on Deck 4. All five of them were now staring at a rather imposing entranceway to a certain storage area. On the automatic sliding doors could be seen the professionally crystal clear labeling, WEAPONS LOCKER 04., along with warning signs about security protocols, and information about its appropriate use.
After scanning the wall fairly carefully, Ben noticed a keypad panel studded with touch-buttons that had numbers grouped in their respective orders, along with a thumb-sized touch-button that was labeled UNLOCK. Immediately he sifted briefly through the inside pocket of the left side of his coat and took out a half-foot long toothpaste tube and uncapped it by turning the screw-cap counterclockwise. The older girls were a little confused and dismayed.
"What are you doing?" asked Elizabeth anxiously. Felicity was busy holding Nan's hand as she and her brother and friend watched what Ben was about to do.
"You'll find out pretty soon," answered Ben quickly, who at this point did not want to bother explaining the procedure of trying to unlock the weapons storage closet. The panel was within reach of the height of an average man, which Ben could be well fortunate of, even if he was a tad short of a grown man's height by a foot. Eyeing the outlines of the panel door carefully, Ben gently squeezed the toothpaste tube and slowly but surely applied a toothpaste-like gel around the outlines of the panel door, save for the areas where the panel hinges were located, which Ben could spot with his good eyes and feel with his fingers. Then he capped back the tube, stuffed it into his interior coat pocket, and watched and waited anxiously.
Immediately after a few seconds the cream-like gel started corroding the outlines of the metal panel until the panel opened itself ajar. With all his teenage might Ben pulled out a circular device with a metallic grapple handle on the surface top.
"What is that?" Nan piped up out of curiosity. Ben was too busy to answer her query as he was busy trying to get the sealed sliding doors to open. Stamping the surface of the device on the right side of the door, he turned the device counterclockwise by a 10-degree angle. Amazingly the doors unlocked by themselves, with a fairly loud, hissing pneumatic "ka-chunk". Ben struggled by himself to pry it open and a loud semi-scraping sound followed.
"What did you do?" asked Felicity in bewilderment, unable to restrain her very self.
"Folks said there was a device that allows you to unlock these doors," answered Ben. "I went to what the call the 'LCARS' and managed to get that information."
"What kind?" put in Elizabeth curiously.
Ben sighed in exasperation. "That I don't know," he said quickly.
The device that Ben was able to successfully use was an anti-magnetic release, which was usually resorted to in case of a power failure on board the Enterprise. However, due to well-founded fears of unauthorized use, it was usually stowed away in a wall panel near the doorway, which was secured in a niche that could be only be unlocked by a four-digit numerical code. However, Ben was able to bypass that security measure using a type of toothpaste-like gel called a penetration cream tube. He was aware of such a device only in the 24th century magazine of cool-looking devices, and managed to obtain something like that from the Replimat, even though such devices were considered illegal in the Federation. It was thanks to the elderly fellow in the antiques section in the Replimat that he was unaware of how smart he and the rest of the children could be, thinking that they were particularly ignorant of how things worked in the 24th century.
When the secured sliding doors were pried open, Ben immediately set himself to scanning what appeared to be a grooved wall. Immediately spying on what appeared to be a handgrip handle on the top, he immediately pulled it down as hard as he could. The wall now revealed a collection of hand-held Phaser Type 2s and Phaser Type 3s in rifle form. The girls, especially Nan, and William, were utterly astounded, as though they had never seen such futuristic devices in the course of their lives. All weapons were neatly stashed in a foam-like wall that was used for cushioning.
Both Ben and Felicity had a taste on what a Type 2 was like, but the Type 3s were a tad different. The only difference being was that they were rifles, which were as long as a man's arm on average and had two grip handles. But such matters made little difference, given that they needed every weapon they could afford to get their hands on.
Immediately Ben pulled out two of the hand-held phasers, checked cursorily to make sure it was activated and set on stun, and handed them over to Felicity and Elizabeth. Then he pulled out two more of those same phasers, checked them quickly, and hand them to the older girls, wherein they issued one of them to each of the little mites. Next, Ben, being the type for the super-cool, pulled out two of the Type 3 Phasers and handed each of them to the older girls. After that he got one for himself.
"Can I have one of those big guns?" asked William.
"Me, too," put in Nan in a small voice.
"You're too little," was Ben's sole answer in the midst of a hasty arms acquiring.
"Aww," protested William.
Immediately the girls inserted their Type 2s into their pockets and Ben inserted his own hand-held phaser into the left-hand slips of his breeches.
"Now don't tamper with the settings, all of you," Ben warned. "They're all set on stun.
"Are you sure that's a good idea?" asked Felicity. She had some idea as to what the weapons could do, but setting them on stun, she thought, would not knock out an opponent completely when an opponent would be on a killing business. "If they kill us…"
"That's not likely," interrupted Ben. "We're far too valuable. Besides, we don't want to be accused of voluntary manslaughter, and our main objective is to get off this ship." He readied his Type 3. "Let's go," he said finally.
On the Main Bridge, Worf was alarmed by the security sensors. He immediately tapped his combadge.
"Worf to Picard," he spoke gruffly.
"Go ahead," replied Picard.
"Captain, I am detecting unauthorized access on Deck 4. Internal sensors indicate a security breach in Weapons Locker 2."
In a few seconds Picard emerged from his Ready Room. "Where?" he asked quickly as he made his immediate approach to the security console. Worf readily brought up the animated Deck 4 schematics. The breached area was highlighted in blinking bright red. Worf pointed to the specific spot on the LCD.
"Deck 4, section 11," he informed.
"What's the complement?" Picard inquired, feeling a mite tense.
Worf cleared his throat. "A complement of three phaser rifles and five hand-held phasers were taken out. But all weapons are currently set on stun setting, sir."
Granted all weapons were set on stun in case of a possible Corellian attack, but Picard found himself unable to reassure himself that the five children would do no harm to themselves, as well as the crew personnel and civilians on board. "Even so, the situation can be even more dangerous," he informed Worf seriously. "If our guests tamper with the weapons settings, they can accidentally cause terminal injury to the crew." His face was tense now. "Worf, assemble a security team and intercept them before they can do further damage," he ordered.
"Aye, sir," rejoined Worf. He opened an internal channel on board the ship. "Security detail to Deck 4!" he ordered.
Ben and the rest of the group were racing through the corridors of Deck 4. Their minds were alert for a possible alarm, and their gaits steady in rhythm. As the eldest Ben was responsible for their well-being. He struggled to keep his mind clear despite the tension and anxiety he was experiencing.
In a few seconds the beeping klaxons sounded, followed by the computer's automated dulcet female voice. Yellow lights on the corridor panels started blinking steadily.
"SECURITY ALERT. REPEAT. SECURITY ALERT."
"Damn!" exclaimed Ben instinctively. He was tenser now, as well as rest of the children. "Hurry! C'mon!" he ordered, as he led the fast-paced way to the main turbolift.
Then came a woman on the P.A. system, which spoke across all internal channels of the ship. In the meanwhile, across all decks, security had been alerted. Crew personnel of all genders, humanoid races, and ethnic backgrounds unlocked all weapons caches, grabbed their phaser rifles and hand phasers, and headed off with great efficiency to track down the five children.
"Attention, all security personnel. This is the Bridge. We have a situation involving the unauthorized use of firearms subsequent to a security breach on Deck 4, Section 11. Suspects are armed and considered extremely dangerous. Suspect 1: White male at 17 years of age. Goes by the name Benjamin Davidson. Suspect 2: White female at 11 years of age: Goes by the name Felicity Merriman…"
"Extremely dangerous, my arse," remarked Felicity tartly in a rather sarcastic manner, as the P.A. kept on blabbing out the names and ages of Elizabeth, Nan, and William in a respective order.
Worf was eyeing the security scanners very warily. Picard approached him briskly.
"All personnel have been alerted," Worf informed. "Security is converging on their last known position."
"Any luck?" Picard inquired hastily.
"No, sir," Worf rejoined curtly. "They're on the move so fast, it's difficult to triangulate their precise known location."
Picard had hit upon a seemingly brilliant but rather drastic idea. "Cut power to the main turbolift. That should deter them," he ordered immediately.
"Working on it, captain," replied Data as he accessed the security station consoles and performed the procedure. Then he looked at Picard again.
"Cutting off power to the main turbolift may only deter them for a while," informed Data. "By my estimates it is conceivable that the children may find a way to get past the obstruction if their sole intent is to get off Deck 4."
Meanwhile the children were in the midst of their daring escape. No one else, not even Elizabeth, had time to say anything about Felicity's seemingly unladylike remark because as she and the rest of the group had discovered, much to their frustrated dismay, the turbolift doors wouldn't open.
"Damn it, why won't this work!" Ben vented out in furious frustration. He had difficulty assessing the situation; things weren't going according to plan. The plan was to use the turbolift to get to Deck 13 and get to Shuttlebay 2. However, a power cutoff to the main lift seemed to foil their daring escape plans.
"We'll need to find another way to Deck 13. From what I learned in the schematics, there are some ladders that will lead us to the lower decks of this ship."
"Are you sure?" Elizabeth asked timidly. "It seems you've only glanced at the…'schematics'".
"Just trust me on this one, Lizzie," cut in Ben. He shot a glance at the rest of his comrades."
"I'm scared," put in Nan.
"Me, too," said William.
Ben looked at them seriously and quickly knelt close to them, facing the little mites in the eyes. "We'll find away out of here, little folks," he promised.
"Really?" asked Nan.
Ben nodded cursorily and stood up fast. "All of you keep your fingers on the triggers, shoot anyone that is in our way, and we'll be off this ship in no time," he ordered.
The children continued racing as fast as they could across the corridor. For a brief moment, their way seemed miraculously clear. Then suddenly two middle-aged crewman in yellow uniform appeared across the middle of the hall, armed with a Type 3 phaser.
"Halt! All of you!" the guy on the left side ordered quickly. Without hesitation, Ben and the older girls fired a single beam discharge from their rifles. Ben's phaser beam took out the guy on the right, and the Felicity fired her phaser beam at the other guy, and another discharged was timidly fired by Elizabeth. Both beams immediately knocked out the crewman with stunning results.
"What have we done?" exclaimed Elizabeth, shocked and frightened from her ordeal.
"No time for that!" Ben yelled in frustration. "Come on!"
The group immediately continued their run until they came to a T-junction. Ben raised his right hand, gesturing them to stop in their tracks. Then he leaned over the wall's edge carefully.
Immediately Ben spied a lone guard in yellow uniform guarding a section of the curvy corridor area where a force field was set up, indicated by brightly-lit orange panel lights lined across a width area of the hall. With some sort of finger gesture, Ben told everyone to wait in their places. Then he readied his rifle. Panting a bit, he waited for a few moments, and then made his daring move. He exposed himself, took quick aim, and fired a few discharges from his rifle at the guard until he was stunned unconscious. Then he rushed back to where the rest of the children were waiting nearby.
"Clear," said Ben. Immediately his comrades grouped together and followed his lead. Then they made their move to the area of the stunned guard.
"You could have let me take him out," Felicity said wryly.
"Could have, but I didn't want to lose you," replied Ben. "You're just a bit of a girl to handle such diplomacy." At the sound of that Felicity gave Ben a rather hard elbowing on his elbow as an indication that she didn't like being called "bit of a girl" when she knew, or rather thought, that she was just as capable a young lady as the rest of her friends and siblings.
Elizabeth studied the situation. "There's something across the hall," she said a little nervously, trying to maintain her composure while carrying her rifle. She gulped a bit before she continued. "I…um…I really don't know what it's called, but unless it's out of our way, we're stuck here."
"'Tis a 'force field'", informed Ben, feeling frustrated again. The last thing we need is more impediments, Ben thought bitterly to himself.
Elizabeth looked at the conked-out guard and motioned Felicity over. Then she pointed at his combadge and her friend noticed it. Felicity was briefly giving the combadge some thought until Elizabeth whispered a rather helpful hint.
"Try tapping the thing, and give the computer an order," she whispered.
Taking her friend at her word, Felicity immediately did exactly what Elizabeth suggested. After tapping the combadge a little daintily, she uttered quite loudly and quickly, "Computer, disable the 'force field'!"
Much to the amazement of Ben and the rest of his comrades, the force field immediately shut itself off. Immediately he passed through the area of where the impediment used to be without incident. He smiled a bit.
"Hmm. That's strange," he remarked half-humorously. "I guess security is somewhat weak around here."
"Shame," rejoined Felicity in a sarcastic manner. As the group continued their escape, Felicity decided to criticize Ben a little. "See? I'm not a 'bit of a girl'," she said, forming an impish grin in her charming elf-like face.
Ben just simply kept silent and led the way.
Worf kept scanning the security monitors on his station. Picard tried almost desperately to think through the situation without resorting to seemingly drastic measures.
"Report" Picard ordered.
"Unknown as to the precise location, sir, but the internal sensors indicate a disabling of an erected force field on Deck 4, section 16."
Picard clicked his tongue. "Mr. Data?" he called.
"Worf is correct, sir," replied Data tactlessly. "The children have just bypassed a security force field 7.2 seconds immediately after passing section 15 of Deck 4."
"Where the main turbolift is?"
"That is correct, sir."
"So where are they heading now?"
Data pulled up a sensor cam video of the five children running past an aft corridor on Deck 4, along with the computerized schematics of the entire deck. A tiny red dot indicated their current position.
"Internal sensors now indicate that the children are heading to Section 3, an area near the aft section of Deck 4," he reported.
"What's on the aft section?" Picard inquired further, as he turned to a young lieutenant in blue uniform.
The lieutenant pulled up the same Deck 4 schematics on the console-based LCD and magnified a certain portion of the Deck 4 schematics until a blinking area was highlighted. He looked up at the captain rather tensely.
"Ladders, sir," he replied quite frankly, as if he was certain the children used ladders for their escape.
Ben and the rest of the children kept climbing down a metallic ladder from Deck 4 and into the bowels of the ship.
"Keep moving!" he ordered, as he struggled to keep a firm grip on the railings and a firm footing on the rungs.
William silently struggled to descend the ladder along with the rest of the children. Nan seemed to have difficulty stepping down the rungs. "I'm scared!" she wailed out.
"Well don't be!" Ben called out. "Just keep a steady pace!"
Elizabeth kept looking down the rather deep, sterile, metallic pit with its systems of ladders and Jeffries Tubes. "This is definitely not exactly what I had in mind," she remarked firmly.
"Why, you thought 'twould be easy?" asked Felicity wryly.
"Nay, but this is rather unexpected for a proper young lady," replied Elizabeth.
Lt. Commander Data kept his android eyes fixed on the station monitors, and at the same time kept his entire body alert as well. "We will have difficulty sending a tact team to intercept the children, Captain," he informed.
"Then have all personnel stand by," Picard ordered hastily.
All across the ship, armed security personnel on every deck level positioned themselves in various areas on standby in case they were needed for the secondary tactical engagement. The same dulcet female voice communicating from the Bridge on the P.A. blared again.
"Attention, all personnel. Stand by to engage suspects. Repeat. Stand by to engage suspects."
After reaching the Deck 13 level, Ben was the first to set his foot on the ground. With seemingly little difficulty he set Nan and William on the floor with his strong arms.
"Th-thank you," said Nan gratefully, as Ben put her down on the floor as carefully as he could afford to do during rush hour.
Suddenly a single phaser beam impacted on a wall from a hallway opening, narrowly missing Elizabeth as she set herself on the ground. Instinctively Ben fired back at a yellow-uniformed crewman with his phaser rifle. Felicity fired at another guy in yellow uniform, and Nan followed, using her hand-held phaser. Ben fired another discharge at another crewman.
"C'mon! Let's go!" ordered Ben. Arraying the group together, he ordered them forward, as he and the rest of the children made their rush across a straight corridor hall on Deck 13.
Worf kept eyeing the security monitors before perking his gruff Klingon head up. "Six personnel reportedly taken out, Captain," he informed.
"Hmm…" rejoined Picard, becoming slightly bothered. "Why so few casualties?" he muttered to himself rather instinctively.
Ensign Kevin Bates was standing near Data, arms akimbo, near the security console on one of the station monitors. "Well, they definitely weren't on a killing spree, that much is for sure," he declared.
"So the children must have some other objective," quipped Lt. Keswick coolly.
"Like what?" retorted Bates. "Running away, or something like that?"
Data kept eyeing his monitor. In a few seconds, a series of three beeps could be heard, which greatly alerted him.
"You may be right, Ensign Bates," he concurred.
"Well, that's damn nice to here," rejoined Bates. "How so?"
"Internal sensors now indicate that the children are currently moving position on Deck 13, Section 9," informed Data in fluent quickness. "According to the Deck 13 schematics, Shuttlebay 2 is located on the aft part of the deck."
Picard was suddenly alerted by the information that Data was giving. "Your implication is that they intend to use one of the shuttlecraft to get off the ship?" he inquired with ominous seriousness.
"That is the implication, sir," rejoined Data.
Picard mused for a moment. "But if our guests from time get off the Enterprise, we risk losing the opportunity to correct the timeline. It is crucial we do not let them."
"Well, they're hell-bent on escaping, so the notion of not letting them escape ain't gonna matter," put in Bates. "They'll still do it anyway."
Whether Picard was listening to him or not was another thing. Whichever the case, his mind was still bent on trying to prevent their guests' escape. "Have all security personnel converge on their exact location," he ordered.
"Yes, sir," rejoined Worf quickly before opening an internal channel across the ship. "Security detail to Deck 13!" he ordered gruffly. "And quick!" He immediately exited the Bridge.
The five children kept rushing past a few curvy and straight corridors. Very soon, they made their hasty approach to a T-junction, which cut into a straight corridor hall, and in turn led to the entranceway of Shuttlebay 2.
"Our destiny awaits us," remarked Ben in a rather sarcastic manner.
Immediately Ben proceeded to jam open the Shuttlebay entrance doors, following the same procedure he used when he broke into the weapons locker. Using his penetration cream tube, he applied it around the grooves of the panel door where the anti-magnetic release storage panel was located on the right side wall relative to the entranceway, save for the area where the hinges were located on the panel door. When the cream fizzled around the grooves and corroded itself in, Ben swung open the panel and pulled out the anti-mag device. Then without hesitation he plugged it into the left side sliding door and turned the device 10 degrees counterclockwise.
But then the doors wouldn't slide. Not one bit. No matter how Ben pushed with all his might, the sliding doors wouldn't budge even an inch.
"Damn!" swore Ben.
Ben steadily came to the realization that if he set his phaser rifle on maximum setting he might be able to blast the seemingly reinforced entrance doors. Immediately he tampered with the phaser settings, and then positioned his rifle from his hip, rather than from his shoulder, steadily aiming it point blank at the doors. Then he fired a single high-energy discharge beam at the door. Immediately after impacting on the grooves, the sliding doors immediately blasted forward a few feet, leaving smoldering debris. The searing heat was enough to generate mild amounts of sweat among the children.
"Yes!" exclaimed Ben in ecstasy, feeling elatedly successful that he was able to blast the dastardly door open. Mopping his sweaty forehead, he prepared to lead the rest of his comrades through the smoldering door wreckage.
But unfortunately his little escape plan took a rather unfortunate turn. Immediately after the blast, a computer-initialized security override system activated.
"BREACH DETECTED. ENGAGING SECONDARY PROTOCOLS."
While the computer was beginning its casually dulcet notice, a heavily reinforced titanium grate instantly slid down with bone-shattering force, followed by a Level 10 force field automatically generating around the grate. Instinctively Ben fired another discharge from his phaser against the obstacle. The phaser blast made a huge ripple across the slightly ethereal force-field, but the blast would not even make a single dent on the grate itself.
Ben got furiously frustrated. "God-dammit!" he yelled, swearing profusely while seething in uncontrollable rage. "High-tech Federation crap!" He banged and struck his rifle furiously at the force-field protected grate, as the strike impacts made ripples across the force field.
While Ben was furiously banging his rifle futilely on the titanium grate, Elizabeth was taking a bit of time to herself on examining the current situation at hand. Felicity, too, was also examining the situation with her friend as well and that the same time, keeping both herself and her friend alert. Suddenly she took alarming notice at a yellow-uniformed crewman skulking in the left hand corner, armed with a Type 3 phaser.
"Ben!" she yelped in a panicky manner.
Instinctively, forgetting that his rifle was set on maximum setting, Ben fired a high-level discharge at the crewman, which narrowly missed him and blasted a portion of a wall near the crewman, which nearly knocked him out. Suddenly three personnel, followed by a security-team leader, immediately shot out stun discharge beams at Ben, which made him crumple to the floor, unconscious. Taking notice of Ben's predicament, she immediately turned to her left side.
"Ben!" she yelped. Felicity knelt over him, trying desperately with all her heart and soul to wake him up during her hour of sheer terror. In a few seconds reinforcements of nine crewpersons of different gender arrived, which were led by another team leader. Immediately he demanded that each of the children drop their phasers and admit surrender.
"I said drop it, young lady!" he yelled across the corridor hall.
In her inherent stubbornness, Felicity dared to resist and make her last stand. It seemed that Southern spirit had completely caught up with her.
"NO!" she yelled defiantly.
Immediately Felicity fired a single low-setting beam from her phaser rifle, which hurt one of the security personnel. Another discharge impacted on the belly area of the team leader. Clutching his abdomen in pain, he ordered his nearest comrade to open fire. An additional two persons were taken out by Nan and William's hand-held phaser firing.
Without sheer hesitation his comrade-in-arms right away fired a low-setting discharge, which impacted on Felicity's stomach area. Instinctively she dropped her phaser involuntarily and clutched her abdomen with all her might, grimacing, as if she was experiencing some sort of severe stomach ache. Another crewman from Team 2 fired at Felicity's chest area, resulting in her having what appeared to be severe chest burn, causing her to impulsively clutch the center of her bosom with both hands, gasping, coughing, and seething in excruciating pain. Then the initial team leader's comrade-in-arms fired another discharge from his Type 3 phaser, which impacted on Felicity's ankles, making her collapse to the ground. On the floor, poor Felicity continued writhing in excruciating pain, wailing pathetically.
In the midst of this agonizing chaos, Elizabeth was too downright terrified; too horrorstruck to do much of anything, as she was not a particularly brave individual as Felicity and Ben were.
In a relative few seconds a third dispatch of reinforcements comprising with a handful of six linked up with both teams and cornered the children like they were cornering a wild and dangerous beast. As guns were aimed directly at them, Elizabeth struggled to help her friend up on her own two feet. Felicity slowly got hold of her Type 3 phaser she dropped when she was hit by one of the security personnel.
"Drop your weapons!" ordered the second team leader.
Both Felicity and Elizabeth steadily faced their aggressors. Elizabeth whispered to her friend to drop the rifle she was holding. Intending to shoot from the hip in a right-handed manner, her aim was on the team leader that gave the second order, her twitchy finger poised on the trigger. She was about to slowly pull it when Elizabeth firmly woke her up from her childhood fantasy of revenge.
"Lissie, No! Don't!" She whispered persistently and forcibly. "You'll just get all of us killed! Or worse…"
Felicity felt as though she had run out of options. If she continued the fight, she risked having her and her friends ending up in an even worse situation than was generally put up with. Ben had already been conked out, Elizabeth had difficulty mustering the necessary courage to continue their objective, and Nan and William had great difficulty fighting back. Furthermore, the children weren't trained adequately with the phaser firearms, nor did they have the training to efficiently take out several enemy combatants. All they could count on was each other, as well as their rather determination to accomplish their objective. But with Ben unavailable, and Felicity finding herself at an impasse, moral among her and her friends evaporated away like water in the desert sands. And suicide was not a morally acceptable option for them. Acknowledging a forlorn nod, she slowly hung her head in an undignified manner, frustrated in the inside, with a natural feeling of shame and resentment in defeat.
So Felicity and Elizabeth slowly crouched, placed their phaser rifles on the floor, and reverently stood up. The same team leader ordered the little mites to drop their hand-held phasers. Both Nan and William, trembling in sheer fright, let loose their firearms in their sweaty grips, and both phasers dropped to the carpeted corridor floor in a seemingly simultaneous manner.
Seconds later Lt. Commander Worf arrived to the scene pronto, accompanied by two security personnel of different genders, with a crewman on his right and a crewwoman on his left.
"The suspects are already in custody, Commander," informed the second team leader.
"Hmm…" he rejoined gruffly.
Soon Worf took notice of the blasted area near the left hand corner wall, which was caused by Ben's high-setting phaser blast. He then came to the possibility of the children using phasers that were set on high setting. But then as he took notice of the fairly injured crew personnel, and seeing no external signs of severe injury, he instead came to the realization that at least one of children were using high-powered phasers. But who? he asked himself mentally.
Without hesitation Worf gave a direct order for the children to be secured in a holding cell in the detention area.
"Take them to the brig," he ordered gruffly.
Sorry for the delay of this chapter, folks. Even during my "vacation", there was a lot going on, and I was experiencing bouts of "writer's block". It took quite a long while to hammer out this chapter in a fairly interesting manner, like in the manner of John Dillard's movie-based novel Star Trek: First Contact. I hope my writing style, as well as the dialogue, and the manner of which the fast-paced incidents are described, are not too cheesy and tripe. For me, action scenes are something which I have a tad difficulty of getting around, and they have to be somewhat described in a manner where the reader will feel as though he's being drawn into a fast-paced environment. Comments about this type of writing style are welcome.
A/N (1): The part where Ben swears "High-tech Federation crap" was derived from Jayne Cobb's quote "High-tech Alliance crap" from the Firefly TV Series. Of course, the term "high-tech" is not one that you would hear people from the colonial period speaking, so it's quite conceivable that Ben must have got that term from reading his magazine of 24th century hi-tech weapons and gadgets that always lies around the Guest Quarters.
A/N (2): Some of the descriptions of the computer systems on board the Enterprise-D featured in the chapter are fairly accurate, and some of them may have been conceived in my overactive imagination. The part describing the generating of images on Data's security console on one of the Main Bridge's station monitors was due to my influence in watching the new Star Trek (2009) movie, where most of the computer graphics on the new Enterprise look like graphics from Apple computer graphics made by the Macintosh Corporation. At the same time, though, I had to have most of my descriptions of fancy computer graphics imagery conform to the standards of the 24th century, and in the Canon of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
So what will become of Felicity and her friends and siblings? Will they be tried for what Capt. Picard would consider to be "misdemeanors"? Will they be put on trial? (I can certainly imagine poor Elizabeth being placed in the spotlight; every American Girl fan who has known Elizabeth Cole throughout the Felicity Series (and the Felicity movie) is aware that she is quite averse to being the center of attention, given her rather shy and quiet personality.) The next chapters concerning these topics will be hammered out fairly soon. (Hopefully…)