"Ooo! I got it!" Tony yelled from his systems administration screen.
"Computer, pause recording," Kirk spoke into the chair speaker. He turned around. "What did you 'get'?"
Lieutenant Moreau spun around in his seat with a big grin. "How much do you love me?" He asked playfully. The statement caused most people on the bridge to turn around and look curiously except for T'Nia, who had heard banter between those two entirely too many times in her life to be put off by it.
Kirk smiled. Despite the 'proper chain of command' he had been forced to endure while Captain Bolerov was in command, Tony's informal nature was a pleasant change. He couldn't help but play along. "Well, I'm not ready to pick out rings or anything, but that could change. What have you got?" That received welcome chuckles from the bridge crew.
Tony pressed a few buttons on his panel. A wireframe model of the government building's third floor appeared on the screen above his station. "Well, thankfully, I was able to get a data burst of everything that was still intact on the Cardassian ship's computers before we left. I've been sifting through it for the past hour. Lookie what I found in their sensor archives."
Kirk got up and walked over to Tony's station and patted him on the back. He was genuinely impressed, even though he had completely written off the idea Tony would be able to find anything. "Outstanding work, Tone. I mean... this is good."
Tony folded his arms, looked up, and batted his eyes. "I want to honeymoon in Paris, Sweetie." He remarked with a broad smile. This was the kind of banter he had been wanting to have with his old friend, just like old times.
Kirk shot him a quick look that warned, "Don't go overboard." He then smacked him playfully on the back of the head and turned towards Richards. "Kenyon, using your own scans, can you determine the dimensions of this floor?"
Kenyon was enjoying the informality. It reminded him of his last assignment aboard the USS Ulysses. He couldn't help but smile. As much as he was impressed with Captain Bolerov's service record, his command style had left much to be desired. He nodded. "I should. Lieutenant Moreau, would you send that schematic to my console?"
With a quick half dozen menu selections with his finger, he announced, "It's on its way." Remembering Richards called him 'Lieutenant', he quickly added, "Sir."
Kenyon smiled. "Thank you." He spun around and began making the necessary calculations.
"What's on your mind, Commander?" Lieutenant Kelly asked. With things being temporarily calm in engineering, he had decided a half hour earlier, to pay a visit to his auxiliary station on the bridge to see what was up.
Stephen turned to face Tom. "Well, I've been running through a bunch of different scenarios in my head on how to get everyone out of that room. First, I was going to only transport our people out using the personnel transporters. But... that leaves the Cardassian prisoners helpless in a room full of Jem'Hadar. So, I thought about using the personnel transporters to get everyone BUT the Jem'Hadar out..."
Tom completed his thought. "But we'd never be able to get them all out at once, which means the Jem'Hadar start opening fire on whoever is left."
Kirk pointed at him and smiled. "Exactly. That led me to my third idea, which was to transport the Jem'Hadar out of the room FIRST. But... that won't work because there are too many of them. We'd have the same problem. THAT led me to my current idea, which is to use the cargo transporter to bring all the prisoners aboard at once. As long as the room isn't too big..."
Tom interrupted. "Um... one, small wrinkle. The Jem'Hadar are scattered through the room with the prisoners, aren't they?" Kirk nodded. "Yeah... the cargo transport beam won't discriminate like that. It'd bring everything aboard, including the Jem'Hadar."
"We can't have the transporter beam only bring aboard everyone BUT Jem'Hadar?" This was getting quite disappointing. Stephen was running out of ideas. At this rate, he may have to forsake the Cardassian prisoners after all.
Tom shook his head. "The beam's got a wide focus. It's meant for cargo... big stuff. We can focus personnel transport beams as narrow as you want, but not the cargo beam." He pursed his lips.
Kirk snapped his fingers. "Wait... we could bring everyone aboard, then immediately fire an electromagnetic pulse in the room. That would disable their weapons. Then, we could send in the Marines to mop up."
"You'd run the risk of another hostage situation if the Jem'Hadar were carrying daggers, which they usually do." T'Nia offered.
Kenyon turned around, looking disappointed. "It won't work, anyway." The group turned around to look at him. "The room's over fifty meters wide and sixty meters long. It'd take two, maybe three attempts with the cargo transporter to get everyone, if they're still scattered the way there were when we saw them."
Everyone looked deflated. Options were starting to run for Commander Kirk. "Okay," he started with a deep sigh, "I'm not quite ready to give up on this yet, but if we have to only rescue our people, and leave the Cardassians to fend for themselves, we will. Moreau, Richards, T'Nia, Kelly... get your relief people up here on the double and meet me in the conference room in ten minutes." He turned to Elaine. "Lieutenant Davies, get Colonel Prichard and ask him to join us in ten minutes."
"Aye, aye, Sir," She answered and turned back to her panel.
He looked at a questioning Commander Richards and shrugged. "I need options and I'm running out of ideas."