Connor shrugged. "Maybe fifteen, twenty minutes." Two more purple streams of energy impacted the wall near the left door.
Prichard surveyed the room. He saw six Marines holding the left door, and seven holding the right door. One of Tonok's men was busy performing some field triage on a marine who had been shot. He was banged up, but he'd be fine. In the room, no less than forty former prisoners were holding weapons of their own. A few seemed comfortable holding a weapon, others had obviously never held a weapon before in their life. So far, the plan was working, but their overflight protection had just left them and their primary barricade sheild generators were weakening. Sam wasn't going to look concerned JUST yet... they still had a few minutes. He motioned to the other two generators they had brought. "Ironhide, take Frosty with you and move these other generators to the front lines. They'll be needing them in a few minutes."
"Yes, Sir," Trace replied. He motioned to Curtis.
"What's up?" Lieutenant O'Shea asked, looking around at the scene.
"Colonel wants us to get these generators down the hall for backup." With that, he grabbed one of the footstool sized devices and began dragging it towards the left hall.
"No problem." Curtis grabbed the other unit and started dragging it off to the right. "Maybe I can ice an ugly while I'm there."
"Don't go rogue on me, Frosty," Prichard replied, not looking up from his tricorder, "just move the barricade."
"Yes, Sir," he replied dejectedly.
Picard approached the old Marine colonel. "Colonel Prichard," he began diplomatically, still holding his hand phaser, "I should like very much to help you. Is there anything I can do? I've been around the battlefield a few times myself."
Still not looking up from his tricorder, he held up his pointer finger. "Hold that thought for a sec, Admiral." He finally looked up at one of Tonok's men, who was standing over their communications relay. "Cofiss, are you reading neighbors upstairs?"
Sergeant Cofiss, a Terrellian, was holding earphones to his ears, situated lower than human ears. He didn't speak, he merely nodded.
"Well, this isn't good," Prichard remarked.
"What seems to be the problem?" Picard asked, doing his best to hide his genuine frustration at not being able to assist.
"Well, the inhibitors around the room are causing my tricorder some grief, but I'm getting a lot of noise upstairs. Sounds like we got Jem'Hadar above us. Since my 'vettes cut off their means of getting across the street, I'm guessing they transported above us." He paused for a moment, looking again at his tricorder. "Cofiss, looks like they're drilling. Is that what you're getting?"
Again, Cofiss merely nodded.
"Well, Admiral, you may get your chance." He raised his voice so everyone in the room could hear him. "I need everyone's attention. We got Jem'Hadar trying to get in from the floor above us. I'm counting three entry points. We'll be arranging you folks in teams to repel the intruders." The recently freed prisoners stood up and looked around nervously at each other. Prichard pursed his lips, then motioned for his senior officers and Picard to gather around. "Alright, everyone... we need to pinpoint exactly where these uglies are comin' down and carve up the ground under them. I don't want them getting a solid foundation to stand on. We need to assemble these people into counterstrike teams and try not to shoot each other. Tonok, you and Lucky get with Cofiss and pinpoint where they're coming down. Picard and I will group everyone and put them in their places. It really stinks that this room got emptied of furniture. SOME kind of cover would have been nice. Ironhide... you and Frosty get to our teams in the hallways. Let 'em know we're about to fight a two-front war."