Following their confrontation with Thot Lor, Allensworth made haste to conjure what was left of the senior staff in the his ready room to review their options. The only remnants of his senior staff was Counselor Nycz. Because of her experience on the Enterprise, Allensworth had asked Kell Perim to join them regardless of her rank. As he watched to two females walk into his ready room, Allensworth knew their options were already few and far between.
"Even with tactical capabilities of this Sovereign class ship, there is still no way we can take out both Breen ships," Allensworth said bluntly. It wasn't his favorite way to start off a meeting, but given the situation, it was the best he could do.
"What about the Defiant from the Deep Space Nine?" Perim inquired a moment later.
She was so filled with good thoughts. Allensworth deeply admired that quality in the Trill, and solemnly wondered what happened to that quality in himself. "It would take them too long to get here," he explained. "By the time they get here, the manifolds could be all that's left of the ship."
Perim nodded. As Allensworth watched the Trill, he saw a very small piece of that youthful optimism die. Now, the captain knew where his own optimism had gone. Slowly, Allensworth cast his eyes upon the counselor as her lips started to part. As Allensworth understood it, she was a very kind, generous and intelligent person. And if Allensworth had learned anything about Nycz, it was that she didn't stop until the job was done, and done right. In that spirit, Nycz carefully placed a padd before her. "I've been thinking about a rescue operation," she said carefully.
"Transporters are definitely out of the question," Perim said before she could say anything else. "The Breen's scattering field will deflect the transporter beam no matter what."
Nycz slightly glanced at the Trill "My plans did not include the transporter," she said. "I was thinking, instead of using the Captain's Yacht for tactical support, we could use it to go to the surface and retrieve them.
"If we use the nearby moon to obscure it's energy signatures, the Breen won't even know what's going on until it's too late."
Allensworth slowly nodded negatively. "And once they do, they'll destroy it," he determined. "It's too dangerous without reinforcements."
Nycz slightly frowned. Allensworth knew what she was going to ask next and decided to answer before she could ask.
"Wait for the reinforcements to arrive," Allensworth said. "It's only a couple of hours."
"In a couple of hours, they could all be dead," Nycz protested. "With all due respect, we have to act now!"
She illustrated her point well, and after a few moments of additional consideration, Allensworth had to agree with her, partially. "We'll wait as long as we can," he said. "But if you see anything unusual on sensors, we'll do what needs to be done."
"Thank you, Captain," Nycz said.
Allensworth smiled.
The away team walked out of the Columbia and into the daylight. Sparhawk turned to his colleagues.
"Let's..."
He couldn't get the rest of his sentence out due to a disruptor blast hitting the ground near him. The officers ducked for cover around the Alexandria. Plumley ducked back through the entry hatch while the other four took cover behind large rocks and panels sticking out of the ship. They looked up to the top of the cliff where they had first arrived to see seven Breen standing there with weapons aimed at them. The Starfleet away team drew their own phasers. Sparhawk slightly looked over the edge of the rock and fired. The blast of fiery orange energy sailed toward the Breen's position, but to Sparhawk's dismay, the target stepped aside before being hit. Once the blast had passed him, the target returned the favor, blasting off a small chunk of the rock in front of Sparhawk.
Well, this was unexpected.
Kell Perim looked at her sensor board with a bit of worry. She then turned to the captain who had just sit down in his command chair.
"Captain, I'm picking up phaser fire on the ground below."
"What?"
He stood up from his chair and walked over behind ops.
"It would appear that the away team is fighting those seven Breen that we picked up earlier."
"Hail the Breen ship." Allensworth ordered.
Perim pressed a few buttons to hail the alien ship but nothing after that happened.
"No response, sir." The Trill replied.
"Damn it." Allensworth said.
After exchanging phaser fire with the Breen for several more minutes, The Alexandria away team was eventually overrun by the Breen forces. Following their surrender, the Breen simply brought the five to the hill top, erected the forcefield around them, and continued to work on something as if nothing had happened.
"I wonder what they want with us?" Plumley whispered to the others as she watched the Breen peck away at the controls on their mini-computer. Slowly, she locked eyes with the others.
While the Fulks, Merriell and Sparhawk seemed as baffled as she, the wide eyes of Dustin Zofchak sparked more than a little concern.
"I'm not sure," he whispered, "but the Breen might be attempting to fabricate some Ketracel White." The chief engineer said.
Sparhawk suddenly knew why Zofchak's eyes were so wide. Ketracel White was most often associated with one of the most lethal killing forces ever encountered by the Federation: the Jem'Hadar.
"Are you certain?" He asked.
"Before the Breen…'borrowed' my tricorder, I detected trace amounts of yridium bicantizine in the soil, as well as several other compounds necessary to create White," he explained quietly. "My best guess is that's what the Breen have been hiding and the reason they're here."
"Why would the Breen want Ketracel White?" Merriell inquired, perhaps louder than Sparhawk would have preferred given the circumstances.
Sparhawk watched as the words he most feared rolled off from Zofchak's tongue,
"To create a Jem'Hadar."
"But the Dominion cloning facilities were all destroyed after the war," Fulks countered.
"Did you personally oversee the destruction of every facility? Who knows how many secret installations were left in tact," Zofchak whispered. "Besides, what's stopping the Breen from creating new facilities? They had access to all of the Dominion's computer databases for several months. I'm sure there's a recipe for Jem'Hadar leftover somewhere."
"Given the extremely minimal data we have on the Breen, I'd say that there's a fair chance of that," Sparhawk concurred.
Suddenly, one of the Breen turned his attention away from his work and consulted rather loudly with his companions. With his, and the other's comm badges in the clutches of the Breen, Sparhawk had no idea what the Breens' strident conversing meant. In this case, actions speak louder than words.
And the Breen certainly started to take action. Several moments later, two Breen marched over to the forcefield and lowered it. Sparhawk watched quietly as the Breen slowly protruded into their makeshift cell and reached for Dustin Zofchak.
Quickly, Merriell lashed out against the offending Breen in an attempt to prevent Zofchak's abduction, but he quickly found himself on the ground, and Zofchak being dragged away. Before he could get up, the remaining Breen pointed his weapon at the other three and, without hesitation, fired.
Seeing that resistance was hopeless, Merriell closed his eyes and waited for the inevitable. A few moments later, it came…
Zofchak wasn't sure if their refrigeration units were responsible or not, but the Breen were most definitely a lot stronger than they appeared. In fact, the grip the Breen had around his chest was so tight, that Zofchak found it difficult to breathe.
"What do you want?" he rasped, despite the pain.
The Breen violently dropped Zofchak down in the lone chair beside the computer and screeched a few short, clipped tones. But before he could even get into a marginally comfortable position, another Breen had already started to probe Zofchak with some sort of medical device. He poked and prodded for several minutes before finally burrowing the device deep in Dustin's spine. Zofchak felt it penetrate several vertebrae before he stopped feeling anything at all. He willed himself to move, but nothing happened. He couldn't even move his neck. As his panicked state grew, Zofchak watched in horror as the Breen began probing him again. It was much shorter in duration this time, and not painful, presumably because of the probe imbedded into Zofchak's spine. Nevertheless, it was thoroughly unpleasant. As the Breen 'medic' finished, he slowly brought his head down to Zofchak's and stared at him for several moments. Unable to look away, Zofchak simply stared back at the green lights scrolling across the Breen's helmet where the eyes should be. For a brief moment, he thought he could see something beyond the green lights… an eye, maybe two…or three, four or five for that matter. But an instant later, the Breen looked away. He tapped a button on his uniform, and moments later, both he and Zofchak beamed away.
As Zofchak opened his eyes, he realized that he had not been beamed back to the Alexandria. In fact, it was far worse. He was now on the Breen ship. It was a dark, ominous interior, accented by a mysterious green aura that seemed to emanate from the walls. The transporter chamber they were in was extremely small, consisting of nothing but the transporter pad and the control station, only a few meters apart. And as his Breen companion shoved him toward the doors, Zofchak noticed a few other things, the restoration of his motor functions, among other things. But the most intriguing bit was the fact that the Breen ship was not the frigid icebox one would expect of the Breen. In fact, it was rather comfortable—yet the Breen still wore refrigeration suits. For a moment, Dustin considered the notion that it was to accommodate him, but then he quickly realized the Breen weren't that nice. There was another reason. Rather violently, the Breen shoved Zofchak into the tight, dark corridor and steered him through several maze-like corridors adjoining the transporter room. After what seemed like hours of navigation, they finally arrived in a rather large, open chamber with several coffin-like alcoves adorning all three walls. The Breen steered Zofchak toward the small group of Breen standing near one of the corner-alcoves. The Breen conversed amongst themselves for several minutes. Still without his communicator, Dustin understood none of their strident babble, but from the tone of their annoying voices, they weren't talking about sports. As the conversation came to a head, all of the Breen suddenly stopped chattering and turned their helmeted heads in Dustin's general direction. Zofchak's heart stopped as it jumped into his throat. His breathing stopped. His eyes seemed to be closing in on him. And before he knew it, the Breen had shoved him into one of the empty alcoves and closed him behind a forcefield of some sort. The Breen did nothing but watch from outside the alcove as Zofchak felt a bright light beating down upon him, and a faint tingling sensation throughout his body. Just when he expected some sort of crude medical instrument to start slicing through his body, it ended. All of it. The light turned off, the forcefield lowered, and the Breen dragged Zofchak out of the alcove and shoved him aside. Curiously, the Breen were also deactivating the neighboring alcove. Thought the Breen were standing in his way, Zofchak was able to make out the distinct outline of something behind the forcefield in the alcove. As the energy barrier flicked out of existence, Zofchak watched in horror as the Breen extended their gloved hands to the emerging figure from the alcove. And what Dustin Zofchak saw almost literally scared him to death. A scaly hand. A scaly, reptilian face. A bony crest. A lock of haphazard black hair. A malevolent smile. A Jem'Hadar.
