Just like the lift, the controls for the door was encrypted. But this time Ali knew how to force the manual override to gain them access.

Ala'tuk entered first, rifle raised as she tracked any movement to determine friend or foe. The scene that greeted them had not been what they expected. The med bay - if it could be called that - was really just a dormitory that branched off to each side of the door and had rudimentary IV stations hooked up to each bed. It didn't quite seem to tally with the vision of high tech wires and monitoring equipment Ali had seen. This was all dirty old tech with stained sheets, it didn't suggest a great deal of care for the occupants. Ala'tuk ignored any questions she immediately had as she focused on securing the room, using a couple of quick and efficient hand gestures to organise her squad to help her do so.

That left Ali with a couple of others checking on the nearest beds, none of them daring to ask the question that was on all their minds. Who was still alive? And what had been done to them? Ali aimed her scanner at the jetran in the nearest bunk to her before turning to the bunk's monitor.

"Ensign Lilka," one of Ala'tuk's squad breathed as he joined Ali.

"She's sedated, but alive," Ali said, in a vain hope to reassure him, or maybe herself. "We'll check every bunk, I can figure out how to withdraw the sedative once we've done a headcount."

"Why not just remove the IVs?"

"We don't know what else has happened to them," Ali replied unhappily. They didn't know enough right now, it was all too possible that the IVs were keeping at least some of their people alive.

There were no further discussions and Ala'tuk returned to confirm they were in control of the lab. Her team had even secured the maintenance access points so that the crew couldn't use their own guerilla tricks against them. Ala'tuk was about to tell Ali to work on the medical interface whilst her team checked on their people, when a movement made them both turn with their weapons raised.

Ali lowered hers a moment later when a familiar, but weak voice asked, "who's there?"

"Claire?" Ali asked, changing her comm to allow direct communication, as she hurried towards the bunk, her voice betraying her relief at finding her friend alive.

"Ali," Claire replied, her eyelids drooping but her lips twitching into a half formed smile. "Ben said you'd come."

Ali stamped down every instinct she had that screamed at her to follow up on that. "Claire, what happened? How are you awake when everyone else is sedated?"

Claire swallowed to try and make her throat work properly, and nodded towards where she was barely able to lift her hand. "Too much time around you," she joked as Ali realised she'd gripped the IV as tightly as she could to stem the flow of drugs.

"I don't think I ever taught you how to bypass an IV," Ali retorted in kind, relieved to see an echo of a smile on her friend's tired face. The normally bouncy ringlets were plastered to Claire's head as if she'd been bound to the bed since her disappearance. "Hold on just a moment longer, I'm gonna figure out how to shut the drugs off."

"Just keep the painkillers on," Claire pleaded.

"Painkillers?" Ala'tuk asked from where she'd been observing nearby.

"Yeah," Claire tried to nod but couldn't quite muster the energy. "Pain, so much pain."

Ali briefly spared a glance to her friend as she used her scanner along with her expansive knowledge of interfaces and decent language skills to work out just what was being pumped into her friend and how to safely stop it. Presently she found a flow control for each of the loaded drugs and tapped the sedative one down to zero. There only looked to be two, one sedative one pain relief, but she'd need longer to confirm. "Give that five minutes and see how she feels, then maybe we can try sitting her upright," Ali said. "I'll see what I can do for the others."

"I don't know how long we'll have before they try and flush us out," Ala'tuk reminded her.

Ali sighed, because she knew Ala'tuk was right. "Well, we can't beam everyone out at once, and unless we take the kit too I don't think we should be beaming them out at all until we've turn the IVs off."

"Ma'am, we've accounted for everyone," one of Ala'tuk's people reported in. Ali was grateful for her helmet to be able to keep her almost overwhelming relief private. Right now she needed to be able to focus if they were going to keep it that way.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

"Right now, our best best is to defend this place," Ali said as she scrutinised the data on her scanner. "It's not ideal though."

"What about using their systems against them?" Ala'tuk asked. "Can we affect their life support or something?"

Ali pulled a face as she considered, tapping on a nearby console. "Like I said before, it's heavily encrypted." She glanced back at her scanner and then appeared to trace something through the bulkhead with her eyes and hand. "But maybe I could short through a few things…"

"When you say short?"

Ali hooked her scanner back onto her suit and crouched to yank off a panel, nosying into it to see what she could access. "I've seen this kind of set up before, if I reroute the right relays and remove a few safeties I'm pretty certain I can shut their systems down."

"Won't that affect us too?"

Ali pulled her head back out of the maintenance hatch, sort of relieved Ala'tuk couldn't see her unsure expression. "If I get it right, no."

They heard a weak laugh from behind them. "That sounds about right for an Ali plan," Claire said, her voice wheezy as one of Ala'tuk's people was helped her sit upright.

"Still alive, aren't I?" Ali retorted in kind.

"Just," Claire agreed.

"Okay, we don't have the numbers to split up, so this sounds like our best bet," Ala'tuk agreed. "Can we wake the rest of our guys up so we've got an easier retreat if it comes to it?"

Ali turned back to the various bunks. "Some, yeah, but they're not all on the same drugs," she explained. Ala'tuk followed the scientist's line of sight and quickly understood the problem. Only a couple looked to be medicated in the same way as Claire, the rest would be something for a medic to tackle.

"Wake up those you can, it still might make our mission easier."

~-x-~

It didn't take Ali long to replicate what she did to Claire's IV to the couple she could; stopping the sedative but leaving the painkillers just in case. After that she was back in the maintenance panels, trying to follow systems through their various control junctions and power relays so that she could be specific in the damage she caused.

She'd opened a significant chunk of the bulkhead by the time she worked out a way to do what she wanted to do, and instantly set to it with abandon. Some pieces she needed to bypass completely rather than simply reroute, and she was happy to tear them out completely to do the most damage.

"If I hadn't heard about the Emerald Mule, I would really be questioning our safety right about now," Ala'tuk observed as she returned from checking in with her team.

Ali chuckled. "That's probably fair."

"What's the Emerald Mule?" Claire asked.

"My new ship," Ali explained, punctuating her explanation with a loud clang as she dropped another component she'd just finished bypassing. "Okay, that's the engineering bulkheads sealed," she said as she stood up, automatically dusting her hands despite the fact that she was entirely suited up and wearing gloves. "I think if I start on this section I can do some damage to their bridge area." She was about to move to a different panel when her eyes landed on one of the components she'd dropped at her feet earlier. "Actually…" She trailed off as she picked it up, turning back to the panel.

"What?"

Ali just grinned mischievously as she realised a couple of new options had opened up regarding the crew's environmental controls.

A short while after she resumed her tinkering a crackle of static startled them, causing them to look up at the comm system as a voice said, "Captain Turner, please stop breaking my ship."

Ali moved only far enough away to ensure that if they were distracting her to overload the systems she was playing in, it wouldn't hurt her. "And you are?"

"That is not important for you to know," he replied. "What is important is the impasse we find ourselves in."

"You mean your inevitable surrender?"

"Ali!" Claire hissed.

"I was, in fact, referring to a negotiation. You have your friends, we shall give you access to the systems keeping them alive so that you can safely remove them, if you agree to leave without any further violence or vandalism."

Ali considered that, it was an odd way to describe what she was currently doing, but she could roll with that. "What reason do we have to believe you'll keep your word?"

"There are few options remaining to us, and the most likely involve our capture, your ship destroying ours, or us destroying our own vessel to take you down with us. We would rather avoid any of those."

"I take it you're threatening to overload your reactor if we don't agree to your terms?" Ali asked.

"Correct."

Ali considered what he said carefully. She opened a new comm to the Endeavour. "The beamers can lock onto us here, right? There's no jamming or alloys lining the ship?"

"Beamers confirm a lock. No jamming currently active, and I haven't seen signs that they have it, otherwise surely they would have stopped us beaming in in the first place," Mishri replied. "Nothing in the bulkheads."

"Why?" Grey demanded before she could close the line.

"They're offering a deal, giving us our people and going, or they blow the reactor," Ali explained. "It was the most obvious trap I could think of."

"So little trust, Turner," the voice cut in again. Ali knew he'd have been able to overhear her conversation. She had considered it unimportant.

"I wonder why," she muttered to herself. "Sir, I'm tempted to take it," she added louder for Grey.

There was a delay before he replied, "I agree."

"Then we have an agreement? We release the medical interface and give you ten minutes to retrieve your people and leave," the voice checked.

"So long as they are free of whatever drugs you have been plying them with by then, yes, otherwise we'll leave when it's safe to move them," Ali stated firmly.

There was another delay, considering her revised terms. "Very well," he conceded. "We shall be keeping an eye on your progress," he added, and Ali turned to the nearest interface to see that access had indeed been granted.

"What do we do now?" Ala'tuk asked as she looked at the screen too.

"Get Narla, she can advice allowing us to speed up the process," Ali ordered. "And hope they keep their end of the bargain."