The Bones of the Hellhounds Tremble [✱8]

Posted on Fri Apr 25th, 2025 @ 3:56pm by SubCommander Saa & Lieutenant JG Eris sh'Rhavar & Senior Chief Petty Officer Gaz & Polyphron & SubLieutenant Attania Viren & Chief Petty Officer Zeldta Yan & First Prime Thalistra
Edited on on Fri Apr 25th, 2025 @ 4:13pm

1,403 words; about a 7 minute read

Mission: The Serpent's Tooth [3]
Location: Glory of Hera, Hera's Mothership - DS13 Orbit
Timeline: 0215 - MD07

The dock crew's EVA teams were already swarming over the pyramid ships by the time Saa, Gaz, Viren, sh'Revar and Yan suited up and beamed into the area chosen for a command post. When the transporter confinement beam released her, Saa found they had materialized in a wide, vaulted chamber, strangely ornate in decor, with bulkheads seemingly made to resemble polished black granite covered in gold-inlaid... hieroglyphs?

"This is different," assessed Yan beside her—rather, beside one of her suit's robotic legs—through her internal comms.

"I'll say. I was expecting an engine room, not a museum." Gaz responded to the Ithenite.

Eris was silent, but her antenna squirmed with curiousity. This was not the sort of locale she had ever been in outside a holodeck.

A woman in airtight gunmetal armour with the fierce head of a lion on her armoured shoulders waited. She looked at attention, but she was resting on her staff weapon. She stood fully upright again as the visitors solidified. "I am Thalistra, First Prime to Hera, Queen of Olympus, Glory to Her Name." She had already met the security team that swept the place earlier, she was confident they would do all the necessary talking. Beside her was a woman with vibrant orange hair and a distinct scarring across the left side of her face, wearing the utility suit of an Engineer. She remained silent.

Later, Saa would be proud of the way in which she allowed the words 'Queen of Olympus' to roll off her like so much water. Truly, she was learning to handle anything the multiverse could send her way. It helped that she'd been mentally prepping herself for high strangeness ever since she first laid eyes on the unusual pyramid ship. She stepped forward from their little knot, unaffected by what she was feeling. Method first, bafflement later.

"Howdy, folks," she greeted through her speakers, as if it were just another work day, "I'm Subcommander Saa of station engineering. This is Operations Chief Gaz, Dock Manager Yan, Engineer Viren and Flight Control Officer sh'Rhavar. Time's short. With your permission, we'll beam in some equipment to help coordinate our teams." She shifted her focus between the armored warrior an the red-haired woman as she spoke, guessing the latter to be the engineering authority.

"This is Polyphron. She is responsible for the machines. She will assist you. I am needed elsewhere, but she can reach me if you require me." Thalistra said, gesturing to the woman next to her.

"Greetings to you all. Please begin as you will, I await your instructions on how to proceed. We have repair crews on the outer hull, but they are few, and their work is slow." Polyphron said confidently, looking betwen the newcomers. Her voice was unnaturally deep in the same was as Akhenaten's, and her accent was vaguely Mediterranean.

Saa turned slightly to nod to Yan, who had been waiting for the all-clear to comm Alpha Dock.

"Energize," the Ithenite said.

A second later, the shimmering blue vortex and oscillating whine of a Starfleet transporter beam filled the vaulted chamber, coalescing into a standard damage control coordination center, one of several the dock teams kept for such occasions. DS13’s EVA crews, drones and other personnel appeared as tagged markers scattered across wireframe schematics of the three ships. Other life-form markers identified the positions of the ships' own personnel, some of them orbiting outside the hull, most packed within. The sleek, sterile Starfleet consoles looked strangely out of place amid the lavishly gilded aesthetic of the ship’s interior.

"Let’s start simple," Saa began. "Teaching our EVA teams to work together would take more time than we have. I suggest you assign us separate priority areas and we each do the best we can."

"I agree." Polyphron said once she had considered. The Federation transporter was a curiousity, but not an unknown. "The midsection is most in need of urgent work. The outer hull breaches should be contained relatively soon by the teams already outside, but the damage to internal systems and storage tanks is causing failures and malfunctions in life support systems throughout the ship." Polyphron explained. "Here." She elaborated, pointing at the area on the display.

Gaz considered the damage on the hologram, folding his arms. It wasn't impossible, but it was a lot to do in the short time available to them. "What's the purpose of the hollow section of the pyramid?" Gaz asked, he couldn't work out the logic of the design.

"This ship, the ha'tak is an older model, designed for planetary subjugation. The hollow serves as an amplifier for infrasonic projections from orbit, and to land on pyramids. Pyramids are chosen because as a landing pad they are the simplest megastructure for primitive humanoid societies to build. Such features form the design language of craft from the early dynasties." Polyphron told the small pig-man.

Viren watched on quietly. This woman seemed to know her stuff, but she couldn't help but wonder about the scar on her face, it didn't look like a recent injury. The voice was also kind of off-putting, she wasn't totally sure what it meant.

Gaz grunted a verbal nod.

Saa studied the indicated components, restraining herself from forming conclusions from the woman's casual references to war and conquest. Planetary subjugation wasn’t a phrase you heard tossed around lightly in Federation starship design circles. But that was beside the point.

"I see your problem," she reflected. "Those sections are inaccessible. I'm guessing it's taking your teams time to cut their way in through the wreckage."

"Indeed." Polyphron agreed, zooming in on the section. "Our shuttlebay was struck in the attack, we have no servicable craft. The equipment to keep Jaffa alive and mobile outside the ship might make the journey, but is not a practical option to fly the necessary distance. Our transportation systems are not so precise as yours." She observed.

Saa studied the data. "Unfortunately, radiation levels like that make our own transporters unsafe. We have to burn our way in just like you're doing. But you're in luck: this station is a dedicated repair facility, and our ingress teams are better equipped than most places you might've stumbled across."

"Anything you can do to assist our efforts will likely save lives. If any of your people are questioned, tell them to give my name. If we can save the tertiary recycling unit here, we should be able to keep life support going indefinitely." Polyphron said, zooming in one a large tank in a room nearby one of the tunnels dug through the ship by energy weapons. "As you can see our teams are going in through the floors above, but they have several decks to get through, and the equipment is too sensitive to survive vacuum exposure for long."

Gaz had let the gears in his head turn long enough, and finally spoke up. "Looking at the damage patterns to the passageways it might not end up being any faster, but we can probably loan you a couple of shuttles to get your people closer to the impact point. If nothing else they can probably get started on sealing any leaks from that end. With ingress teams going simultaneously, maybe we can go twice as fast." He turned to the Chief Engineer. "If you're on board with it, ma'am."

Polyphron looked to the chief, hoping it could be possible. She almost went to say something but hesitated, and her brief look was lost on the subcommander, who could usually only read the subtleties of human body language with effort, and right now her focus was on Gaz. Her gaze shifted from the Tellarite to the display. Behind the opaque face of her EV suit, designed more for sound reception than for light, she assembled the components of the operation.

"We'll need an officer in each of the shuttles," she agreed, receiving a quick confirmation from Eris. Then, turning with due care for the slight awkwardness of her suit, she addressed the Goa'uld woman.

"Have two of your hull teams report to this room for transport to our shuttlebay, and leave someone here to coordinate with Yan. And then join us here." She indicated a section of the schematic, where she'd noticed something she'd previously missed. "That is, if you're up for a swim."

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