Hostile Welcome

The *Firefly* moved away from the debris that hid their position so well and when Captain Stryker was sure that they were far enough away, he ordered Anasazi, the ship’s helm officer to head for the station and dock in the main hanger. The message t’Pek had received back was far more than just a simple hello, it contained far more information, including the codes to drop the shields and open the hanger bay doors.

As the *Firefly* grew ever closer to the Starbase, the entire crew’s apprehension about whether they would be fired on grew. Sooner or later the crew of the Starbase would realise that they were not heading for the Engineering airlock, but the main hanger. Once that happened, they would most likely open fire. Even if they didn’t realise until it was too late, the dropping of the shields would have sealed it.

“Trance….” Jack enquired. “…how are we doing ?”

“I’m picking up only low-level scans coming from the station, no sign of any weapons being activated.” Trance reported. “But we’ve still on the edge of their weapons range.”

“Dylan, how long until we land ?” Jack asked.

“About three minutes at present speed.” Dylan replied.

“Let’s just hope that the codes work.” Beka remarked.

The ship drew ever closer to the station, until they were within sight of the huge hanger bay doors.

“Trance, send the codes.” Jack ordered.

Ahead of them, the crew saw the huge doors slide open. Although they couldn’t see it, the shields which protected the doors also dropped.

“Shields are down.” Trance reported. “Looks like we’ve run out of luck, the station is powering phasers.”

“Dylan, get is inside now.” Jack stated.

With a dash of speed from the impulse engines, followed by a burst from the ship’s reaction control engines, the *Firefly* jumped closer to the station and beyond the reach of the stations weapons.

“Let’s land and pick up our passengers.” Jack suggested. “It’s going to be a lot harder getting out.”

The *Firefly* landed in the main hanger bay without trouble. On the viewscreen however was not a tidy hanger deck, with cargo crates neatly piled and stacked. The bay walls were scorched by what looked like weapons fire and there were several small vessels in various states of disrepair. Most of the larger cargo containers had either been moved or hastily pushed into place, forming a barrier between the bay and the inner doors which led to the station’s interior.

“Beka, Harper suit up and start unloading the cargo, we’re going in. Dylan, I want you to stay on the Command deck and be ready to move at a moments notice. Trance, t’Pek you’re with me, let’s see if our passengers are waiting.” Stryker ordered.

Stryker, t’Pek and Trance all stepped onto the deck of the hanger bay and surveyed the damage. Whilst t’Pek knew the dangers, unlike Jack and Trance, she rarely carried a weapon. Instead she was carrying a med-kit she’d snatched up as they had left the ship, something told her that she’d be needing it.

The bay appeared empty, there was no-one around, then movement from behind the makeshift barrier alerted Jack and Trance, who both drew their weapons.

The top of a few heads peeked up over the barrier, accompanied by the tips of phaser rifles before disappeared again. Then a single man walked out from behind the barrier and looked at the three crew members and then the ship. There was something in the way the guy looked at the *Firefly* that Jack didn’t like.

He stood at just under two metres tall and sported a battered phaser rifle which seemed to have been used more recently as a club than an energy weapon. His jacket was an old grey top though Jack could see a fine layer of phaser armour poking out from his collar. The jacket had several holes and tears in it, where the jacket had been hit repeated by phaser fire.

His trousers too were scraped and dirty, held up by a belt with its large brass buckle pulled to one side and a phaser pistol tucking into it. As the man drew closer, his facial expression changed.

“Holoprojecters right ?” The man asked before he picked up a piece of rubble from the ground and chucked it at the front of the ship. It bounced off the metal plating, hitting the deck.

“Huh, You have another ship outside or something ? I can’t believe Kar would send an antique to get me, or is it a new trend ?, I have been away from civilisation for a while.”

Jack didn’t like the way this man was speaking about his ship and his trigger finger twitched. However, before Jack could act on his impulse to blast the guy’s head off, t’Pek stepped in.

“Well if you don’t want our help, we can always leave.” She stated. “And yes the *Firefly* maybe an antique, but she flies….pretty well actually.”

“I’m sorry, but I was expecting something a little more….well newer. Don’t get me wrong it’s very… quaint.” The man replied. “No insult intended Captain ?”

Jack eased the pressure off his trigger finger and lowered his gun. He nodded at Trance, who acknowledged Jack’s sign and re-holstered her own weapon. Jack did the same, before taking a step forward.

“Captain Stryker, Jack Stryker.” Jack announced. “And you are ?”

“My name is Quinn, Commander Quinn, Starfleet Intelligence, kind of.” Quinn replied. “Well I’m sure Kar wouldn’t have picked you people unless you were good, so I guess we should get moving.”

“I’d suggest that we get you and your passengers, plus your cargo loaded and then get the hell off this base as soon as possible.” Jack suggested.

“Of course, there’s twenty of us in total, can this crate carry that many ?.” Quinn stated. “We’ve also taken some casualties; I hope that you have some decent medical facilities onboard.”

“t’Pek is our medical officer.” Jack remarked. “She’ll take good care of them.”

“OK. Once we’re aboard, we’ll transport the cargo from the storage bay and get out of here. It’s already tagged with transponders, so you’ll just have to lock on and transport it……” Quinn ordered, pausing in mid-sentence as he suddenly realising something. “Don’t tell me….your ship doesn’t have a transporter system installed.”

“Sorry.” Jack admitted. “But Klass never mentioned the need for transporters.”

Quinn was annoyed; he’d hoped to get away from the station without having to battle the base crew. He had no sympathy with those who were now against him, but he had so few colleagues left, he didn’t want to risk losing any more needlessly.

“Oh joy...” He said under his breath. ”Okay, we need a new plan. How many crew do you have ?”

“There’s six of us.” Jack replied. “But I think t’Pek would be more useful here on the ship treating your injured and I’d keep our pilot at the helm ready to leave.”

“OK, so there are only four of you left.” Quinn considered. “I just hope you’ve got a good engineer, we’ll need to by-pass the base’s security if we going to get to the storage bay.”

“Only the best.” Harper announced. “Seamus Harper, Engineer and resident genius.”

Harper had just come down the main cargo doors, pushing a container marked medical supplies, followed by Beka pushing a second container. He was dressed for battle, wearing full-length phaser armour. The armour was too big for him and he looked slightly ridiculous.

“That’s what they all say.” Quinn remarked. “Let’s see if your actions are as good as words. All the key systems are either locked down by the Starbase crew or have been sabotaged by us. The storage bay where the cargo is waiting does have an independent cargo tranporter, but it’s locked down. With a little re-wiring, we should be able to get it functioning. It’s a different system from most you may have come across, but I have the schematics here.”

Quinn passed Harper a Padd and he read through it. Quinn wasn’t wrong about the transporter being unusual. Harper spent a few minutes studying the schematics, um’ing and ahh’ring as he read.

“Do you think you can get it running ?” Quinn enquired.

“Piece of cake.” Harper replied.

By now the rest of Quinn’s ‘men’ had started to come forward, several of them supporting their wounded colleagues. In total there were eight wounded and twelve fully fit, three of them women. Only one was dressed in the same armour as Quinn and she approached him. The rest were dressed in various forms of standard Starfleet uniforms.

“This is my colleague and right-hand, Sam Hoffman.” Quinn introduced the young lady.

“Hoffman…” Harper started to say, before Beka nudged him in the ribs.

“You sound as if you’ve heard the name before ?” Sam stated.

“No….” Harper lied. “I just like to repeat the names of women I meet from time to time, just so I don’t forget.”

“Indeed, so you’re one of those…” Quinn remarked. “Sam, check our weapons count and see how many of the wounded can at least hold a phaser pistol.”

“Yes sir.” Sam said, walking away towards the ship.

t’Pek was already running a medical tricorder over the injured and Beka and Trance moved three of them inside the ship. Sam and those who could still walk came back towards Quinn, awaiting their next orders.

“What’s our status ?” Quinn requested.

“We’ve got three with serious injures and another three who have minor injuries.” Sam reported. “We’ve got five phaser rifles with about a quarter charge each and about a dozen phaser pistols.”

“How many guns do you have Captain ?” Quinn enquired.

For the first time since they’d landed, Jack felt he had the upper hand. Ever since they had landed, Quinn had been barking orders and taking command.

“I think you might want to check the cargo crates we brought with us.” Jack suggested, as a smile crossed his face.

Quinn walked over to the two crates Harper and Beka had unloaded and opened the closest. Inside were the medical packs they had brought with them.

“Oh Fascinating” Quinn remarked. “Medical supplies !“

“Look underneath.” Jack suggested.

Moving the medical supplies to one side, Quinn discovered that the crate had a false bottom. Removing it, he discovered a surprise hidden beneath, Phaser rifles and plasma grenades. They had been heavily shielded, which was why none of the patrols had picked them up.

“Klass thought you might need some fresh supplied.” Jack remarked.

Quickly they removed the fresh weapons and armed themselves, placing the medical supplies back in the crate, before gathering around Quinn who laid out his plan.

“Right, here’s the plan. Because these people couldn’t afford a transporter system, we’ll need to use the cargo transporter in the storage bay. The cargo bay is only one deck up, but most of our routes have been cut off due to battle damage or are heavily guarded. All the Jefferies tubes have been decompressed and sealed off, so we have only one option. We’ll have to fight our way up to the storage bay through the corridors.” Quinn stated. “Our only point of access to deck six is the turbolift shaft down the corridor.”

“Sir, how do we avoid being hit by a lift cab ?” One of Quinn’s men asked.

“That will be upto Mister Harper.” Quinn replied, nodding towards Harper. “He’s our tech guy for this mission, as Dennis took a pretty big hit.”

Harper raised is hand and smiled.

“Hi.” He said.

“We will make our way across this deck towards the turbolift, hopefully the Commando forces will still be tied up with those false phaser signals Dennis set up on the sensor grid, so there shouldn’t be any resistance. Harper will be overriding the lift system and once we’re sure that the turboshaft is clear, we’ll climb up to deck six.” Quinn continued. “Once we’re on deck six, things may start to get messy. We’ll need to get past our own barricades and head for the storage bay. Once we’re inside, we’ll barricade ourselves in and hold our ground until Harper can get the cargo transporter working.”

“What happens if this Harper guy can’t get the transporter working ?” The same guy asked.

“We’ll cross that bridge if we get to it. But if we intend to make something of all this we need that technology and from the state of their ship, if the overload doesn’t work then we will be fried without it” Quinn continued.

“Overload ?” Jack asked.

“Once Harper has the transporter working, we’ll transfer all the cargo back here, where it can be loaded onto the ship.” Quinn continued not listening to Stryker. “Sam will remain here and ensure that the Commandos don’t overrun the docking bay and our only means of escape. As soon as we leave, she’ll seal the doors. Once the cargo is back here, she’ll start loading it onto the ship. Sam, take Hobbs, Crockett and Miller, they’d just slow us down otherwise. Take Fredricks as well, he appears to be a little sceptical about this mission.”

“Yes Sir.” Sam and the others all stated in unison.

“Captain Stryker, I expect you and your crew to keep up and do their job” Quinn added. “Any further questions ?”

There was nothing but silence.

“Then if you’re ready Captain, let’s go.” Quinn announced.

Captain Stryker, Beka, Trance and Harper followed the twelve Starfleet officers past the makeshift barricade and out into the corridors of the Starbase.