Five women dressed in the black and white of a modern starfighter pilot and one dressed in the tatters of an older-style Starfleet uniform were staked out around their small shack near the center of the prison courtyard, hunkered down behind barrels, peering out from windows and doors, hidden beneath hastily stacked piles of debris, waiting. The Lazon sun climbed higher in the dusty sky and the temperature rose, but they didn't dare let up their vigilance. Out in the rest of the old prison compound, all was quiet, but Carter knew that the inmates were gathering to strike. They couldn't steal the Banshee fighters outright because of Alex's booby traps, so they'd have no choice but to come after them in hopes of finding a deactivation control. Even if they got the control, they still wouldn't have the deactivation code, snickered Carter.
After their escape from Halfnose, they had recovered all their equipment, including their combat tricorders, which made the present situation a little easier. Any approaching inmates would be automatically detected by the devices, plus Sam was keeping her cybernetically-enhanced senses on the lookout as well.
Carter caught Max's sudden hand signal with her peripheral vision and tensed. Enemy sighted. She nodded at Jo across the shack's only room, who immediately began entering instructions into her tricorder.
Seconds later, the mayhem started. The wooden planks above Alex's head shattered with a loud crash under the impact of a small projectile and rained splinters and sawdust down on her head. Jazz poked her head out from behind the front door and got a bead on the origin of the attack. She fired her phaser at a pile of large steel barrels and was rewarded with a large explosion. That was all hell's cue to break loose.
The air was suddenly thick with orange phaser beams and lavender Cardassian weapons fire, all criss-crossing back and forth across the compound. The noise from the projectile weapons was deafening, but at least it served to partially drown out the noise of screaming and dying men. Each hit on the Banshees' shack blasted away another piece, until Carter began to wonder how much longer it could remain standing.
Several foolishly-bold inmates were making a run for the shack, weapons blazing, but they were stopped short when they were cut down by some well-aimed phaser fire from Max and Sam. No sooner were they down however, than another group rushed forward. These were taken care of by converging fire from Alex and Carter. Meanwhile, Jazz was on the opposite side of the building facing yet another onrushing suicide squad. Each group was stopped in their tracks by one of the Banshees, but each time they got closer to the shack.
A mob of twenty or so maddened inmates was running wildly towards the shack within Carter's fire zone, and she began flattening them one by one. There wasn't enough time to get them all though, and with a mighty crash of cracking wood and masonry the survivors of Carter's gunnery smashed right through the shack's thin wall. Carter was knocked backwards by the impact and landed flat on her back, the concussion knocking the wind out of her and causing her phaser to fly from her grasp and skitter across the floor to come to a rest against Jazz's boot heel.
Carter raised her arms in defense against a hulking attacker, a red-scaled reptilian humanoid, who was about to take advantage of her helplessness. He raised his weapon, an old Cardassian disruptor rifle with a homemade bayonet lashed to the muzzle, and prepared to plunge it into his victim's chest. He never got a chance to follow through on that motion however, as a phaser beam sizzled into his back from across the room. With a startled grunt he toppled over, dead before he hit the ground. Carter put down her arms and looked in surprise across the room to see Jazz with phaser in hand. She'd just saved her life; perhaps she had soul left after all.
There was no time for philosophical debates however; the inmates smelled blood and were pressing in on all sides. Jazz quickly tossed Carter's phaser back to her and turned back to defending her side of the shack. Carter deftly caught it and did the same. As she fired indiscriminately into the attacking crowd, she yelled over her shoulder at Jo, who was still crouched in one corner working her tricorder. "Hurry up, Lieutenant! We can't cover you forever!"
In response, Jo looked up from her tricorder and gave the thumbs-up sign.
At the same instant, Carter could hear from somewhere outside the unmistakable roar of starfighter engines, and seconds later the explosions began. After the defenders finished off the attackers closest to the shack, suddenly there was a pause in the onslaught. Carter risked a look outside, and was amazed by what she saw.
A single Banshee fighter was zooming by overhead, making repeated strafing runs across the prison grounds around their shack. Inmates had dropped their weapons and were fleeing willy-nilly in every direction, desperately trying to escape getting blown to bits by the starfighter's phaser cannons. It didn't take more than a few minutes before all enemies were either fled or dead. The Banshees had cheated death once again, against odds hundreds-to-one.
Cautiously at first, the six women emerged from their blasted refuge and witnessed the destruction. High overhead, the instrument of that destruction, a lone Banshee flying on remote control, circled in a holding pattern, while beneath, the ground was peppered with charred blast holes and strewn with smoking bodies and body parts.
"Looks like their attack went all to pieces," quipped Jo sadly, eyeing the human debris. She pocketed her combat tricorder, which she had used to remotely pilot her starfighter for the attack.
Carter sighed. So much waste, and all because of a lack of trust. If the dead inmates had only believed her when she told them that a rescue ship was coming none of this would have happened. "Jo, get that Banshee down here. It's time we got the hell out of here."
An hour later, the Banshees, including Jazz, had picked up the other four fighters and flown them to a safe location elsewhere on Lazon II to await the arrival of the rescue mission from Serenity.
back to TOC