Chapter Two
The room was
pretty large, larger than Burnel expected. There was a big window which let in
a lot of light and two single-beds. One of them was occupied. It was an
Asian-looking woman holding an old-fashion paperback novel in her hands. She
was dressed in a white t-shirt and light blue shorts, her stomach face-down on
the bed. She looked up at Burnel and smiled.
"Hi!"
"Hi,"
Burnel dumped her bag onto the other bed.
The woman stood
up and put out her hand: "My name's Diane. Lieutenant Diane Lee, it's nice to meet you."
"Lieutenant
Sylvia Burnel…I just got here." She said, taking Lee's hand. This startled
her, she stared, wide-eyed, at the bionic prosthetic which was used to replace
Burnel's disintegrated forearm and hand.
"Whoa,"
She breathed. "What happened to arm?"
Burnel smiled:
"I was on an away-team and I was hit by a high-power energy blast…My
forearm was disintegrated."
"Why didn't
you replace the destroyed arm with a more…uh…realistic one?" Lee asked
carefully.
"Nah,"
Burnel shrugged. "I like it better this way."
"Oh,"
Lee decided not to pursue the matter any further.
Burnel found her
uniform neatly folded in the closet that was assigned to her. She neatly sorted
her clothes in the same closet and then let herself fall on her bed.
"You ready
for tomorrow?" Lee asked, sitting cross-legged on her bed.
"I hope I
will be," Burnel said. "I'll need to have a real good sleep tonight;
it's been a long day."
"I haven't
seen you in the complex before…When did you get here?" Lee asked.
"Just
today," Burnel smiled.
Lee frowned:
"Where did you undergo your training?"
"Well…"
Burnel quickly came up with a simple cover story. "I've been a member of
Intelligence for a while already, but not a true operative. By mistake I was
put on active-duty and I've been active the last few months. The guys at the
top preferred to have me pass a real test of my abilities before letting me
continue working as an operative."
"Aaah…I get it." Lee nodded, and then smiled.
"Should I consider you lucky or unlucky?"
"I don't
know…" Burnel smiled back. "We'll see won't we?"
Lee nodded.
"Well, I
think I'll get some rest…" Burnel said, lying down on her bed.
"Okay,"
Lee went back to reading her book. "See you in a minute…"
* * *
The next morning,
Burnel woke up at oh-six hundred hours. She went down to the empty gym room and
got onto the exercise bike. At oh-six hundred fifteen hours she got off the
bike and went to the leg press where she lifted the sixty kilo weights one
hundred times. After that, her legs were tired so she walked around the
courtyard once to relax the muscles. When she got back to the gym room she
found another officer there.
He had short,
dirty blond hair, green eyes and flashed a boyish smile as soon as she entered
the gym.
"Good morning!"
He said.
She wiped her
forehead with a towel and said: "Hi,"
The man was
pedaling steadily on one of the exercise bikes: "You always get up this
early? I haven't seen you around here before…"
"That's
because it's my first time down here," She explained as she picked up a
weight with her left arm and began exercising with it. "I came in
yesterday."
"Yesterday…"
He repeated with a frown. "How can that be?"
She told him her
cover story and he nodded his understanding: "Yeah, I see."
"…And what about you?" She asked. "Have you
been here long?"
"My first
year in special operative training," He grinned. "I count myself
lucky…There are guys I know here who've been here three years. They've already
failed the test twice."
Burnel nodded:
"Yeah…"
"You feel up
to the training today?"
"I don't
know what to expect, really…" She admitted.
"People have
been saying it'll be different than anything we've trained for before…"
The guy said. "Before it was just physical and tactical training…Now we'll
be doing--you know--the shadowy stuff."
The two last
words made Burnel smile: "I see,"
"The
veterans have been telling us that…Dunno if it's to
warn us or to scare us." He smiled, his eyes came upon her right arm and
he blinked in surprise: "Hey, what's with your right arm?"
She explained
what had happened and he winced in sympathy, approximately at the same time
that she ended her story, his bike beeped to signal he had completed the
exercise and he jumped off the bike: "By the way," He said coming
towards her and holding out his sweaty palm. "I'm Ensign David Mann, call
me Dave."
"I'm
Lieutenant Sylvia Burnel," She took his hand and shook it. "Call me
Sylvia."
"See you
around, then." He smiled and left the gym, leaving her alone.
* * *
The first class
began at oh-eight hundred hours after a light breakfast in the mess hall. In
auditorium one there was only 20 seats that contained a bunch of the officers
in training. Burnel took a seat next to her roommate, Diane Lee, and the
professor entered at oh-eight hundred ten hours. It was a middle-aged woman
with shoulder-length brown hair and dark eyes that scanned everyone in the room
before she began the class.
"I'm
Commander Sarah Clover, I shall be your main instructor during the next few
weeks along with Commander Small whom some of you already know. Today we shall
be training our infiltration skills."
Burnel felt the
rush of excitement run through the officers, infiltration was exciting
business.
"We'll head
for the four Holodecks, now." Clover said. "You will be divided into
four groups with five members per group. You will be given a mission that you
will have to prepare for and complete. The program was written by Rear-Admiral
Patrickson himself so expect to find some of his…his style in the
program."
Some of the
officers smiled, Burnel certainly did.
Clover divided
the officers into four groups of five. Burnel was in the same team as Diane,
which made her more comfortable. Also in her group were two other men
lieutenants, the one with black hair was called Dan and the other was a Bolian named Reff. The last
member of the group was a small woman--her name was Sandra--with brown hair
that had stayed silent during the whole briefing.
Clover came to
their group first to give them the rules of the game.
"Your
mission is a simple one: First, you will have to prepare for your mission,
choose the correct equipment, weapons etc…Next you will beam down to a facility
on a planet where you will have to extract a captured operative from his
underground prison.
They all nodded
and Clover, satisfied, opened the door to the holodeck and let them enter. They
were standing in a holographic runabout; there were piles of equipment stacked
all over the place and Clover said: "The mission has begun, take your time
to prepare…But don't waste too much time. The life of an operative is at
stake." She winked. "Good luck."
The doors closed
and faded out of existence. Dan had been named leader of the group for this
mission and began instantly.
"Okay, here
is one of the mission briefings…With a map." He studied the information
before continuing. "The complex is not so big; it shouldn't be a problem
searching it."
Diane was looking
over his shoulder and frowned: "Are you sure? It still is pretty
big…"
"Quiet!"
He snapped.
Diane blinked.
"First of
all, I'm in command." He told her. "Second of all, because I'm in
command you should call me "sir" all the time."
She sighed:
"Of course…"
He frowned and
returned to his briefing with Diane shaking her exasperated head behind him:
"We can't beam underground directly so we'll have to beam in on the ground
level…I'd suggest somewhere around here." He pointed to a location on the
map and Reff nodded his blue head upon seeing the
area.
"Agreed,"
Said the Bolian. "It should provide us with
sufficient visual protection from the guards."
"Okay…I
don't suppose we'll be running into any guards if we're careful, so I'd suggest
bringing down some light weapons." Dan picked up a compact stealth rifle
and loaded it. The compact stealth rifles had poor firepower but allowed more
freedom of movement, less noise upon firing and were much lighter. "Take type-1
phasers in your pockets as a precaution."
They picked up
their weapons and Dan continued: "Next, I'd suggest one of us takes a
tricorder with the map programmed into the memory so we can position
ourselves."
"I'll take
care of that," Diane picked up a tricorder and transferred the map of the
facility into the memory.
Burnel spoke up:
"Info tells us that the doors of the prison are heavy…The stealth rifles
won't be enough to open them."
"We'll need some
explosives." Reff smiled. "I'll take'em."
"It should
be the middle of the night on the planet now…" Diane said. "We should
take NVG and thermal goggles."
"We'll look
stylish then…" Reff rolled his eyes.
"Agreed,"
Dan nodded.
They put on their
goggles and activated them.
"Okay,"
Dan checked the time. "Are we ready?"
"I think
so…It's a bit quick and dirty but it should do." Diane shrugged.
"We put on
our black uniforms, helmets and we go." Dan said.
A few minutes
later, they were ready.
* * *
It was the middle
of the night, but for the five members of the infiltration team the world was
displayed in shades of grey thanks to the NVG that they wore.
Dan motioned to
the rest of the team to follow him and they did. They had been beamed down
behind a large pillar in the courtyard of the facility and were not moving
towards the location on Diane's tricorder that showed the stairs to the lower
level.
"It's
quiet…" Reff whispered...his voice amplified
in the helmet comm.
"It's a
holodeck, idiot." Diane said with a smile.
They never saw it
coming…
The pulse of
energy flew across the courtyard at such a speed that it would have been
impossible to catch a glimpse of it. It hit Diane's stomach from the right; she
crashed into the wall to her left and collapsed to the ground.
"Cover!"
Burnel heard Dan snap into the comm. Dan and Sandra who were at the head of the
group dashed towards a pillar in the distance and took cover behind it. Meanwhile,
Reff and Burnel went back to the pillar behind which
they had beamed in, Burnel grabbed Diane by the collar and dragged her across
the sandy ground of the courtyard.
"Does
anyone see who's shooting?" Reff asked,
glancing beyond the pillar to try to catch a glimpse of the shooter.
"Negative,"
Said Dan. "Sylvia?"
"Nothing…"
She said. "I'm switching on thermal vision…"
The world
changed, now everything Burnel could see was of different colors. These goggles
were calibrated for heat-detection so any cold color (blue, green) would
represent a cool object and any heat-source would be shown as a warm color
(red, yellow).
And she saw them…
"I've got
two heat-sources at ten' o'clock…You have them?"
A few moments
later Dan answered: "Got'em…"
"Do we
have a shot?" Reff asked.
Dan said: "Burnel,
ready yourself…I'll get the one closest to the door…You get the other."
"Ready…"
She said when the shape of her enemy was positioned right in the middle of her
thermal scope.
Suddenly, she
heard a hollow metallic sound coming from her left. She lowered her stealth
rifle and tried to find the source of the sound.
Dan fired and
said: "Nailed him…" into the comm.
"Photon grenade!" Burnel suddenly exclaimed upon
seeing the small cylindrical object. "Take cover!"
The noise that
the grenade made on detonation was a loud energy discharge, the blinding flash
of white light made Burnel's thermal goggles go haywire and switch off
automatically. She pulled off the goggles and blinked a few times to try to
steady her self...
"They're
coming straight at us!" Burnel heard Dan shout in the comm as she ripped off her thermal goggles and reactivated
the NVGs. "It's going to heat up!"
There were
several phaser blasts, Burnel was still dazed by the photon grenade but she
managed to pick up her stealth rifle and fire a few blind shots.
Diane was still
unconscious and Reff--who had been wearing his NVGs--still couldn't see anything. He gripped his rifle but
did nothing.
"Dan what's
going on?" Burnel asked.
"There
are two of them left…They tried to storm to our side but I managed to get one
of them. They still managed to stun Sandra, though…Now they've taken cover
somewhere…"
"Somewhere?" She grunted. "My thermal goggles
have switched off; you'll have to use your own. I can't see them."
"Understood,
meanwhile why don't you see if you can get around the courtyard without being
seen…If we can attack them from both sides, they're history..."
"Okay,"
She informed Reff of her plan, his vision was slowly
returning and he promised to guard Diane and make sure the enemies didn't come
close. Then she crawled swiftly along the sandy ground in the shadows towards
the opposite side of the courtyard.
Her NVGs didn't give her any of the valuable thermal
information but she had a pretty good idea of where the enemies were. Their
phaser fire was coming from behind a large statue in the middle of the
courtyard.
A few seconds
later, she had a visual.
"Dan,"
She whispered. "I see them…There are two of them, as you said. One of them
is down."
"Get
their attention, I'll run along the wall and attack them from the other side."
"Aye,"
She raised her rifle and aimed at the nearest enemy. The digital zoom of the
rifle gave her a close-up image of the man and she aimed at the middle of his
back.
She was about to
pull the trigger when suddenly she stopped…
"Sylvia,
what's up? Are you okay?" She heard Dan's voice say in her helmet.
"Hold your
fire, Dan."
"What?"
"Hold your
fire!" She snapped. "Those aren't enemies…"
"What the
hell are you talking about?"
"Hey!"
She shouted across the courtyard, the enemies turned to look at her. "Hey, Dave! What the hell are you doing here?"
The man she had
been aiming at removed his helmet and stared at her disbelievingly:
"Sylvia?" It was indeed Dave Mann whom she had met before in the gym.
"Weren't you
supposed to be in another holodeck?" She asked, approaching them.
"Weren't you?"
He smiled. "What's the meaning of this?"
The scene faded
away and the ten officers found themselves back in the grid of the holodeck.
"Okay,"
Clover entered the holodeck, nodding her approval. "Everybody head back to
auditorium One on the double."