Clubland Jazz

Posted on Mon Jan 17th, 2022 @ 2:18pm by Commander Kaleetha Sloan (*) & Executive Officer Jake Ford & Chief Helmsman Kalahaeia t'Leiya & Chief Engineer Michael Burnstein & Liha t'Ehhelih & Angel Ramirez & Curtis Vaan

Mission: Mission 14: Holoworld
Location: SS Holoworld
Timeline: MD 05 20:00
7132 words - 14.3 OF Standard Post Measure

Kaleetha led the small group along the grander hallways to a huge cavern of a room that held one of the nightclubs, or in this case the only nightclub that was not filled with parts of the ship that should be in place in the walls and ceiling. The compartment was half holodeck with the familiar black and yellow grids and half a huge bar and stage. It looked like whoever had designed this area had thought about it and the issue that might have happened if the simulation failed mid-party. It was dark and dingy, but as soon as the rest of the group stepped through it lit up, revealing what could potentially be a large club.

"Please select a club option," the computer announced. Kaleetha went to the console, but as she attempted to select a theme for the club nothing happened.

"It never activated with either of us," Kaleetha commented, glancing at Kalahaeia. Both of them had to be thinking about what it was about them that was not allowing the ship to recognise them. "And it is not letting me pick a theme. Going to have to let one of you.'' She stepped back with a flourish towards the SS Mary Rose crew.

Kali nodded back at Kaleetha; but glared at the unactivated area around them for a moment; recalling their various attempts to make it, or others, respond.

Angel looked at the others and shrugged. “I’ll give it a try,” he said, walking over to the console. He perused the list of options.

"There was this one place I used to work at on New Vegas," Jake interrupted, peering over Angel's shoulder. "The Helix Nights Club. Had a whole casino attached and everything. Entertainment, gambling, women..." he winked at the other man sneakily. "Let's give it a try."

Angel smiled. “Helix Nights Club it is,” he said, picking out the selection. “Let’s see what we get…”

As soon as the button was pressed the whole make up of the place changed from the bare and basic set up to something quite fantastic. The club looked huge with several levels above them with people dancing in balconies above and below them as they stood on the first floor.

Below them, several large booths were occupied by separate groups on the ground floor who, after having had quite a few drinks, seem to be trying to prove which group is best at a game that was on the table, but Kaleetha could not see what it was. The other, smaller tables were also occupied by people who were clearly having a good time. Even most of the stools at the bar were occupied, though nobody seemed to mind more company. Kaleetha closed her eyes, sending herself somewhere familiar for a moment with the loud music and the smell of alcohol that hit her.

The setting was packed, but it gave off an aura of people enjoying themselves. “There is so much to take in,” Kaleetha said above the loud music.

"And tune out," Liha practically shouted back, fitting sound deadening plugs into her ears. If anyone required proof that other humanoids had inferior hearing, the sound level they preferred in clubs should be all the proof needed.

Burnie had to agree on there being a lot. He wasn't normally one for crowds, so this was not exactly his idea of a great club, but he knew he was generally in the minority on that opinion, and as a result had gotten fairly good at tuning all that out. His mind had been on the puzzle of why the two passengers weren't recognized and returned there. The obvious theory was that . Of course, good design would limit it to only crew, but given Kali's opinion of the design, 'good' might be assuming a lot. Still, the lazy programming option would be to lock it to crew, which suggested there must be something else. All they had in common was Starfleet and Romulan heritage, and Jake was former Starfleet, so... "Why don't you try turning it down a bit?"
passenger recognition had been disabled to prioritize crew commands when the ship hit emergency status.

Liha nodded. "With pleasure." She approached the console. "Computer, reduce crowd size and sound levels by fifty percent. And change the music setting to jazz," she added, deciding that if she had to listen to Human music, she should at least get to pick a decent genre.

The computer responded without hesitation. Reducing the crowd allowed a lot more space below Kaleetha, making her turn to listen to the music. “Cannot say I like the music much, but much better than before.” Jazz was not her jam at all.

"At least it's quieter." Kali sighed with relief, her face relaxing slightly from the scrunched up discomfort it had taken on with the loud music earlier. She had a set of audio filters like Liha had just brought out; but hers were in the backpack of stuff she'd left on the Mary Rose; it wasn't exactly an item she'd expected to need aboard a derelict that refused to turn anything on...until it had. Her eyes narrowed as a particularly annoying thought crossed her mind and she glanced over at Kaleetha. "Wonder if the damn replicators that wouldn't work for us would work for them all, too. We might've been eating weird sandwiches for nothing."

Angel had been enjoying the loud music, though of course it was probably detrimental to what they were doing here. When the club emptied and the music switched to jazz. It wasn’t really his genre, but it was adjacent to some of what he grew up with, like Louis Prima.

“So what are we looking for here?” Angel asked as they surveyed the club.

Burnie had found one thing, or rather eliminated one possibility, which gave further support to his working theory that passengers had been locked out of accessing the system. He smiled a little at the change in the club though. Fewer 'people' was a lot more comfortable for him, and while jazz wasn't his top pick, he did like it. He did have to wonder how well the ship's AI could read the person making a request though. Jazz was a broad musical category – everything from big band to blues to latin -- but the first song up wasn't the classic 'Take Five' but an updated cover of 'Mack the Knife' and he almost heard Liha humming along to it. "Anything that might give a clue to what's going on here. Though I think some of us wanted to find the way to the casino vault," he said, flashing a quick grin at Kali.

“Actually, my money was in the safe at the smaller gaming area I was playing at when we crashed.” Kali grinned back, then shrugged, Human style, with her shoulders. “Already got it, in fact. Not that I don’t think these asshats owe me a ton of money for this little incident; but I’d prefer to avoid prison, so I’m leaving the rest of people’s money in the vault. Not sure if it falls under salvage law like the rest of the ship or not.”

“Well, we would need to beam over some gear for a vault break,” Angel said with a smile. “We’ll play it by ear.”

Kaleetha said nothing other than to shake her head as she leaned against the railing watching people below. She looked like she was far away, but she was listening to the group. It had been her favourite thing to do on Starbase 612 on the promenade and then on Daucina in the marketplace. It was such an easy pastime to keep her mind busy, but that day she was using it to think on what it could mean that the salvagers – or better lack of a term to describe the crew of SS Mary Rose – were able to access the system whilst they could not.

"It might be simpler just to ask. Maybe Curtis can get the system to recognise us as having access..." Jake suggested, still taking in the club surroundings. It was like so many other places he had lived and worked in the past - long before he'd joined Rosie.

"We started the party without you, I am afraid, Ford. Seems everyone can get the ship working other than us," Kaleetha apologised to the man as she returned to the table that the group had decided to sit on as she spotted the executive join them. "Mister Burnstein, you can play this game. Why would a ship lock out passengers in an emergency but let salvagers access it?" she said in a questioning tone.

"Typically, passenger recognition might be disabled to prioritize crew commands when a ship hits emergency status," Burnie replied, though he imagined everyone would already know that. "But lockout by passenger list rather restricting to only crew is weird. It's a lot easier for a cruise ship to maintain a crew list than to revise the passenger list for each trip."

“And it still wouldn’t explain how we got access,” Angel added. “And where are the other passengers anyway? They should have either been secured in suite during the emergency or gone to emergency pods for escape, especially if the ship was going down like this.”

"It doesn't," Burnie agreed. "But the reason passengers would disappear is usually pirate slavers, but we haven't seen any evidence of a battle, and if they showed up after the crash the ship would have been stripped, which it wasn't. Of course, they might have just gathered escape pods, but leaving a luxury liner without checking for high-end salvage? That seems unlikely."

Liha nodded. "Something else is going on here. If we had intel connections, I'd try pulling the passenger list and looking for likely targets. Crashing a cruise ship would be a great way to assassinate someone without it looking like an assassination because of the number of casualties." Her eyes shifted around the scene. "Though disappearing everyone would be a classic Tal'Shiar move to get at high-value non-Romulan targets."

“There were, actually, not one but two different Romulan delegations aboard in fact.” Kali glanced at Liha, but any suggestion in anyone’s mind that such might be in play fell flat with her follow-on words. “But I can basically guarantee that the Tal’Shiar wasn’t behind this. If they were, no way in hell whatever they might’ve done with the passengers and crew who managed to survive the crash would have left me behind; pretty sure they consider those charges of treason leveled against my parents — and me, later, despite being born in the Federation; once I’d joined the Federation fleet — to still be active.” She glared at one wall. “Not to mention they probably still consider me an interesting intelligence target, even ten years out of date.” She glanced at Burnie with that part, and shrugged again, blithely moving on with no regard to the set of interesting or abrupt questions and information shifts she had just provided anyone who knew enough to read the possibilities implied by parts of her statements. “Pirates or slavers was actually my first hypothesis; more likely to have left a couple of unconscious people behind after not checking that carefully for life signs. But that’s a good point about the salvage. Would have expected them to come back for it by now.” Kali sighed in frustration.

"Pirates or slavers wouldn't have passed-up a semi-working holoship, though. Way too valuable," Jake observed.

“Were we able to pull a passenger manifest?” Angel asked. He hadn’t been on the team that went to the bridge.

"Not yet. We had some folks working on it, but the computer wasn't playing ball. Curtis thought there might be some corrupted sectors of the main computer core, but getting physical access to those in order to confirm isn't straightforward," Jake explained. He glanced at Kali. "At a guess, I'd say you'd probably have already identified potential internal threats before you even boarded. And if there's nothing on your radar, then we're flying blind from that perspective."

“You’re…not wrong about that.” Kali looked back at Jake, and while sheepish wasn’t generally an emotional state or reaction associated with Romulans, it was absolutely one hundred percent the expression on Kali’s face and the tone in her voice at the moment: Someone at SFI had, in fact, briskly waved a copy of the manifests in front of her before she’d accepted this ill-fated contract, and she’d seen no one on it she felt was a particular threat, nor had they flagged anyone for her themselves, beyond the general ‘watch the Romulan delegations’ task they’d paid her for. “Though, if there does turn out to be physical damage to the core...” She pursed her lips, and the former intelligence officer gave way again to the former pilot. “Question would be, did it result from the crash, or predate it? If something else caused it earlier, the damage might’ve been a contributing cause itself even. Hard to keep control of something this large without the computer assisting.” The pursed lips compressed into an annoyed frown. “Though, Burnie had a point earlier on your ship, on the flight recorder data. Weird as hell for that to be scrambled too. It shouldn’t be dependent on the condition of the main core like the main system data is.”

Burnie nodded. "Yeah, flight data being corrupted is really unlikely unless the company that runs this completely flouted every safety reg, and paid off inspectors to look the other way." His eyes shifted around the space, much as Liha's had done earlier. "Which suggests sabotage, though why is the question. A new luxury pleasure ship is an odd target, unless the owners were overextended and really needed the insurance pay out. But that would be the last ditch – a crash with only two survivors would majorly impact sales for any other cruise they run."

"And they'd have had it discovered right off to be able to make the claim," Liha added, mulling all of this information, particularly about the small Romulan that Burnie seemed to know. Being former SFI and born in the Federation placed her to some extent, but that was a fact to be filed away for later. Right now, the fact that she was still here and the Romulan delegation was not suggested it wasn't Tal'Shiar action, though leaving one obvious target to deflect suspicion wasn't outside the realm of possibility for them. However, there were groups other than the Free State Tal'Shiar to consider and the fact that the official delegation was gone, but of all other passengers a Romulan and a hybrid had been spared. That was beyond what she could accept even if she believed in coincidence. Which she didn't. A hand fell within easy reach of a knife as she weighed another possibility: the two survivors were actually working together and had orchestrated all of this. She regarded them steadily. "I would say the most likely cause is sabotage, not by the owners, but by passengers whose agenda is as yet unknown."

“Chill.” Kali rolled her eyes slightly at Liha, noting the subtle movement and the slightly too steady gaze on her suddenly and reading the implication quite clearly. “I’m not anywhere near that good, and I’m entirely uninterested in having risked my own life to bring down this piece of fluff even if I was. I suppose that’s not an impossible theory about some passenger though; but regardless of how much I think their supplies sucked, I’d still hope they’d have secured the main core against any random nitwit. If there was any sabotage involved, crew would be more likely than a passenger, I’d think, to have been able to gain access. Still, beats me what anyone’s motive would’ve been for it.“

Kali started counting off on her fingers like she had in the early days after the crash milling on the cause with Kaleetha. “Most commercial insurance these days is sold by the Ferengi, and they really will find any excuse not to pay out. Pirates and the like should have come back for the ship and salvage by now. Assassins after a specific target…Eh, possible, but just too weird to make all the bodies vanish or kidnap the rest or whatever and leave two people behind. Two is a weird, weird number if your goal is to make it look like an accident.” One hand struck the side of a nearby holographic piano, but not hard enough to be more than petty frustration. “I suppose it could have actually been an accident for all we know, even, but just…I dunno. It just feels weird.” She thought back to the comment Kaleetha had made in those same early days of analyzing their situation after the crash, about wondering if any survivors had evacuated to a nearby moon that was supposedly inhabitable, her mind flitting wildly from various pieces of data and questions to the next like a pinball. “Oh! Don’t suppose any of you noticed if there were any life signs on that moon nearby, or not?”

A slanted eyebrow tipped upward skeptically. "That's a lot of excuses for someone who isn't guilty," Liha remarked, not chilling in the slightest. "Isn't there some Earth phrase about protesting too much?"

Burnie sighed; he should have seen this coming. "There is, but in this case I know her and she's telling the truth."

"As far as you know," Liha noted stubbornly, eyes cutting between the two survivors.

“Oh, for Pete’s sake.” Kali’s eye roll was rather larger this time, but she wasn’t really at all surprised either that nothing had allayed the other woman’s suspicion. “If I ever learned to protest too much it’s probably because I’ve spent half a century being accused by every Tom, Dick, and Harry around!” Now, the volume of Kali’s own voice was rising slightly, the tone destabilizing a bit in the way it can when someone touches on an old, deep hurt, in this case of someone who’d been accused of being an enemy spy or the like or of not belonging since they were in primary school by parties as varied as strangers on the street to classmates and colleagues, though she took a sudden deeper breath after that, one hand clenching nails into her palm, and her tone steadied again. “But I’m assuming that’s a no on any life signs on the moon, then?” She sighed, glancing at the rest of the group.

Kaleetha looked at the pair and rolled her eyes. “Not sure anyone has had a chance to answer, as you two have just gone on in your own way.”

Kali’s face blushed a deeper olive for a moment at this, silently accepting the point. It was…well, the one thing pretty much no one had ever accused her of was of having decent control of herself.

"Uh, yeah, no," Burnie answered, then realizing that might need clarification, added, "That is, we scanned for life signs in case escape pods had landed there and there was nothing. Sorry. It was a weird thing to bring up. Did you have any reason for thinking there might be life there? Hidden base or something? Because our scans could have missed that, especially if it was cloaked."

"Good point." Liha nodded. "I'd thought it was a throw away misdirection, but maybe there's more to it, something Starfleet is trying to hide. Or maybe something they were hoping to discover, to draw out." Her eyes cut back and forth between Kali and Kaleetha. "What aren't you telling us?"

Kaleetha could now understand why her mother had raised her Human instead of Romulan. It would be draining to be that suspicious all the time. It was making the science officer tired just watching it. She rubbed, annoyed at the mark on her collar bone where the communication pip had fused in the initial crash. It was a dull red scar more annoying than painful now thanks to medical treatment, but distracting. “So does anyone else have this view? Are we suspects?” Kaleetha asked calmly, looking at the crew of the ship. The woman had no skills as a Romulan, let alone an operative with enough skills to bring down a ship like the one she had been holidaying on. It all seemed circumstantial, but as a senior officer she felt the need to be a voice of reason and ask.

Burnie sighed inwardly. He knew Kali, or at least had known her, and didn't think she'd kill a shipload of civilians for an op. But she was apparently contracting for SFI, and he knew all too well there were people within that organization who would. Liha tended to be paranoid even for a Romulan, but that didn't mean she was wrong. "If I had to lay a bet, it would be against you two being responsible, but honestly, we can't discount it." He gave Kali an apologetic look. "If you were on my crew and it was Liha in your place, would you not be thinking the same thing?"

“Me? Probably.” Kali shrugged again. “But I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t be—“ Kali waved a hand slightly at Kaleetha and smiled at her. “So maybe consider that when you weigh the evidence, too. As for the moon thing, no, the question had zilch to do with any suspicion of a hidden cloaked base.“ Now Kali sounded incredulous, as if in this matter she was judging Liha’s level of paranoia with ridiculous disbelief. “It’s because early on, we—“ another expressive hand wave to Kaleetha, “mused on where the hell the rest of the people on board has gone, and other than taken by pirates or slavers’ the other going theory was took escape pods to the nearby moon. Since we’re trying to solve that question still, I thought it might be relevant to check while we’re all here.” Now Kali sounded more exhausted than angry and annoyed, the sort of rapid peak and fall she’d long been prone to occasionally.

"Hey, you popped that question at the end of a string of 'it could not be me' excuses, so even Mr. Trusting Human thought that's what you might mean," Liha retorted, jerking a thumb at Burnie. "As for the claim that Starfleet there wouldn't be suspicious if she were the one investigating, you're either claiming she's simple-minded or asking me to believe she's innocent because she's much better at acting clueless." The already lifted brow slanted up higher, her expression one that on a Human might be summed up with 'pull the other one, it has bells on'. The more the woman talked, the less Liha trusted her. Even if she'd grown up among Humans it was simply impossible to believe that a Romulan her age would make such pat assertions, expecting to be trusted by people she barely knew. A Romulan child of ten would know better.

Kali, fast losing patience with the endless accusations when the damn place had nearly killed her twice already, in the crash itself and in the structural collapse later, gave up entirely for the moment and looked over wearily at Kaleetha, though she doubted anything the other woman could say would mollify their would-be interrogator, either.

Kaleetha looked at Liha, concerned. “Do you never get tired of being so paranoid and thinking ten steps ahead?” the Starfleet officer asked, standing from where she had been sat and looked around. It was not like they could do anything with the ship not responding to them without someone from the crew with them, so she had no idea how they were meant to be doing anything.

It was the question of someone who'd never been hunted by the Tal'Shiar. Or wanted them to believe she had no knowledge of such. Liha gave her a withering look. "You might as well ask if I ever get tired of living."

With a sigh Kaleetha looked at the executive officer as she would in Starfleet, defaulting to him instead of just going around and around with paranoia. “Well, seeing your crew think that of us, best to lock us up in your brig or quarters,” she offered.

"Fighting gets us nowhere," Jake growled, shaking his head at the bickering women. As much as he would have potentially entertained the prospect of Liha and this other Romulan woman going toe-to-toe - it might have knocked Liha down a peg or two - they weren't exactly coming across well to their rescuees.

Kali facepalmed at Kaleetha’s last words; as suggestions and defenses went, 'why don’t you put us in jail?' wasn’t what she’d been expecting to be proposed, and she was quite certain the woman accusing them would find it agreeable to follow through on it. That the larger male didn't seem inclined to agree was the first piece of positive information in awhile here.

"No one's fighting. Trust me, you'd know if I decided to fight," Liha remarked. Cocking an eye at Jake, who obviously hadn't absorbed as much Romulan sense as she'd hoped, she frowned. "What I'm doing is asking questions - entirely sensible questions given the situation - which I would expect other Romulans to expect and even appreciate."

“Okay, let’s just everyone calm down and have a drink,” Angel said. He’d disappeared during the spat between the two Romulans and now returned with a tray of some tropical umbrella drinks. “We’re here, we’re at a club. What’s our next move? Dancing?” He smiled at Kala and Kaleetha as he handed the two attractive women drinks.

Kaleetha ignored the drink. It was not the time for someone trying to peace keep when emotions were so high. “No, thank you.” Instead, she picked up the tricorder that was on the table, scanning herself and then Kala. She frowned, ignoring the rest of the group as she looked at Kali. “Did you get hurt by your combadge?” Kaleetha asked her fellow survivor.

Kali, surprisingly, did not ignore the drink, and instead flashed a small smile at Angel. Charming someone in this group might potentially be about the only way they stayed out of an undeserved stint in lockup at this point, and she was far less willing to deal with that than her companion seemed to be. She took only the smallest of sips, though; if he wanted to get them in a vulnerable spot without a fight, well, sedative in a drink would be a good way to do it, but hard to pull off if she didn't indulge much in it. At Kaleetha's question, she frowned slightly, considering. "Maybe? I kept mine in my pants pocket, and I've been assuming I must've landed on something wrong while I was unconscious or something to short it out." She fingered a small, singed hole in the pocket at the hip of the black leggings she was wearing. "Just one more way this place has flipped me the bird over the last week. I liked these pants."

Any other time Kaleetha would have flirted or made a witty comment about scanning someone’s back pocket, but she did it without question. “Mine shorted too,” she commented, moving her tee to the side to show the singe mark.

"Wait. What are you seeing on the tricorder readings?" Burnie asked, grateful for a change of topic. He'd been kicking himself for asking something that had spiked Liha's paranoia, but it had been an honest question. He knew Kali and remembered some of the things SFI had been involved in, so that unexpected 'hey, did anyone check the moon?' had made him think it had something to do with more than escape pods. Besides, she knew him; how could she even think he wouldn't have checked there for life signs? "A simple short shouldn't erase someone from recognition. That could ruin a vacation cruise with one spilled drink."

“I do not know,” the woman replied, putting the tricorder down for him to look at if he wished. It was like some bio matter around both the wounds that would not have registered unless she was forcing the subject, but it was like nothing she had seen before. “I do think we should get back to your ship though.” She did not trust her gut most of the time; it overruled common sense and logic, but something about why she was seeing did not sit well with her.

The fact that the normally calm Jake was feeling a creeping sense of paranoia as well about this whole thing was equally unsettling to him. Staring around the casino, hearing the music, he should have felt more comfortable. But everything about it just felt...off. Wrong. And they weren't likely to be prepared for anything to turn sour.

"Maybe regrouping on the ship is a good idea," he said cautiously. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed something. There were various holographic hosts filling out the casino and making it feel busier. None of them really paid much attention to the group of visitors, as per their programming. They were background characters for a reason, naturally. He leaned over to look beyond a bank of games machines, trying to get a better look.

"Wait, that can't be right..." he muttered, spotting a familiar face. Dressed in a period dress, complete with bonnet and book in her hand, he could see one of the characters from Eden's Austenworld scenario moving around between some of the other characters.

"What?" Kali followed the direction of Jake's glance, flicking her eyes rapidly at the area in question, then the rest of the room, just in case, then back to Jake; one hand moving ever so slightly like Liha's had earlier to a position near the access point to draw her knife if need be, making sure she had a quick and easy draw on the one weapon she still possessed if whatever he'd spotted turned out to be a threat. "Something wrong?" For once, she didn't append a sarcastic 'besides all the things we already know are' or such to the comment; seeming to snap into a level of focus and professionalism at a potentially imminent threat that had eluded her earlier.

Angel put his drink down to focus on where Jake was looking, though he didn’t notice any threats.

Kaleetha looked down, noting that the holograms did not at all look like they belonged in the simulation, from the bonneted woman to the person holding a guitar, cowboy boots, and not much more. The hologram in the bonnet looked at them and smirked. “Yeah. No. Move,” Kaleetha said, not at all liking the look on the hologram's face. It was a proper expression, and it seemed to make everyone below look up at them standing on the balcony.

"Huh?" Burnie looked up, having barely gotten a glance at the tricorder readings. But the sudden appearance of non-club type characters (the Naked Cowboy *might* show up in a club, but this wasn't a Times Square club) was definitely wrong. It struck him as more of a technical problem than a danger though, at least until Liha got in front of him and urged him back.

For her part, Liha had little idea who these other holograms were supposed to be, but they did not fit, and however little trust she had for the other two Romulans they'd rescued, she read their alarm as real and therefore worth heeding. "Stay behind me. Holograms aren't something you can fight with explosives."

"Don't suppose you'd care to give me back the weapons you took earlier?" Kali's glance flicked from Kaleetha to Liha, back to the collection of holograms; not sure what was about to happen here, but more than willing to lay odds that it wasn't going to be good, whatever it was. "Though honestly not real sure a phaser will do much either if you're right about them." Her eyes tracked over to Kaleetha again for a moment, putting her vote behind her earlier suggestion. “'Move' might not be a bad plan, at least till we know more about what we're dealing with."

Angel blinked as he caught the eye of the young woman in the bonnet. He instinctively smiled back at the attractive lady, then glanced at the others. “So the program is glitching?” he said. “We could try a reset, or run a diagnostic.” He headed over to the control panel they had used to start the program.

Kaleetha nodded at Kalahaeia, relieved that they were on the same wavelength for the moment. “This is more than a glitch. Can you not feel the vibe in the air?” Kaleetha demanded as one of the new holograms turned to start up the stairs. “If that console works, one of you needs to open the door and get us out of here.” Both the former passengers would be useless.

Kali was beginning to wonder if, in fact, the answer to Kaleetha's question was no, the collection of Humans around them couldn't sense it; that something somehow gave herself, the woman with Burnie, and Kaleetha some extra biological instinct deep inside that the rest of the room lacked. She couldn't have explained it, but the air was almost electric in an uneasy way, a way that when it had happened in the past always ended badly. She set down the drink entirely, giving her both hands free.

“Sense what?” Angel asked. “Computer, door,” he instructed the command console. He smiled again at the young woman in the bonnet as she came up the stairs.

"The vibe of the place. It is just off." How could the man not feel it in the air? Kaleetha could feel it and she was barely a Romulan with their weird senses and paranoia. She was pretty sure it was not just down to them. The door appeared instantly and the group piled out into the corridor to see that the lighting, which had been standard before, was now stark red of an emergency.

"Danger." Kali said, in near-perfect unison with Kaleetha's response.

Liha nodded, for once agreeing with the runt, who apparently had retained some Romulan sense despite growing up in the Federation. "It feels wrong, and in a way that is definitely bad," her eyes shifted around at the new out-of-place holograms, "and threatening."

Jake remained silent, but he felt it too. For whatever reason - perhaps his strange connection to Liha - but there was something there. He wanted to agree with them, but kept his mouth shut for the moment and watched.

Angel frowned. “Now what?” he asked, his hand instinctively drifting near his phaser. “Computer, what is the emergency?” And why hadn’t they been alerted in the holosuite?

Burnie had gone to look at the console too, but it was clearly unresponsive. "Don't expect it to answer," he muttered, dropping down to force open the panel below the controls. "This has essentially shut down." Seeing Liha about to yank him away, he shook his head and began pulling isolinear chips and rearranging connections. "Buy me a few minutes. I'm going to try to hot wire it."

"The entire ship is filled with holoemitters. Not exactly anywhere we can take significant refuge, unless you have some ideas?" Jake looked at Kali and Kaleetha. They'd survived days on their own here, and although the ship had been welcoming to them initially, this surely was connected to their needing to hide.

"How about just transporting everyone back to your ship?" Kali asked hopefully in the general direction of Jake, then flicked a glance at Burnie. "Or is this bucket of bolts jamming us?"

"Got it in one," Burnie replied, still shuffling isolinear chips. He sucked a breath through his teeth, muttering to the console. "Come on, I'm giving you a chance here... but I'm just as happy to pull out the plastic explosives..."

"I swear, with all the trouble this ship has caused me, I'm gonna be hard pressed to not wanna put a torpedo in the side of it if we get out of here," Kali muttered, glaring at the misbehaving circuits Burnie was working with before turning her attention back towards the impending threat. "I'm more than happy for you to explode it."

Kaleetha said nothing as she watched the isolinear chips being moved in a familiar pattern to cause something big.

"Sounds like we need some distractions to give Burnie the time he needs," Jake announced. "Our best chance is giving them multiple targets instead of a single group. If we stay mobile, we should last a little longer. Break up and take different directions. Keep them occupied." He looked at Liha momentarily. "Someone should maybe watch his back..."

"Ya think?" Liha snarked, and took up a position guarding his back.

“Stay with him,” Kaleetha finally said as she started to go in the opposite direction before she realized that it was no good going anywhere when she was ignored by the holograms. “Someone who is getting registered should probably come with me as well.”

Liha's head cocked to the side, her mouth creasing in a brief frown. How had she not seen the strategic advantage immediately? "Actually, you'd be more useful here. If they can't see you, it'll be like having invisible guards." She motioned both of them over, but didn't step away yet herself. "I'll make sure you can interact enough to hit them before I try to draw any way after me."

"Assuming the invisible doesn't extend to insubstantial," Kali warned, taking up a position to one side. "If they can't hear us and they can't see us, for all we know our fists pass right through them when we try to punch their lights out, too." She shrugged. "But sure, I'll give it a go."

Kaleetha rolled her eyes. “Then you go with them and save your crew mates who might be trapped in holo simulations and lead people away,” Kaleetha said to the foolishness. She did not even identify as Romulan herself, so it was straight up paranoia in her eyes.

Liha rolled her eyes right back. "I'm not abandoning a crewmate before knowing you're capable of protecting him. He's great at blowing things up. Hand-to-hand…not so much."

"Enough!" Jake snapped, finally losing his temper with the two bickering Romulans. "You two can sort it out with knives, harsh language, or whatever you care to use, when we get back to the ship. We don't have time to fight over who the baddest is. We have to survive, which is something you're both supposed to be good at. So stop talking and start moving. You two, stay with Burnie. The rest of us split up and cause distractions; keep them off their guard and away from here. Understood?" He didn't wait for the arguments. "Let's go!" With that he started to scramble away from the group and past the bank of amusement machines.

Kaleetha said nothing. Kaleetha was doing nothing with knives, harsh language, or whatever. She had no inclination in the slightest. “I’ll look after him,” Kaleetha promised as the first hologram came towards them and the science officer tackled it to the floor. The hologram disappeared, but reappeared a few feet away, looking around confused.

Meanwhile, to the other side, Kali similarly tackled the Naked Cowboy; a vicious uppercut to the chin with a sarcastic snarl of 'have you heard of pants?!? as a battle cry; followed immediately and with no hesitation by a lightning-fast move that snapped his neck. He similarly reappeared some distance away.

“There is a barrier,” it said aloud, not sure if it was said to the Naked Cowboy or the woman in the bonnet.

“Others have gone that way,” the woman in the bonnet said, going after the retreating crew that were going in the opposite direction.

“I think we can blow up safely and get some distance between us all,” Kaleetha said smugly as another one came towards them and she kicked it back, leaving it confused by what was happening.

"You make a good force field," Burnie said, glancing up with a quick smile. "Go on, Liha. I'm covered, and if I can't get around this, better if everyone scatters so I can blow it up safely."

"Fine. But don't get yourself killed. I'd hate to have to find another engineer for my accreditation," she said, and grabbed a chair, throwing it at a non-naked cowboy and rushing him as he ducked to grab his gun, which she promptly used to shoot him.

He disappeared and reappeared a meter away, looking angry. "That warn't too nice, little lady."

"I'm not little." Liha plugged him in the chest and ran, firing at any hologram in range. They wouldn't stay down, but she figured she could hack them off enough to make them give chase.

Kaleetha watched as the other group went in the opposite direction, leaving them alone in the corridor. “How long do you need?” she demanded as she tackled the naked cowboy, using his guitar to hit him over his head. It was repetitive keeping them all back as they started to bottleneck in the doorway from the holodeck, but it seemed to be working, as they had no idea why they were being sent back.

"Just a few more..." *Brzzt! Fzzt!* "Frak!" Burnie cursed as he slapped out sparks from spewing from the base of the console. "Fine. Be that way..." Pulling plastic explosive from his belt pack, he began pressing it into the exposed junctions. "Figure out how to make a path," he called up to Kaleetha. "I'm going to shut this down – with extreme prejudice."

Kaleetha said nothing as she started to run away. Anything she would have said would have been lost in the explosion that knocked her forward into the open observation lounge. Boy did that man know how to blow something up was her onky thought as they ran.