Anabasis

[darthdavid]

Yay, more crack. Getting alot of good stories updated today. And that's a good thing.

[MKSheppard]

Now THATS the way to deal with a Q

[Pablo Sanchez]

Anabasis
Chapter Four
Mutineer


The interrogation was winding down. Yamashita could not say that he was disappointed with the results, as he was most certainly not a sadist. His feelings were more or less mixed. He was glad that he had not been forced to torture Captain Putzkammer, but he felt more than a little disgusted at the ease with which the man had been broken. There was no iron in him, he was a doll made from rice paper. He had barely had the courage to lie about the size of his Starfleet. Yamashita had known the captain was lying, for he had always been an excellent judge of such things. But he hadn't called Putzkammer on it. There would be time for that later.

"So, your ship has no first officer?" Ichiro asked.

Putzkammer shook his head, eyes downcast. "No. He was killed in a transporter accident just before we left on patrol. There was no possibility of a replacement in time for our departure. Lieutenant Commander Stanley has been acting in that capacity."

"Transporter? What is that?"

"A device for transferring matter from place to place. It scans an object and records every detail of its composition, then dismantles it to be recreated at a point of our choosing. It can move anything below a certain size. We use it mainly for moving people," Leopold explained.

Yamashita nodded thoughtfully, "And your first officer? What happened to him?"

"There was an error in the transmission and he materialized inside a rock," the captain said.

"Fascinating. Are such accidents common?" Yamashita asked.

"Not really. Every once in a while."

"I see," Yamashita said, glancing down at his wristwatch. It was still too soon for Lieutenant Takashi to have made much progress with his efforts. He was an experienced intelligence officer working with an advanced data-extracting computer, but it still took time to crack unknown technology. It would do to kill a few more minutes.

"Which of your crewmen can tell me more about these transporters?" he asked.

Putzkammer pursed his lips, "Chief Engineer Patel should be in the cafè, he knows everything about how the ship works."

Yamashita nodded to Sergeant Kanagashi, who stood quickly and walked out the door. Ichiro looked back down at Putzkammer, slouching in his chair with sweat running down his face. Pathetic.


----


Meanwhile on the bridge, Lieutenant Commander Stanley was leaning against one wall and considering his options. He fidgeted slightly. If his guess was right, and he was sure it was, the admiral would be interrogating Putzkammer with all necessary force. Knowing his captain, Stanley didn't think very much force would be necessary. He had been with Putzkammer since the Dominion War, and he knew that man had the spine of a noodle. If Starfleet had any balls at all, men like that would be kept out of command and given more appropriate work, like day care.

He pushed off of the wall and turned to the nearest soldier. Stanley said, "I have to urinate."

The soldier shrugged and turned to Major Uchida. "Major, this man says he has to use the toilet."

Uchida laughed harshly, "Weak bladder? Corporal Kumaki, accompany him."

The marine that Stanley had spoken to had his rifle hanging from his shoulder on its sling, and rather than raising it he simply drew a pistol from a holster on his hip. Kumaki gestured towards the door with a jerk of his head, and kept his pistol aimed low and out of the way, but still in action.

The main restroom for the bridge level was just past the ready room. Stanley walked down the corridor slowly, and looked back at the man following him. Kumaki growled, "Eyes front."

Lieutenant Commander Stanley shrugged and faced forward again as he triggered the door and walked into the restroom. It was a unisex facility, like everything aboard Federation starships, and was simply a row of walled stalls with toilets in them. He walked directly to the first stall and unzipped the fly on his uniform pants. Then he paused for a few seconds and turned his upper body around to look at the corporal again. The other man was standing about a yard behind him in the stall door, his gun arm hanging at his side.

"I can't go with you watching me," Stanley said.

"Then you'll have to try harded," the soldier replied.

Stanley shrugged again and turned back to the front. Then, flat-footed, he kicked out horizontally behind him, driving his right heel hard into Kumaki's groin. The corporal grunted in surprise and pain and started to raise his gun even as he staggered back. Stanley spun and grabbed the smaller man's right arm. They were both in peak physical condition, but Stanley was much larger. The weapon discharged once with a report magnified by the tile surfaces and tight space, then Stanley muscled Kumaki's arm out of line, so that the muzzle of his pistol was under his jaw. Stanley shoved one thumb into the trigger guard and yanked down. The pistol cracked again, and there was an explosion of blood down the soldier's neck. He went limp. Stanley pulled the pistol out of the lifeless hand and examined it quickly. It was a chunky slab of black metal, from the sound of it and the hole it had blasted in the wall, it must have been some sort of chemically powered projectile thrower. Stanley bent down and pulled the first objects he could identify from the dead man's vest: a knife, a handful of grenades, and a flashlight. He left everything else, and the rifle. It would take too long to figure them out.

Stanley hopped up onto the toilet and hit a glowing touch-panel button that was mounted on the ceiling. A portion of the ceiling a meter square moved aside and a short ladder dropped down. He pulled himself up into the opening just as some other Japanese burst into the bathroom, and a few projectiles smacked into the wall just below him as he shut the door and triggered the override lock. Safer now, he exhaled and zipped up his pants. In the dim light of the jeffries tube, he examined his weapon more thoroughly. It was a mean looking thing. Aside from the trigger there were two additional buttons on it. Since it was a projectile weapon, one of them would have to be the magazine release, but he couldn't guess what the other was. He decided not to risk an experiment. He stucked the knife and grenades in his pockets and crawled down the tube, pistol in hand.

The first thing was to get to the bridge computer override station and hit his panic button, then he could go to the communications maintenance room and override the subspace transmitter from there, to warn Starfleet of what had happened. He knew the tubes like the back of his hand, the enemy knew them not at all. He would have to bank on that advantage.

The computer station was only a few meters down the tube. It was a cramped room with just enough room for two people to crouch next to eachother. Stanley knelt in front of the terminal and tapped the touchscreen to bring it online. The computer asked, "Password?"

Stanley responded, "Stanley, Patrick Connor. Section 31 override command."

The datum raced through the computer's guts, opening up circuits and closing others. A set of new commands popped up on the touchscreen. "What are your orders, Commander?"

Patrick's fingers raced over the screen as he cut the bridge and engineering out of the ship's controls. Then he hit his panic button.


----


They had heard the gunshots in the ready room, and the guards at his sides had quickly sprung to cover Putzkammer, while the other two raced out the door to investigate. Yamashita did not look particularly shocked.

"Hmm. What might that be?" he asked quietly, raising his eyebrows at Leopold. The captain had no answer for him. A few seconds passed, then there was a staccato burst of fire. The two guards returned, reporting to the admiral with a quick burst of Japanese. Putzkammer could hear a multitide of boots stomping back and forth in the corridor.

Yamashita stood and looked down at him across the table. "I suppose I will be unable to have my hoped-for discussion with your engineer. Your man Stanley has chosen to fight us rather than cooperate."

Just then, the lights cut out in the ready room, and through the open door it was evident that the lights there had gone as well. A quiet rumbling came from the walls and slowly built to a roar. Then the computer terminal next to the door exploded violently as the plasma conduit supplying power to it overloaded. A moment later, the lights flashed brilliantly for an instant before exploding in a cascade of glass. Purple blindspots danced in his vision and Putzkammer's ears rang.

"Tell me," he heard Yamashita asking, "do your ships always explode spontaneously?"


----


On the bridge the mayhem was even more pronounced. The main viewscreen burst just after the lights went out, shooting bits of itself all over the bridge. The Japanese marines in their armor pressure suits proved largely immune. The only ones injured at first were Lieutenant French and the ship's science officer, who had been standing near the screen. The glass cut through their uniforms and flesh. Then the consoles began to explode, first the tactical station, then communications. Ensign Pauley threw herself to the floor near the bridge railing just in time to avoid the explosion of her sensor terminal. Lieutenant Takashi dropped to the floor on top of his computer, interposing himself between it at the science station as the plasma conduit there let go.

His uniform was made of fairly tough material and he was struck by no significant shrapnel, though he had to brush burning bits of plastic from his back. It could not be said that the bridge had been reduced to chaos, fortunately. In the light provided by the burning carpet and guttering flames issuing from the broken conduits, Major Uchida put his helmet back on and bellowed orders. The soldiers seized the remaining Federation officers and began leading them towards the door.

Takashi himself stumbled through the darkness to the ready room. He didn't have the benefit of the light amplification goggles built into the marine's helmet lenses, but he could guide himself well enough. He burst into the room. "Admiral! I retrieved their starmaps and a technical overview of this vessel, as well as historical records, as you ordered. But I was unable to retrieve the other data you requested."

Yamashita walked towards the door. "No matter, I have the feeling that this ship will not be a current concern for very long. Captain Putzkammer, you will come with us."

Major Uchida burst through the door. "Admiral, we must evacuate you to the Hiei!"

"Yes. But a moment, first. Give me the captain's communication device," Yamashita ordered, then recieved the badge and handed it to Putzkammer. "What is your subordinate doing?"

"I don't know. He's not acting under my orders," Putzkammer said defensively, affixing his communicator to his shirt.

Ichiro waved a hand dismissively, "I did think he was. Please, use your device to contact him."

The captain tapped his badge twice, finding the frequency. "Stanley, this is the captain speaking. What are you doing?"

There was a pause, then the reply came back, "What you lacked the courage to do, Leopold. I'm in the communications maintenance room right now, sending a warning to Wertham V. They'll relay it to San Francisco, and your new friends will have half of starfleet down their throats inside a week."

"Stanley, be reasonable!"

"The time for that is past. I'm smashing my communicator."

The signal cut off. Putzkammer looked helplessly at Yamashita.

"Your vessel has escape pods?" the admiral asked.

Putzkammer nodded.

Yamashita considered. "Is their endurance sufficient for them to await rescue by your fleet?"

"Yes."

"Major Uchida," Ichiro ordered, "evacuate the civilians from the nursery to the escape pods immediately. I will be leaving aboard my shuttle in the interests of safety. There is still information aboard this ship which could still be useful to us. You must make efforts to salvage this situation. Captain Putzkammer, how can we intercept this saboteur?"

"He's--he's in the jeffries tubes. They're a maze. Even if you had a map, it would take hours to become familiar with all the passages on this ship," Leopold replied.

Admiral Yamashita stroked his mustache, "He will scuttle this ship if we do not stop him."

"You think he's going to self-destruct? But without my authorization, he'll have to do it manually."

"Where can we intercept him?" Ichiro asked.

"I don't... I don't know if I want to help you kill him," Captain Putzkammer responded.

"You picked a difficult time to find your principle," Yamashita said, then turned to Kazuo. "Major Uchida."

Uchida nodded sharply, then drew his pistol. Captain Leopold Joseph Putzkammer had just enough time to blink in surprise before he was shot through the head.

"I leave the Jutland in your hands, Major," Ichiro said and turned away. Admiral Yamashita stepped over the body and walked down the hall towards the access ladders. The turbolifts were no doubt out of service, but there would be time to reach his shuttle. Uchida would have to figure things out on his own, but he was fairly good at such things.

As Yamashita walked away down the hall, Major Uchida's mind raced. He had about sixty men aboard the Jutland, but according to what the captain had said the maintenance tunnels curved mazelike through every part of the ship. Of course, the most obvious places to put the manual trigger for the scuttling charges were the engineering section and ammunition magazines, where secondary explosions could assist the demolition process.

He began issuing orders to his men over his helmet comm. There wasn't much time.


----


Stanley scrambled down a ladder to the jeffries tube that accessed the engineer decks and dropped prone there, resting for a moment. It was tiring to move in the half-crouch that the tubes forced on him. He took several deep breaths and laid his head down on the deck. In a few minutes, he would be dead. With any luck, that was. He pulled himself back up to his knees. When they had recruited him for Section 31, they had said he had to be ready to kill himself at any time, or to kill others. When he thought the first officer might have caught him programming his bypasses into the computer systems, that had been an easy decision. But Patrick guessed he just didn't have the self-destructive urge. Blowing up the ship and dying in the process did not appeal to him, though he would do it anyway.

He started moving again, and he soon came to the exit that opened into catwalk above the engineering deck. It was empty and dark, the firefighting systems here had multiple backups and had managed to survive the plasma conduits detonating, so the fires had been put out. He shone his flashlight around, looking for the proper panel. The housing that had formerly held the warp core was empty, and the section looked very odd without it, like an unfinished house.

Presently he had found what he was looking for. He walked quickly to the wall panel marked "Danger: Explosives" and traded his pistol for the borrowed knife in his pocket. He used it as a prybar, jamming it under the edge of the metal sheet and pulling hard. The panel fell away, and behind it was his goal. He focused the flashlight down on it.

It was a shaped charged bomb massing about 50 kilograms, pointed through a retaining bulkhead at one of the two primary fuel cells for the Jutland. Inside the cell was quite a lot of antimatter. When the self-destruct command was issued from the bridge, it was this explosives that detonated, forcing the fuel cells into a secondary explosion that would all but vaporize the entire ship. Of course, it would be impossible for him to trigger it normally. He didn't have the authorization, and anyway he had blown the bridge consoles to bits. Stanley leaned close to the explosive's casing, shining the light close. He hammered the hilt of his knife down onto part of the casing, denting it with the first blow and popping it off with the second. Underneath was the detonator. He gently removed it.

There were a large number of wires coming out of it, but he had been trained for this, and he knew precisely what to do. He sliced the blue one away with his knife, stripped the insulation from the free end, and wound it around a different contact point from the one it had first occupied. Then he slipped the detonator back into his housing. Now he had to do the same to the other bomb, on the other side of the room. He walked around the catwalk as quietly as he could, and stopped at the appropriate section of wall.

He heard a clattering noise from the hall, slightly muffled. Stanley turned. The engineering section had reacted to the overloading plasma conduits by sealing the airtight emergency doors. The only thing that could get through those was an overloading phaser, and the only other way in was through the jeffries tubes. And right on cue, they banged at the doors several times. Stanley ignored them.

He cracked open the wall and retrieved the detonator, as before. Then he began to bypass the safeties. There was another clatter of boots on metal from the other side of the door. He glanced back at the door. Apparently they had given up.

A moment later the whole room erupted in a floor-shaking explosion. When Patrick recovered from the disorientation he looked back at the floor. The door was in pieces and a ragged circular hole about a meter and half across had been blasted through it. Stanley quickly twisted the blue wire into place and drew his pistol, just as the marines began pouring through the breach. He opened fire on them, not hitting much of anything as he was totally unfamiliar with the weapon.

They returned fire quickly with their rifles. They certainly weren't phasers, for there was no visible beam or bolt, but they didn't sound like gas-expansion weapons either. It was less a crack and more of a yawp. Whatever they were, the shots half-ripped, half-burned gaping holes in the catwalk and walls very near him. Stanley was terribly exposed where he was.

He grabbed the railing with his free hand and jumped over, towards a row of computer consoles that had formerly surrounded the warp core. He landed behind them, badly twisting his right ankle. He crouched behind the cover as the rifle fire began chewing it up.

"Shit!" he said to himself. He pulled a grenade out of his pocket, yanked the pin free, and tossed it blindly towards the door. When it went off, he fired his pistol wildly at them and ran for the nearest jeffries tube entrance, just a few meters away at the wall. A shot struck him in the right tricep, and his pistol tumbled out of his grasp, but he made it to the tube anyway. Gasping with exertion and pain, Stanley scrambled down the tube. His arm was useless and reeked of burned meat. He raced around a corner, followed closely by another burst of gunfire. But it didn't matter, he had made it.

He laid down in the tube, just out of sight around the corner from main engineering. Off-handed and clumsily, he pulled away the access panel set into the ceiling. There was a simple lever underneath, which was labelled "Manual Self Destruct." He grabbed it and pulled.

Nothing happened.


----


Sergeant Kanagashi scrambled up a ladder onto the catwalk just as the Stanley disappeared into the jeffries tube. He had been doing _something_ here, he spotted the bomb, and the exposed detonator. He turned around. There was another bomb on the other end of the catwalk.

He turned and pointed. "Bomb! Someone defuse that!"

For his part, Kanagashi pulled the wire cutters from his vest webbing and examined the detonator. In the green night vision provided by his helmet, he couldn't see any of the colors. Still, it was a remarkably simple device for something as important as the ship's scuttling charge. After scarcely a moment's consideration, he snipped one wire, then another.

"Disarmed!" he announced.

The soldier who had gotten to the other bomb confirmed as well. Kanagashi sighed with relief.


----


Stanley pulled the lever twice more, with the same result: Nothing. He slammed the back of his head against the deck in frustration. He groaned, "Fuck."

Patrick never even saw the grenade that rolled down the tube to stop just centimeters from his feet.


----


"Target neutralized, situation under control," Major Uchida's voice crackled across to the Hiei.

Yamashita was back on the bridge. "Excellent work, Major. I want you to locate whatever equipment and hard data you can carry with you, then get the remaining crew of that ship into their escape pods. When that's finished, bring the prize crew back to the Hiei."

"Yes, sir," Kazuo acknowledged, then broke the connection.

Captain Saegusa frowned, "We're letting them go?"

"We don't have the space to take prisoners and we are most certainly not murderers. We're going to turn then out in their escape pods as per Treaty of Johannesburg regulations, even if they aren't signatories. Anyway, there's very little they can tell their superiors that that transmission didn't already tell them," Ichiro said, tapping the transcript of Stanley's distress call with two fingers.

"Indeed," Saegusa replied.

Yamashita ordered, "Now, Captain. Once the marines are safely back aboard, I want you to destroy that ship. When that's finished, plot the fleet an evasive course into the Beta Quadrant and stop somewhere well away from any inhabitable systems. Their reinforcements won't follow us there."

"Why not?" Saegusa asked.

"It's complicated," Yamashita said and checked his watch. "There will be a command meeting on the Hiei at 0800 hours tomorrow concerning what has happened to us. Until then, I'm going to get some rest, and I suggest you try to do the same."

"Sir." Captain Saegusa saluted smartly, and Yamashita exited the bridge.

[Pablo Sanchez]

An acknowledgement to Sheppard for valuable discussion on this chapter.

[darthdavid]

This story rocks...

[MKSheppard]

Yes it does indeedy so.

Pablo's already heard my running commentary on
it as I read it so no need to repst it here.

[MKSheppard]

[Mayabird]

This story makes me think of butter being cut by hot knives...WHEE!

Can I expect more Section 31 appearances in the future? They seem like the only people who have a chance of putting up a good fight.

Nice flower, Shep.

[Pablo Sanchez]

Added cover art

[Mark S]

Added cover art

Which two states are you not recognizing? I'm not sure why I noticed that but what the hey.

Great start so far.

[Mayabird]

Added cover art

Nice!

48 stars. Is that just because those are the WWII-era flags, or does that mean the US has yet to add any more states (such as Canada or southern Mars)?

[Mayabird]

Added cover art

Which two states are you not recognizing? I'm not sure why I noticed that but what the hey.

Great start so far.

Hawaii and Alaska.

[Pablo Sanchez]

Which two states are you not recognizing? I'm not sure why I noticed that but what the hey.

Historical differences, this is a different timeline. The Pacific had a slightly different history--Hawaii got picked off the vine before the USA even reached the Pacific, and the Russians never sold Alaska to the USA because they never owned it.

Hawaii and Alaska.

How did you know?

[Mark S]

Good enough for me. Who owns Alaska in their timeline?

[Mayabird]

I just said Alaska and Hawaii because in our timeline they didn't become states until 1959. I had no idea that in your timeline history had already deviated to prevent them from becoming states in the first place.

EDIT: By "our timeline" I mean in real life. You probably knew that, but I'm tired and it's a weird, confusing comment.

[Pablo Sanchez]

Good enough for me. Who owns Alaska in their timeline?

It doesn't really matter, but if you care it's part of Canada except for the Aleutians, which are Japanese.

[Duken]

Great story. What is the other universe?

[Kuja]

Great story. What is the other universe?

His own idea.

[Kuja]

Oh, and great twist with Section 31, Pablo.

[Crazedwraith]

Execallnt no comment other than that not even nitpicks.

Well asides from: why is the feddies scuttling charge so simple? Why does it have wires? Shouldn't it have isolinear chips?

[Pablo Sanchez]

Well asides from: why is the feddies scuttling charge so simple? Why does it have wires? Shouldn't it have isolinear chips?

The fact that there's even a manual self-destruct goes against their usual style. Shep (who supplied a number of ideas for this chapter) advised me to say that the manual scuttling regulations were holdover from the TOS era and thus had not been contaminated by form over function stupidity. I left that line out of the chapter, but that would be the official explanation.

[Col. Crackpot]

a fitting death for that turd of a captain!

just how big is this Imperial Japanese Navy? Surely thay can't be larger than the Federation as they are exclusively Japanese... although will it matter with their obvious technological advantage?

[Pablo Sanchez]

a fitting death for that turd of a captain!

just how big is this Imperial Japanese Navy? Surely thay can't be larger than the Federation as they are exclusively Japanese... although will it matter with their obvious technological advantage?

Task force Hiei is
13 destroyers
5 light cruisers
3 heavy cruisers
1 superbattleship (the IJN Hiei herself)

And
2 IJA troop transports.

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

Bump? We want our fix now please

[darthdavid]

Yeah, Whate he said!!!