Poseidon Paradox

Posted on Wed Jul 23rd, 2025 @ 3:45am by Commander Raiden Kosugi & Sergeant Trent Busby (Kosugi) & Captain David Hawkins & Lieutenant Edruj Daughter of Thrawn & Lieutenant JG Spencer Griffith-Bailey & Cadet Third Class Aarfa Barakzay & Captain Callisi Verra & Corporal Zul'arra (Hawkins)

Mission: The Gamma Expanse
Location: Captain's Yacht Aquila
2417 words - 4.8 OF Standard Post Measure

/// ON ///

The door hissed open.

A lone figure stood beyond the threshold, his silhouette outlined by the dim emergency lights beyond. Clad in tattered Marine combat gear, his posture was unmistakably defiant despite the signs of battle etched into his armor. Quickly, Meeka rushed up to him and whined in excitement.

“About damn time,” Lt. Colonel Hayter drawled, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “I was starting to think you forgot about me.”

"Colonel Hayter?" Trent couldn't believe his eyes. The last time he had seen the colonel was when they were on that planet rescuing someone. After that, there hadn't been any word whatsoever as to what happened to him. Whether he was dead or alive. That little engineer, Tia didn't have any information at all. He looked towards Captain Hawkins with a questioning gaze, maybe he had the answer.

"Captain..." Callisi called up, almost impatient.

Hayter chuckled lowly, stepping forward and giving Meeka a rough scratch behind the ears. "Yeah, yeah. Surprise. Turns out, playing dead has its perks." He shot a glance toward Hawkins. "Commander Tayla d'Jax and the baby are safe, thanks to our fearless captain here pulling a few strings. Faking our deaths? Classic move. Real dramatic."

Hawkins folded his arms, cutting off whatever long-winded explanation was brewing. "You can thank me later, Colonel. I sent you to hunt down the last of C.O.I.L., not to go sightseeing. What the hell happened here?"

"Right," Hayter drawled, not missing a beat. "So, our friends in C.O.I.L.? Turns out, they're a curious bunch. They stumbled onto this place—this... thing—and figured they'd struck gold. Starbase, but not just any starbase." His expression grew more serious as he jerked his thumb over his shoulder. "It's the Poseidon. The missing Poseidon station. I don't know how, but it ended up out here, off the grid."

Hawkins' eyes narrowed, the weight of that name settling over the room like a lead blanket. "The Poseidon? That's impossible. That station vanished and never heard of again. Starfleet wrote it off as destroyed, but classified the documents and quarantined the solar system."

"Yeah, well, someone forgot to tell the Poseidon," Hayter quipped. "C.O.I.L. was trying to bring it back online, but they hit a snag. The whole place is leaking some kind of exotic radiation. Best I can tell, it's coming from a busted reactor that powers the cloak—and some weird transportation system. Whatever this thing was meant to do, it was abandoned for a reason. And judging by the mess they left behind, we don't want it coming back online."

Hawkins let out a breath, his jaw tightening. "And where's the rest of the C.O.I.L. team?"

His smirk faded. "Dead or gone. The radiation didn’t exactly agree with them, and those that survived didn’t stick around the core once things started going sideways. I’ve been trying to keep a lid on it, but this place? It’s a ticking time bomb. And the skeleton crew left? They're scattered across the station, stripping it for parts and supplies like a bunch of scavengers."

He leaned against the bulkhead, shaking his head. "They even launched their ship. Went off to grab a couple of poor souls who might know how to wrangle that new reactor. If they figure it out..." He let the thought hang, his expression grim. "They'd have themselves a shiny new base of operations, fully cloaked and tricked out with Starfleet's latest and greatest. And guess which station they got their hands on?" He tapped the side of his head. "The Poseidon. She's not ours—but we know her well enough to be real worried."

"What now? I've been through the Poseidon stayed here a couple of times. Just not like this." Trent responded. "And you were dead? Kinda explains why you've not been seen." looking at Hayter. "Now what? Captain Hawkins and Colonel Hayter? What's your ideas about not letting this station get taken by COIL?"

Edruj had manned her station in silence as she listened and absorbed the conversation. When the question of what to do about the station was asked a rather enigmatic smile was found on the engineer's face. "Sirs, if I may. If the station is irradiated and the enemy is attempting to repair and steal it for their own purposes. Then perhaps we should do the galaxy a favor and simply destroy it."

Callisi finally relaxed her posture. It seemed that this new face wasn't a threat as far as the Captain was concerned. "Unless..." the cyclopean officer offered up, "If the station is important enough for the enemy to occupy, and dangerous enough to want to remove from their possession... why destroy it? There was a master tactician of Ts'usugi legend that said that the first step to defeating an enemy is to deprive them." she paused. "Let's take it from them. Get there before their repair teams, eliminate the skeleton crew, and then deal with the core issue. When they return with THEIR repair crew, we bring the entire station's firepower against them." it sounded simple when she said it out loud.

Trent looked over towards Hawkins then to Hayter then back to the Captain, " Okay so blowing up this station." turning towards Edruj, "won't that cause something really bad to happen?"

"Depends if there is a substantial amount of radiation present or not. But stations and ships get destroyed on a fairly regular basis. I would recommend keeping the engines on standby through. We are going to have to outrun the shockwave." Edruj answered with little to no worry in her voice.

Trent looked at Edruj, she was so calm in giving out this information.

Before Hawkins or Hayter could respond, another burst of weapons fire rang out, closer this time. The shots echoed through the corridor, the sharp report of energy discharges bouncing off the metallic walls. It wasn’t just a random firefight—it was moving toward them.

Hawkins tensed, his gaze snapping toward the darkened hall where Hayter had come from. His hand instinctively dropped to his sidearm. “That didn’t sound like friendly fire.”

Hayter’s expression hardened as he shifted his stance. “No, it didn’t.” He tapped the side of his rifle, glancing toward Hawkins. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”

Before Hawkins could answer, a distorted voice crackled over the station’s failing comm system. The words were garbled, but enough came through to send a chill through the air.

“—breach… unknown hostiles… repeat… not COIL—”

Static swallowed the rest.

Hayter exhaled sharply through his nose. “That’s new.”

Another blast of gunfire, followed by an inhuman shriek, cut through the corridor. The sound wasn’t like anything a COIL operative would make. It was guttural, raw, something that shouldn’t belong on an abandoned station. Then came the sound of metal scraping—claws on steel.

"That's new?" Hawkins clenched his jaw. “We might have a bigger problem than just COIL.”

From the darkness beyond the corridor, something moved—too fast for a clear look. But the reflection of emergency lighting caught a hint of wet, gleaming flesh, elongated limbs, and too many eyes staring back.

The station wasn't just contested. It was infested.

"That's not good. We need get to the engineering section and see what we are dealing with. Our first priority is to secure this station, but look into blowing this thing to pieces, Hawkins explained as he looked at Hayter and the rest. =^= Away team to Gladiator. Come down on our signal and scan for a cloaked power source. We are going to try and turn the cloaking field off.=^=

=^=Aye Captain once we deal with a problem, I will contact you once we are finished.=^= Raiden replied.

Another shriek tore through the corridor, echoing off the metal walls. The sound was guttural, raw—too unnatural to be human. Hayter spun on his heel, raising his rifle and firing a quick burst down the hall. The muzzle flashes lit up the passageway for half a second, just enough to catch a glimpse of something moving.

He exhaled sharply, his jaw tightening as he turned back to the group.

“Sounds like Gorn,” he muttered, barely above a breath.

But the way his fingers tightened on his rifle said otherwise. This wasn’t just Gorn. This was something worse.

Aarfa had instantly raised her phaser, every sense on alert, but especially her nose. "It's Gorn, but... something in its scent is off."

Edruj still thought that the best answer to this situation would be to destroy the station. That would take care of everything. However, she was not in command so she shouldered her rifle and as many of her acestors did before her, she waited for the battle to come. Without turning her head away from the direction of the enemy she spoke to the Captain. "Captain if we can get to engineering I can set the autodestruct for the station and be rid of everything."

"Nevermind engineering for the moment. We have a hallway before us." Callisi commented, her sidearm phaser never leaving the raised posture. Ears down, eye narrowed. She disliked how her inquiry was simply brushed aside, but this wasn't her place, wasn't her station, wasn't her command.

There was some trouble going on with the Gladiator, Trent wondered what was up. In the meantime though they had a current problem happening. Enemies.

"Captain, Colonel, Which way are we heading? Gotta make the way clear. Where is engineering" Trent asked.

He turned to look at Calissi."Sometimes, if I am to understand what Lieutenant Edruj was saying, its easier to blow something up instead of trying to save it. Just to keep it out of enemy hands." he turned back towards the incoming enemy. "Right now we've got to clear the way to our destination." he noticed more shapes moving in the darkness. "Looks like we've got trouble heading our way even more. Give the direction we need to head for." his finger pressing the trigger and sending out phaser fire towards the incoming things.

"You want to know which way to Engineering?" the medic having pulled out his padd, down two levels. So are we going to move?"

Trent gave a huff, moving forward and sending down plasma rifle strafing blasts, "Lets move! Aarfa with me!"

Hearing the sounds of shrieks of the gorn they were dealing with. Trent was making his way towards the turbolift, "Move it!!"

The medic was quick to follow after, looking hesitantly behind them as they made progress. "Just watch our six right?"

"We've got you. Go!" Aarfa said, taking position to cover. Her eyes were better in dark than most humanoids, but whatever Gorn had survived their first volley where hanging back to where she could barely make out movement. They were there though. Her ears lifted, turned, trying to orient on the faint skittering further back in the shadows.

Hawkins fired a quick burst down the corridor before answering. “Engineering’s two decks down, but we’re not getting there unless we punch through this mess first. Stay sharp and stay alive. We move on my mark.”

Hayter grunted, checking the charge on his weapon. “Blow it up, save it, gift wrap it—I don’t care what we do with this haunted wreck. But if we don’t clear this hallway, none of it’s gonna matter. Let’s move, people. Time to earn the hazard pay.”

Trent widened the beam of his phaser rifle, making sure it wasn't on stun setting then moved forward in order to clear a path. These creatures, were persistant. Screeches were resonating in the corridor, causing Trent to grimace, he glanced towards Aarfa then towards the others who were firing. It looked like they were making headway, and there was the awful stench that hung in the air.

There was a brief glimpse of one of the critters run up the wall and leaped towards the medic.

Eyes keyed to motion instantly snapped to the threat. Aarfa spun and fired, hitting the Gorn mid-leap. The phaser blast knocked the Gorn off-target, sending it to the deck with a heavy thud, a rear leg all but severed. It shrieked, clawing to right itself, and turned to lash at the closest target.

A shot was fired to finish the thing off, then things grew into a blur for Trent, as they moved forward. The critters were cleared, engineering was found what took place in the next part Trent wasn't certain as to what happened next--All he knew was that the Gladiator swept in, tractoring the Aquila into the bay and beaming people up just before the station they were on, disappeared in a burst of light.

Over the intercom Raiden spoke, "Welcome home everyone."

~ An Hour Later ~

Hawkins stepped onto the bridge of the Gladiator, his uniform still scorched and dusted with soot from the firefight in the bowels of the Poseidon. His pistol was holstered, and his expression was unreadable as he crossed to the command chair. The bridge crew stood at attention briefly, acknowledging the return of their captain, then resumed their tasks as he sat down.

It had been nearly an hour since the last hostile was neutralized, the reactor secured, and the cloak shut down. The station damaged, but still formidable was now in their hands. Whatever nightmare had taken root inside had been swept out, for now.

"Status?" he asked, voice low but clear.

"All decks secured, Captain," came the response from tactical. "Radiation levels are dropping. Edruj’s teams are setting up dampeners and prepping for containment."

"Good. Let's keep that thing quiet until the nerds in Engineering can argue about it."

He leaned back slightly in his chair, finally allowing himself to exhale. Then, tapping the comm panel:

=^= All ships in the task group, this is Captain Hawkins. Stand down from red alert. Begin radiation scrub and run full diagnostic sweeps. Medical teams, rotate and report any symptoms of exposure, especially anyone who went inside the station. =^=

He paused, his eyes drifting to the sensor feed still displaying the dark outline of the now visible Poseidon hanging silently in space its secrets cracked open but far from solved.

=^= And someone get me Starfleet Engineering. =^= A wry smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. =^= Looks like they’ve got a new baby to play with. Hawkins out. =^=

/// OFF ///