#holo squad

The hiss of the seal filled the small compartment as the airlock pressurized. Baines breathed through the oxygen mask over his face as he waited for Ruiz to get the other door open. A moment later, there was the clank and creak of metal. Their four-man crew stepped onto the speed freighter and swung their wrist lights around the completely dark corridor.

"Round up the crew," Baines told Grag. "Ruiz, get the life support back on. Vaofa and I will start the gutting."

They set off. Not far down the corridor, Baines and Vaofa stepped over the body of a young Romulan. Grag stopped to grab the kid's arms and drag him off to another location, the Nausicaan being the muscle of the operation.

"Unusual for a male to have long hair like that," Vaofa commented.

"Don't care," Baines replied. He and the Tellarite began cataloging the various parts to strip.

Vaofa ran her scanner over some of the relays. "These are in better shape than I expected for a Kaplan F17," she said. "The captain even made some upgrades. This is going to be a prime haul."

Baines grinned. Score.

"Life support is back on," Ruiz commed.

A second after that, the emergency lights flickered to life as well. They didn't want to restore full power to the ship, though; they didn't need it.

Baines took off his oxygen mask and switched off the flashlight. Then he and Vaofa started yanking parts out of the power conduits. With each armful they grabbed, they carried it up to the center of the upper deck and began to make a pile. They passed Grag a few times as he did the same with the crew, carrying them one by one over his shoulder to lock in the holosuite. Not that they should be waking up any time soon after the EMP blast the ship had been hit with. It was a nasty little thing that was able to disrupt both the power grid on a ship and the electrical signals of any organic lifeforms onboard, rendering everything disabled.

Grag brought over a woman and unceremoniously dumped her on the floor at their feet. "This one's got Borg implants," the Nausicaan said. "She can fetch a pretty price too."

Baines pursed his mouth at the blonde. Those were some interesting Borg pieces. He shook his head, though. "Bjayzl is dead, and without another guaranteed buyer already lined up, taking a live prisoner is too risky."

Grag made a snuffling sound but picked the woman up to take to the other prisoners.

Baines and Vaofa made their way down to the med bay where they met up with Ruiz. Ruiz let out a low whistle in appreciation. Indeed, the med bay was quite fancy and full of good stuff for the taking. The three of them immediately went to different counters to start snatching stuff up.

Ruiz suddenly yelped, making Baines whirl around.

"What?" he demanded.

Ruiz pointed frantically at the alcove. "I saw something."

Baines and Vaofa turned to look, but there was nothing there.

"I swear, there was something—"

Vaofa snorted. "Get back to work."

Baines shook his head and resumed rifling through the instruments on the counter. Until a few minutes later Ruiz shouted again. This time when Baines looked up, he caught a glimpse of two sparking blue eye sockets framed in the faint contours of a face. The amorphous figure started storming toward them, only to completely vanish after two steps.

"What the hell," Baines uttered.

"I told you!" Ruiz exclaimed. "Dios nos proteja," he muttered, picking up his Saint's necklace and pressing it to his lips. "We should go."

"Don't be an idiot," Vaofa snapped.

Ruiz shook his head urgently. "I've heard stories of ghost ships. We do not want to mess with them."

Baines rolled his eyes. "Those ridiculous stories are always about old abandoned wreckages. This ship has a live crew. Well, for now," he added with a smirk.

Ruiz didn't look convinced, but they got back to work. They were on their last haul of the med bay when the sound of weapons fire erupted on the upper deck. They drew their phase pistols and hurried up the stairs to where Grag had been emptying the armory. The Nausicaan was sitting on his ass on the floor, a phaser burn across his arm.

"What happened?" Baines demanded.

"One of the rifles just fired on me," Grag grunted, nodding to a weapon lying horizontally on a rack.

Vaofa scoffed. "You just mishandled it, you big oaf."

"I'm not a fool," he snarled at her.

"Something's going on here," Ruiz said. "My mama, she had the gift. I can feel it too, sometimes."

"Shut up," Baines snapped at him. "This is a job like any other." He turned to Grag. "Are you sure all the crew members and passengers are accounted for?"

"Yes," the Nausicaan growled as he got to his feet.

"Then just focus on the job. The sooner we finish here, the sooner we can leave."

He pivoted and marched off. When had his crew become bumbling idiots?

Baines went up to the bridge to look around. Wouldn't hurt to take a few plasma conduits from under the operations consoles. But there was suddenly an odd almost clicking swish behind him, and he turned to find a ghostly figure with glowing blue and white spritzing eyes standing only a few feet away. It pointed a spectral finger at him. Baines whipped out his pistol and fired, but the plasma burst went right through the phantom and struck the bulkhead. The figure did disappear, though.

The others came rushing up to the bridge.

"What now?" Vaofa huffed.

"Nothing," Baines snipped.

She arched a dubious brow at his drawn weapon, which he hastily holstered.

"Let's just get this done," he groused. The insanity was catching, apparently.

The consoles at the operations stations suddenly lit up and started blinking in chaotic fashion.

"Who turned that on?" Baines demanded.

Ruiz raised his hands, only to reach for his medallion again. "Don't look at me."

Vaofa strode over to the console and began tapping at the controls, trying to turn it off. The panel sparked with a surge, and she yelped as a squiggly bolt of energy jumped from the console to her. She staggered back, clutching her arm.

"Can we get out of here now?" Ruiz whined.

Baines gritted his teeth as he snapped his gaze around the ship. He was not going to let himself get run off a job, not one this good. He caught a shimmer of what looked like movement, this time across the deck near the engines. Something was tapping against the metal casing, and the core started flickering as though trying to come back on. Baines drew his pistol again and sprinted across the deck. An incorporeal figure looked up from tinkering with the engine, those eyes glitching before he disappeared.

"I recognize him," Grag said. "He's one of the crew."

Baines's jaw tightened. "So, what, he's capable of astral projection? Bring him out here!"

Grag hurried off, leaving the rest of them on edge as they scanned the deck, waiting for that ghost to reappear.

No, it wasn't a ghost. Baines didn't believe in those.

Grag returned, the crewman in question slung over his shoulder. He dropped him on the floor, then hauled him upright by the back of his shirt. Baines strode forward and smacked the man across the face.

"Wake up!"

He slapped him a couple more times before he finally started to stir. The man's head lolled back with a groan as his eyelids fluttered open.

"Wakey wakey," Baines said. "What's your name?"

It took him a moment to process his position, and then he straightened in a show of defiance, but Grag's grip on his shoulders kept him on his knees.

"Captain Rios," he said. "What the hell are you doing on my ship?"

"Ah, captain, good," Baines said. "How many are currently aboard your ship?"

Rios glowered at them. "Why would I tell you that?"

"Because this can go the easy way or the hard way."

The captain twisted to look around, then grunted in frustration. "Seven, including myself."

Baines looked at Grag.

"Seven in the holosuite," he confirmed.

Baines pursed his mouth in aggravation. "Were you having computer glitches?"

Rios furrowed his brow, and his gaze shifted past Baines to one of the wall panels with the conduits ripped out. The man scowled. "Gutting my ship might have something to do with it."

"The power was offline. We didn't turn it back on. Who did?"

"I don't know."

Baines backhanded him across the face, snapping his head to the side. "Don't toy with me."

Rios slowly rolled his neck back and didn't say anything, just glared up at him.

"Let's just finish and go," Vaofa urged.

Baines clenched his jaw. He didn't like being messed with.

Sparks abruptly started shooting from relays all over the deck, making everyone duck and flinch away.

Baines grabbed the captain by the front of his shirt and shook him. "Who's doing this?"

"Baines!" Ruiz shouted, pointing frantically as a nebulous figure came striding forward out of thin air, expression stormy with lightning in its eyes.

Baines jerked back and drew his phaser to fire. But there was nothing solid to hit.

Vaofa suddenly fired her weapon across Baines's path, and he reeled away to find a second specter closing in on them. Grag's eyes were wide as he looked at something behind Baines, and he twisted around. There was a third, and a fourth, all faint wispy outlines of figures with flashing eyes blank and unseeing, yet somehow looking furious as they advanced.

Baines whirled back to Captain Rios and aimed the phaser at his head. "Make it stop!"

One of the phantoms ran straight at him then, passing through Rios and flinging itself into Baines's face. And though it passed through him too, he still recoiled with a scream and flailing arms.

Rios surged to his feet and lunged at him in that moment of distraction, grabbing his arm and trying to wrest the phaser away from him. The rest of the specters attacked as well, though being incorporeal, they couldn't actually cause any damage. But in the frenzy of shooting at them regardless, Ruiz hit Vaofa with phaser fire. Grag fired haphazardly, and one of his phase blasts shot between Baines and Rios struggling, hitting them both. The freighter's captain dropped to the floor, having taken the brunt of the hit, while Baines staggered back with a gasp of pain and a snarl of curses at the Nausicaan.

A fifth specter appeared in front of Baines, standing straight and tall and prim. "Get off this ship," it intoned.

The five phantoms surrounded them, eyes flashing rapidly in dizzying synchronicity. Baines had had enough.

"Abandon ship!" he ordered.

He and his crew retreated back toward the airlock. Ruiz reached it first and punched frenetically at the control panel, blithering like an idiot. He finally got it open as Baines and Vaofa staggered over, and they all fled off the haunted speed freighter without any of their plunder.

~

Rios felt the subtle rocking of a ship disengaging from La Sirena. Good riddance, damn pirates. He grunted as he sat up, wincing at the phaser burn across his side.

"A little help here?" he groused at the holos.

"What did you think we were just doing?" Emil snarked, his disembodied outline and eyes standing over Rios in a rather unnerving way.

"We're havin' difficulty wi' our matrices, Cap'n," Ean said. "Wa'ever disabled the ship severely messed wi' our systems."

Rios groaned and pushed himself to his feet. "Where's everyone else?"

"Secured in the holosuite," Enoch's voice responded.

"Okay." Tucking his left arm across his stomach, Rios started hobbling that direction. "Malfunction came in handy, though," he commented between strained breaths. "Scared the shit out of those conchetumadres."

"It was quite amusing," Enoch agreed cheerily.

Rios glanced over his shoulder at the spectral holos following him and cringed. Even knowing what they were, the visages were creepy. That needed to be fixed first, once he freed the others.

He scowled as he saw all the destruction those looters had caused and how much was going to need to be repaired. At least they hadn't gotten away with it. And when Rios had his ship fixed, he was going to hunt down those bastards so they couldn't do this to anyone else.