Cindy

It had been an annoying climb through the Jeffries tubes that had been much like going through an obstacle course. After the battle with the things in Engineering, she was worried about how much energy she was using. At this rate, she was going to need to recharge within another 24-48 hours. She was doing too many things at once, distracted by too many things to see what was coming. In making her more human, they had slowed down her computing ability in some respects, so that when she was in her android form, her reactions were more realistic. That included artificially restricting her number of functions she could process at one time.

Trying not to hurt herself as she struggled through the crawlspace, she was not registering where she had last detected movement. The creature had stopped a couple of times, perhaps trying to decide which way to go and it had been only a few seconds since she had picked up the movement, but she knew she was gaining on it.

As she began lifting herself up through a bulkhead, still running several things through her mind and cursing this damned thing for making her chase it through the bowels of the damned ship, there was a fraction of a second where she saw something. It was a flash of movement. It was the creature. It roared as it lashed out and struck Cindy.

Cindy barely caught the movement and the sudden loud noise startled her. In one of the rare moments when she had a genuinely human sort of reaction, this one caused her to give a short and sharp cry of surprise and lose her grip on the bulkhead. It was good in that it allowed her to fall back down and out of danger, but it was bad in that the blow that struck her, sent her downward with a bit more force than a simple fall. She tried to fire at it with her phaser, but the shot was weak and was barely able to make sparks from the bulkhead it hit, having missed her intended target. In all her activity, she had drained the phaser and it was now useless until she got another power cell, but right now that was the least of her worries, as she was too busy falling to take in the failure of her phaser.

Cindy was lucky in that there was less than full gravity in the tubes. That worked in her favor, but only just barely. She bounced her way down a couple of meters and then fell hard on her left side. Her arm was under her and it felt wrong as she tried to roll over. She looked up and expected to see the creature bearing down on her to continue the attack, but as she looked up, the tube was empty.

She was not of interest to the creature. It had detected her as a possible threat, but not worth much effort. She was not sure if she should feel insulted or grateful. Reaching out with the sensors, she felt it moving away from her again and she got back up. She refused to stop trying and now the thing had a head start on her again.

She tested her arm and was disappointed to discover it was actually damaged. It was not severe, but she could tell that the structural integrity had been compromised. It was the equivalent of a fracture, if her frame had been bones. She could tell there was damage to the composite material and some damage at an attachment point. She could only trust it for roughly 50% use, at most. She tried to use it as she began climbing once more and realized it was going to be more of a hindrance than she had thought.

Undaunted, she continued to make her way toward Sickbay. She was worried about her dwindling detection of the movement of her quary and then understood that it was because the sensors themselves were not functioning. The thing was taking the time to disable the sensors. She wondered briefly why it would do that, as it took time to do that and damaged sensors still told her an area it was in.

Cindy finally made it to the large junction and understood. There were a number of exits it might have taken and she had not idea where it was right now. There were a couple of the hatches open and Cindy picked the closest one. She tumbled out onto the deck in a far corner of Sickbay, behind a cart. She managed to stand and looked around, cradling her injured arm.

Not seeing the creature, nor anyone panicked by the sight of it, Cindy was no longer on the hot trail of her enemy. She leaned against a vacant bed and closed her eyes to try and focus on the ship sensors, looking for where the thing went. She had to find it before it killed more of the crew.

She whispered to her self in frustration, "Where the hell is it?"

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OOC: Awaiting some GM input via e-mail, but for now Cindy is open to some interaction, should you feel inspired.

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XO LtCmdr Samantha Waters
Lone Wolf
lonewolfdagaz@hotmail.com