OOC:  Another repost.

“Master Chief, I can’t raise her” Petty Officer Smith said to the chief of the boat.

“What do you mean you can’t raise her. Is her communicator functioning?” Command Master Chief Minna Chang asked the man at the comm station on Endeavor’s bridge.

“She’s just not answering it Master Chief.”

“What is her precise location, right now?”

“One second. She’s on the fourth level of the mining station, its a small building, …, looks like a bar.”

“Send those coordinates to the transporter room and follow me.”

“Yes Master Chief.”

She walked, or rather limped quickly off the bridge and into the lift, with the petty officer right behind her. A few minutes later they were in the transporter room.

“Transport me just outside that building, then standbys, I’ll be calling quickly for evacuation.”

“Yes, Master Chief.”

—- Rory’s Tavern, Berengaria VII Mining Complex, Commercial Sector ——

Minna materialized in what looked liked a city street, but for the fact that it was underground. There were a few bicycles in a rack, and a small truck parked across the “street”, but mostly people, or rather beings of many species just walked, mostly in groups.

Despite the variety of species, they all looked somewhat the same to Nami’s eyes. Whether male or female (the vast majority were male) they were tall, muscular, though walked with something of a shrug, as though they’d been doing hard physical labor for far too many hours in the day. They were also either darkly complected, or for those who weren’t, looked so due to the soot that seemed to permeate everyone and everything. Nami had seen mining communities before, but this one was a whole other level of oppressive and nasty.

She spotted the bar easily enough and would have even had she not known the coordinates. It was the only place with a lot of lights on both inside and outside, and was the only place from which the sound of laughter emanated. Minna limped over quickly, not caring that her clean Starfleet uniform and the fairly crude metal brace on her left leg stuck out just as much as the fact that she was small, pretty and most importantly, clean.

She walked into the bar and her eyes quickly scanned the place, but her daughter wasn’t anywhere to be seen. She proceeded quickly to the bar, but before she could reach it she felt a hand on her shoulder. What happened next would appear to any observer as just a blur of motion. In that blink of an eye, the hand was lifted, the body attached to it spun, bent and pushed, all by Minna’s left hand, while her right hand, also in a blur of motion, pulled the rather beat-up phase pistol from her belt and jammed the business end hard into the man’s face. Said man was also face down on the ground with his right arm twisted at a very unnatural and painful angle and Minna’s undamaged right knee grinding down hard into his back behind and under the left shoulder blade.

“Where is the other one?” She asked quietly.

“The other what?”

“The other Starfleet officer. The younger and prettier one that was right here two-minutes-ago” Minna replied.

“I don’t know, I didn’t seeeaAHHHHHHHHH”

The man screamed as Nami pulled back on his arm.

“You really should tell me, and then take me to her. Your shoulder has only another few millimeters before its dislocated.”

“Okay, okay. They took her to the storage room.”

Minna let go and then stood up. “You’re going to take me to her, or I’ll start shooting off body parts. Should we start with your hands or your feet?”

“I’ll take you, you crazy bitch.”

“Yeah, you will. NOW.”

The man slowly got up and then started walking toward the back of the bar. Minna saw him give some kind of nod to another man who stood up and started approaching, with some sort of mining pick in his hand. Minna’s reaction was instantaneous, shifting the position of her weapon slightly and firing. The red beam made it clear the phase pistol was set to kill, as did the head of the pick axe disintegrating with the direct hit. Man #2 quickly sat back down and man #1 continued toward the back.

“Open it” she said, and the man very wisely complied, revealing a small room with two men beyond the door, a person on the floor in front of them and another man beyond.

Someone had obviously signaled them as they were already turning and had weapons drawn when the door opened. Minna’s thumb engaged the selector on the phase pistol and a fraction of a second later she was shooting. First the man behind the door to the left, hitting him right between the eyes and dropping him to the ground like a sack of wet bricks. The next shot a split second later was at the one furthest into the room behind the prone person who she figured was Kyungmi, and again she hit him right between and with the same result. The other man at the door fired at the same time as Minna’s third shot, at the same man who was shooting at her. She ignored the man who opened the door as her sidestep behind him resulted in door man #2 shooting his own guy while aiming for a moving Minna, and Minna’ own shot hitting its intended target with her usual precision.

The whole “battle” had lasted all of three seconds, and all four of the men were put down and the threat ended. She walked over the prone forms of the stunned men and came upon her daughter, uniform ripped and blood running down her nose. Minna looked down quickly, then calmly pulled her communicator and simply said “Chang to Endeavor, two to transport.”

They materialized barely three minutes after Minna’d gone down and the petty officer looked first at the phase pistol in the Master Chief’s hand, and then at the bloody and sobbing young lieutenant with an obvious family resemblance.

“Give us the room” Minna said plainly and without a word the petty officer was gone, leaving only Minna and her daughter. Even with their privacy, she spoke in Korean rather than Standard.

“What the hell were you thinking?” Minna asked her daughter despite the younger woman technically outranking her mother.

“I was there for an ore sample.”

“An ore sample?”

“That stuff they’re mining, they said it is half the weight and four times the strength of titanium.”

“Who said that?”

“The engineer I met in the processing plant.”

“I didn’t find you in the processing plant.”

“He said it would take about an hour to package a sample and invited me to have a drink while we waited.”

“You didn’t bring backup?”

“I…, I was just thinking how useful that sample could be. With the war and everything, a lighter and stronger metal would…., I’m sorry mother, it won’t happen again.”

“No, it won’t. When off duty you are confined to quarters until further notice.”

“But mother, I…“

“Oh I’m not confining you as your mother. I’m confining you as chief of the boat and as acting chief armory officer, which puts me in charge of security. Maybe you’ll have time to think about what was about to happen to you in that storage room.”

“Yes, Master Chief” the young lieutenant intelligently replied, knowing far better than most not to mess with the chief of the boat.

“Now, get yourself down to sickbay first and have that looked at.”

“Yes, Master Chief” she replied before leaving Minna alone in the transporter room.