Snowfire's escape

As Tess acted in her suddenly calm, professional Starfleet way, Snowfire saw her own holographic image in the cell stand up and show all the signs of a living carbon-based lifeform suddenly exposed to the vacuum of space. In a few seconds, it floated like a lifeless object, eyes, ears and all other body openings spilling out little round droplets of body fluids.

"Please hurry, M'am," Tess urged the older science officer. "Now that there is no diverting signal of your lifesigns, he will notice your presence as soon as he stops being distracted. Your captain is doing a fine job in playing on his ego and memory patterns but I calculate that it will start to loose efficiency in four point seven minutes at best."

As she spoke, she opened the panell revealing the combat EVA suits stored there for the combat officers that would have been part of the normally living crew complement of the Achilles class heavy siege destroyer during the days of the Dominion wars. They were of an older design but in pristine condition and already equiped with hand weapons and ammunition, a thruster pack and concentrated rations, being also armored and equiped with a sensor ECM and scrambled comm package. Once suited, her lifesigns could therefore be masked... at least for a time.

The locker also doubled up as an emergency exit hatch to deploy troops outside the ship.

As she finished locking her helmet after checking in haste the state of her suit, the Illythirii heard in her helmet's speakers the voice of Tess giving the standard warnings before a starship hatch opening. In front of her eyes, a yellow light replaced a red one over the heavy sealed door and she felt her feet leave the metallic floor. Now floating in zero-G, she saw the brief flash of a forcefield deactivating. She felt more than she heard a hiss of air  pushed out and the yellow indicator turned green. Then there was a clanking sound. The hatch slowly opened before her.

K'leysha took a step towards the hazy blue and red fog that filled the outside. Some dust and ionized particles flew to her large visor, sparkling like diamond dust. A thunderous static discharge blinded her for a moment; she could even think that she felt a prickling of electricity on her skin.

When her vision cleared from the brief glare, she was again staring at the nebula. But she was looking at it through the main viewer of the bridge.

"No... no, you can't get away!"

The voice was unmistakable. As she turned, she saw that Khan was standing before the command chair. Obviously, the AI had restored the holoemitting grid that had been shorted out previously by wild phaser fire. Then, the science officer of the Horizon understood that he had finally seen through Tess, deception and transporter her to him. The bridge was empty but for the threatening form of a white-haired, older Khan in a tattered marooned uniform that barely covered his powerful physique. His intense stare was boring through her like phaser beams.

But then, his gaze went up past her. From behind her, someone touched her briefly. She was startled as there had been no sound, no movement... not even a thought  to warn her that someone was right behind her.

At first she tought it was Commander Oseno; but then, she saw that the man was Human, larger and taller than the Bajoran and she recognized him instantly. The hair was steely grey now, the face etched starkly with the marks of a long life of struggle and worries, the eyes heavier and deeper, but there was no mistaking who it was despite the odd twenty-third century Starfleet uniform and the surprising rank insignas adorning it's right shoulder. He stepped right besides her,

And then, he winked at her.

That's when Khan straightened up his own imposing posture to face the other presence standing in front of him.

"You... I never forget a face. Commander... Redding, isn't it?"

"Admiral Neil S. Redding, Starfleet Intelligence. And I of course, I know  you."

Khan's eyes narrowed as he seized up the other. He was as old and as powerful-looking as himself.

"This is a trick," he stated flatly. 

"And quite a nice one, If I may say so myself," agreed Redding with a grin. "When you took my data chip and connected it to the ultrasophisticated and powerful computer system of this ship, you spared no effort in downloading it's encrypted content into those immense computer banks of yours. And the only way for you to do so was to integrate that content into an isolated part of your artificial mind to eventually digest the data without corrupting your own. Any other computer, even on a starbase, would have taken months,  years to do it, but you did it in less than a single hour.  Impressive. And it worked perfectly, as you can see. The holographic facsimile of me that was part of the file has been recreated... just like you were... and linked to the main core... just like you are. Oh, it took me a while to get my bearings and to find my way out of your computerized confinement... But fortunately, you were so distracted by that charming and efficient lady here, her valorous comrade and that Andorian's great ship out there that I finally managed to slip pass you and get here. "

"Why are you here?" Khan then asked with a calm, curious tone, like a man reciting as line from a script.

"To stop you of course," answered Admiral Redding with a grin.

 "You can't stop me," said Khan with a grin of his own. But his was the smile of a shark. "You will serve me... or I will take the life of this woman."

Khan made a move to grab Snowfire; but he never got the chance.

There was a clanking and a sudden boom followed by the sound of klaxons blaring being snuffed out by a sudden rush of air. The emergency hatch of the bridge had been blown open by computer control. In an instant, anything not solidly fixated to the deck or the bulkheads of the bridge was instantly blown out into space.

In that same instant, Snowfire K'Leysha was thrown outside the Nemesis. Yet as the klaxons screamed, she reached out with the least powerful yet most visible of her Gifts. She had seen the memory recorder on the bridge, and regardless of the fact that the Commander Redding could almost certainly get a new one, this would be a lot easier. And it wasn't as if it was really heavier than a housecat. Not much at least. Her mind caught hold of the system where it lay still attached to the Nemesis's computer, tore it loose and then away. It wasn't as if it was needed anymore. She caught it as she went flying out of the bridge, wrapping her suited body around the device in an attempt to shield it from the nebular conditions. It was the least she could do.

On the bridge of the warship, now exposed to the outside, the strange luminescent haze of the nebula started to creep in like a dense fog. There was no sound to be heard now on the depressurized control center; but this was no problem for two sentient programs to nevertheless understand one another.

"Now," Admiral Redding's holographic avatar said, "it's between you and me, Khan."