The situation on the Excelsior continued to escalate. Captain Santiago had sent his security team and a medical assistant down to engineering where the alien humanoids were ready to destroy the warp core. Captain Santiago was losing patience, and his crew beginning to feel very nervous. This was probably the first time as captain that he felt like he had lost control of his ship.
The Chief of Security and his team emerged from the turbolift and rushed to engineering. Most of everyone in the room lay unconscious or seriously injured. A thick fog of smoke filled the room that made the team almost gag. The Chief of Security stared at the odd-looking humanoids that surrounded the warp core of the Excelsior. They scanned it up and down, looking as if they were trying to determine how to best destroy it. We need to draw them away from the warp core, the Chief thought. The team raised their weapons, which consisted of Type III phaser rifles. The Chief nodded, giving them the order to fire.
But the phaser fire had little effect. The medical assistant who stood by quickly used his medical tricorder to scan them, but he did not want to get too close. “They have a hard exoskeleton that’s able to absorb the nadion particles from our phasers and dissipate it as heat without injuring themselves. But they do have vulnerable areas in their necks and joints. I’m also detecting a relatively low concentration of nociceptic nerve fibers in their tissues.”
The Chief just stared blankly at him.
“They don’t feel a lot of pain,” he explained.
“I want everybody to aim carefully. Increase your settings to kill. Make every shot count.” The team raised their rifles once more and managed to disable one of them by firing at its lower back, and it stumbled forward and onto the ground. That got the attention of the other three, who fixated their lifeless eyes on the security team. Two of them marched towards to security team that scared them to their core.
The medical assistant spoke once more, hands trembling as he read his medical tricorder. “There’s one more thing. I’m detecting an abnormally high concentration of adrenaline and testosterone in their blood. Their strength and aggression…they must be…”
“Just spit it out already. What does that mean?” the Chief demanded.
“Don’t piss them off.”
