When the Pelekys left Trahho Station, it was with with a truly absurd amount of fanfare. One would think that the experimental ship was on its way to single-handedly bring the entirety of the Lacertus Commonwealth under Thalatte control, not test out whether this new ship design would be a worthwhile addition to the fleet.
Not that it would do either of those things, if certain members of the crew got their way.
Setting up the anesthesia had mercifully gone off without a hitch. Thanks to her spotless record, and exemplary performance throughout her years of service, Doctor Marinos was the last person anyone would suspect of getting up to anything nefarious. So when the thalatte officer in charge of the medical unit on the Pelekys crossed paths with the human, who was in the middle of going through the supplies found in the medbay, they accepted her excuse that she was just checking over things to make sure it was all in order without batting an eye.
And when she later was fiddling with the emergency ventilation access port in the medbay - all Thalatte ships had them, in the event a bioweapon was used on one of their ships, and an airborne countermeasure needed to be administered to the crew - no one would have suspected her of anything other than a good doctor doing their due diligence to make sure that they could adequately take care of the medical needs of those aboard the vessel.
That she'd jury rigged a remote release for the canister of anesthesia she'd attached to the emergency ventilation system was not a deed anyone would have pegged her for.
Getting the W.Y.R.M. units, however, proved to be a little trickier.
That Chief Khari was going through the emergency supplies was not an issue. She'd had a hand in supplying them, after all, and as the lead non-thalatte engineer on the ship, her military record as spotless as the Doctor's, she was the last person anyone would suspect of doing something untoward.
No, the problem came from the fact that her commanding officer, a thalatte engineer who only got the job because their parents were friends with the right people, was also a gossip looking to gab, and the Chief got trapped having to listen to every scandalous scrap of information her CO had on the rest of the thalatte officers.
The only saving graces with this interaction were that the Chief was able to casually lean against the open supply locker she'd been about to pull the W.Y.R.M. units out of when the officer had cornered her, the thalatte in question too distracted by their recounting of details to notice the deorviran slip her prehensile tale out from her uniform, and using the cover of the locker door, grab the 4 units she needed and tuck them up her shirt. That, and the W.Y.R.M. units were small enough she could hide multiple on her person.
By lights out that night, she'd slipped her co-conspirators a unit each. Smaller than the palm of one's hand, they were designed to be clipped to the collar of a uniform, and once activated, they would project an invisible forcefield around the wearer's head while pumping in filtered air. It was not a long term solution to being in a toxic atmosphere - more of a stopgap until one could get into a more robust environmental suit or out of said hostile environment- but it would suit their needs for the narrow window in which they had to act.
And as the Pelekys made the jump to subspace, that window rapidly approached.
Operating with all the military precision they were known for, the thalatte officers performed exactly as Sgt. vel-Ahllan predicted. As the most experienced pilot, she had been left to guide them out of subspace with the skeleton crew of the "night" shift, one thalatte officer to watch over them while the rest retired to their quarters for the evening, a whistle signalling that all those not necessary for operations on this leg of the journey to likewise make for their bunks.
10 minutes later, lights blinked out across the ship, and under the guise of adjusting herself into a more comfortable position in her seat, Sgt. vel-Ahllan activated the W.Y.R.M. that lay hidden underneath her uniform collar. In the crew cabin, 3 other W.Y.R.M.s were activated, along with the remote switch on the canister of anesthesia tucked safely away in ventilation.
It wasn't long before those left awake began dropping like flies. On the bridge, the first of the crew who fell out of their seat, completely unconscious, startled the officer left on duty into standing. But before they could even so much as bark a demand for what was going on, the anesthesia took effect, and they collapsed to the floor. Not even bothering to make sure the rest of those on the bridge were out, Nevara stood from her seat, smoothly pulling the emergency pistol from its place at her station, before she emptied every single round into the thalatte officer's head.
The pistol was only strong enough to punch through organic matter, rather than the metallic hull of a ship, so she had to make sure the officer was well and truly dead by firing every charge the gun had. That was what she would tell the others later, when she'd had a chance to gather her thoughts, but as she stood above the officer's dead body, chest heaving and eyes filled with hate, the empty gun in her hand clicking as she kept pulling the trigger, her mind was full of nothing but the voiceless howl of her own rage at everything she'd experienced under Thalatte control.
In the crew cabin, Malakh had disengaged the lock with embarrassingly little effort, the murmurs of confusion from the rest of the crew abed tapering off as they were quickly knocked out by the gas being pumped through the system. Rhea handed her and Pryseia a powered scalpel apiece as soon as they were out of the room, and the trio quickly made their way to officer's quarters just down the hall.
Rhea halted them just outside the door, her doctor's Longan Unit keyed in on the thalatte within. The second it registered that they'd all been pulled under by the anesthesia, she hit the switch to open the door, and they made their way inside. Unlike the crew quarters, which consisted of a single room with multiple bunks, the thalatte officers each had their own private rooms. Thankfully, none of them were locked, and so the three aliens split up to get the job done faster.
The scalpels they bore all had keen metal blades, their cutting power amplified by the inclusion of a laser emitter designed to cut through even the toughest exoskeletons known to science. Though more protective than the softer flesh of other races, the scales of the thalatte were no match for the searing force of these scalpels. Plunging the blade into the spinal column just at the base of the skull was the least time-intensive way to kill their captors, as Rhea had told them. Speed was of the essence, after all.
But when they each emerged from a room, more covered in blood than they had been before, none of them made a comment on it.
Finally, with all the officers accounted for, Rhea deactivated the anesthesia canister, and the ventilation system set about filtering the air into something that wouldn't drag them under.
"Should take about 10 or so minutes to get it back to breathable in here," she said, voice shaking as she motioned towards one of the ducts in the room, "Still, I'd suggest keeping the W.Y.R.M.s active for at least 20. There's a lot to do, and not a lot of people to do it with."
"I'm going to go dig out the QECD," Malakh said, voice steady despite the fact she was visibly trembling, "We can load that into one of the shuttles, along with the officers, and shunt that off into subspace. You good without me?"
"Make haste with your endeavour," Pryseia replied, demeanour calm but her eyes wild, "Nevara can assist us with moving this lot."
Malakh nodded, her eyes briefly flicking across their blood soaked hands before she turned and ran out of the officer's quarters.
Within subspace, time and space behaved very differently than it did outside of it, which made communication across these dimensions all but impossible. Only through quantum entanglement were messages able to be delivered across the void.
Two particles bound in such a way that what was done to one would befall the other, their use enabled the instantaneous transmission of rudimentary data over any and all distances. The jiggling of a particle could only convey so much, and so a simple encoding method was developed specifically for use with the Quantum Entanglement Communication Devices. Once, when using a discussion about the QECD as an excuse to spend time with Rhea, the human had told Malakh about a similar method of transmitting data her people had developed in their early days of telecommunication. Morse code, she believed it was called, though she couldn't be certain. Malakh had been more intent on memorizing the feel of the other woman's leg pressed up against hers than she was whatever they'd been talking about.
But now, without the overbearing oversight of their Thalatte captors, they wouldn't need to make up excuses to spend time in one another's company. That thought alone motivated her more than any order she'd been given throughout her military career.
It didn't take her long to detach the QECD from its station in the combat information centre, and thankfully the thing was small enough that she didn't need to find some kind of transportation cart to haul it down to the shuttle bay. When she arrived, device in hand, it was to the sight of the others shoving a cart piled with the bodies of the thalatte officers into the shuttle they were going to sacrifice to the void.
With still so much to do, she didn't allow herself to feel any kind of way about any of that.
In short order, they had the bodies and QECD stowed securely away in the shuttle, and after programming the transport to fly at maximum speed into the depths of subspace until its fuel ran out, they sent it on its way.
Malakh only had enough time to register that Rhea's uniform jacket was unbuttoned against regulations and her hands clean of blood before they were in her mane, pulling her into a searing kiss.
"I don't relish interrupting you," Pryseia said not unkindly a few indulgent moments later, "But how much time do we have before the rest of the crew awakens?"
Rhea pulled away from the kiss, just far enough to rest her forehead against Malakh's, the human's words hot against her lips as she said, "A half hour or sooner, depending on how resistant to anesthesia they are on an individual level."
With her own hands around Rhea's wrists, holding her in place, Malakh added, "I'll get on the schematics, see what monitoring devices there are in here, and how badly we'll need to gut this place to get them out."
"I'll assist you. Pryseia can help Rhea with the crew." Nevara said, and Malakh heard the pair of them walk away.
Placing once last chaste kiss against her lips, Rhea stepped back, eyes as bright as her smile as she said, "Gotta finish our chores before we can have any fun."
Her own smile breaking free, Malakh replied, "I've never looked forward to anything more."
Confusion reigned supreme when the rest of the crew came to.
Some were immediately on board with the mutiny that had gone on without them, more than happy to be rid of those who had stolen them from their homes and forced them to fight for a cause that wasn't their own.
Others were gripped by fear - over what to do with their lives now, at the thought of Thalatte retaliation, or the worry that they'd just traded in 1 master for 4 others.
No one, however, was distraught over the fate of the thalatte officers.
Thankfully the 4 conspirators managed to soothe worries rather quickly.
The Pelekys, built as a testbed rather than a production model, had only been outfitted with monitoring devices within the crew quarters and the mess hall, the only places the alien members of the Thalatte military could congregate outside of their duties. Malakh and Nevara had them disabled and uninstalled by the time the last member of the crew returned to consciousness. Allowing the rest of the engineering team to go over the schematics and confirm this eased the crew tremendously.
Then, using the procedure Malakh had been working on in secret, Rhea removed the deorviran's Longan Unit, which further ameliorated the crowd when she promised she would do the same for all of them. The atmosphere grew more and more celebratory with every Unit removed. Incredible what not having a bomb bolted to one's skull could do for morale.
Doubts were further assuaged when Pryseia promised that they'd be rerouting to apiarian airspace - more than half of this crew came from the Aristocracy, and the rest would be able to find transportation to elsewhere in the galaxy - and that anyone who wanted to leave was free to take whatever they could carry, the SH-3N mechs included.
Hours later, as Nevara set course away from the intended target of the Lacertus Commonwealth, it was to the sounds of raucous cheers and glasses clinking together as the officer's private store of alcohol was broken into.
Regulations didn't matter now that the crew of the Pelekys was en route to freedom.