Chapter Text
XII. The Object of Everyone’s Attention
Communications Technician 3rd Class Karl Havarti looks out the port at the dull, cloudy glow of their hiding place. He makes sure that he keeps his breaths shallow. So far, the air recyclers in the several escape pods, all bound together by the framework of their housing, had been working fine, but they don’t know how long. The life support systems are supported by the fact that there are only four to six of them in any single pod. That and the extra airhandling unit that had come with the section of the ship with the pods. An idea that had been born after they had jumped here and fought off a Klin scout ship, from something their captain and the engineer warrant officer had come up with, based on something the captain had discussed with her mother, an admiral of engineering.
Three pods were in use by the living. The fourth pod houses their dead, and one of them houses their most seriously wounded crew member, the XO, Ensign (Midshipman) Madison and the medtech. The young woman is mercifully in a medically induced coma; he doesn’t know how much longer she will last.
Most of her body is covered in second-and third-degree burns. If she survived, it would take many months, possible even years to regenerate that much skin and tissue for her to heal completely.
Karl closes his eyes, thinking of one of those in the fourth pod. Comm Tech 2nd Class Hank Dougherty. A fellow comm tech with an easy manner, one who had instantly accepted Karl when he had come aboard.
A new start after his ignominious failure as a midshipman, only two months into his one-year probationary period, the same for any graduate of the Academy with a degree and the demonstrated technical skills, who hadn’t graduated in the top 1% of the class. A top 1% who would immediately be ranked as a full ensign immediately after graduation.
He hears a slight moan beside him. His eyes travel down to the young acting captain. He reaches down and wipes the bruised, freckled forehead.
When she had first reported aboard, Karl had been skeptical. She, like him, hadn’t graduated in that coveted top 1%. She, also like him, had been very close. It hadn’t helped that Sinclair had assigned him a duty that was, in his mind, someone else’s. Merely because he had reminded her of the fact that it wasn’t his job.
It had been during the trip to Earth for Sinclair’s and Captain Chandra’s investiture, that Hank had taken him aside. He had gently and firmly told him that it wasn’t his job to debate assignments that the captain of the ship gave him, after a battle. No matter what he thought of whether she was qualified.
He’d seen Regit Th’rolev, the Andorian Ops midshipman speaking to Hank, who was the leading comms tech on the ship before Hank had given him the talk.
“You need to let it go, Cheese,” he had said, using the nickname that had been coined way back in his plebe year. “It ain’t about you and whether it was fair or not that you got DOP’d.”
Dropped on probation, he thinks, closing his eyes. The official term. Final, unless he’d been willing to repeat his fourth year.
His pride wouldn’t allow him to.
He senses movement into the escape pod. He looks up as Th’rolev steps in. He stumbles slightly, the product of the the broken antenna that Karl carries in his pocket, in an insulated coldpak.
Th’rolev moves down to his knees, then moves in behind Sinclair. He gently pulls her up and lets her rest against him. Th’rolev had lifted Decker after she’d been thrown against the after bulkhead of the bridge.
Th’rolev looks at Karl. “You done good, Cheese,” he says. “It was a good idea to get the log buoy to keep talking to us.”
He looks down. “I’d been working on that in my spare time. I didn’t think she’d let me, since I’d bucked her a bit.”
Regid shakes his head. “That’s why she’s a captain a few weeks into her service. She used what she had to keep us alive.
All with six broken ribs, a punctured lung, and a concussion, Karl thinks.
Karl falls silent. He looks down at the impossibly young face, only a year behind him in the Academy. He shakes his head, thinking of what Hank had said.
Of the chance that Sinclair had given him to prove that he wasn’t a failure.
Sinclair, no, Captain Sinclair, moans again. He can see her eyes moving beneath her lids. He reaches down and takes her hand, as Th’rolev holds her tighter in his arms.
XIII. Brain Dump
The darkness fades in an instant. Decker fights to focus. As she does, she sees something on their position. She can hear the grinding of the two hulls. The Aerfen shudders as it travels along the Klingon battlecruiser’s boom, turning slightly away.
Covering the escape pods on the starboard side. “Belay that,” she yells, her voice sounding like someone else’s through the fog. Brain injury, one part of her brain shouts. She moves to the helm and sits. She doesn’t have a great deal of time, as her Ops officer has moved to help Madison who is screaming in the Cohort pit. “Th’rolev,” she continues in a calmer voice. “I need you on the weps. Stand by aft torpedoes.”
He instantly obeys. She finds what she is looking for on the navigation screen. She punches it in, then waits for the Aerfen to continue her swing.
“Torpedo armed and ready, Skipper,” Th’rolev says. “Target?”
She sends him a text to the console. He nods as her hand moves to the warp drive controls. “All hands,” she says, taking a breath against the pain in her side and back, “brace, brace, brace! Weps, match bearings and shoot!”
The world turn translucent and slows down as the stars twist in a manner not usually seen in entering hyperspace. Idly, her mind focuses on the fact that she had just created an unstable wormhole.
Her vision comes into sharp relief. As it does, she releases the contents of her stomach on the console in front of her. She sees the scarlet in the vomit; she can feel stabbing pain in her side with every breath.
“Damage report,” she hears Th’rolev say as he comes over to her. With surprising gentleness, he lifts her from the chair. She tries not to cry out from the pain, as he lays her flat on the deck, pulling her legs out.
Voices speak words, but her brain can’t translate them for a moment.
“Life support failing,” someone says. “Warp drive offline. We left the right nacelle somewhere back in hyperspace.”
“Two targets! Klingon light scouts.”
“Get me up,” Decker manages. The pain returns with a vengeance. “Salvo remaining torpedoes,” she says. “Target the lead hawk.”
She hears the tchunk of the releases, or at least four versions.
“Got her!” another voice shouts. “She didn’t have her shields up.”
“The other one is turning to run.”
Decker focuses on the screen. She is about to find her voice when there is a flash of light in front of the Klingon. The crew watches in dumb fascination as their wayward right nacelle enters realspace.
And collides with the Klingon with a secondary burst of light.
They all stare at the screen.
“Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good,” she manages. She turns to see the warrant officer engineer moving slowly towards her, his arm hanging loosely.
“Life support still failing, Captain. We’re dead in the water.”
Her mother’s face flashes into her vision.
“I got an idea.” She stares at the large gas giant that now fills the screen with their drift.
XIV. In Too Deep?
“Get us the hell out of here,” Targsbane says.
“Belay that!” Croft shouts. He whirls on her. “We’re not leaving them, dammit!”
“They’re dead,” she shouts back.
“We don’t know that!”
“Maybe not, but I ain’t getting dead to prove it!”
“Yes we are, A’lanna, if we have to.”
Both of them turn towards Ael'a, one seated, one standing. They stare at her.
“You don’t have a say in this,” the pirate starts.
Ael'a moves over to her. She looks down at her childhood friend, sitting in the center seat. The one time she’s able to, she thinks.
As if thinking the same thing, Targsbane rises and uses that height.
“Yes, I do, if you want to get paid,” Ael'a says quietly.
Out of the corner of her eye, she sees one side of Croft’s mouth curl upward as Targsbane stares at her. For a moment, she thinks that A’lanna is going to order her tossed from the bridge. She feels a familiar smile come over her face.
She sees A’lanna start with recognition as she sees the smile. She rubs her jaw absently. A memory flashes in Ael'a’s mind. A smaller, full Romulan standing over a taller Romulan-Orion hybrid, her hand smarting from where it had connected with her jaw.
“Shields,” she says. “How many assholes are we looking at?” she asks her pilot.
The woman turns to her and asks, “Besides you?”
Croft and Ael'a snort as A’Lanna stares at her. “How long can you tread water in space?”
The woman smirks. “Only if you learn how to fucking drive,” she says. She looks back at her screen. “Three Birds of Prey,” she replies. “They just cloaked.”
“Great,” A'lanna says. “Go ahead and cloak us as well.”
Ael'a feels the strange sensation she always gets a cloaking device is engaged. She looks at Croft, probably the one that has experienced this sensation the least, but he gives no sign of discomfort. She notices that he is looking at the Federation gunboat.
She exhales sharply as she sees the damage for the first time. The Aerfen, as Croft had called it, floats between their ship and where the Klin were last seen. There is a rent in the hull about midships, just aft of the bridge that goes through all of the decks, but not all the way across the hull.
Hull plating is missing all over the ship, including a few that might have been lost when they had arrived here.
“Neutrino buildup approaching closer, Captain,” the helmswoman says. Ael'a searches her memory for her name. Tardris, she thinks.
Ael'a sees her stop. “Okay, the neutrinos are back to normal.”
A'lanna looks at her. “What do you mean?”
Tardris whirls on her. “It means we can’t track them,” she says forcefully.
“Torpedoes inbound,” says another crewmember.
“Evasive,” A'lanna says.
The ship turns away. As it does, there is an explosion of matter from the gas giant. Ael'a sees the matter mark the three predatory shapes.
“That ain’t natural,” Croft says.
“Got target locks,” says the weapons officer.
“Fire torpedoes. Full spread!”
Ael'a looks at Croft as the torpedoes impact the Klingon ships, shattering the center shape, while sending it careening into the other.
His expression says the same thing as hers does.
Where did the gas discharge come from?
XV. An Inspector Calls
Inspector Liz Torbert of the San Francisco Police Department steps out of the transport. A uniform makes a note of her arrival as the homicide investigator of record. She moves into the alleyway, careful of where her feet go.
She stops as the hovering floodlights illuminate the scene, staying on this side of the crime scene holo indicators. Her eyes take in the body kneeling on the cement.
Her eyes move up the body, taking in the staring yellow eyes.
Until they fall on what looks like the hilt of a sword sticking up from the right shoulder, shoved where it would impact the heart and other major organs.
She sees another wound on the left side.
“What have we got?” she asks the uniform guarding the scene.
“A mystery. He’s not apparently registered here. The Klingon consulate denies knowledge of him.”
“And the Romulan blood?” Liz continues.
The officer points to knife lying on the ground, being scanned in place by one of the crime scene units. “Apparently a FedSec officer was attacked by someone she was tracking. Stabbed her, but the officer was able to put a knife in her. It’s got the officer’s prints on it. The Rom was apparently a Starfleet officer.”
Liz raises her eyebrows at that, then nods; she starts to move through the crime scene holotape, checking to make sure her sterilization field is on her belt before turning it on. She hears the hum and sees the glow.
Liz senses a figure come up beside her, stopping at the holo. She turns as a tall Betelgeusian woman reaches into her tunic and pulls out an ID plaque.
“Let me guess,” she says. “FedSec Counterintelligence.”
She can’t tell if the woman smiles or not. “I’m Chief Inspector Yer,” she says.
A human woman walks up, with suit written all over her, as well as an old man in a Starfleet uniform. An admiral, if she remembers what her memory and her baby sister had told her, from the braid.
“You lose an officer?” she asks the old man.
For an instant, she wonders if the Starfleeter was going to tear her a new one. Instead, she sees a tiny twinkle in his hard blue eyes. “Maybe. Or maybe she was never an actual officer.” He doesn’t offer to shake hands, seeing the sterilization field over her skin. “I’m McCall. Starfleet Intelligence.”
The woman doesn’t offer to introduce herself, but smiles what looks like a more sincere smile than most suits have in their repertoire, in Liz’s experience.
Liz starts to move towards the body. She hears the woman make a noise in her throat. She stops, then motions to a tech who is watching the evidence gathering units circle the body. The three, after donning their own sterilization units, follow her. Liz nods at the medical examiner.
She stares at the green blood on the Klingon’s corpse as well.
The ME nods. “Definitely Romulan. And something else.”
“What?”
“Probably some type of chemical that might mask the Romulan blood,” the human woman says. “So you don’t get made if you get a paper cut, but might with major trauma.”
“She speaks,” Liz says.
“Usually with authority, Officer,” she replies.
“Inspector,” Liz corrects. “So you’re saying this woman is a Romulan spy?”
No one says anything.
Liz stares at them. “What the hell is this?”
“That’s none of your business,” says another voice.
They whirl as one. Two men stand there. One of them is in his late fifties and carries a swagger cane of some sorts. Liz immediately discounts him.
Another man. Erect, with a straight spine. His eyes are cold in a wrinkled face. He leans on a cane.
“Admiral Harriman,” the human woman says. “I wondered when SPECOPS would weigh in. She turns towards the other man. “Seeing how Daina Reese worked for your lackey, here.”
“Special Section, FedSec, and Intel can pound sand,” Harriman says. “Security will take over. Just like the Border Patrol is going to stand down on looking for the missing ship in the Triangle.”
“No,” the woman says.
Liz sees the dark eyes flash. “What do you mean, ‘no’, C?”
“Just what she said, Sam,” McCall replies. He looks over at Liz. She doesn’t move.
His mouth quirks up in a smile that matches the twinkle.
She pulls out a PADD. She glances over at Liz as well. She gives her a wink.
“You’re not taking over this investigation. It will remain a FedSec Investigations Directorate inquiry.” She smiles as Liz feels her face grow hot. “With SFPD in the lead here in their jurisdiction.”
Liz calms, her eyebrows feeling like they have risen to her hairline.
“On whose authority?” he says.
A new voice speaks behind them. A voice with a noticeable accent. Some kind of Slavic. Russian maybe, Liz thinks. “I can answer that.”
All of them turn, some of them smiling.
A middle aged man in a Starfleet officer’s uniform stands there. He is shorter than average, but Liz recognizes that he has a good deal of authority in his manner, from years of experience.
“What are you doing here, Captain?” Harriman asks.
“Countermanding your orders. At least on this.”
Harriman bristles. “By whose authority, Captain?” he asks, the emphasis on rank clear.
The officer taps the braid hanging from his right shoulder. “My boss. And yours.” He turns to Liz. “Hello, Inspector. My name is Captain Pavel Andreivich Chekov.” His rank comes out in her hearing as Keptin.
“Who’s your boss?” she asks, taking his hand, looking into his dark eyes.
He smiles tightly. “You can call him Mr. President.”