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Star Trek Adventurer	By : Tcr Category: +S through Z > Star Trek: Online Views: 2690 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: Disclaimer: Star Trek is owned and copyrighted by Paramount Pictures and CBS. For full disclaimer, see Chapter 1.

Chapter List
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- 23
A/N: Proklâtyj translates from Russian to English as “Damn”, at least as far as I was able to get a translation. Any error here is mine and mine alone.
Chapter 22: The No Win Scenario
Three beams streaked from the ship towards one of the others. The viewscreen shifted again without Korolevna’s orders, showing the polaron weapons rip right through the shields on the Luna-class Deimos, carving deep into the starship’s hull, through the entire saucer, and out the bottom of it. Debris and bodies were pulled into space, writhing and gasping as they struggled to survive.
Ricardo! Taka gasped, her hand going right to her mouth. Erra’s eyes widened in shock, Straala stared stoically at the screen, though Taka could see the subtle twitch in the Vulcan’s lips that betrayed her emotions.
“Shields!” Korolevna ordered. She slid back into her chair.
Explosions tore through the Adventurer before anyone could react to her orders. The viewscreen went black and came back to life with static rippling through it. A blue skinned hand grabbed hold of the executive officer’s console, pulling its owner back to her feet. She sucked in a painful breath as her arm went to her ribs, pain searing through her body, and blue blood trailed down the side of her cheeks.
On the viewscreen, plumes of flames erupted from the Prometheus-class Epimetheus as weapons blasts ripped into its hull. Taka couldn’t believe it; it was like their shields weren’t even there. She steeled herself against the destruction being wreaked on the fleet as reports flooded the communications channels, shrouding the Bridge in eerie cries and scared reports.
“Hull breach-”
“-damage to deck 14!”
“Overloaded circuits-”
“-heavy casualties, deck 7!”
“Captain?” Taka called out. No response. “Commander?” Silence. She looked around the Bridge, trying to find anyone still at their consoles. “Tactical?”
“Here,” Erra’s voice stated. Taka pivoted to look over in the direction of the Bajoran woman. Erra glanced back at Taka before she looked down at the ground and kneeled. There was silence for a moment before she rose again, “Commander Watson’s dead.” She slid back into her chair and began tapping commands into the console.
The lights clicked back on and Taka saw the Adventurer’s actual executive officer’s body on the ground, sharp debris jammed into his forehead and neck. “Clear those channels, Erra.”
“I’m trying, Taka!”
“Palmer?” Taka asked. Silence greeted her again. “Straala?”
“I am still alive, Takala,” Straala replied stoically. She pulled herself from the floor in front of the Helm console. Green blood flowed across her face and lines of it ran down her hands, dripping off her fingers, as she stepped around the console back to her chair.
“Get us out of orbit, evasive maneuvers,” Taka ordered. Straala replied positively. “Shran’s ghost, what the Hell hit us?” she muttered, dropping into Captain Korolevna’s chair. She opened a channel to Engineering, “McMaster, what’s going on down there?”
*****
Acrid smoke mixed with the toxic fumes from the warp core. Recruits clambered over one another trying to get away from the cloud of death as they screamed and yelled. M’Akl stared at the scene unfolding in front of her eyes through the transparisteel window for only a second before grabbing the oxygen mask on the wall behind her and slipping it over her face.
“I can’t breathe!”
“I need air! God, I need air!”
“Use the mask! Come on, use your masks!” M’Akl yelled it, but she wasn’t sure anyone even heard her over their frantic cries and shrieks. The cacophony was overwhelming and, if anyone heard her, none of them cared about what she’d said. “Get back to your stations!”
“Damn it, boys, use your brains!” McMaster’s thick Irish accent bellowed over the cries. Something exploded in the cloud and a stampede of recruits and officers alike charged him to get to the masks.
The cries from her fellow recruits and officers deafened her. Her hands covered her ears to try to avoid it, but it did nothing as she wanted to fall to the ground. Her eyes saw someone writhing in the toxic gas. Her hands came away from her ears and her sensitive hearing, through the loud, deafening cacophony. Screams and cries for help, pleas for anyone to help, reached her and she turned back to look at the Adventurer’s Chief Engineer.
He was lost amidst the recruits charging towards the back of Engineering.
Thirty seconds, M’Akl, that’s all! she told herself. Thirty, twenty-nine, twenty-eight…
Her eyes adjusted sharply to the cloudy situation and she was thankful it wasn’t plasma coolant; she wouldn’t have been alive to do anything if it was. She found the black shape with quick ease and grabbed the woman. She tried to pull, but nothing happened. She tried again. Again, she didn’t move. Cursing, she looked over. A beam had collapsed across the woman’s legs, crushing them beneath it.
Twenty, nineteen, eighteen…
Time was running short and M’Akl looked around. A discarded plasma torch lay off to the side and she quickly grabbed it, looking at the woman. “I’m sorry.”
The Ensign on the ground nodded. M’Akl knew that surviving without the legs was better than dying with them and so did the woman trapped beneath the debris. There was no need to comment anything else; they both knew it was going to be excruciatingly painful. The chance was worth it, though. She switched the plasma torch on.
Twelve, eleven, ten…
The woman screamed and twisted. M’Akl didn’t blame her. She couldn’t. Not before and definitely not after the nauseating scent of burning flesh reached her nose. Come on, come on! Seven, six, five!
The woman’s legs separated with disturbing ease as the Caitian dropped the torch and pulled on her. Mournful wails filled M’Akl’s ears, but she didn’t stop. She couldn’t. Even as she felt herself get weak and her steps become unsteady, she couldn’t.
Another figure plunged into the smoke, charging deeper into it than M’Akl had gone. With her hearing, her ears picked up coughs as lungs were exposed to the gases. She pulled the woman to safety and turned around, ready to go back in with a couple long gasps of air before she weaved and balanced herself against the wall. Another blast jerked the ship and she stumbled.
The emergency hatch descended. M’Akl moved to charge in, to save the one who had gone in, before a hand pulled her back. A body rolled out from underneath the bulkhead mere seconds before it sealed itself completely. She finally saw who had charged in to save the recruit; Chief Engineer McMaster slumped against the transparisteel, blood seeping from his nose and mouth as he slid down the window.
“Lieutenant?” M’Akl yelled out. She grabbed one of the enlisted. “Where’s the officers?”
“No one knows where they are!” the man shouted back at her, pulling away. “I guess you’re the Chief now!”
“Engineering! McMaster, report!” Taka’s voice erupted over the speakers, loud enough to be heard over the mass of bodies hurling themselves at masks and Jefferies tubes. “Somebody report!”
M’Akl steadied herself before heading to the console. “Bridge, Engineering. I don’t know where anyone is and we’ve got a leak down here. I don’t know how bad.”
“Find out!” Taka snapped.
The ship jerked again and consoles blared alarms. “Report!” M’Akl growled at the rest of the men and women.
*****
“Erra, get those damned shields up!” Taka ordered from the command chair. “Jena, where’s that damned ship?”
“Power’s down, severed relays throughout the ship. I can’t get them up!” Erra reported.
“The ship’s coming around for another shot, Taka,” Hiland stated.
“Weapons?”
“Offline,” Erra replied.
“Helm?”
“Maneuvering thrusters only,” Straala answered. “We’ve venting drive plasma from the shot to the nacelle. Impulse and warp are off-” the Vulcan woman was cut off by another shot that shook the ship. “Hull breach, deck 16, five missing.”
Taka envied Straala.
Though they liked to hide their emotions, bury them deep under a blanket of calm and cool, they were still there. But Vulcans had control. Straala was stoic as everything went to Hell around her and, right now, Taka could definitely have used that as her antennae flashed wildly.
The viewscreen went completely static before coming back to show the four-nacelled design of the Prometheus-class Epimetheus twist to face the oncoming threat. The bright blue glow of the nacelles stood as a stark contrast to the black of space, her orange-red phaser bursts and cannon fire light up the sky, her torpedoes carving through it. The enemy weapons shone a bright purple as they streaked across the void, the Epimetheus’ Helmsman only narrowly avoiding the full blast of fire ripping through its hull, a mere glancing blow cutting a swath of destruction of the starship’s arrow-shaped hull.
“Taka, the Epimetheus!” Erra cried. “The weapons…”
“Our shields are useless against them,” Taka finished the depressing thought.
The Epimetheus split into three sections as it activated the multivector assault mode the class had pioneered and mastered. The saucer, Alpha, moved upwards and the two other pieces, Beta and Gamma, moved downwards. Beta moved starboard, Gamma port, all heading towards the nearest enemy vessel. Another blast from the unknown aliens ripped through a section of Gamma, the Epimetheus’ keel.
The Aeneid moved in to assist the Epimetheus, its own phasers chewing at the attacker’s ship. A second vessel erupted from warp, the same design as the first, her weapons firing on the Aeneid, shattered hull plates ripped from her superstructure, bursts of flames instantly vanquished by the unforgiving vacuum. The weapons burned into the Aeneid’s engineering hull, opening it to space, bodies thrown from the breaches. The Odyssey-class vessel broke off assisting Epimetheus to take care of herself.
Palatine and Deimos moved in to assist both starships, though Taka didn’t know what good they could do. The Deimos’ wounds were still hemorrhaging atmosphere, though it seemed her internal forcefields were holding the rest of the ship in. Bursts from the enemy rippled along the Palatine’s hull, stripping plates and drilling deep into its saucer section.
“Uzaveh,” Taka gasped. She was hardly religious, barely caring about the ancient god, but this was one of the few times she uttered the name. Though none of the ships had been destroyed, they were being picked apart. It was like the horrendous tales and recreations of the Battle of Wolf 359 she’d had to study in Command 101.
“Taka…” Erra trailed, turning from her station to look at the viewscreen.
Taka looked up as a violent explosion rippled through space and blinded her. All around her, gasps from the conscious Bridge staff reverberated through the smoke. She stood, mouth agape at the sight, even as chunks of the Epimetheus’ saucer struck the Adventurer and was deflected off into space.
“Prophets…”
“Good God.” Hiland’s disbelief that the Alpha section of the Epimetheus had just been vapourized was reflected in her widened eyes and open mouth, mirrored by every member, except Straala.
“Admiral Banacek…”
“Is most likely dead,” Straala finished Taka’s sentence.
The Prometheus-class cruiser’s other two thirds continued to press their attack, but it was a futile endeavour now. Without Alpha section and Admiral Banacek, they were at the mercy of their own commanders rather than a computer controlled attack pattern, leaving them vulnerable to misinterpretation and destruction. The attacker’s weapons struck the Beta section’s starboard nacelle, shredding its protective plating as it detonated into fiery bits of metal extinguished in the darkness. The chain reaction destroyed the section, splintering it into millions of pieces.
“Shran’s ghost,” Taka gasped absently.
Phaser fire from the Palatine and Deimos joined with Epimetheus’ Gamma section. The combined strength of the weapons fire seemed to cut through the attacker’s shields, drilling into its hull. Taka allowed herself a smile at the sight - at the realization that they could, in fact, do damage to the bastards. Her fist clenched in anger at the state the Adventurer was in; she wanted to get in there and help, wanted to fight these bastards and make them pay for the devastation they were wreaking on the Starfleet ships.
“Weapons, Erra?”
“Still offline,” Erra replied. “The damage control teams are overwhelmed and they’re running ragged through the ship.”
Taka gritted her teeth. She wanted to give them Hell, wanted to tear into them like they were a first year Cadet, but she knew it would do no good. If the power relays were in the destroyed sections of the Adventurer’s hull, the damage control teams needed to shore them up before they could take on the challenge of enacting repairs. She slammed her fist down on the Captain’s chair in frustration, though said nothing.
There were thousands of men and women out there - Hell, she thought to herself, there were people she knew out there - fighting and dying and she was left to do nothing but sit and hope the weapons were repaired. She hated it; she hated knowing that there was nothing she could do, that someone else needed to be there to protect her. She twisted to face Erra.
“Can we get people to start throwing sticks and stones at those bastards?”
“With the holes in our hull, I’m sure something could be arranged,” Hiland stated seriously.
“Taka, I’m detecting energy signatures,” Erra reported. Her eyes snapped up to Taka. “Transporter beams, throughout the ship!”
Taka opened the intercom, “All hands, we’ve been boarded!” She closed it before pointing at Erra. “Erra, you’re with me. Straala, keep the ship intact until I get back.”
“Yes, Takala,” Straala replied.
Erra moved to the wall and opened a panel, grabbing a phaser rifle from the weapons locker before tossing one to Taka. The Acting First Officer caught it out of the air with ease, then entered the turbolift. They waited in silence as the doors closed. Erra told the lift its destination and it descended. The suffocating silence enveloped them again.
It didn’t last long as the doors opened.
Acrid smoke assaulted their senses and Taka grimaced at the smell of burning flesh. Sparks showered the deck, cries of the wounded and dying reverberated through the corridor, the teal uniforms of the medical staff hurrying past to help them. Her antennae twitched angrily and with a touch of fear while apprehension gripped her and her fingers clenched the rifle tighter. She head weapons fire and moved, down the corridor towards the sound.
She may have only been the Acting First Officer, but these people were her crew and they deserved better than to be callously slaughtered by an unknown enemy.
She went to turn a corner, finding it blocked by a forcefield. On the other side, the black vacuum of space stared back at her from the open deck.
“Prophets,” Erra’s gloved hand covered her mouth. “How many people…”
“Don’t think about that, right now, Netu,” Taka said softly. She was angry. The corridor had, in all likelihood, been filled with men and women hurrying to their stations or just chatting, unknowing of the Hell that had awaited the Adventurer when they had entered the station. More to herself, she said, “Focus on doing what needs to be done.”
“Shit, contact!” Erra cried out, her rifle coming up in her hands. She fired, the beam shooting down a corridor to their left.
Taka’s rifle instantly went up and added to Erra’s fire. Both of them separated and fell in behind support strut outcroppings in the wall. Taka cursed and fired down the hall. A cry of surprise and pain erupted as her beam sent one of the boarders to his ass.
“Security team Delta, where the Hell are you?” Erra demanded. She cursed as sparks showered her from a weapons blast to the wall in front of her.
“Uh, corridor Alpha… I think,” a man’s uncertain voice answered. “I’m not sure.”
“Damn it, man, get your head on straight!” Erra growled. Taka understood her frustration. The Bajoran woman had spent the better part of the last week training them to be the most efficient security officers they could be and they were only making her look bad.
“Yes, ma’am.” The man paused for a moment. “Corridor Beta, section Alpha. AG plating Gamma-47.”
“Hurry up, we’re under attack!” Erra snapped. “Corridor Gamma, section Delta.”
“Erra!” Taka cried, her rifle firing over the Bajoran’s shoulder. The boarder stopped in surprise before disappearing in a flash of orange. Taka noted their use of armour completely covering their bodies.
Erra glanced at Taka. “Thank you.”
“Couldn’t lose another Tactical officer, could I?” Taka grinned.
Subconsciously, she shuddered from where she stood, though she knew Erra wasn’t able to see it from her position. And Taka was glad for that. Her own shock, surprise, and adrenaline had hit and not let up since being attacked and it was not something that she wanted to experience again.
“Ensign, we’re here,” the same man Erra had scolded stated from behind them.
Taka glanced and waved him over. She was surprised as Tanis appeared behind him. “What the Hell, Tanis?”
“Medic, Taka,” Tanis said. “I was needed with them.”
Taka’s antennae twitched in obvious irritation - even to those who didn’t know what the subtle movements were. “Stay back, then.” She turned her attention to the security team leader. “Crewman, where’s the officers?”
“Lieutenant Denis went down almost instantly from a shot to her chest and Ensign Jorgensen had a mental break back there. We’re just trying to keep it together ourselves, ma’am. I just passed basic training last week,” the man replied. Taka could see his hands shake. She didn’t blame him, no one had expected anything of this magnitude happening. The fleet was being devastated and people slaughtered.
Two members of the security team dropped like a sack of potatoes, hitting the ground and falling still where they lay. Tanis went to move out there, but Taka grabbed her arm and pulled her back before she could. “Think, Tanis! They’re dead, they’re not moving!”
Erra moved, firing down the hall. She went to slide back into the outcropping; she was too slow. A blast from the attackers caught her side and she spun wildly around. One of the security team, surprised by that was caught directly in the chest by another shot and thrown backwards against the wall. Erra shrieked as her hand grabbed her side. Her inhuman wail echoed down the corridor.
Taka looked over, watching as Erra writhed on the ground. “Damn it!” She motioned to the surviving members of the security team. “Covering fire!”
“Covering fire!” the Crewman Taka had considered the leader cried out. His hands still shook as he fired down the hall towards the invaders.
“Come on, Tanis!” Taka said as the team fired. She fired as she ran across the hall, keeping herself between the invaders and Tanis. She wasn’t sure if she hit anything, but there were cries from the darkening smoke and she smiled. She slid into cover as Tanis kneeled next to Erra.
Taka glanced down at the Bajoran Tactical officer. Blood streamed from the wound to her side and flowed from between her gloved fingers even as Tanis pulled open her mobile medkit. Taka heard the familiar beeps from Tanis’ medical tricorder as she looked around the corner and fired at the attackers.
“Takala, security team Alpha has repelled the boarding parties on deck nine, do you require assistance?” Straala’s voice asked.
“Negative,” Taka answered. “Send them to Engineering. Ensure those bastards don’t get to the core.”
“Understood.”
“They’re using an anti-coagulant type of weapon, not unlike the Jem’Hadar,” Tanis muttered to herself. “Should be able to…” There was a pause after her words trailed. “Maybe this.” Taka watched as her lover slid something into the hypospray in her hands.
“Shenva, little less time talking to yourself,” Taka said. She slid around the corner and fired down the corridor. A shot struck the wall in front of her, sparks blinding her as she slipped back behind her cover again and her hand shot up to her eyes.
“Taka?” Tanis’ voice asked.
Her sights were blurred, she couldn’t see anything with clarity. A scream ripped through the air, her antennae darted aimless around, trying to compensate for her lack of vision. The shriek of a phaser and a cry that was cut off. Taka stumbled backwards into the wall, her antennae telling her someone was approaching, but she couldn’t tell who it was or if it was even friendly. Her heart raced with fear as she felt the wall.
“Ma’am, it’s just us,” the voice of the security Crewman stated.
Her vision cleared up slightly, the blur diminishing. She looked down at the ground, seeing Tanis lying there, unmoving, the point of a knife jutting from her chest. Taka fell to her knees next to her beloved and stared into the unseeing eyes, lifting her body from the ground. Tears slid down her cheeks and her antennae curled in anger.
“Ben, we’ve got a live one here!” one of the other men called out. The Crewman looked over. “What the Hell?”
“Starfleet sho’vaQ!”
The explosion that followed ripped through the corridor. Debris and bodies flew towards the new breach, spiralling into the vacuum. The air from within the Adventurer pulled on Taka, threatening to throw her out into the nothingness. Nothing mattered to Taka, though.
*****
“Sir, what are they doing?” one of the medical personnel asked, directing Straala’s attention to what remained of the Epimetheus.
“It would appear they are attempting to ram the attackers,” Straala said matter-of-factly. Her hands darted over the Helm, pulling up the sensors. “There’s a spike in their warp core.”
“She’s,” Korolevna gasped as she pulled herself to the command chair, “she’s set her self-destruct.”
Straala glanced back at the Adventurer’s Captain. Blood glistened against a piece of metal protruding from the other woman’s abdomen and Straala knew, from its location, it had done severe damage to the other woman. She turned back to her console without saying anything, tapping keys into it, requesting Doctor T’Pril and medical personnel to the Bridge.
“Engine status?”
“Both drives offline, Captain. Maneuvering thrusters only,” Straala replied.
“Back us off, best possible speed,” Korolevna ordered. Her gritted teeth were stained with her blood, but that didn’t matter at the moment. If they didn’t get out of there, they wouldn’t be alive in the next few minutes.
On the screen, it cleared enough to allow them to witness Epimetheus’ section Gamma drive itself into the side of the attacker. Hull plates crumpled under the force, the Prometheus-class cruiser’s arrowhead tip drilling deep into the massive ship, bodies and debris expelled from both ships into the harsh, uncaring void. The nacelles and lights across the Epimetheus flickered briefly, escape pods being jettisoned from its side, before the ship detonated.
Explosions rippled along her metal skin and shattered its hull plates and the nacelles. What remained of the ship split in half before the massive fireball consumed both ships in the hungry flames direct from Hell. Korolevna had to look away, her ocular implants blinding her as they briefly overloaded from the sight and reset themselves; Straala was unaffected, her hands flying over the console in front of her, entering commands to the thrusters and reversing the Adventurer away from the detonation. The ship jolted as the shockwave struck it. Like those aboard the Epimetheus, the fires were quickly extinguished in the airless vacuum.
A rumble shook the decks of Adventurer from the inside.
“What the Devil was that?” Korolevna asked, slinking into her chair with a wheezing gasp.
“Explosion, deck five,” Straala reported. “Hull breaches, corridor Gamma, sections Delta and Gamma.” She swiveled in her chair to face Korolevna. “Captain, zh’An and Netu were down there.”
The Russian born Captain tapped her commbadge. “XO zh’An, report!” Silence greeted her. “Ensign Netu!” Again, nothing. She looked at the man covering the tactical station. “Are comms out?”
“Negative, ma’am,” he replied. “Internal comms operational.”
She bit her bottom lip nervously and tapped her commbadge again. “Does anyone have sights on Ensigns zh’An or Netu?”
“That’s affirmative, Captain,” a man’s voice replied. “They’re wounded, but still alive down here.”
Korolevna breathed a sigh of relief and, to her surprise and shock, even Straala seemed to relax at the Helm with the knowledge. “What’s the status of the attackers?”
“The other vessel has broken off engagement with the Palatine and Deimos and engaged her warp engines,” the Tactical officer stated. “She’s gone.”
“Proklâtyj!” the Captain cursed under her breath. “Damage control teams, have them do what they can to shore us up to return to the Dyson Sphere. And find out who the Hell those aliens were!”
“Yes, sir!
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Star Trek Adventurer