A Song Of Swords And Fire
Posted on Fri Nov 9th, 2018 @ 9:43pm by Captain Remas McDonald & Lieutenant Commander Shadi Zatra & Lieutenant Dinui Locke (loch)
4,566 words; about a 23 minute read
Mission:
S1:3: Myriad Problems
Location: USS Traveller, in orbit of Carpathia the colony moon
Timeline: MD 61 8.30AM
This would not be Remas's first battle. It would not even be his second.
And yet...the hesitation was there. For a Rish, the very idea of conflict went against every tenant of their way. Conflict lead to violence, be it against crew or your ship, the net result could never outweigh the loss. A crippled ship could float through the void for centuries before finding the light of another star. The same could happen if that ship's engineer had been killed in a bar fight.
Be smarter.
Hide better.
Run faster.
Don't make them hate us more.
But this was different. And it was not just because the Traveller was unlike any homesteader ship Remas had lived on in his life. This far from any sort of support she was as thin-skinned and under armed as the weakest Rish ship. The difference now lay in a message, and one delivered by Abborax.
You are prey.
To not fight back now, would be to invite horrors untold upon his ship, his colony, and his family. But the hesitation was there. It would always still his hand on the blade, as his father had told him when he had gifted the short sword to him.
'This will bring you no protection, only harm and pain. Forgive your father for this.'
Remas set the sword back into its scabbard and hung it back on the wall beside the door from his ready room. It was time.
Stepping out onto the bridge, he could feel the change in the air. People were still getting used to the brass tendrils that had wormed and insinuated themselves into the ODN network of the ship. Clee'san was no main computer to be sure, but it was better than before. The odd flicker of alien glyphs on an LCAR's display, the faint sound of something that could be music, and a sense of a vast intelligence settling its attention on a single point were a small price to pay.
He nodded at Shadi, who for better or worse had been his instrument in unleashing what could be a very memorable mistake on their ship. Like tea, once you add milk it is not an easy thing to separate the two. He reached his chair and leaned over the air rest to use the all hand's comm function.
"Crew of the Traveller. Shortly we will be leaving the orbit of the colony moon and proceeding on an intercept course for Abborax's ship. He is currently entering the space surrounding this system's star. Our engineering and helm crew will be using a sequential series of micro warp jumps to get us in range to disable Abborax's ship, board it, and retrieve that which was taken from us," Remas said, looking to the bridge crew as he spoke to the entire company.
"Our odd's are long, Abborax's ship could very well be more advanced than us. The fact he was able to have our ship turn its guns on the Colony Barge is a telling indictment of what we face. But we did not come here to cower. We came to explore, and expand the boundaries of what is known. And the Myriad are known all too well to us. They are the Dominion who waged war on the Federation, who sought to dominate through force those who sought peaceful coexistence. They are the Son'a, who lie and mislead to further agenda's that sully the hands of any who believe their lies. But we are Starfleet. We must be the shield and the sword that protects anyone from the harm others would bring to them. We must be as ten out here beyond the Galatic Barrier. We must be the Starfleet. And with that knowledge I do not fear defeat, nor do I foresee a sad ending to this song."
He settled into the captain's chair.
"All hands, go to red alert stations and prepare for close action," he said and cut the connection as red hazard lights began to glow to life along the ceiling. "Helm, power up the warp nacelles and prepare to break orbit. Operations, secure ship for danger close. Science, bring your eyes to the target of Abborax's destination. If we miss our chance to end this before he arrives, maybe we scan scupper his escape. Weapons..."
He turned his chair, looking directly at Victor.
"...roll out the cannons and warm the launchers."
"Aye Captain." Victor replied as he brought all weapon systems online."Weapon systems online and ready at your command sir."
Dinui was feeling more than overwhelmed but hiding it under a smile, the wonder clear on her face as she was getting acquainted with the newer interface with the Clee'san brass cabling and alien gylphs. She had started trying to cross reference data she already but at the Captain's words she nodded her head, "Aye Sir, eyes on the prize!" She just hoped she could make sense of what she was seeing in a timely fashion.
If bridge duty made Shadi nervous before, then adding Clee'san to the mix should have made her downright paranoid. But her epic duel with the space demon seemed to have tamed it, enchained it even, and brought it to heel to do their bidding. Yes, the new computer system was a worthy verse in the Song of Shadi Zatra, for it was a victory she had won with her steel cunning rather than her steely claws. Besides, Clee'san basically did everything for her anyway. All she had to do was tell Captain Remas that she had done something, and Clee'san would take her cue and quickly perform it before anyone was the wiser.
"Reducing all non-essssential systems to minimum power and rerouting to deflectorsss and enginesss," Shadi reported with a keen eye fixed on the readout. Lo and behold, Clee'san did just as she said! Shadi began to quietly hum a melody to her own brilliance.
Having ignored most of the Captain's speech and wearing down from the earlier discussion with Zado, she roused when orders started being spouted. Jolani reported dutifully, "Warp nacelles are coming online. Awaiting orders to break orbit." She then added after a brief pause, "Do we have the coordinates? I know that we're going to require some rather detailed warp bursts."
"We should be getting something...ah, there we are," Remas smiled. The view screen was beginning to be populated by navigation graphic, a wireframe tunnel stretching out of orbit and snaking on a curving path towards the sun. Along the wireframe tunnel's length highlighted waypoints blink. On the screen, they looked close together, but in reality, they were millions of miles apart. Each segment a micro warp jump, the safest means of catching up to Abborax with a crippled navigation system.
"The beacons are lit, marking our path onward, leading us towards the dawn," Remas said softly with a smile. "A Rish navigators prayer. Lay in for the first waypoint, engage at warp 1 if you please."
Jolani's fingers flew across the console. "Course laid in, Captain." She maneuvered the ship out of orbit and then to a range where it was safe to make a short warp burst, "Out of range of the planet, engaging warp factor 1 for first waypoint." She kept her eyes on her controls, making sure that they were not jumping into a star.
Around them, the crew of the Traveller felt their ship rumbling to life. Her warp engines engaged but for a moment, warping gravity and subspace around the starship like cloak before cutting out and dropping them back into normal space. The transition to and from warp was anything but smooth, with the feel of gears grinding somewhere.
=/\="Engineering to Bridge, Jenkins here. Just a note from the folks down in the boiler room that these micro jumps will be taking their toll on the warp coils life expectancy. But we're not seeing micro fractures yet. Yet! Jenkins out."=/\=
"You heard the Engineer Miss Kohnar. Lock in the second jump, and proceed," Remas stated, looking over his shoulder at Shadi. "Increase power to the structural integrity field around the nacelles and the pontoon connections. Let's try and keep the people who keep the lights on happy. Miss Locke, any better resolution on our target destination? I'd hate to warp out in the middle of a flare."
"Already done, Captain!" Shadi sneaked a wink at the readout to ensure Clee'san had already done so. Confirmation blinked out at her in a happy green hue. Goddess bless that space demon. Perhaps... and Shadi would have to ponder this further... Clee'san the Space Demon had been sained by Shadi's exemplary adhesion to the Warrior Code of the Blood Goddess? The thought made her hiss with delight.
"Second jump locked in, Captain. Warp one for second jump initiated," Jolani called out.
"I can't stop the fluctuations in the power syssstems, but so far the stabilizers are holding," Shadi reported.
"Continue through the waypoints Jolani," Remas commanded as the Traveller bucked again, jumping another half million miles closer. And then again, and again. Remas held on, as did the rest of the crew. But in that moment he was reminded of something a friend had once told him about the similarities between riding horses and flying a starfighter.
'You stick in the spurs to go faster, and you hold tight on the reigns and pray you stop in time.'
Apt.
"Just keep the power on, Shadi and I will get us to each plot point," Jolani called back intensely. She kept her eyes fixated on the console and made each adjustment as necessary, occasionally cursing when the power would dip, causing her to slightly recalculate and adjust her plotting. Despite it all, she only missed her mark twice and by a few hundred miles. She said nothing as she made the corrections and got Traveller back on its correct path.
Myriad Ship Insessor
Abborax summoned Ari. One moment he was with the computer core, continuing the work of downloading secrets of a tantalising but trivial nature, surrounded by the other 'guests' of the Myriad. Kella had fallen unconscious, which for the stalwart attempts at not screaming at her ruined hands had to be a blessing.
The next he was in a space best described as Cathedral. High vaulted ceilings, the walls spaced with shimmering panes rolling like waterfalls of data. The room was dominated by a machine as large as a shuttlecraft, wholly unlike anything Ari had seen before. It had the look of something anatomical, like a section of vertebrae flensed of flesh and sinew. LIke an ancient and terrible jet engine made of bone, with parts that moved and shifted in ways psychic's deemed should be possible.
It was a wrong thing.
Abborax reached into the depths of the machine with one hand, pulling his robe back to allow him to reach further. He possessed the Federation Proxy, its hair still wet from whatever vat it had been grown in. He looked up at Ari, and smiled.
"Your...'friends' seem eager to catch up with us," he said as in the air between them became filled with a hologram of the Traveller making its stunted little warp jumps, hopscotching towards them. "It would seem I owe them much more ingenuity than I granted them. Which makes the next part all the more the pity."
Something inside the great bone machine clicked, and an electric humming sound began to fill the air as Abborax pulled his hand free. Fine cracks appeared in his hand, revealing the glossy black pseudo-muscle fibres beneath it. He beamed happily at Ari.
"I need you to tell me how to cripple your old ship."
Arivek shook his head, "That I won't do," he said, firmly. "That wasn't part of the deal and frankly, they pose no threat to you."
"I find this new found sense of loyalty to your old crew very charming, bravo by the way. But it didn't stop you from stepping away with me, or from crying foul when I stole their computer core. How they're even going to warp without it is astounding," Abborax said, using the material of his robe to clean the black blood oozing from his hand. "But, and I ask this as a prelude to genuine anger, I would prefer to cripple them, Killing them is no more than a thought away, but I am seeking return business with these people. They are of use, a valued resource a dozen client races of the Myriad will pay handsomely to attain. The Trill doctor alone! Multiple lifetimes of knowledge...I know a member of the House Of Moth's who would place no price on dissecting that worm. And the Suarian I imagine might make a fine feast for one race I can think of. A good opening gift in negotiation."
His smile grew thin.
"Tell me what I need to know, or was the Chadrian with the ruined hands not a clear enough measure of what my ire looks like?" he said sweetly.
"Look..." Arivek sighed, "Why are you so concerned with them? You already have what you came for."
Ari was in the air before he knew. Abborax's alabaster hand gripped his throat, squeezing as his fingers dug into holographic flesh. The Myriad held him off the ground with ease, his eyes blazing like coals as a savage smile torn across his face.
Grabbing at the man's hand, Arivek squirmed from the grip around his neck. He began to gasp for air, though it shouldn't have been possible to feel suffocation. Arivek's eyes went wide as he realized that modifications had been made to his program. And despite his lack of corporeal being, he felt pain and dizziness coursing through his body as he tried to wiggle free.
And then Abborax spoke...from behind Ari.
"What we desire, what we hunger for is the control your lives are devoid. You war, you rage in the night against shadows and build towers to last mere centuries...and for what purposes other than vanity," the horned Proxie from early stepped around Ari to stand beside the Federation Proxie, their voices singing in pitch-perfect duet their cruel words.
"We give the worlds under our management purpose. We give them direction. A goal, an aim towards which their lives can be spent to attain," a third white skinned Proxie joined the scene. This was was tall, narrow, like a stick insect with a single vertical row of three glowing eyes on its tubular head.
"Your ship represents the entry of a destabilizing element. Your Federation sticks its nose where it does not belong, you interfere, you place ideas in the heads of the listless and demand they take action," a crowd was gathering around Ari now. A dozen and a dozen more white skinned Myriad Proxies, all a different race, each with the glowing red eyes boring into him as he was held aloft.
"The Myriad should have found your worlds before you grew wings Ari. We should have burned the thought of the stars from your mind, filled it was horrors and the terrors that Myriad minds can conjure. But like a plague of locusts you have come to our realm, and whilst some of you are unique enough to be spared the killing jar..." the room went silent.
"But the rest?" the silver-haired Federation Proxy that held Ari at arm's length, his smile turning into a leer. "Well exploring beyond the map sometimes means you get eaten by sea monsters."
Abborax reached up, cupping Ari's cheek like a long lost lover.
"And I couldn't have done it, without you."
"This wasn't part of the agreement," Arivek said through labored breaths. Abborax may have held him in a tight grip, but he was allowing him to remain alive. That could only mean one thing: Arivek was still needed. "I didn't agree to any of this."
"Your consent was never required, only your obedience," Abborax said, dropping him to the floor in a heap. "Very well, if you will not perform a simple task, then I will have to perform it myself. What's a little more blood on your hands Ari, huum? It's very much your colour."
Starfleet Ship USS Traveller
The Traveller groaned in protest as she completed the 12th micropump. Lights were flickering on some of the multi-system displays, with Shadi's Op's Control panel showing a lot of green system lights flickering towards amber's and reds. Already Engineering had been on the comm asking for at least a chance to do something (Remas suspected prayer was involved, and possibly a replicated chicken) to keep one or both nacelles from flying off in disgust.
But now bright golden light filled the bridge from the viewscreen, the polarisation filters already darkening the viewer so as to not leave them all blind. A hellish landscape of towering solar promontories arc around them, and far below the roiling surface of the star glistered with a billion nuclear fusion reactions every second.
"WARNING: Gravitational constant now at 45%. Extreme hazard warning. Advise withdrawal," the computer warned in its oddly muddled accent. ONe part standard auto voice, one part ancient Morning Star Empire AI.
"Miss Locke! Where is Abborax!" Remas barked, before glancing back to Jolani. "Keep us from flying into a wall of plasma fire, but keep us on this bearing as much as you can. Victor, this close to the star, how effective will our weapons be? I'd hate to fire a torpedo and have it explode the second it leaves the tube."
"Torpedoes are designed for extreme environments so we should be ok sir, the phasers are a different story though. The charged plasma may disperse their concentration resulting in reduced damage and range."Vic said as he began to run more calculations to back up what he just said.
"How close do we need to get to make the forward cannon battery more effective than harsh language?" Remas asked. He spoke of the two turret mounted phaser cannon's tucked under the Travellers bow. The pair of 20-inch phase cannon's had been purpose-built for the Ronin-class, owing to her overpowered nature, and helped the heavy cruiser swing well above her weight class in a fight.
Remas had thought to name them in his mind Crisis and Catastrophe, but for now, he welcomed the heavy firepower to round out the phaser arrays and torpedo launchers.
Dinui's fingers danced across the console before her, "Ahm sendin' flight corrections t' helm, we be righ' on his arse Sir!" The new interface was a fabulous mixture of what appeared old and new but the connection was true it was translating the data she was getting and she in turn gave the information need to keep them from turning into crispy critters to the helm.
At the captain's mention of the phase cannons, Shadi pulled up the weapons systems only to note that power was steadily depleting from them to bolster the already strained stabilizers.
"The amount of power being drawn into the nacelles to keep'em from cracking open like eggsss is only going up," she reported. "If you want to fire those cannons, then it's now or never, Captain Remasss!"
"Captain," Jolani called out, "I'm doing everything I can but the ship is responding sluggishly. You need to do whatever you plan on doing before I can't hold Traveller on a heading or even together."
"My plan is to get us as close to Abborax that where ever he's going we go as well," Remas said, getting up from his chair and staggering towards the helm as a shock wave from the suns corona roiled under them. "And I think I can see it from here."
Ahead of them on the view, beyond the growing blackthorn of Abborax's ship, something was rising up and out of the fusion ocean of the star. It looked like a geodesic cage of angular and gleaming bone shards that flexed slowly back and forth. As it expanded outwards a bright violet light caught fire in its centre, before on the inward beat it was snuffed out.
"Get us on his wake now," Remas hissed to Jolani as he turned an eye to Victor. "Portside cannon Mr Renyolds, let's send the Myriad our warmest greetings."
"Pulling us into his wake," Jolani called back, hoping that this made the Traveller invisible to Abborax's ship. She also started calculating whether she could get close enough to his ship in order to ride Abborax's ship inertia, thereby reducing the strain and fuel consumption of Traveller.
"Ready to fire Captain!" Vic responded, he pumped as much power into it as he dared given the state of things. "Recommend we follow up with a torpedo volley for added effect."
"Fire port cannon!" Remas barked.
On the viewscreen targetting brackets closed around the Myriad vessel, twisting tight around it in a glowing red circle as Traveller took her shot in anger. The bow mounted cannon barked, the report of its firing humming through the ship like a heavy lightning storm. The golden particle slug of the phaser shot raced out, arcing a little as the star's magnetosphere played with its angular confinement.
But the fire control system was good, and Victor's aim true. But it didn't connect.
instead, the phaser cannon shot broke apart just before impacting Abborax's ship, the shards of energy getting sucked down into the thorny protrusions across the ship's hull.
"Mr Renyold's, full spread of torpedoes. If that's some sort of point defence system, I want it choked," Remas began to say as the lights on the bridge dimmed for a second, the screens flickering with brassy sigils and glyphs before returning. "Shadi, what was that?"
Shadi was at a loss. "Some kind of... dysphasic shielding?" She fought for the proper description. "Our cannon had no visssible effect. Either we find a way to reduce or bypass the phase dispersion or we may as well just wave our eggsacs at the ssstarving ship!"
Ahead of them Abborax's ship began a course change, shifting down into a closer orbit of the sun as the pulsing cage of off-white material began to open wider. Within its heart, the pale violet point suddenly rushed out, pushing against the sides of the cage. A flare rose up, engulfing even the massive construct of the Whisper Gate...and was drawn into it like water rushing down a drain.
"Jolani, get me close enough to hear the proximity alert klaxons. Where he goes, we go!" Remas enthused.
Shadi hissed her agreement. "And where we go one, we go all!"
"Thats the spirit!" Remas said with a mad grin on his face.
Myriad Ship Insessor
Abborax threw a hand towards the arching walls of the chamber, they vanished in a blaze of fire and light. the crowd of Proxies and Ari now stood on a flat plain of decking with the sun all around them. Arching towers of roiling plasma and flickering magnetic fields soared around them as they raced towards the massive expanding ribcage like artefact that was still ascending towards them.
Behind them, as Abborax's Proxies all turned to look, a bright silver fleck of light grew into the form of the Traveller. Her shields were up, blazing with the reflected energies of the star.
"Tenacious!" Abborax laughed pitilessly. "In a Myriad, I'd call that an admirable skill. But in a Bound, it's just insulting."
Abborax looked over to the right of the Starfleet vessels path, and slowly raised a hand.
"I'll just reach out to their computer systems one more time, a few seconds of hard thrust from the port side engine and they'll be incinerated in that flare," Abborax said, his fingers stretching out. "Its almost to-"
For a moment, a brief blink-or-you'll-miss-it moment, Ari and Abborax weren't alone. Something tall and muscular stood before Abborax, facing him down with golden eyes, her four arms set in a solid impenetrable wall. Clee'san, the recorded consciousness from the Dark Space Ark, stood there as a ghostly brass afterimage.
And then was gone. As was the holographic landscape of the sun. Instead, Ari stood amid the Proxies within the room with the great bone device. Abborax still had his hand outstretched, reaching...but his eyes were dark and empty. Infact, all the Proxies one glowing eyes were now dark and empty.
Arivek wasn't quite sure what had just happened, but he saw this opportunity as clear as day. He took a few steps away from the proxies and smacked his combadge, "Computer, initiate transport," he said and he quickly vanished.
Starfleet Ship USS Traveller
Four torpedoes left their tubes and hurtled towards Abborax's ship. Each of the weapons was smart enough to home in on their target all by themselves, the Travellers fire-control computer little more than a distance guiding hand hampered by solar radiation. The first torpedo, like Icarus of yore, flew to close to a rising flare and self-destructed when it realised its premature detonation might kill its three brothers.
Its melting molecules waved good by the trio as they sped past, wishing them a good death.
And then something odd happened. The pale violet light coming from the now engorged and opened Whisper Gate whipped out, lancing each of the torpedoes with a lightning bolt of energy. The weapons were small, and the Awareness within the gate was old enough to know they meant no harm. Grains of sand against the hurricane.
But they were antimatter weapons, and antimatter weapons were listed as dangerous. And the Awareness, old and senile as it was, still remembered what to do with dangerous things. The weapons dropped directly into the sun, the gates Awareness robbing the weapons of their kinetic and motive energies in accordance with its mandates.
But its mandates did not cover anti-matter powered starships.
First, it enclosed the Myriad ship in a fine webbing of energies, the interlocking planes and flickering bolts becoming the shell that would protect it from The Broken Space. There were things in The Broken Space that saw bright intelligence and thought, in their strange alien ways, 'Mine!'.
And then the Myriad ship was away, the passkey within directing them along the pathways forged in The Broken Space by the Gates ancient builders. And then the second ship entered its sphere of awareness. It was odd, not for its newness but its familiarity. It did not pose a passkey, and so the Awareness knew it should be negated. Even robbing a starship of all its stored energy, from its antimatter reaction core to the neural firing of its biological crew, would not tax it. It would be the work of single flicker of a gluon.
But...it was a familiar thing, in a way. And the Awareness was old. And so it wrapped the Traveller in a blanket of energies and sent it along the network to its fated destination.
And like that, they were gone. The Whisper Gate powered down, returning to its quiet contemplation of deeper mysteries, and sank back into the sun.
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