Fallen Heroes - Book 2 of 2 - Chapter 9d (of 10)
Captain Mathieu Duvivier is perched on the edge of his captain’s chair, as he has been for fifteen minutes or so, issuing commands and finding ways to defeat the giant Massal-class warship looming over them. This is where he belongs, back in the saddle—a simple, perhaps cliched, notion that should compensate for the sorry condition the Kennedy is in. His bridge is a shambles, especially the starboard side, which is empty—disused like a broken arm. On the left, Lieutenant Junior Grade Malin is demonstrating her piloting skills at the helm, Commander Tony Q and Ensign Parkin man the tactical station, and Lieutenant Commander André Soeteman sits at his engineering station. This makes the captain the rightmost person in the command center apart from several diligent engineers carrying out critical repairs. “Status of Massal.”
“Oof,” Tony says. “Sensor readings are problematic at best. Hold on a sec.” Not exactly how one should address their commanding officer, though Duvivier will allow it. Tony has changed considerably since he has last seen him, and not just in the physical sense, what with the young man’s injuries. He has matured beyond his years, exuding a weariness you’d normally associate with soldiers in prolonged armed conflicts. Whatever burden he’s lugging along, it must weigh a couple of metric tons at least. “Okay, I got something. I suspect their shields to be at half strength, structural integrity at about 75 percent.”
Duvivier slides back into his chair and studies the screen. The Massal is factory fresh compared to the three Starfleet vessels. Led by Admiral Van Aken and Captain Reynolds, the Wolf attempts to distract the massive warship, which has decided to pick on the weakening saucer of the Sundance, the incomplete Prometheus-class vessel. Her new acting captain, Commander Dennis Levine, has probably saved the saucer from certain destruction with his noble request to beam over and assume command. As promised, Van Aken and Levine have been sending extra troops to the station.
Despite their best efforts, the fight remains unfair, but Tony’s unwavering determination is inspiring to Duvivier and his crew. An incoming message on the captain’s armrest panel catches his attention. It’s from his first officer, Jansen, who reports the additional troops from the three vessels have been divided into squadrons and have begun advancing from the station’s lower levels. As expected, they’ve met with heavy resistance. Luckily, Letor Fune’s death has certainly affected the Altonoids’ morale, while the Starfleet troops have been strengthened in numbers and spirit. Duvivier texts him an encouraging response, and refocuses on the viewscreen.
“Ventral saucer phasers still inoperable,” Tony says.
“My teams are on it,” Soeteman replies. “Seems like most of it will require drydock to fix, but we’ll do our best.”
“Parkin, to counteract this, I’ve adjusted—”
Noise and mayhem erupts as the Massal’s four phaser beams swoop across the Kennedy’s bow, filling the viewscreen with green light. In a disorienting instant of utter chaos, it’s as if the entire bridge is upended and gravity annulled as the beams wreak havoc on the vessel, jolting personnel from their seats and machinery from their mounts before everything becomes right-side up again. The ops station explodes in a spray of rubble, which the nearby Malin can barely evade.
“Forward shields offline!” Soeteman shouts.
Thrown from his chair, Duvivier has landed on a cracked bridge tier. “Hard to port, Malin!” He plucks a sweltering piece of LCARS panel from his elbow. Thank heavens ops was unmanned, although he doubts whether Ops Officer Muntenaar is much safer aboard Station A-12.
“Lining up starboard arrays,” Tony says.
While Duvivier returns to his chair, the Sundance careens by on the viewscreen, drawing away fire. The Massal rewards her valiant efforts by breaching another segment of her hull, scooping off a cluster of ablative armor.
Soeteman shouts, “Multiple failures in emergency force fields, decks 7 through 18!”
“Evacuate sections at risk of decompression,” Duvivier says. The fact that all non-essential personnel has “fled” to the space station is cold comfort of sorts.
The Kennedy manages to get a few shots in but can’t prevent another four-beam direct hit striking the Sundance’s underside, knocking her off course for a handful of seconds. Her engines recover, and she lines up her bow launcher to hurl four torpedoes at her tormentor in a futile attempt to postpone the inevitable.
Soeteman pivots his seat toward the tactical station. “Tony, Parkin, I’ve been analyzing the prototype phaser system.” He doesn’t elaborate right away, busy as he is arranging evacuations and repairs. “The flanks and underside of the phaser ‘wires’ should be structurally weaker than the rest.”
“Those are tricky to reach,” Tony says.
“Yes, but well worth the effort. Continue targeting the most damaged areas and see if you can hit the weaknesses I mentioned. This might gradually unravel the array by peeling off its anchor points. It’ll require accuracy and patience, but I have strong reason to believe it will also decrease their system’s power output.”
“Excellent work,” Duvivier says, keeping an eye on the struggling Sundance. More and more impacts make it through her regenerative shielding, betraying it’s on the verge of petering out. “A challenge nonetheless, but I’m sure our tactical duo is up for the task.”
“Yes, sir,” Parkin says with a smirk.
A bright blast depicted on the viewscreen quashes their optimism. Four Altonoid phaser beams have seared through the Sundance’s bow torpedo launcher and blown the integral device to pieces, shredding the surrounding armor and creating a substantial hole. She rolls out of the line of fire in self-preservation, exposing her ventral section to the phasers’ wrath. The phaser beams slice through her lowest decks, partially obscured by her arch-shaped hull configuration, and her lower warp nacelle explodes in a ball of flame.
Duvivier’s chest tightens. “She’s dying. Stand by to detect escape pods.” None have exited the vessel so far. They may not even get the chance to launch. “Come on, Levine. What’s your last play?” The Sundance is crippled, her movements have become weak and erratic, and she has little resistance left to offer. It doesn’t stop the Massal from attacking her, robbing her crew of the opportunity to abandon ship. “Line up torpedoes. Let’s incentivize the Altonoids to leave well enough alone.”
As a trail of photon torpedoes bursts from the Kennedy to slam into the Massal’s shields, the Sundance sputters forward. Spontaneous hull breaches are spreading across her surface, flames surging from her windows wherever the internal explosions travel. The lone saucer of what once was an intact and imposing Prometheus-class escort has gone adrift. At last, the Massal ceases firing at her to ward off the remaining two ships’ vehement counterattacks.
Like a sinking ocean liner, the Sundance’s lighting flickers and fails. Shedding entire hull sections, she lists to the side and reveals the trellis of smoldering tritanium her lower decks have become. Her bow is lit from within, next in line for a tsunami of collapsing decks. Then, her impulse engines flare up and push her bow toward the Massal.
“What the—?” Duvivier says, surprised by the vessel’s sudden motion.
Her bow continues to light up until her hull plating can no longer contain the devastation, which builds and builds until it rips the Sundance apart as if torn asunder by the gods. The detonations keep growing in size and number, overwhelm the glowing Massal’s shields, and nip at the armor and external devices on the warship’s upper-left corner. The fireworks culminate in one last explosion larger than any before and bites a whole chunk out of the Massal! Stunned, the warship hangs motionlessly in space, its top-left edge flattened as if clumsily milled.
The wreck of the Sundance and the Altonoid hull segment she took with her disperse in a cloud of jetsam. “Scanning for escape pods,” Soeteman says. “I’m sorry, sir. Nothing has escaped the blast radius.”
The Massal resumes firing at the two remaining Starfleet vessels. “Refocus on the battle,” Duvivier says, squaring his shoulders for appearance’s sake. The Sundance went down in an impressive display of heroism at the behest of the brave Commander Levine. The nature of her demise suggests her ill-fated crew armed as many torpedoes as possible and primed them to detonate in quick succession upon nearing the Massal, giving her a final chance to claw at her opponent. It worked, gave her death meaning, but the truth remains: Dozens of people have died.
He casts a look at Tony, who’s paler than ever and gazes at the viewscreen as if having seen a ghost. The young commander wipes at his brow and directs his thousand-yard-stare at his captain, thereby, without saying a word, conveying with absolute clarity that the Sundance’s obliteration is another milestone in the road to a grim future.
* * *
Although he detests shooting people in the back, Captain Stephan Rinckes fires his phaser rifle at the two Altonoid soldiers running toward this deck’s observation lounge, where a cruel fate awaits Melanie unless he intervenes. Blood taints his dented rifle, but the energy weapon is still functioning and its trigger obedient to his lethal demands. Stringy clusters of hair stick to his forehead, his knuckles have gone numb from fighting hand-to-hand, and even the constant circulation of adrenaline refuses to dull the pain in his torso and jaw. Has he ever been anywhere else but here, progressing through Station A-12’s hallways as if on rails, guided by red alert panels?
Unaware of Rinckes, an Altonoid sprints into the corridor, answering the call for reinforcements made by the soldier who first spotted Melanie. The captain bashes his rifle stock against the Altonoid’s neck and hurries past as the soldier slumps to the carpet.
There it is, the main entrance to the observation lounge. As before and as always, it draws him in, beckons him to the surreal scene of her death. Its doors slide open as if welcoming him to the tragedy, and he rushes headlong into the room the size of a modest mess hall.
The view out the windows stops him dead in his tracks. The Sundance is missing from the raging battle, which is awful, but the real eye-catcher is the one detail every nightmare omitted: a complete starfield, stretching from corner to corner, proving he is wide awake. Despite a brush of movement, he cannot tear himself away from the stars that used to soothe him after transitioning from nightmare to reality. Spellbound, he—
Someone grabs his arm and drags him to the floor the exact moment a green phaser beam screeches by with inches to spare. His savior, a Starfleet officer, maintains a firm grip, so he follows her to behind a tipped-over, thick metal table. Immediately, the next beam strikes the table with a loud clang, and Commander Melanie Simons returns fire with her phaser rifle, silencing the other party with a sickening crunch. “One less to worry about,” she says, sneaking a peek over the table’s edge. “More on the way.” She looks at Rinckes with blue eyes he never thought he’d see again. “Glad you could join me, Captain, but I’m afraid we’re sort of pinned down.”
To hear her voice, to be near her, to feel the warmth radiating from her skin—it’s enough for him to want to embrace her, to never let go, to tell her how much he has missed her. He can’t, not until she’s safe. He buries these emotions and desires under a deep layer of pragmatism, coughs to keep his voice from breaking, and says while soldiers’ footsteps are approaching, “You take the ones on the left. Short bursts, hold fire when possible to prevent overheating your rifle, and stay close.” Having defaulted to his leadership skills under the pressure of imminent combat, it’s almost as if he’s talking to a mere subordinate instead of Melanie. “If I’m killed, just leg it and don’t look back. Head for the shuttlebay and get as far from this deathtrap as you can.”
She wrinkles her brow and says in a worried tone, “Captain, what’s happened to you? You seem—”
“In here!” an Altonoid shouts.
Rinckes latches onto the sound, clips his rifle over the table’s edge, and fires. A scream confirms the blast has struck its target. He glances over the tabletop. A group of four Altonoids are running toward them from the side entrance. Upturned tables and chairs lie strewn across the area, some ragged and tarnished with the same phaser marks that smear the bulkheads and windows. He also spots an indeterminate number of Altonoid corpses.
As he and Melanie prepare to defend themselves, the doors he came through swish open, revealing three more Altonoids storming the room. “They’re mine,” the captain says, shooting the first. The second dives for cover in the rubble, and the third races toward them. Rinckes aims at the third Altonoid’s shins and squeezes the trigger an instant before his adversary does. Crying out in pain, the soldier fires into the ceiling and stumbles to the floor. The captain shoots him twice to eliminate the threat and ducks to avoid the remaining Altonoids’ phaser fire.
Meanwhile, Melanie is staging her own defense against the soldiers that have rushed in through the side entrance. Adeptly, she’s darting up and down to fire at the enemy in controlled bursts. “There’s so many of them,” she says, leaning her back against the table to catch her breath and cool her rifle. A hurricane of impacting phaser beams pummels the table, creating wide indentations that will shatter into metal splinters soon. She pushes aside a lock of blonde hair. “We never should have split up.”
Rinckes honestly doesn’t know what to say. These simple words, said by her, demolish the dam he set up to ward off years of regret and sorrow. Somehow, perhaps out of reflex, he retains his composure.
“We return fire together,” Melanie decides, “firing blind, forcing them to seek cover. Spray and pray, on three.”
Her ability to think straight in crisis situations has never ceased to impress him. It’s easy to forget when the predominant memory of her is her dying in his arms, but she has always been a strongminded individual and an exemplary first officer.
“One, two, three!” They prop their rifles up over the edge and fire—all out at first. Then, without the need to communicate this, they fire in sequence to dole out suppressing fire. As predicted, this forces the Altonoids to hide, and it incapacitates one of them as an added bonus.
Rinckes gauges whether there are extra soldiers inbound from both entrances. There aren’t, so he and Melanie rise from cover and spray the room with phaser blasts. Just as he deems it safe to make an exit with her, another pair of Altonoids step in through the main entrance, angry scowls on their ridged faces, prompting Rinckes to drop to his elbows and open fire from below. He picks off the newcomers at the cost of drawing attention to himself, which is problematic because only his legs are currently behind cover. Several phaser beams whoosh past him from different angles, sending fragments of rubble and ribbons of carpet his way as he struggles to aim his rifle to the left from his prone position. He cannot deny his wounds are increasingly hampering his mobility.
Melanie shoots the least concealed Altonoid, buying Rinckes time to crawl behind the buckling table. As soon as she crouches, Rinckes gets up, takes aim over the table, and pulls the trigger. Nothing happens. He tries again. The rifle doesn’t respond. Glancing through its crosshairs, he sees an Altonoid hesitantly emerging from his hiding spot, having noticed Rinckes’ faulty rifle.
After a hasty inspection, he finds the defect: A smoldering strip of metal has lodged itself between barrel and firing mechanism. Pressing his back against the table, he wraps his fingers around the sharp object and pulls it out, ignoring the pain. It didn’t help; the rifle sputters and dies.
“They’re trying to circle us!” Melanie shouts.
Rinckes tosses the useless rifle and reaches for the phaser holster on his belt. He detaches his handphaser and lifts it. He could list a hundred reasons for it be damaged or otherwise malfunctioning, but the phaser’s colorful indicators signal it’s ready for action, and he permits himself a sigh of relief.
A bout of stray enemy phaser fire precedes a loud crash, startling him. A glass mist spreads toward them as shards clatter to the floor, and he raises an arm and closes his eyes in self-protection until the racket stops.
“Are you okay, sir?” Melanie asks.
Apart from his already existing injuries, he feels fine. “Yes. Are you?”
“I am. Shame about those models,” she says with a faint smile before refocusing on the attacking Altonoids.
Rinckes stares at the broken transparent display on the opposite bulkhead, housing but a few gilded starship models. The rest lie scattered over the floor. A stone-cold sensation branches out from his heart and creeps toward his throat as it sinks in that he found Melanie dying among these very same shards of glass and broken models.
In the original timeline, he witnessed the Sundance’s explosive demise, a fate she appears to have repeated. In here, the scene has been set for Melanie to die, its lighting rigged, its props in place, her killers present.
For all the effort it took to get here, for all the blood clinging to his hands in hopes of mending the future…
How much has really changed?
Captain Mathieu Duvivier is perched on the edge of his captain’s chair, as he has been for fifteen minutes or so, issuing commands and finding ways to defeat the giant Massal-class warship looming over them. This is where he belongs, back in the saddle—a simple, perhaps cliched, notion that should compensate for the sorry condition the Kennedy is in. His bridge is a shambles, especially the starboard side, which is empty—disused like a broken arm. On the left, Lieutenant Junior Grade Malin is demonstrating her piloting skills at the helm, Commander Tony Q and Ensign Parkin man the tactical station, and Lieutenant Commander André Soeteman sits at his engineering station. This makes the captain the rightmost person in the command center apart from several diligent engineers carrying out critical repairs. “Status of Massal.”
“Oof,” Tony says. “Sensor readings are problematic at best. Hold on a sec.” Not exactly how one should address their commanding officer, though Duvivier will allow it. Tony has changed considerably since he has last seen him, and not just in the physical sense, what with the young man’s injuries. He has matured beyond his years, exuding a weariness you’d normally associate with soldiers in prolonged armed conflicts. Whatever burden he’s lugging along, it must weigh a couple of metric tons at least. “Okay, I got something. I suspect their shields to be at half strength, structural integrity at about 75 percent.”
Duvivier slides back into his chair and studies the screen. The Massal is factory fresh compared to the three Starfleet vessels. Led by Admiral Van Aken and Captain Reynolds, the Wolf attempts to distract the massive warship, which has decided to pick on the weakening saucer of the Sundance, the incomplete Prometheus-class vessel. Her new acting captain, Commander Dennis Levine, has probably saved the saucer from certain destruction with his noble request to beam over and assume command. As promised, Van Aken and Levine have been sending extra troops to the station.
Despite their best efforts, the fight remains unfair, but Tony’s unwavering determination is inspiring to Duvivier and his crew. An incoming message on the captain’s armrest panel catches his attention. It’s from his first officer, Jansen, who reports the additional troops from the three vessels have been divided into squadrons and have begun advancing from the station’s lower levels. As expected, they’ve met with heavy resistance. Luckily, Letor Fune’s death has certainly affected the Altonoids’ morale, while the Starfleet troops have been strengthened in numbers and spirit. Duvivier texts him an encouraging response, and refocuses on the viewscreen.
“Ventral saucer phasers still inoperable,” Tony says.
“My teams are on it,” Soeteman replies. “Seems like most of it will require drydock to fix, but we’ll do our best.”
“Parkin, to counteract this, I’ve adjusted—”
Noise and mayhem erupts as the Massal’s four phaser beams swoop across the Kennedy’s bow, filling the viewscreen with green light. In a disorienting instant of utter chaos, it’s as if the entire bridge is upended and gravity annulled as the beams wreak havoc on the vessel, jolting personnel from their seats and machinery from their mounts before everything becomes right-side up again. The ops station explodes in a spray of rubble, which the nearby Malin can barely evade.
“Forward shields offline!” Soeteman shouts.
Thrown from his chair, Duvivier has landed on a cracked bridge tier. “Hard to port, Malin!” He plucks a sweltering piece of LCARS panel from his elbow. Thank heavens ops was unmanned, although he doubts whether Ops Officer Muntenaar is much safer aboard Station A-12.
“Lining up starboard arrays,” Tony says.
While Duvivier returns to his chair, the Sundance careens by on the viewscreen, drawing away fire. The Massal rewards her valiant efforts by breaching another segment of her hull, scooping off a cluster of ablative armor.
Soeteman shouts, “Multiple failures in emergency force fields, decks 7 through 18!”
“Evacuate sections at risk of decompression,” Duvivier says. The fact that all non-essential personnel has “fled” to the space station is cold comfort of sorts.
The Kennedy manages to get a few shots in but can’t prevent another four-beam direct hit striking the Sundance’s underside, knocking her off course for a handful of seconds. Her engines recover, and she lines up her bow launcher to hurl four torpedoes at her tormentor in a futile attempt to postpone the inevitable.
Soeteman pivots his seat toward the tactical station. “Tony, Parkin, I’ve been analyzing the prototype phaser system.” He doesn’t elaborate right away, busy as he is arranging evacuations and repairs. “The flanks and underside of the phaser ‘wires’ should be structurally weaker than the rest.”
“Those are tricky to reach,” Tony says.
“Yes, but well worth the effort. Continue targeting the most damaged areas and see if you can hit the weaknesses I mentioned. This might gradually unravel the array by peeling off its anchor points. It’ll require accuracy and patience, but I have strong reason to believe it will also decrease their system’s power output.”
“Excellent work,” Duvivier says, keeping an eye on the struggling Sundance. More and more impacts make it through her regenerative shielding, betraying it’s on the verge of petering out. “A challenge nonetheless, but I’m sure our tactical duo is up for the task.”
“Yes, sir,” Parkin says with a smirk.
A bright blast depicted on the viewscreen quashes their optimism. Four Altonoid phaser beams have seared through the Sundance’s bow torpedo launcher and blown the integral device to pieces, shredding the surrounding armor and creating a substantial hole. She rolls out of the line of fire in self-preservation, exposing her ventral section to the phasers’ wrath. The phaser beams slice through her lowest decks, partially obscured by her arch-shaped hull configuration, and her lower warp nacelle explodes in a ball of flame.
Duvivier’s chest tightens. “She’s dying. Stand by to detect escape pods.” None have exited the vessel so far. They may not even get the chance to launch. “Come on, Levine. What’s your last play?” The Sundance is crippled, her movements have become weak and erratic, and she has little resistance left to offer. It doesn’t stop the Massal from attacking her, robbing her crew of the opportunity to abandon ship. “Line up torpedoes. Let’s incentivize the Altonoids to leave well enough alone.”
As a trail of photon torpedoes bursts from the Kennedy to slam into the Massal’s shields, the Sundance sputters forward. Spontaneous hull breaches are spreading across her surface, flames surging from her windows wherever the internal explosions travel. The lone saucer of what once was an intact and imposing Prometheus-class escort has gone adrift. At last, the Massal ceases firing at her to ward off the remaining two ships’ vehement counterattacks.
Like a sinking ocean liner, the Sundance’s lighting flickers and fails. Shedding entire hull sections, she lists to the side and reveals the trellis of smoldering tritanium her lower decks have become. Her bow is lit from within, next in line for a tsunami of collapsing decks. Then, her impulse engines flare up and push her bow toward the Massal.
“What the—?” Duvivier says, surprised by the vessel’s sudden motion.
Her bow continues to light up until her hull plating can no longer contain the devastation, which builds and builds until it rips the Sundance apart as if torn asunder by the gods. The detonations keep growing in size and number, overwhelm the glowing Massal’s shields, and nip at the armor and external devices on the warship’s upper-left corner. The fireworks culminate in one last explosion larger than any before and bites a whole chunk out of the Massal! Stunned, the warship hangs motionlessly in space, its top-left edge flattened as if clumsily milled.
The wreck of the Sundance and the Altonoid hull segment she took with her disperse in a cloud of jetsam. “Scanning for escape pods,” Soeteman says. “I’m sorry, sir. Nothing has escaped the blast radius.”
The Massal resumes firing at the two remaining Starfleet vessels. “Refocus on the battle,” Duvivier says, squaring his shoulders for appearance’s sake. The Sundance went down in an impressive display of heroism at the behest of the brave Commander Levine. The nature of her demise suggests her ill-fated crew armed as many torpedoes as possible and primed them to detonate in quick succession upon nearing the Massal, giving her a final chance to claw at her opponent. It worked, gave her death meaning, but the truth remains: Dozens of people have died.
He casts a look at Tony, who’s paler than ever and gazes at the viewscreen as if having seen a ghost. The young commander wipes at his brow and directs his thousand-yard-stare at his captain, thereby, without saying a word, conveying with absolute clarity that the Sundance’s obliteration is another milestone in the road to a grim future.
* * *
Although he detests shooting people in the back, Captain Stephan Rinckes fires his phaser rifle at the two Altonoid soldiers running toward this deck’s observation lounge, where a cruel fate awaits Melanie unless he intervenes. Blood taints his dented rifle, but the energy weapon is still functioning and its trigger obedient to his lethal demands. Stringy clusters of hair stick to his forehead, his knuckles have gone numb from fighting hand-to-hand, and even the constant circulation of adrenaline refuses to dull the pain in his torso and jaw. Has he ever been anywhere else but here, progressing through Station A-12’s hallways as if on rails, guided by red alert panels?
Unaware of Rinckes, an Altonoid sprints into the corridor, answering the call for reinforcements made by the soldier who first spotted Melanie. The captain bashes his rifle stock against the Altonoid’s neck and hurries past as the soldier slumps to the carpet.
There it is, the main entrance to the observation lounge. As before and as always, it draws him in, beckons him to the surreal scene of her death. Its doors slide open as if welcoming him to the tragedy, and he rushes headlong into the room the size of a modest mess hall.
The view out the windows stops him dead in his tracks. The Sundance is missing from the raging battle, which is awful, but the real eye-catcher is the one detail every nightmare omitted: a complete starfield, stretching from corner to corner, proving he is wide awake. Despite a brush of movement, he cannot tear himself away from the stars that used to soothe him after transitioning from nightmare to reality. Spellbound, he—
Someone grabs his arm and drags him to the floor the exact moment a green phaser beam screeches by with inches to spare. His savior, a Starfleet officer, maintains a firm grip, so he follows her to behind a tipped-over, thick metal table. Immediately, the next beam strikes the table with a loud clang, and Commander Melanie Simons returns fire with her phaser rifle, silencing the other party with a sickening crunch. “One less to worry about,” she says, sneaking a peek over the table’s edge. “More on the way.” She looks at Rinckes with blue eyes he never thought he’d see again. “Glad you could join me, Captain, but I’m afraid we’re sort of pinned down.”
To hear her voice, to be near her, to feel the warmth radiating from her skin—it’s enough for him to want to embrace her, to never let go, to tell her how much he has missed her. He can’t, not until she’s safe. He buries these emotions and desires under a deep layer of pragmatism, coughs to keep his voice from breaking, and says while soldiers’ footsteps are approaching, “You take the ones on the left. Short bursts, hold fire when possible to prevent overheating your rifle, and stay close.” Having defaulted to his leadership skills under the pressure of imminent combat, it’s almost as if he’s talking to a mere subordinate instead of Melanie. “If I’m killed, just leg it and don’t look back. Head for the shuttlebay and get as far from this deathtrap as you can.”
She wrinkles her brow and says in a worried tone, “Captain, what’s happened to you? You seem—”
“In here!” an Altonoid shouts.
Rinckes latches onto the sound, clips his rifle over the table’s edge, and fires. A scream confirms the blast has struck its target. He glances over the tabletop. A group of four Altonoids are running toward them from the side entrance. Upturned tables and chairs lie strewn across the area, some ragged and tarnished with the same phaser marks that smear the bulkheads and windows. He also spots an indeterminate number of Altonoid corpses.
As he and Melanie prepare to defend themselves, the doors he came through swish open, revealing three more Altonoids storming the room. “They’re mine,” the captain says, shooting the first. The second dives for cover in the rubble, and the third races toward them. Rinckes aims at the third Altonoid’s shins and squeezes the trigger an instant before his adversary does. Crying out in pain, the soldier fires into the ceiling and stumbles to the floor. The captain shoots him twice to eliminate the threat and ducks to avoid the remaining Altonoids’ phaser fire.
Meanwhile, Melanie is staging her own defense against the soldiers that have rushed in through the side entrance. Adeptly, she’s darting up and down to fire at the enemy in controlled bursts. “There’s so many of them,” she says, leaning her back against the table to catch her breath and cool her rifle. A hurricane of impacting phaser beams pummels the table, creating wide indentations that will shatter into metal splinters soon. She pushes aside a lock of blonde hair. “We never should have split up.”
Rinckes honestly doesn’t know what to say. These simple words, said by her, demolish the dam he set up to ward off years of regret and sorrow. Somehow, perhaps out of reflex, he retains his composure.
“We return fire together,” Melanie decides, “firing blind, forcing them to seek cover. Spray and pray, on three.”
Her ability to think straight in crisis situations has never ceased to impress him. It’s easy to forget when the predominant memory of her is her dying in his arms, but she has always been a strongminded individual and an exemplary first officer.
“One, two, three!” They prop their rifles up over the edge and fire—all out at first. Then, without the need to communicate this, they fire in sequence to dole out suppressing fire. As predicted, this forces the Altonoids to hide, and it incapacitates one of them as an added bonus.
Rinckes gauges whether there are extra soldiers inbound from both entrances. There aren’t, so he and Melanie rise from cover and spray the room with phaser blasts. Just as he deems it safe to make an exit with her, another pair of Altonoids step in through the main entrance, angry scowls on their ridged faces, prompting Rinckes to drop to his elbows and open fire from below. He picks off the newcomers at the cost of drawing attention to himself, which is problematic because only his legs are currently behind cover. Several phaser beams whoosh past him from different angles, sending fragments of rubble and ribbons of carpet his way as he struggles to aim his rifle to the left from his prone position. He cannot deny his wounds are increasingly hampering his mobility.
Melanie shoots the least concealed Altonoid, buying Rinckes time to crawl behind the buckling table. As soon as she crouches, Rinckes gets up, takes aim over the table, and pulls the trigger. Nothing happens. He tries again. The rifle doesn’t respond. Glancing through its crosshairs, he sees an Altonoid hesitantly emerging from his hiding spot, having noticed Rinckes’ faulty rifle.
After a hasty inspection, he finds the defect: A smoldering strip of metal has lodged itself between barrel and firing mechanism. Pressing his back against the table, he wraps his fingers around the sharp object and pulls it out, ignoring the pain. It didn’t help; the rifle sputters and dies.
“They’re trying to circle us!” Melanie shouts.
Rinckes tosses the useless rifle and reaches for the phaser holster on his belt. He detaches his handphaser and lifts it. He could list a hundred reasons for it be damaged or otherwise malfunctioning, but the phaser’s colorful indicators signal it’s ready for action, and he permits himself a sigh of relief.
A bout of stray enemy phaser fire precedes a loud crash, startling him. A glass mist spreads toward them as shards clatter to the floor, and he raises an arm and closes his eyes in self-protection until the racket stops.
“Are you okay, sir?” Melanie asks.
Apart from his already existing injuries, he feels fine. “Yes. Are you?”
“I am. Shame about those models,” she says with a faint smile before refocusing on the attacking Altonoids.
Rinckes stares at the broken transparent display on the opposite bulkhead, housing but a few gilded starship models. The rest lie scattered over the floor. A stone-cold sensation branches out from his heart and creeps toward his throat as it sinks in that he found Melanie dying among these very same shards of glass and broken models.
In the original timeline, he witnessed the Sundance’s explosive demise, a fate she appears to have repeated. In here, the scene has been set for Melanie to die, its lighting rigged, its props in place, her killers present.
For all the effort it took to get here, for all the blood clinging to his hands in hopes of mending the future…
How much has really changed?
So, from the looks of it, Book 2 will have 12 chapters in total. This means a bit more work for me, but you deserve a proper conclusion to this story, so I'll make sure you get one!
