Star Trek: Into the Inferno Second Edition Star Trek/A:TLA

[Graywand2]

This is a rewrite of Star Trek: Into the Inferno designed to incorporate the new SOTL NX hull as well as the fact that my writing has improved substantially since the last one nearly two years ago

“Watch ye therefore, for ye not know when the master of the house cometh”
- Mark 13:35

“The most persistent sound that reverberates through man’s history is the beating of war drums”
-Arthur Koestler, Janus

“Although all men are born free, and all nations might be so, yet too true it is, that slavery has been the general lot of the human race. Ignorant-they have been cheated; asleep-they have been surprised; divided-the yoke has been forced upon them.

But what is the lesson? That because the people may betray themselves, they ought to give themselves up, blindfolded, to those who have an interest in betraying them? Rather conclude that the people out to be enlightened, to be awakened, to be united, that after establishing a government they should watch over it as well as obey it.”
-James Madison, Essay in the National Gazette December 20, 1792.

Prologue​

Psi Cancri system, 137ly from Sol

Captain Erika Hernandez sat at her small narrow desk in the Columbia’s ready room, reading over an engineering status report on the new refit’s systems from the computer terminal on her desk. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the display screen hanging on the wall next to the door, displaying the most glaringly obvious sign that her ship had just undergone a major refit: the sizable secondary hull connected to the ship where the launch bay used to be.

Eight additional decks, she thought to herself, thinking about the month her ship and the Enterprise had spent at Newport News getting her new hull drilled on. Triple our previous crew not counting the MACO platoon, a very large deflector dish, experimental energy shields, and she’s capable of almost warp six. She smirked to herself as she remembered trying to use the supposedly Warp Five engine the very first time. At least Columbia and Enterprise won’t try to shake themselves to pieces when they hit warp five anymore.”

Her door chime rang right as she approved the report for transmission to Starfleet Command. “Come,” she said quickly as she turned around in her chair to face the door which opened to reveal her science officer, Commander Asha Naidu. The slender twenty-six year old young woman had a excited look on her face as she walked into the room, the door closing behind her. Her uniform, unlike hers had teal science stripes on her shoulders instead of the gold stripes of a pure command officer, the three rectangular silver pips of her rank glowing in the fluorescent light of the room.

“Captain,” she said quickly, her Indian accent giving a lilt to her tone as she came to attention and proffered a padd with a glowing blue screen. “We’ve finished our preliminary sensor sweep of Psi Cancri, sir.”

Erika took the padd gently, scrolling through the report, skimming and taking out the highlights. “I take it from that look on your face that there’s something in there that’s caught your attention.”

“That’s an understatement, sir,” Naidu said. “It’s a small system, only three main planets. Psi Cancri III is a gas giant roughly the size of Jupiter with as far as we can tell about a dozen moons. Psi Cancri II is your run-of-the-mill lifeless dirtball in the middle of nowhere.”

Captain Hernandez nodded in agreement, skimming the results of the survey. Then she got to the final listing. Her nostrils flaring in surprise, she looked up and met her science officer’s eyes.

“Psi Cancri I, however,” and Naidu’s voice took on an excited tone, “appears to be an M-class world with an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere, liquid water, and a moon in a roughly the size of Luna.”

“Then that’s where we’re going first,” Hernandez responded, setting the padd down on the desk. “Set a course for the first planet, full impulse. We’re going to get a chance to test out our updated sensor suite.”

“I already gave the order, sir,” Naidu said. “ETA fifteen minutes.”



“We’ve assumed a standard orbit over the planet, Captain,” Commander Naidu said from her science station fifteen minutes later, as she looked into her hooded viewer. “It’s about the same size of Earth and is about 1 A.U. from the primary. It’s atmosphere is primarily oxygen-nitrogen, with traces of argon and an abundance of liquid water.”

“On screen,” Hernandez ordered. Her breath caught in her throat. She was staring at a big blue marble with white whisps of cloud and capped, almost lovingly, with ice like her homeworld. There was a huge main continent. It appeared to be in the middle of the geologic process of splitting into three smaller landmasses, she could see the splits from here. It gave the primary landmass a look a lot like that of a crustacean reaching out to consume the brown islands that surrounded it.

"How big is the main continent?" Hernandez asked eagerly.

She heard Naidu’s station hum as she ran a sensor sweep on the main continent. After a few moments she stood up and looked at her, saying, amazement in her voice, "Roughly the size of Gondwanaland, sir."

“Is it inhabited?” Hernandez asked. It would seem like a waste of space to have such a world not be inhabited. They hadn’t been challenged or hailed, and Naidu surely would’ve mentioned it if they’d detected any sort of interstellar travel. A pre-warp or preindustrial society was still well worth the journey, and, expanding the frontiers of human knowledge was worth any price.

“Standby,” she heard Naidu say. Captain Hernandez looked over to see Naidu leaning into her viewer as she tapped commands into her console. After a long moment, she leaned back in her chair and said, “This is…I don’t know what to think.”

“Report, Commander,” Hernandez ordered, well disguised surprise and slight worry flooding her.

Naidu leaned back from her viewer, retracted it and turned to face her, utter shock on her face. “I’m reading human biosigns on the surface,” she said, her voice hollow with surprise.

Immediately all the idle chatter that floated on the bridge ceased as everyone turned and looked at her science officer.

“How can you be sure?” Erika asked. “The only human ships this far out have been merchantmen and the ECA hasn’t reported any missing ships in this sector.”

“The sensors just passed a level one diagnostic,” Naidu said shaking her head. “There’s no way these sensors can be wrong. There are humans down there.”

Suppressing the fluster she felt when thinking about it, Hernandez asked, “How many humans?”

Her science officer sighed and said, “On the order of six hundred million, sir. I ran the scan twice to be sure.”

Six hundred million, she thought to herself, genuinely surprised by the number of people. Only Alpha Centauri has that many people off Earth. How the hell did our kind get out this far? And when? “Ensign Tischler,” she began, looking at the communications officer. “Try emitting a general hail, see if that get’s their attention.”

The sandy-haired Starfleet ensign stuck his receiver in his ear and ran his hand over his board. After a few moments he shook his head. “No response, sir,” he said with a distinct Israeli accent. “Also, I’m not reading any evidence of subspace communications. No artificial EM emissions of any kind.”

“Are you sure, Ensign?” Commander Naidu asked. “If they were advanced enough to get out here they have to have subspace communications.”

“Positive, sir,” Tischler said. Cocking his head, he said, “If I may be so bold, sir, it’s possible they’re one of those “Back-to-Nature” Luddite groups who left Earth a few decades after First Contact and promptly dismantled their ships.”

“Yes,” Naidu retorted, her tone no doubt reflecting her annoyance with the hypocrisy of using a starship to get away from technology. “But the largest of those groups was only a few thousand at most. They wouldn’t have gotten a population this large in less than a century. I mean, even Alpha Centauri only got its population after persistent immigration from Sol, and that in the last few decades.”

Deciding that now was the appropriate time to get everyone focused back on their duties, Hernandez broke in and said, “Can we leave the discussion for when we’ve learned more, please? Commander, continue your scans. Ensign, transmit our preliminary survey and the sensor data we’ve already gathered to Starfleet.”

It was at that exact moment that the sensor alarm from the tactical station beeped. Captain Hernandez turned in her chair to view her tactical officer Lieutenant Commander Dechtire Shaughnessy. “Captain,” the younger woman said with a fairly strong Irish accent. “I’m reading a Romulan vessel closing on our position.”

“What?!” Hernandez said, “Romulan?”

“Yes, sir,” she said, nodding fiercely. “It appears to be of the same type that the Enterprise encountered three years ago. It will be within weapons range in approximately,” and she tapped a few commands into her board, double-checking a reading, “seven minutes.”

Nothing for it, then, she thought to herself. “Tactical alert,” she shouted, “Helm, standby to break orbit on my command.”

“Aye, sir,” the young Thai woman at the helm responded, her hands running over her board. The instant the words were out of her mouth, the lights dimmed slightly as power was shunted to the shields, engines, and weapons systems and the images on every computer station on the bridge turned red.

“All sections report at tactical stations,” Ensign Tischler reported two minutes later.

“Commander,” she said. “Put the Romulan ship on screen, maximum magnification.”

A heartbeat later, the screen changed to show a vaguely green ship with roughly the shape of a horseshoe crab, gracefully curved warp nacelles sticking out a strut on both sides. Abruptly, the ship on the screen sped up, the magnification on the viewscreen compensating by cycling out to keep the whole of the ship in view.

“They’re increasing speed,” Shaughnessy shouted. “They’ll be within weapon’s range in a minute.”

“Break orbit, helm,” Hernandez ordered calmly, “move us between them and the planet. Ensign try hailing them.”

She heard him run his hands along his board. After the communications console beeped. “No response.”

“They’re charging weapons,” Shaughnessy said.

“Evasive maneuvers, now,” Erika ordered as a green burst shout out of the front of the Romulan starship. The view of the screen suddenly shifted to the left as the ship pitched violently to port. The bridge around her shuddered under a glancing blow and Erika gripped the armrests of her command chair as the crewmembers around her stumbled and grabbed onto their consoles.

“Direct hit to starboard shields,” Shaughnessy reported. “They’re holding.”

Erika Hernandez breathed a silent prayer of relief at the thought. “Bring us about,” Hernandez ordered. “Shaughnessy, fire at will.” She watched four fiery red lances lash out at the Romulan warship as the enemy vessel swerved to avoid Columbia’s firing patterns. Two blasts connected to the hullg.

“Two direct hits, sir,” the tactical officer said, a note of exhilaration on her voice. “Enemy’s starboard shields are at ninety percent.”

“They’re coming about for another pass,” her flight controller responded, shock and fear on her Thai accent.

“Commander Shaughnessy,” Hernandez ordered even as she watched the Romulan vessel’s weapons ports glowing menacingly. “Target their weapons and engines, maybe they’ll be willing to explain themselves if we cripple them.”

“Sir.”

The next few moments raced by as a blur as both starships closed and engaged each other at point blank range, phase cannon and disruptor blasts lashing into each other. Both ships bobbed and weaved trying to avoid the bulk of the fire from the other. Columbia’s three orange-red photonic torpedoes lashed out across space. The bird-of-prey avoided two of them, the third one slamming into her midsection, and both ships continued launching furious barrages at each other.

Hernandez heard a console explode behind her as surge protectors overloaded, filling the air with an acrid smoke as she stood over at the flight control station, looking over tactical data as it came in.

“We are losing dorsal shields,” Shaughnessy reported, exhilaration having long ago turned to worry.

“Keep our bow to the Romulan,” Hernandez heard Naidu order over the din of exploding consoles. “Reroute auxiliary power to forward shields.”

“Hull breaches on Decks C, D, and E,” Shaughnessy shouted, “emergency bulkheads in place and holding!”

“We’re receiving casualty reports all over the ship!” Tischler blurted over the din. “Sickbay responding.”

“They’re firing again!”

Hernandez barely had time to grab onto the flight control station when a massive blast rocked the ship as though it had been hit by the hammer of an ancient Terran god. Hernandez saw the deck rush up to meet her even as she put her hands out to break her fall. As she fell, time seemed to slow as her head rushed towards the deck.

Madre de Dios, she thought as she blacked out.

---

Commander Asha Naidu watched as her Captain hit the deck with a loud thump. An instant later the young woman rushed over from her station, not even stopping to make sure her relief took her position. She put her hand on Captain Hernandez’s neck, breathing a sigh of relief as she felt a pulse run under her fingers.

“David, call a med team!” she shouted to Ensign Tischler as she helped the helm officer back into her chair. As Ensign Tischler placed the call to sickbay, she rushed over to the command chair and sat down.

“Engineering to Bridge,” the voice of the chief engineer filtered through, desperation on his voice. “Respond please.”

She hastily activated the intercom. “Robert it’s me,” she said quickly. “The Captain’s unconscious.”

“We have a problem down here, Commander Robert Kelby said over the intercom. “The starboard interlock took damage and I can’t repair it right now.” A heartbeat later a loud explosion was heard over the intercom

“Shit,” she heard him say when Robert’s voice came over the intercom, and she sighed in relief even as worry hit her again at what he might’ve been swearing at. “Bridge, the interlocks just failed, we’ve got ten minutes to a warp core breach there’s nothing I can do. ” Another explosion was heard over the intercom and Robert shouted, “Everyone out, now!”

“Status on the Romulans!” she shouted.

“They’re moving off, sir,” her helm officer said a moment later, wonder and confusion on her voice. “I don’t understand it.”

“They know we’re about to suffer a core breach,” Naidu said, slamming her fist on the armrest of the command chair. “They don’t know if we can do anything about it, so they’re moving off at best speed.” The turbolift opened at that point and a medical team arrived and loaded Captain Hernandez onto a stretcher. A minute later, the turbolift opened again and Naidu looked in relief as Commander Kelby walked onto the bridge.

An instant later, the two officers were over at the engineering station on the starboard side of the bridge, with Naidu entering her command codes to eject the engineering section from the rest of the secondary hull, Kelby following a moment later. An instant later the computer emitted a denied tone. Worried, the two of them entered their codes again. And again.

“Well,” Kelby said after the third time. “Time to go.”

“No kidding,” Naidu said as she rushed over to the command chair. “All hands, this is the Acting Captain. Abandon ship, abandon ship, all hands abandon ship. Shuttle teams launch ASAP, everyone else to the escape pods, Captain Naidu out.” She looked at her crew, all of them had stunned faces as they realized the true effects of what was being ordered.

“Let’s go.”

 

[Graywand2]

Crown Princess Azula lay in bed, looking at the red upholstered ceiling of her four-poster bed, stewing as she thought about what had been done to her. They betrayed me, she thought, thinking about Ty Lee and Mai’s betrayal. I made them who they are and they betrayed me. Mai stopped me from killing my dear traitor brother Zuzu and Ty Lee struck me behind like the cowardly piece of shit she is. She hit her pillow, rage at the betrayal hitting her like a particularly painful brand. Revenge, however, has been mine. Ty Lee and Mai are incarcerated, and the moment I have the available forces ready I will pursue Zuko and his friends to their hiding spot and burn them all out.

She was interrupted from her musings from a green glow that suddenly appeared out of the corner of her eye. Looking over, she saw a strange light outside her curtain. Pulling the curtain aside she balled her left hand into a fist, causing a blue flame to explode to life. Sitting on her nightstand was a small, silvery gray box. Cocking her head in interest, she reached out with her right hand and touched it gingerly. It felt cool to the touch. Curiosity piquing even more, she grabbed it and picked it up. Willing the fire in her hand to turn orange she lit the candle on her nightstand before allowing the fire to dissipate, and, in the flickering light, analyzed her find.

There's a lid, she thought to herself when she saw what appeared to be a partition at the bottom of the box. Taking care not to break it, she lifted the lid. When it emitted a loud chirping sound, Azula's eyes widened in shock and she dropped the box, letting it bounce onto the bed. Berating herself for being weak enough to jump at a mere noise, she picked it up again, examining the small, metal grille in the center of the opened box.

“Jolan’tru, Princess Azula, heir to your people,” a deep male voice said unexpectedly out of the grille, and Azula had to restrain herself from dropping it. “My name is Admiral Valdore. I am speaking to you through this device called a communicator. It allows communication over vast distances, even across entire worlds and…even with people in orbit.”

“Orbit,” she said, a cold feeling of surprise flooding her as she remembered the term used for objects, like the moon, that circled the planet. “You’re in space?”

“On a ship in orbit, to be precise,” the man said coolly, though he could’ve sworn that he heard the man on the other end suppress a chuckle. “Now, there are things I must tell you, and quickly, there is little time…” Azula, her mind racing at the possibilities simply implied by the sudden appearance of this device, listened intently as this person, who claimed to be an Admiral, talked.

“We’ve just crippled an Earther warship in orbit of the planet. It’s going to be destroyed soon, and the survivors will land on your world. If you want to take advantage of what we’re offering you, capture as many as possible and turn them over to us when we return to your world at some point in the near future. Do you agree?”

She lay back on her bed and thought about it. If these “Romulans” were as powerful as the fact that they could make this device appear in her room in a flash of light seemed to prove, they could be very beneficial to her. Every word he had said to her had opened up a new world full of possibilities, opportunities to be exploited, revenge for her enemies, and at long last, what she always craved ultimate power for herself. This is a dangerous thing you’re embarking on, she thought, but rule over all mankind is worth it.

“Yes,” the young woman said, a slow, dangerous smile appearing on her face. “We have a deal.”

“Excellent,” Valdore said. “Jolan’tru, Princess. Oh, and as proof of our generosity look in the back of the device after our discussion is over.” After that there was a clicking sound. Azula slid the device into the pocket of her crimson bathrobe and flopped back down onto her pillow.

A heartbeat later three loud booming knocks were heard at the wooden door at the other end of the room. Having a good feeling about what was going to happen, she said, an almost eager tone on her voice, “Come.”

The door opened to admit a porter in the red dress of the palace servants. The young woman with brown hair bowed obsequiously as soon as she was in the door. “My Lady,” she said, her gaze averted towards the ground, and away from her Crown Princess. “Several meteors crashed into the middle of the Fire Nation capital. When it landed, it caused much damage in the center of the city. The City Watch is still putting out the fires.”

“And the City Watch is so incompetent that my leadership is required for fire suppression?” she remarked, her brief optimism replaced by annoyance. Meteor strikes were a common enough occurrence. Gods, I hope this doesn’t turn into one of those stupid things my father usually leaves me to deal with.

“No, your Highness,” the porter said, her eyes still downcast. “They were made of solid metal and one of the meteors turned out to be a strange vehicle. It had four occupants inside who surrendered without incident.”

“They are waiting outside?” Azula asked, an almost giddy sensation filling her. This alliance might actually pay off after all.

“Yes, Highness,” the servant before her said, “they’re here now.”

Azula stood up. “Very well,” she said nodding, “send them in.”

“Yes, Highness,” the servant said as she withdrew. An instant later a squad of armed guards entered the room, followed by a squad of soldiers in the black lacquered armor of the City Watch entered, muscling three women and one man into the room. The four people before her were clearly soldiers based on how they carried themselves. The three women and one man wore blue uniforms with blue epaulettes on the shoulders and had what appeared to be silver pips similar to the ones her own officers wore on their undress uniforms to denote rank.

“I’m Captain Erika Hernandez of the United Earth starship Columbia,” the eldest woman out of the group said, standing at parade rest. Azula regarded the older woman before her curiously. She was about forty years old, with fair skin, brown hair and eyes, and a noticeably purpling bruise on her forehead. Her blue uniform had gold stripes on both shoulders and four silver pips on her right shoulder.

“Princess Azula of the Fire Nation,” she said slowly, folding her arms as she thought of the opportunities the four people in front of her represented. “Take them to a cell on the lower levels,” she ordered the guard commander. “And call the physician to see to any of their injuries. I’ll be down in order to question these people shortly.”

After the guards muscled her bewildered guests out, she turned her device over and gently opened the back up. The moment she had it open a green light appeared, lancing up before coalescing before her eyes into a physical representation of a very familiar island in the shape of an ember. She inhaled in surprise, then looked at the location being shown, reading the description being written in her language.

Let the games begin, she thought to herself, feeling an urge to laugh in delight. With this I cannot fail. The world will fall.

 

[Graywand2]

A/N: This chapter is incredibly short, but I decided that was for the best. The way the other chapter is planned it will be much bigger.

Chapter One

​

Zuko and Suki padded silently through the verdant woodland covering the mountaintop. Or even worse, his sister and Ty Lee. I have to be especially be on guard for Ty Lee, he thought, thinking about the woman his sister used as one of her most dangerous weapons. All those acrobatic reflexes make it easy for her to stay silent, and damn hard for someone to detect until she’s almost right on top of you. At the thought of Ty Lee, memories of Mai burst into his consciousness. He paused, his mind flashing back to that brutal day only last week when Mai engaged the guards on the loading dock, covering the escape of him and his friends.

I shouldn’t have left you there, he thought to himself, his heart feeling as though it were caught in a vise as he relived what had happened that day. You should be with us.

He abruptly felt a warm pressure on his shoulder and Zuko’s instincts took over and he whipped back around, prepared to blast whoever came near him. He forced himself to relax when he saw that it was only Suki giving him a curious look.

“You still thinking about Mai?” she asked, concern evident on her voice. Zuko,simply nodded.

His friend released a half-sympathetic, half-frustrated sigh. “You know we couldn’t take her with us, right? If we turned around we would’ve been captured again and we’d all be in that shithole together or worse.” She gave a derisive shake of her head. “Besides, even if she had managed to escape with us, it’s not like we would be able to trust her as far as we could throw her.”

Zuko flinched at her tone. Hearing Suki talk of Mai like that, especially after what she did, never failed to send a surge of anger through him. Drawing himself up to his fight, he glared directly into her eyes. “She saved our collective asses back there, all right? I think that should’ve at least earned her a modicum trust.”

Suki glared right back. “Some trust. She’d have to work damn hard to earn that from me, especially after what happened in the forest in Ba Sing Se.” She shook her head in frustration. “That’s irrelevant, however,” she said a heartbeat later, suddenly sorrowful. “Men and women make their choices, right or wrong, and they have to live with those choices every single day. In the end, we become those choices.”

Zuko shook his head slightly, his anger giving way to sympathy. He could tell from the way she was talking that she was thinking about her own burden; her soldiers, trapped in one of the many prisons in Agni’s Crater, the Fire Nation capital, far beyond their meager resources to rescue.

“It wasn’t your fault,” he said, putting his hand on her shoulder, “that your soldiers got captured. It was just… the fortunes of war.”

“Do you think that makes it better for me,” she blurted angrily, reverting before his eyes to Major Suki, commanding officer of the Kyoshi Warriors. “They were my men, my men. I’m a soldier, like you, and we both know that we do not leave our people behind.”

Zuko gave a frustrated sigh, putting his hand on his chin. He admired his friend’s commitment but there was nothing that could be done and they both knew it. They didn’t even know where her people were being held, and no good officer worth her salt would go off on a rescue mission when she didn’t know where to attack. Suki however, was so desperate to wipe away the stain of allowing her entire force to be captured that sometimes he swore she was on the verge of just upping and leaving in the middle of the night.

Can you blame her, he thought to himself. I mean can you really? You’ve thought of doing the same thing for Mai. Every time he considered it though, his own sense of duty slapped him in the face. His duty was here, now, helping Aang learn to firebend to defeat his father. Not rescuing Mai.

“Suki,” he began, launching into yet another pep talk designed to keep her from doing something stupid. “What is an officer’s duty while imprisoned by the enemy?” Suki growled, folding her arms under her breasts and looking away from him. “Suki,” he said patiently a moment later. “We both know this. What is an officer’s duty while imprisoned by the enemy?”

“‘It is the sworn duty of every officer to try to escape,” she said, reciting the nigh-universal mantra taught in every military science course on the planet. “‘If they cannot escape, it is every officer’s sworn duty to cause the enemy to use an inordinate amount of troops to guard them, and their sworn duty to harass the enemy whenever possible.’”

“You did that, Suki,” Zuko said, “remember? We destroyed the gondola system connecting the Rock to the mainland? We stole my sister’s personal airship? You did your duty, Suki.” He put both hands on her shoulders. “We both did our duty.”

“Another duty of an officer is not to leave her soldiers behind if she can possibly avoid it,” Suki said, sighing. “I’ve spent the last week lounging around here with Sokka, when I should be out there right now, hunting for my people.”

“You know how you can help your people? Helping Aang, helping us to depose my father, bring down my sister, and end this war. That is how you will get your men out of whatever shithole camp my sister has them, and I will one day be able to rescue Mai. All you seem to want to do is go out and commit suicide trying to rescue them by yourself.”

Suki turned to look at him, a curious and appraising look in her eyes. “We could both go, just the two of us. You and me, we leave and we don’t come back until we’ve achieved both our aims. We liberate my people and we liberate Mai.”

Zuko paused, stunned at Suki’s off the cuff suggestion. We could do it, the part of him that was the desperate young man who wanted his love back thought manically, together. It’s no more insane than when you left with Sokka. As soon as he thought that, common sense once again slapped him. Hard. We don’t know where we’d be going this time, he thought. Not even I have a location and rundown of every POW camp and prison in the Fire Nation. There would be no coming back from that mission.

“I can’t do that,” Zuko said, shaking his head as the hope in Suki’s eyes transmuted to anger. “Aang is going to need a Firebending teacher when he gets back from that supply mission along the Earth Kingdom coast in two days, someone who’s learned from the dragons like he did. I’m sorry Suki, we cannot go.”

Suki’s glare held for another half a second before she sighed and, eyes downcast said, “You’re right, as usual, and I’m sorry for ragging on Mai.You’re right, I should be more grateful.”

“It’s okay,” Zuko responded, clapping his hand on her shoulder. “It’s understandable.” The two of them turned to continue their patrol when bright golden orange light suddenly flared into existence above their heads. Caught unprepared, he slammed his eyes shut against the painful glow, turning his head to avoid the light that burned even through his eyelids. After a long moment the light began to fade and he opened his eyes, blinking back yellow-orange spots as he stared up at the sky.

He was stunned to see what appeared to be a rapidly fading fireball, as though a new sun, disappearing into the night. Something had exploded in midair, that much was obvious, but what? Also, why was there no accompanying explosion?

At a loss for words, he looked at Suki, who was staring right back at him in shock. “What,” they both said in perfect unison, “was that?” A softer light appeared overhead and he looked up again to see dozens of meteors streaking along the night sky as they tore through the sky off towards the east. As they watched entranced by the odd beauty of the scene, Zuko thought, there’s no way this and the explosion aren’t connected. He was still watching when behind him, he heard a soft rumbling sound. Zuko cocked his head and listened to the sound as it grew progressively louder, until it sounded like the roar of a tigerlion. Suddenly realizing what was about to happen, he launched himself at Suki and tackled the two them to the ground. An instant later he felt the ground heave as something large collided into the earth at, to Zuko’s ears, had to be an obscenely fast rate. He could hear it digging into the ground, forcibly uprooting trees and sending them crashing back down. After what seemed like an eternity of shaking and destruction, the sound stopped and Zuko got up and looked around at the scene surrounding them.

It looked like the gods themselves had decided to rend the forest asunder. Thick hundred –year-old trees were toppled everywhere like child’s playthings and the blackened shrubbery lent the smell of burnt foliage to the carnage.

“Zuko,” Suki whispered, shoving on his arm. “Look.” She pointed towards what appeared to be a large gash driven through the soil. He followed the line with his gaze, until it finally ended with a sight of… something.

Zuko approached the object carefully, studying it. It was yellowish and had a roughly boxed shape, was over twice his length and as tall as he was. "What is it?" he asked.

“I don’t know,” Suki responded

They were interrupted by a loud banging sound that seemed to come from the back end of the vehicle. Running around to the side, they realized that the sound was coming from a metal plate in the center of a large cylinder sticking out of the box. That’s no plate, he realized. That’s a door.

Abruptly the banging stopped, and the plate slid open with a dragon’s hiss.

To Be Continued.

 

[Graywand2]

Chapter Two​

Captain’s Starlog June 1st, 2155. In order to foster relations between the Andorian Empire and United Earth after the recent creation of the Coalition of Planets Treaty Organization we’ve rendezvoused with an Andorian cruiser to pick up an old friend who will be acting as an observer, and advisor, of day-to-day operations on a Starfleet ship .

“I don’t trust him,” Captain Jonathan Archer heard his Vulcan first officer say as the two of them walked towards the airlock on the starboard side of the primary hull. After half a decade of serving together on the Enterprise, Archer had grown used to his first officer’s distrust of Andorians, and even understood it. Centuries of distrust between Vulcan and Andoria wasn’t going to disappear overnight after all, even after the recent détente .

That didn’t mean he had to accept it, however, especially now when a certain Andorian was going to be a permanent fixture in their. “No,” Archer said patiently as the two officers pushed through a group of enlisted personnel in the corridor. “You don’t trust Andorians. You never have. This new Coalition though, is about forging bonds between former enemies, and after all that’s happened between us over the last few years I doubt he’s our enemy anymore.”

“Last year, the two of you fought a duel to the death when you agreed to stand in for a Tellarite who killed one of his officers,” T’Pol said, giving him a pointed look.

“Shran was going to withdraw the Imperial Guard from the alliance against the Romulan marauders if I didn’t allow the duel,” Archer reminded her testily. “Besides, do I look dead to you?”He stopped in front of the controls to the airlock. Seeing on the display panel that the ship’s docking seal was holding, he entered the commands into the console to verify that the airlock was pressurized appropriately. When the red light next to the airlock door flashed to green, he pressed the button and the door slid open.

“Captain Archer,” Shran said as he walked onto the deck. Archer looked at his friend. The Andorian commander was thin, with blue skin, blonde hair, and antennae that were currently pointed at the captain. “It’s good to see you again, and to be back in space.”

Archer put his hand on Shran’s brown-uniformed shoulder. “What have they had you doing since we last saw you?”

He sighed a frustrated sigh and looked at the deck plating. “As I told you last time, an Imperial Guard officer who loses a ship isn’t usually rewarded with another one.” Looking up to meet Archer’s eyes again, he said, “So, before I was picked for this assignment I’ve been on “administrative leave” and spent most of my time among the Aenar.”

Archer smiled. “Been spending time with Jhamel?” Archer asked, having a feeling that he already knew the answer. One would have had to have been as blind as Jhamel to not see that they had been attracted to each other last year.

Shran gave him a wry smile. “You could say that.” Shran said, nodding.

“Ah,” Archer said, the understanding clicking in him as to what precisely Shran meant.

“Anyway,” Shran said. “How’ve you been doing? I see they put your ship through a thorough refit. How big is your crew now?”

“The Starfleet crew is two hundred and forty-nine,” Archer said, unable to keep the swell of pride out of his voice. “With the addition of an entire platoon of MACOs it now stands at three hundred.”

“Three hundred,” Shran said, a trace of awe in his eyes. “Impressive.”

“The ship itself is now-,” Archer began, only to be interrupted by a beeping sound coming from the intercom on the airlock panel.

“Bridge to Captain Archer,” the voice of Lieutenant Hoshi Sato said. “We’re receiving a transmission from Starfleet Command. It’s urgent.”

“Transfer it to my ready room,” Archer said, concern filling him. “I’ll be right there.”



Ten minutes later, Archer walked into the situation room at the rear of the Enterprise’s bridge. His senior staff, including Shran, looked at him curiously. Walking to the head of the small computerized situation table, he sighed, leaning heavily onto it as he thought about everything Admiral Black had just got done telling him.

“Before we begin,” he said, “I’m going to assume everyone here is familiar with our Andorian observer.”

“That’s an understatement,” his chief engineer said in a deadpan Southern drawl.Shran looked at everyone around him with a mixture of curiosity and annoyance.

Archer allowed himself a smirk at Trip Tucker’s observation before the seriousness of the situation came back at him. “The Columbia has gone missing.” He pressed a few buttons on the panel before him and a star chart appeared on the display in the center of the table. “She was last reported as undertaking a survey in the Psi Cancri system before we lost contact with her. We’ve been ordered to investigate, and rescue any survivors.”

“At our maximum warp it will take us two weeks to reach the Psi Cancri system,” T’Pol said. “Logic says that by the time we arrive there won’t be any survivors to rescue.”

“Starfleet Command doesn’t think so,” Archer said, tapping out a few commands into the system. On the screen behind him a digital representation of an M-class planet appeared. The planet had one huge continent with a string of small islands next to it.

“This is Psi Cancri I,” Archer said as he got out of the way so his senior officers could get a look at the screen. “It’s M-class, about the size of Earth, and,” he said, his mind still marveling at the fact, “has a large population of humans living on it.”

“Humans,” his flight controller Lieutenant Travis Mayweather said, surprise in his voice. “Are they sure?”

“The sensor data transmitted by the Columbia clearly indicates the inhabitants are human, Travis,” Archer said, nodding.

“Define ‘large’,” Lieutenant Commander Malcolm Reed said, his English tones registering surprise. “Fifty thousand, a hundred thousand? How big are we talking here, sir?”

Archer sighed. “According to the sensor data, the planet’s population is approximately six hundred million.”

“Six hundred million?” Lieutenant Hoshi Sato said, surprise on the young Japanese woman’s face. “Our only worlds other than Earth with a population over one million are Mars, Proxima Centauri, and Deneva. And the failed Skagaran colony in the Expanse only had six thousand humans.”

“Our orders are also to investigate that,” Archer said. “Lieutenant Mayweather, set a course for the Psi Cancri system, maximum warp. Hoshi, T’Pol I want you to go through the historical database with a fine-toothed comb, see if anything can account for this.” As all three of them left to carry out their orders, he turned to his chief engineer.“Trip, Malcolm,” he said. “How are our new upgrades doing?”

“The new engine upgrades are doing quite well for something so experimental,” Trip said nodding. “I can give you Warp 5.5 the whole way out.”

Good, Archer thought. That should help us get their as smoothly as possible.

“I’m still having issues aligning the upgraded tactical sensors,” Reed reported, concern on his voice. “If we run into trouble I can’t guarantee that they’ll be at their peak effectiveness.”

“Trip, will you assist Mr. Reed?” Archer ordered. “If Columbia was the victim of hostile action, I want to be ready for whoever may have destroyed them.”

“Aye, sir,” they both said before leaving to carry out their orders.

“Well,” Shran said as soon as both men were alone in the situation room, “this is a…interesting development.”

“You can say that again,” Archer responded, looking at the world on the computer screen. Another human world where one had no earthly business being, he thought, marveling at the fact that this was the second pre-warp extrasolar human world they’d come across in the past five years. What alien race took our people out to an M-class planet this time? And for what purpose?

“I take it from that look on your face you know someone on the Columbia personally,” Shran remarked, and it wasn’t a question.

“Her captain,” Archer said, remembering that time a couple years ago when they went mountain climbing in California. “Captain Hernandez and I were…involved many years ago. I hope she’s okay”

“Well,” Shran began, clearly making an effort to sound comforting. “I’m sure if there are any survivors they’ve already established peaceful contact with the local human population.”



Suki knelt in the underbrush, watching as two people stepped out of the strange vehicle. The woman was slightly older than her, dressed in gray and brown pants and a coat. The man was in his twenties with a navy- uniform with red stripes. Both of them carried strange black, curved devices. What are those, she thought, struggling not to make any noise that would betray their position. Better proceed with caution, they could be a weapon.

“Private,” the man said, his tone telling Suki that this was either a senior noncom or an officer. “Scan the area; tell me if we’re alone.”

“Yes, sir,” the woman said, pulling out a strange gray device and waving it around in front of her.

Officer, then, she thought, nodding to herself, but for which side? I’ve never seen that uniform design in my life.

She looked over at Zuko. Her friend was watching them curiously as well. He caught her eye and shook his head, silently ordering her not to break cover. Suki, still in officer mode from the conversation right before that thing nearly creamed them, immediately nodded and stayed low.

“We’re not alone, Commander,” the woman said, showing the officer in the newly made clearing something on her device. “Two humans in those bushes over there.”

Suki dropped her head in frustration. How did they locate us that fast? She heard a rustling from her left and saw that Zuko had stood up and was walking towards them. Seeing no other option, Suki stood up and began walking towards them.

“You’re oddly dressed for rescue workers,” the officer said, giving them a curious look as he stared at the two of them, “you’re dressed more like special warfare operators. Besides shouldn’t there be more of you?” Suki looked at them askance, unwilling to believe what he just heard. You damn near kill us coming down in that thing, and you think we’re here to assist you?

“What makes you think we’re here to rescue you?” Zuko said, incredulity and anger on his voice. “We were running a patrol through here when you came crashing down out of the sky in that thing. Now who are you, and what is that thing?”

“You were?” he said, a suddenly ashamed look on his face. “My apologies, after our ship was in orbit was destroyed we lost control of our pod. My name is Commander Robert Kelby, chief engineer of the starship Columbia. This is Private Sana Kassab of the MACO platoon also late assigned to the Columbia.”

“And if I knew what a “Columbia” or a MACO was that might mean something,” Suki said. Then the other word he said hit her like a ton of lead bricks thrown at her head. “‘Starship,’” she repeated, feeling rooted to the spot. “You were on a ship in orbit. That’s impossible; humans don’t have the technology to get into space. We have airships, but not starships; those are the pipe dreams of engineers and scientists thinking hundreds if not thousands of years into the future.”

“What are you talking about,” Kelby said, giving her a look like she was insane. “Our race has been launching people into space for about two hundred years, and we’ve had the capacity to travel between stars for the past century. You’re the first of our kind we’ve met who doesn’t know that.”

My gods he’s serious, Suki thought. Then she thought about it. It’s the only thing that makes sense. The soundless explosion, the unexpected meteor shower, she looked over at the vehicle, lying motionless in the wreckage of the forest, that thing over there. It’s the only thing that works. They’re humans like us, but they’re not from around here. “Well,” Suki said, flustered, and, trying to maintain a level head she latched onto the only thing that she knew was a connection between them and finally resolved to introduce herself. “I’m Major Suki,” she said, bowing politely. “Commanding officer, Kyoshi Warriors. This is my friend Zuko.” Zuko, ever silent, simply nodded.

The moment the words were out of her mouth she saw a change come over the woman in front of her. Her guard had been oddly down, for some reason not considering her a threat, but the moment she heard her rank she snapped immediately into drillyard perfect attention.

“You’re an officer?” Kelby asked. “Forgive me, but Majors aren’t usually as young as you.”

“Yes, sir,” Suki responded politely. If these people’s rank structure was anything like the rank structure she knew, he did outrank her after all. “I’m the youngest commanding officer my unit’s ever had, but that’s neither here nor there. More to the point, there are a lot of questions that need answering among all of us, and what’s left of this forest isn’t the best place to do it.”

Suki looked over at Zuko. As the only other person in that clearing to have even technically held a rank higher than hers, she tended to defer to him. Zuko, seeing where she was going, nodded.

“You’re welcome to come with us back to camp,” Suki said. “We should make it quick, though. There’s no way they’re didn’t hear what just occurred, and we should get back to smooth their ruffled feathers.”

“Thanks for the offer, Major,” he said. “We accept.”

 

[Graywand2]

A/N: For the record, I couldn't directly show the initial reaction to bending because it shattered suspension of disbelief and blew it all over hell.
​

Chapter Three​

Suki walked down the corridor of the Western Air Temple, intent on crawling into her bunk after a long and exceedingly weird day. First she nearly got squished by a falling metal object, second, they revealed that there is a human civilization that traveled among the stars, and third they told them that they had absolutely no benders among their population whatsoever. Fourth, and most surprisingly Katara agreed to help them locate where the rest of their crew landed, saying that was what Aang would do, despite the fact that that means we won’t be here when he gets back. That also means we leave tomorrow, which means I need to get some sleep.

“This is a hell of a development,” she heard from the room she was about to pass to her left. A surprised Suki stopped in her tracks, leaned against the wall, and listened, her curiosity getting the better of her. It was the field officer, Kelby, who was speaking. “The powers some of the people around here have are amazing.”

“Were you not listening during that impromptu briefing that Katara woman gave?” the accented voice of a clearly angry Private Kassab said. “There’s a war going on around here, a full scale war, by humans, against humans. I’m not talking about some Yakuza or Triad pirates or some fringe terrorist group here, this is one human nation taking up arms against another human nation with the intent to subjugate the other’s people. God, this Fire Nation’s already exterminated one human nation on this planet. The contract I signed and the oath you swore both say the same thing: we are to protect the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Article One of that document we swore to protect with our lives is a simple line: all humans currently alive at the ratification of this document and their descendents in perpetuity are United Earth citizens, with all the rights thereto.” She heard the other woman give a distressed sigh and sit down on her bed. “My entire life I’ve wanted one thing, to be a MACO, like my father. We were the ones who stood watch over the struggling colonies in Montana and Colorado during the Horror. We were the ones who marched against Colonel Green during the war. We were the ones first charged with defending the realms of men, and now it feels like we failed in our duty. It feels stupid, but there it is.”

“Yes, it hurts,” Kelby said, sounding patient, and surprisingly not telling her off for being insubordinate, “but we’re two people. We don’t even know if the rest of the Columbia’s crew made it off alive.”

She heard another sigh from Kassab followed closely by the words, “You’re right, of course.” Wondering what was going on she inched forward, and peeked her head around the corner, to reveal Kassab in his arms, their lips locked together in what was obviously a passionate kiss.

Suki stood there, briefly stunned, unnoticed by the two of them in their eagerness to attack each other mouths. For a long moment she stood there, stunned by what she just heard, heedless of what was going on in front of her. I don’t know what a constitution is or most of what they were talking about is but that’s irrelevant. The people of this world they’re from feel obligated to get involved in the war. They could help us end the war. She continued moving quickly, feeling a sensation of hope flood her. The Avatar wouldn’t have to rely on our limited resources anymore. We could make a difference. A real difference. Moving quickly, she went to her room, crawled into bed, and fell asleep within minutes.



Suki stared around her, shock hitting her when she recognized her surroundings. How could she not? The worst months of her life were spent in this hell. She recognized the layout like the back of her own hand. The massive guard tower in the center of the courtyard, the guardhouses atop, all glinting in the light of the moon. I’m in the Boiling Rock, she thought, sudden horror hitting her as she tried to figure out how she got back in that accursed place. But how?

“Suki,” a familiar, though oddly toned feminine voice said from behind her. Her confusion abruptly gave way to anger and she turned around slowly to see, standing before her surprisingly in Fire Nation prison garb, Ty Lee.

“Ty Lee,” she said darkly, sliding into a combat stance, heedless of her dress. “I should’ve known. Tell me how you brought me here! Now!

Seemingly undeterred by her threat, the other woman shook her head. “The memories of the form I’ve borrowed suggested that you’d be this belligerent,” she said, her voice taking on an odd quality, one that sounded like it had a preternatural sense of the future. It was certainly not a quality Ty Lee, or any other person she ever met usually had. Surprised at the tone, her hands dropped and she looked at the other woman quizzically.

Then the answer hit her as if Aang had airbended her into the wall. “You’re not Ty Lee, are you? And this is some sort of dream or vision.”

The other woman bowed her head slightly. “You catch on quick, don’t you? Prophets like me go by many names, but my identity is unimportant right now.” The entity in Ty Lee’s form sighed. “Do you remember when you were a child, and you would spend long hours just sitting on a bench in the graveyard in your home village? Do you remember what you told your parents when they came to look for you?”

Suki stood rooted to the nonexistent stone beneath her feet, her mind reeling as she came to grips with the fact that this entity, for lack of a better term, seemingly knew everything about her past. Unbidden, the words came back to her, sweet and childlike, with the innocence of one who didn’t know that the world was exceedingly dangerous to mankind, I know where I’m going to rest, Mommy, she’d say to her surprised Mother, right there in the shade of that tree.

It’s coming, she thought to herself, a sudden and instinctive fear rushing through her as she backed away from the entity. Gods of my father, its coming. No, please!

“Yes, Suki,” the entity said. “It is time for your final role in the saga of the human race to begin. Climb the mountain, Suki, the mountain at the heart of the land of Man’s birth and face She who no warrior can defeat at the end of the line.




Ty Lee screamed as she bolted awake, exploding into an upright position as shock and fright flooded her. She felt confused and terrified as she tried to grasp onto the already dissipating threads of her dreams. She shook her head in confusion. I think I was threatening someone, she thought to herself. I didn’t sound like myself when I was doing it.

“Ty,” the familiar voice of her friend Mai coming from the bunk against the wall across from her, tinged with sudden worry. “Are you all right?”

Ty Lee was still breathing heavily, and took a few moments before she said, still breathy, “I’m fine, Mai. It was just a bad dream, a really weird one though.”

“What happened?”

Ty Lee sighed, hesitating. In the manner of dreams she had already forgotten most of what she had dreamed about, but something lingered at the edge of her consciousness. “I got the distinct impression I was threatening someone familiar. I don’t know who, but I didn’t sound like myself.”

“Which ‘myself’ are you referring to?” Mai asked pointedly. “‘Myself’ as in the real you or ‘myself’ as in the ditz you act like whenever you have to be within a few miles of Azula.”

Ty Lee cocked her head to the side as she tried to come up with a decent answer. Finally, she flopped back into her bed and said, “Both.”

“I’m beginning to think you were right that evening when you suggested that the two of us should just cut and run, head for Ba Sing Se and never look back. We wouldn’t be in this mess and you, a woman who, among other things, mastered a difficult and complex martial art by the time she was twelve, wouldn’t have had to pretend to be as dumb as the floor for all this time.”

“I was just venting, Mai,” Ty Lee responded, thinking about that incident. It had been the dead of night, Azula had been asleep, and the two of them had been out getting something to drink from the nearby stream. “You and I both know what Azula would’ve done to our families if we’d left. Look at your brother, that sweet and precious little boy. She would’ve hurt him to punish us, to say nothing of my youngest sister, barely three.”

“I know,” Mai said. “Do you think they’re safe now?”

“Well,” Ty Lee said. “Your family is safe, they’re being held in Omashu now that that sector is back under Earth Kingdom control. As for mine,” she said, worry cutting into her gut. “Well, it depends on Azula’s mood.”

“I want you to promise me something, Ty Lee,” Mai said after a moment.

“What?”

“That you will never hide who and what you really are ever again,” Mai said, “you’ve been doing that for years and look what happened to you, to us. Never again”

“Don’t worry,” Ty Lee said, a wash of cold determination filling her. “I don’t intend to.”




Morning came entirely too early for Ty Lee’s tastes. One second she had finally made it back to sleep after her conversation with Mai and it seemed like the next second she was awakened by the loud thumping of every door in their cellblock opening all at once. Ty Lee groggily sat up in bed and looked over to see an equally groggy Mai do the same.

“Prisoners awake!” a male voice shouted. “All prisoners awake! Prepare to file out into the courtyard.” Giving an annoyed sigh, the two women got up off their narrow cots and walked out of the cell, joining the line of male and female inmates that were diligently filing their way into the courtyard.

When she got into the courtyard, she looked up to the sky, and breathed a sigh of relief. It was a actually a beautiful day, the sun was shining and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Probably going to be hot today.

“Ty Lee,” Mai said suddenly, pointing towards the gondola system. “Look.” Ty Lee looked up to see a sight that made her breath hitch in shock; a large black Fire Nation air transport was pulling to a stop as a platoon of guards spilled out of the prison to take up defensive and overwatch positions around it.

“Where’s your uncle?” Ty Lee asked, “He usually oversees new prison arrivals.” And a big batch of new arrivals it looks to be, she thought to herself. They usually don’t use an entire airship to transport a load, much less bring it up to the dock.

“Probably still sulking from that humiliating defeat Zuko gave him,” Mai said, a smug look on her face. “Let’s see who we’ve got arriving.”

After a second, a hatch in the side of the ship opened up. “Atten-tion!” A loud female voice shouted from inside the ship. “March!” Immediately the sound of footsteps marching on metal was heard before the first woman marched down the ramp, in a perfect march, quickly followed by a line of them, all women.

“The Kyoshi Warriors,” she whispered, shock filling her as she watched the line of woman march out of the ship. As she watched she heard two guards behind her start whispering amongst themselves.

“Who are they?” a female guard asked.

“A force of war prisoners,” the other guard, a male said, “a detachment from an all-female military outfit from the Earth Kingdom backwater. The Kyoshi Warriors they’re called. Remember, their leader was an inmate here until last week, having been captured leading a patrol by our Crown Princess. The rest of the company sized force surrendered a day later when we outmaneuvered them and forced them into an impossible situation.”

If taking a refugee station full of innocent civilians and threatening to execute every single one of them if they didn’t surrender counts as outmaneuvering them, then I suppose that’s accurate, Ty Lee thought to herself, an acute sense of shame filling her.

“Both officers and their men were making trouble in the capital,” a male guard said. “We’re far removed from anything important or strategic so someone in Agni’s Crater came up with the brilliant idea of shoving the entire force here so even if they did manage to escape they wouldn’t be able to do any serious damage.”

Ty Lee sighed as she remembered taking part in that vicious attack on the Kyoshi Warrior patrol. She shook her head. This is going to make life interesting.

 

[Gojirob]

Very faithful to both series, and intriguing as all get-out. I look fwd to reading more!

 

[Graywand2]

Chapter Four​

Katara sighed and cast a glance at the ship next to her, glinting in the orange torchight. Zuko had told her that the big, sleek airship with dark black armor that he and Sokka had pilfered from Azula was what the Fire Nation designated as a Sovereign-class cruiser, with all ship names coming from previous Firelords. This one had been named the Firelord Azulon. It was of course, a name that simply couldn’t stand. Acting on her own initiative, she had renamed her Fearless. She still felt a chill up her back whenever she thought about what she’d done. It’s bad luck to rename a ship, she thought, shaking her head. Even if said vessel’s name was Lord Azulon. Katara looked out into the world from the massive domed room farther down the cliff where Fearless docked. Through the huge space that once admitted the virtually extinct Sky Bison, she could see the sky turning a panoply of blues and reds as their sun begin to peak above the horizon, their corner of the world turning to face it once more.

I suppose I can’t call it “the Sun” anymore now can I, she thought to herself, and that name that Kelby gave it doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue now either. According to him it’s the twenty-third most prominent star in the constellation they call Cancer the Crab, based on an old language of theirs, which makes sense I suppose, but doesn’t exactly give it a name I like. So now it’s our sun to distinguish it with the other suns that have planets with people orbiting them, humans or not. She shook her head. She still was surprised by that. That not only was her world not the sole world with humans on it, but that humanity’s homeworld was not her world and there were other thinking, intelligent nonhumans that shared her plane of existence. She then thought of Aang, of how they were just going to leave. We need to help these people, she thought, if only because they need it, what they can do for us and this world notwithstanding. “As much as I detest the man now,” a familiar male voice that made her see red just listening to it, said, “renaming the ship is bad luck and we both know it.” She turned around to view Zuko standing on the ridge.

“Zuko,” she said darkly, fighting the instinctive urge to attack Zuko with terminal intensity.

Zuko, blithely, didn’t seem to notice the deadly edge in Katara’s voice. “Katara,” he said civilly, “are you feeling up to this?”

Her enemy’s congenial tone toward her caused her ire to flare up. Before she was even cognizant of what she was doing, she had charged forward, the world around her briefly a blur before she closed the distance, grabbed Zuko by the lapels roughly pulled the older man down to eye level.

“Listen very carefully,” Katara growled, loading her voice full of malice and hatred. “I don’t know why I have to keep telling you this, but I don’t like you and I don’t trust you, and I don’t want to interact with you beyond what is required by our duties. Got it?”

Instead of acknowledging her authority over him because of she’d been in the team since the beginning, he glared back at her and said, “Everyone else around here seems to trust me? Why don’t you?”

Zuko’s question caused a surge of anger to flood her and she had to expend a considerable mental effort toward keeping herself from striking him. “I was the first one to trust you, remember? Back in Ba Sing Se? Then you betrayed me, betrayed all of us! You betrayed the world by giving its last free city of any significant size on this world over to that psychopathic sister of yours!”

Continuing to glare at her, he said, not even bothering to struggle, “That was a different place and time. I’m a different man, Raising his voice he bit out, “If I wasn’t totally committed to saving us from my father and my sister, I wouldn’t be here right now! Everything depends on Aang winning this war!”

Shoving back roughly, she released her grip on Zuko’s collar and said, “Just get on the ship.” Without another word, she turned and walked away from him.

-----------------------------------------

Zuko was lying in his bed in the executive officer’s quarters on the Fearless. It had been several hours since they’d left for the Western Earth Kingdom, the most likely place to start looking for the Columbia survivors, based on where it looked some of the wreckage that they had initially mistook for a meteor shower had been headed.

Try as he might, he still couldn’t get what Katara had told him out of his mind. He shook his head. She had been unequivocally right, of course, but that didn’t mean he had to accept it and do nothing to change it. It was at that point that there was the hard clanging of a fist on metal. Quickly throwing himself out of bed, he said, “Come.”

The metal door opened and Toph Bei Fong entered the room. The thirteen-year-old was pissed about something, judging by the look of anger and rage in her green eyes. It wasn’t at all an abnormal emotion for his friend to be feeling, but it was decidedly abnormal for there to be bags under her eyes. But why is she here? He thought, suddenly concerned about why she was tired. “Toph?” He asked. “What do you want?”

Tophstarted like she had been a thief caught in the act of trying to pilfer some gold from him. “Nothing,” she said quickly, before turning quickly to leave. Zuko, alarmed by this, disregarded his personal safety and grabbed Toph and spun the young woman around to face him.

“What’s wrong, Toph?” He asked, concern in his eyes and on his voice.

“It’s nothing,” she said, quickly, flashing him an angry, desperate look.

“Don’t tell me it’s not nothing,” Zuko said pointedly. “We can’t afford to have you a tired wreck. The world is changing, and we need you functioning if we’re going to come through this in one piece. ”

Toph gave a derisive smirk before the sad mask on her face abruptly reappeared and she plopped herself down on his bed. “Well, if you insist on making me tell you,” she sighed. “It’s Sokka.”

“Sokka? I figured as much.”

“Then you know how I feel,” Toph said angrily. “I know what he and Suki get up to at night, and can’t stand it and I wish it were me.” Zuko’s eyes widened, and not because Toph wished it was her. Young women were often married between the ages of thirteen and fifteen. No, what surprised him was that she was losing sleep over it. Toph, whom he was willing to bet was possibly the most ornery and tough human being in existence, on any world, was losing sleep over a boy.

“How long have you had a crush on him?”

She sighed. “Since I first met him in Gaoling.”

“That was seven months ago,” he said, surprised. “You never told him?”

“I would’ve,” she said, shaking her head, “but that little incident at the Serpent’s Pass kind of changed things.”

Confused, he asked, “What are you talking about? What incident?”

“Oh, that’s right,” Toph said. “You weren’t there, were you? Well, about six months ago we were traveling to Ba Sing Se. We had reached the transit station at Full Moon Bay when we ran into Suki. She had been the station’s provost marshal at the time and she had been overseeing a trainee detachment when she caught site of us. She agreed to escort us through the pass herself, so she left her second in command in charge at the station and took us deeper into the mountains. It wasn’t long before we reached the, ah, serpent that the Serpent Pass is named after. He destroyed the ice bridge Katara had created while I was trying to cross and,” to Zuko’s surprise, she saw an echo of genuine terror flash in her eyes. “I hit the water. My parents had never bothered to teach me to swim and as such I went under almost immediately.” She heaved a wavering sigh, visibly trembling. “I felt my lungs burn as I sunk deeper. I came within a hairsbreadth of opening my mouth. Me, Toph Bei Fong, the greatest Earthbender in the world, and I nearly lost the battle to keep my own mouth closed. I was this close to giving up when I was dragged back to the surface.”

Zuko understood, forcibly putting aside the horrible memories of his own brush with drowning after the Redemption was bombed. “Sokka.”

“I wish,” Toph responded, shaking her head. “It was Suki.”

“Suki,” Zuko said, surprised. Then his brain rapidly extrapolated the rest of the story and he found himself laughing good-naturedly. “You thought it was Sokka didn’t you?”

“Oh, yes,” Toph said, her face flushing a deep crimson. “I actually kissed her on the cheek, which prompted Suki to tell me who she was, after which I begged her to just let me drown.”

“Have you considered telling him?” Zuko asked. “Your feelings I mean?”

Toph gave him an annoyed glare. “Besides the fact that it would drive one of those swords you have into the heart of our friendship. I think I’m developing a crush on someone else.”

“Who?” He asked, curious. There were after all, other young men in the group. Haru, Teo, Aang, though Toph’s not so stupid that he doesn’t recognize the Avatar’s feelings for Katara. Gods of my mother I can see it stamped all over his face.

It was at that point, that she blushed crimson again and ran for the door, opening it and slamming it shut behind him before he could move to stop her.


--------------------------------------


Suki watched as Private Kassab picked one of the four black phase rifles up off the table in the Fearless’s armory bay. “Now this, sir,” the young enlisted woman began, “is the EM-44 phase rifle, manufactured by Colt Manufacturing Company for the Military Assault Command Organization and Starfleet for about the past ten years. There are three settings,” she said, pointing at the markers surrounding the setting knob. “This one,” she said, pointing at the stun weapon. “Is the stun setting. It suppresses the enemy’s central nervous system for about fifteen to twenty minutes, causing them to lapse into unconsciousness.” With that, she raised her weapon, pointed it at the small dummy and pressed the button in the ring near the handle. A loud crack was heard and a blue blast tore out of the rifle and slammed into the dummy, sending it crashing to the floor.

Suki shared a stunned glances with Sokka and Teo, “That is certainly interesting, Private. What else can it do?”

“Well, sir,” Suki felt that sense of easy familiarity between her and the young enlisted woman. The use of sir for officers regardless of gender was another thing that she found that both worlds used. On her world it had been in use in every military that had allowed men and women to serve alongside each other since time immemorial, though she had been surprised to learn that it had only come into vogue on Earth in the last century. “This is the kill setting, designed to kill someone instantly, due to enough intense heat and radiation to torch every internal organ at once. I will now demonstrate on this side of meat.” With that she hefted her rifle, pointed it at a slab of meat hanging from a hook on the wall and fired. The blue blast flew across the room and for a bare heartbeat she assumed that it was going to turn out the same as last time. Her eyes widened in impulsive shock when the blue blast exploded in a shower of white-hot sparks and when the light faded a half-second later, an entire side of beef looked to her eyes to be fully cooked. She stood there, her mind, the mind of an officer, thinking about what this meant for her and her people. A small squad of my people armed with weapons like these could make short of work of Fire Nation formations ten times their size, to say nothing of what would happen if I could arm my entire force with weapons like this.

“Private,” she began, before Katara’s voice filtered over the communication system.

“Hey, guys,” Katara began quickly. “We’re approaching land, and I don’t think we’re going to have to ask the local villagers in Shanxi about where to look for anything that might have fallen last night, because I just saw something familiar.

Thirty minutes later, Suki gingerly approached the large brown cylinder. She looked behind him at the trail of up-kicked dirt and burnt foliage the object had left it.

“There are four bodies inside,” she heard Commander Kelby say from behind her, the sound of the device he’d introduced as a hand scanner whirring behind her, “all human, and all dead.”

Suki, knowing what it was like to lose men in accidents herself, could only say, “I’m sorry, sir.” With that, Kelby pushed himself ahead and pressed a button on a panel outside. The groan of activated machinery was heard and the metal door groaned open. The door opened and touched the ground, turning into a ramp. She watched as Kelby stepped inside, herself following a moment later.

She held her breath, and the bile rising in her throat, at the carnage before her. The inside of Kelby and Kassab’s lifeboat had seemed to survive the crash relatively intact, apart from a bank of what Kelby called computer panels on the starboard wall that was broken. Here, that panel, as far as she knew, was more or less intact, but blood was splattered everywhere, and scattered around the room were the broken and lacerated bodies of four people, two men and two women.

“These were some of Commander Shaugnessy’s people,” she heard Kassab say, shock and recognition on the woman‘s voice. “There’s Crewman Bagdadi, Petty Officer Foraker, Petty Officer Caslet, and Crewman Hibson.”

“There’s some stretchers in the Fearless’s battle dressing station,” Zuko said, suddenly from behind her. “We’ll get them and retrieve their bodies.”

“Thank you,” Kelby said, his eyes still riveted on the carnage behind him. He stayed like that for a long moment before he looked over at the starboard wall.

“What happened?” Suki found herself asking.

“Structural integrity probably failed,” he said, even as he crossed the short distance to the starboard wall. He pressed a button on a panel and the rectangular surface suddenly glowed to life. “Computer still works, though. Ours was totaled in the crash, but this appears to still be functioning. If I can access the navigational program, perhaps I can find out where we were supposed to land, and then we can head straight there.” After a few moments, the system rang out. “Ah,” he remarked. “Here we go.” He looked directly at her and her fellow locals. “Does this location look familiar to any of you?” Suki and the rest of them edged their way forward and looked at where he was pointing. Holding back her wonder at the sight of the glowing map on the rectangular surface, she recognized the location as being somewhere in the Central Earth Kingdom, but other than that, it was unknown to her.

“It does look familiar,” she heard Katara say, wonder on her voice. “Wait a moment. That’s Taku. It’s a ruined city in the Central Earth Kingdom. Uninhabited, apart from a major Fire Nation military base within about a day’s travel from there.”

“Pohuai Stronghold,” Zuko added. “Assuming the base wasn’t taken by Earth Kingdom forces during the Eclipse, your people are in grave danger, Commander. They need to be relocated away from the base as soon as possible.”

-------------------------------


Avatar Aang gently guided Appa into the massive hole in the Western Air Temple, listening to the sounds of Haru, Teo, and Hakoda behind him, talking about how they’d like to go home and crawl into bed after stowing away all the foodstuffs they’d managed to collect. Aang gently guided the reigns down, and Appa responded with a groan as he touched down on the stone floor of the Western Air Temple.

“Hey, guys,” he said happily, jumping down from the bison’s head. “Did you miss me.” When no one responded, he said, “Guys?”

“Where is everyone,” Haru asked, concern on his voice as he jumped down from Appa’s back.

“Sokka,” he heard Hakoda say, calling for his children, a note of franticness on his voice. “Katara.” After that they spread out throughout the Temple, looking for any sign of what happened. Unfortunately for the Avatar’s peace of mind, there was plenty of evidence that they had left in a hurry, taking what little food they had left with them on the also-missing airship.

Aang, sick with worry returned to the fountain deck and sat next to the hearth, looking out the window when Haru walked back into the room, running towards him.

“Aang,” Haru said, handing him a rough parchment scroll. “Take a look at this, it was right in the middle of your bed, we must have missed it in the hastiness of our first search.”

Aang, curious, took the parchment and opened it up. The words were written in Katara’s neat, flowing hand. However they described something that, had it come from anyone else, would’ve been too good to be true. He read them again, and again, and again trying to get a handle on what he was suggesting.

“Well,” Haru said from behind him. “What do we do?”

“Follow me,” was all Aang said in response, moving towards his bison to see the “lifeboat” that Katara described on top of the mountain.

 

[Gojirob]

Good on all fronts. Classic ST FC stuff, what with recognizing one's place in the cosmos, 'what we could do with one of those phasers' , and some nice Avatar plots based on what we know and what could have been. Also noted : Since 'The Southern Raiders' may now never take place, Katara and Zuko have yet to reconcile. Very cool. Waiting for Sokka to geek out in the NX-01 engine room.

 

[Graywand2]

“If this be treason, make the most of it.”
-Patrick Henry
Speech to the Virginia House of Burgesses in opposition to the Stamp Act
May 29, 1765

Chapter Five​

Ty Lee sat in the corner of the main prison yard of the Boiling Rock, keeping an eye out on the prison population around her, in particular for members of an all female military unit, an entire company of which had just been shoved, officers and men all into the general population. She kept an eye out for them because the absolute last thing she wanted was to run into them. They knew who she was of course, knew that she had attacked their patrol and brought down the Earth Kingdom using their uniforms, so any confrontation was going to end violently even though she bore them no ill will. There’s also the little fact that I feel sick just thinking about my role in that. I brought the last remaining free city of humanity under the control of a lunatic and I can’t stand it, if I were in one of their shoes, I’d attack me to. She understood it was like to hate seeing your uniform dishonored in such a way, she had after all taken the basic military science courses offered to the younger children of noblemen at the Academy for Girls when she was eleven and twelve after all. Being unlikely to inherit meant that younger sons and daughters oftentimes spent time in the military seeking glory in battle, before settling down for civilian lives in the Fire Nation.

And before certain events happened nothing would’ve kept me out of an officer’s uniform by now, she thought to herself. But they did happen, and here I am, and perhaps it’s for the best, because I am ashamed of what a once honorable and proud military has done over the past century. All things considered I would rather serve a military that makes me feel like I would be fighting for something worth dying for, and not serving the brutal excesses of a couple of madmen.

She was snapped from her reverie by the sound of a rough male voice booming from across the courtyard. “Hey, sweet legs,” the male voice said in something that was supposed to sound maybe seductive, but came off as disgusting. “Why don’t you sit your sweet little ass next to me? Who knows, maybe we’ll be rolling around in my bunk together.”

The voice of the woman he’d been accosting came back clear as day. “Nice try, shithead,” the voice said defiantly. All in all it seemed like a perfectly common exchange between male and female inmates, and since the guards didn’t care which cell you were in at the end of the day as long as you were in a cell, liaisons like the one that had been rather rudely suggested and just as vehemently denied were rather commonplace.

But that wasn’t what had Ty Lee rising to her feet, anger and concern flooding her as she scanned the crowd for the source of the exchange. The problem was that she’d instantly recognized the voice, considering she’d attended the trial, of the man as the leader of the most dangerous pirate group in the last decade, and judging by the fact that the woman he had accosted was in a position where he felt like he could accost her, that meant that she was a newbie, which meant that she was in all probability a Kyoshi Warrior.

She moved through the crowd silently, Mai next to her as they moved in the general direction of the sound. The man in question had had a reputation, before the Navy captured him, of being one of the most vicious pirates the backwater areas of both the Earth Kingdom and the Fire Nation had ever seen. The things she’d read about the ships they’d attacked and the coastal villages they’d ransacked had turned her stomach.

“If that’s who I think it is,” Mai said, her voice thick with scorn and disgust, “Capturing him is one of the few honorable things our Navy’s accomplished in the past century.”

“Then they had to screw it up by shoving him and his gaggle of demons with the political prisoners instead of just executing the lot of them.” Half of them had been killed when Rear Admiral of the Black Ildiko Lao’s Fourth Battlecruiser Squadron had finally crushed them at the Second Battle of Garsai. She had brought the rest of them back home in chains to be brought before an Admiralty Court, only to inform her that, instead of putting the rest of the little shits to death like naval tradition demanded, they were going to be sent to an experimental new prison for the most dangerous inmates.

And look at them now, she thought, seething with anger, Preying on the innocent people and political prisoners they keep shoving in to this shithole along with the monsters.

“There they are,” Mai said softly, to the right. She looked. Sure enough, she saw three men and two women, arranged in a semicircle that backed a young woman about her age into a corner. She had dark hair and brown eyes, and she had a wary hunted look in her eyes as she was clearly scanning for an opening to extricate herself from the situation she’d found herself in.

She shook her head at the sight of the woman, wondering how they could participate in something like this. Of course, they had participated in the brutal pirate raids, which is even more baffling, apart from the fact that it proves that you can find sick pieces of work in pretty much any group of humans you can think of. “You’ll take the two on the right; I’ll take the three on the left. On my mark, we move.”

Mai nodded fiercely, and angled into position.

“Come here,” one of the men growled, grabbing the Kyoshi Warrior and holding her to him. To her credit the other woman unleashed a huge fusillade of saliva that slammed into her attacker’s eyes, followed up by a savage kick to another pirate’s kneecap. The other three charged forward and that’s when Ty Lee moved forward, aiming a savage kick to the midsection one of the female pirates. She doubled over in pain that’s when Ty struck a nerve cluster along her back, dropping her to the deck like a boned fish. She looked up to see a heavy fist rushing forward towards her face, instinctively Ty brought her arm up to block the fist slamming towards her, redirecting her adversary’s energy away from her face. She watched as he stumbled, his legs twitching as he was caught off-balance right before she slammed his fist into the back of his neck. In an instant, she watched every limb on him go limp right before he collapsed to the ground, motionless. She turned around to see a man launch a well-aimed punch that collided with Mai’s face, sending her staggering back before she responded with a well-aimed kick to the head, only to be set upon by additional forces. Ty, adrenaline pumping through her, moved as though in a haze, focused only on attacking Mai’s attackers, when a well-aimed kick slammed into the side of his face, knocking him backwards. She looked to see the Kyoshi Warrior slam her knee into the groin of the final attacker, the infamous pirate Tam Wei himself, before bringing her hands down on top of his head. She watched appreciatively as his eyes rolled back into his head and he finally collapsed to the ground.

“Thanks,” Ty Lee said, suddenly breathless. “Thanks for that.”

“You’re welcome,” the Kyoshi Warrior said, nodding.

“Are you okay?” She asked Mai, who was apparently oblivious to the large bruise on his forehead.

“I’m fine,” Mai pointed out.

“Where are the guards?” she heard the woman they just helped say.

“Don’t worry about them,” Ty responded. “Unless you firebend or cause trouble when assigned to a work detail, they tend to ignore you unless you start a riot.”

“Good. What’s your name?”

“Uh,” Ty Lee said, sudden knotting up with fear. If I tell her, the calmly rational part of her mind, whispered, she’ll attack me I know it. She sighed mentally, squelching the errant thought. Sometimes you just have to roll the dice. “My name is Ty Lee.”

The moment she said it, the relieved light in her eyes was gone replaced immediately by an uncertain combination of distrust and gratitude. “Ty Lee?” She repeated. Out of the corner of her eyes, Ty Lee noticed five other woman move into flanking and defensive positions surrounding them.

“Yes,” Ty Lee said, pushing on “that Ty Lee. As you can see, my standing in the world has fallen significantly.”

“I see,” the other woman said, giving her a look she could’ve sworn had a trace of sympathy in it.“Nozomi, Lai, help me escort our guests to the commanding officer. She’s going to want to talk to them.”

“Yes, Corporal,”

--------------------

Five minutes later Ty Lee found herself standing outside one of the doors to cellblock D. One of the Kyoshi Warriors knocked, and she saw a pair of gray eyes look out the slit in the door before it opened from the inside. She could feel the eyes of the guards on her as they were ushered into the small cell. Sitting on the bunk on the left side of the wall was a woman of about seventeen, with black hair and eyes, and an angular face. Her eyes widened as she realized who the woman was she was standing before, the image of her fists slamming into her back before she’d arrogantly told her in no uncertain terms she thought her ugly filling her.

“Captain Shiga, sir,” she heard the young noncom she had just rescued say, the sound of her coming to attention reverberating off the walls. “We have come into contact with two inmates which I thought you would be interested in meeting.”

The other woman looked at them for a moment before her eyes lit up with recognition as well “I see, Corporal,” she said, standing up. “Thank you for bringing them to me. You’re dismissed.”

“They risked their lives to help me, sir,” the young woman said causing a stunned jolt to run through her, she hadn’t expected that, “especially Ty Lee,”. Most corporals weren’t that forward in front of an officer, particularly without asking so much as a by your leave.

“Thank you, Corporal,” Shiga said, shooting her an annoyed look. Ty then heard the door slam shut behind her, leaving them alone with the Kyoshi Warrior guards and the commanding officer. Ty Lee stood there, coming to attention herself.


“What,” she said, the contempt on her voice mirroring the contempt she felt for herself, “are the Crown Princess’s chief minions doing in a place like this? And in prison garb no less?”

“I betrayed her, sir,” she said, deciding that the odds of her surviving the next few minutes were greatly increased if she acknowledged the woman before her as an officer. She began to explain the events that had led to her and Mai’s incarceration, hoping against all hope that she’d believe her and wouldn’t order the deaths of both of them in the next five minutes.

“So,” she said, leaning back against her wall, a thoughtful look on her face. “‘The Crown Princess’s minions, creatures whose only thoughts in their heads are how to best serve their mistress,’” she began, sprouting the most common rumors about them, apart from the (mostly) false rumors of her promiscuity, “are human beings after all.”

Ty Lee bristled at the other woman’s tone, the reminder of her past that she had shed in order to survive filling her with disgust, self-loathing, and a searing hate for Azula. “I always hated that bitch,” she growled, “she kept me under her thumb through fear, destroying my ambitions. I will gladly do anything to bring her down.”

“Really,” the other woman said, slyly. “You’d really betray your own country?”

“No one in this hole has a nation anymore,” Ty Lee said. “There is only us, livestock surrounded on all sides by predators.”

“If you really believe that,” she said. “Prove it. You are by all accounts a master of chi-blocking, why don’t you teach those skills to my men.”

Ty Lee stood there stunned, unsure if she was hearing her correctly. “Captain?”

“If we’re going to survive in here we need an edge over everyone else. My men are some of the highest trained soldiers in the world, but even they can be overwhelmed by sheer numbers. They need some way of offsetting that, even in only a small way. Some of the livestock, as you’ve so colorfully described us, are going to need teeth of their own if they ever want to get out of here.”

Ty Lee was shocked, rooted to the floor. The commanding officer of the Kyoshi Warriors in the Rock was offering her the chance to redeem herself in some small way.The way it was being offered made sense.

“All right,” she said, bowing to her. “I’ll do it.”

“Very well,” Shiga said. “As an added bonus, and to give you something to strive for, because I believe we all need something, I hereby grant you a field commission as an officer in the Kyoshi Warriors, First Lieutenant Ty Lee.”

----------------------

Suki scanned the underbrush bathed in the orange light of the setting sun, her eyes alert for any sound that might indicate a person or, gods willing, dinner. They had practiced strict rationing over the past week but, they were down to two to three days worth of food, and they needed to find something to stretch their food supply. She hefted the rifle that Private Kassab, her partner on this little hunting trip, had taught her to use.

“Do you see anything, Sana?” Suki asked, looking over at the young enlisted woman.

“No, sir,” the dark-skinned seventeen year old said, her own rifle pointed at the underbrush.

Suki sighed, she had expected as much. “We’ve been out here for two hours and we haven’t found a thing, looks like it’s down to either what’s left of our food stores or one of your fancy ration packs.”

“Sir, the last of the MACO and Starfleet issue ration packs were eaten yesterday,” Sana pointed out.

“Damn,” Suki responded, remembering last night. The food had tasted unusually good, probably because it was the last of it. “Well, Sana, we need to find something so we’re not reporting back until we’ve gotten something edible. We’ll continue down this way a bit more, then double back here and go due west. Take point.”

Sana nodded, “Yes, sir.” Pointing her rifle ahead, together they stalked deeper into the forest. They had been moving for all of five minutes when she stopped, her nose suddenly assaulted by a horrific stench roiling from somewhere near her. She cast about, looking for the source of the stench, the unmistakable smell of burnt flesh, until she saw Sana Kassab standing over the source. Walking over, she stared at a woman in her early twenties in the uniform of a Fire Nation soldier. Her blank, lifeless eyes stared up at them, belying the fact that the entire right side of her chest was burned black.

Her shock addled mind finally registered where she’d seen those burns before. How could she not? “These are phase rifle burns.”

An instant later, the forest around them exploded with the sounds of battle.

 

[Graywand2]

Chapter Six​

​

The first thing Suki noticed, apart from the sound of small arms fire going off over her head, was the weight of Sana Kassab as she slammed her into the ground. The stunned officer could barely breathe before she felt the other woman roll the two of them into the natural ditch to their left. “I’m sorry, sir,” she said quickly, getting off her and picking up her weapon. “But it was getting too hot over there.” Suki nodded glumly and looked up to see orange blasts of fire and blue phase rifle blasts crisscross the air above their heads.

“How many of ours and how many of theirs,” she asked quickly. Sana nodded and withdrew her hand scanner. After a moment, she nodded. “I’m reading ten firing the phase rifles with an additional fifty behind them,” Sana responded, “the ones firing are probably a squad of ten under a Staff Sergeant consisting of two five man fireteams under the command of Sergeants.”

“Hostile forces?”

Sana sighed. “I’m reading close on fifty hostiles on the other side of the culvert with another hundred taking up position to support. Major, I think they mean to flank us.” Hitting on another idea, she reached in and pulled out the two devices Private Kassab had identified as headset microphones and gave one to her before putting on her head and settling the microphone part near her mouth.

“Remember how to use this, sir?” Sana asked, before pressing a button on the side of hers. “It should automatically scan for and set itself for any channel in use.”

Suki pressed the button on the side. She heard the device start up. An instant later, her ears were assaulted by the sounds of close to a dozen phase rifles going off repeatedly at the same time and a cacophony of male and female voices talking over the blast.

“Shit,” a male, strangely accented voice said. “all personnel, weapons free, I repeat, weapons free.”

“Hostiles to the left,” a female voice shouted, “they’re trying to flank us!”

“We’ve got to help them,” Suki said. “Sana contact them.”

“Yes, sir,” she pressed the button on the side of the headset again. “Staff Sergeant Kwanmesa,” she said, her words echoing in her ears, “this is Private First Class Sana Kassab, Charlie Squad, Fireteam Foxtrot, do you copy over?”

Suki heard the response over her headphones as well, “Private?” Kwanmesa said shocked, “Where are you?”

“In the ditch between you and the hostiles with a local friendly officer,” Sana reported. Kessab looked at her, requesting permission to keep going. Suki nodded. “Sarge, who’s the officer in charge over there?”

“Ensign Gray,” Kwanmesa’s response came back, surprisingly calm. Though Sana’s eyes lit up in surprise.“He’s one of Commander Kelby’s people. Seventeen, brave but green as hell. Or at least was before all this started.”

“I have a local Major with me,” Sana said, “she’s assuming command on the same channel we’re on.”

“Acknowledged,” Kwanmesa responded, surprised. “Ensign Gray should be able to hear us as well.”

Suki pressed the button on her headset, holding it down like she’d seen Sana do. “Ensign, this is Major Suki, I’m assuming command on the ground right now, do you copy?” She smiled despite the situation. Adapting to their style of warfare was going to be surprisingly easy, utilizing formations, she’d figured out through conversation, was the same as utilizing what she was coming to see as modern infantry.

“Yes, sir,” a male voice said, surprised but relieved. “What are your orders?”

“There’s a large clearing approximately a kilometer to your position,” she said calmly. “Get your people out and go to it now. Staff Sergeant, you and your people are to provide cover. Understood?”

“Yes, sir,” Gray said, “but-,”

“But what, Ensign?”

“But, sir,” he said. “We’re outnumbered, if we move they’ll outflank us and cut us off.”

“Not if you move fast enough,” Suki said. “We’re going to bomb the crap out of this sector, and I don’t think you want to be around when we do so?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Sergeant,” she said quickly. “Do you understand what you have to do?”

“I believe so, sir,” Kwanmesa responded.

“Good,” she said. “See you at the rendezvous point.” Taking her hand off the button, she looked to Sana. “Private, hand me your communicator.”

“Yes, sir,” Sana said, unzipping her pocket and throwing her the communications device. Suki flipped it open and said, “Suki to Kelby.”

“Suki,” he heard Commander Kelby’s voice say quickly. “What the hell’s going on out there?”

“Sir,” she began, and she explained what was going on, finishing with, “we need to bomb the advancing Fire Nation forces before we’re overrun out here.”

“Of course,” Kelby said. “We’re on our way. ETA, five minutes out. Get you and Sa- I mean Private Kassab out of their and rendezvous with our forces.”

“Right,” and she flipped the communicator closed.

“Let’s move out, Sana,” she said.

“Sana,” Suki said as they tore through the underbrush, trying to get an answer to a question that had been nagging at her ever since this whole crisis had started a few moments ago. She was lucky they had left the bulk of the Fire Nation force behind them, “they’re not going to have a problem with me being younger than most majors, are they?”

“Probably, but you act like a Major, which was enough to convince me,” Sana said. “On Earth and her colonies you’re allowed to join both Starfleet and the Military Assault Command once you’ve hit military age, will reach military age by the time you pass training, and have graduated high school or the equivalent.”

“I gather most don’t,” Suki said. “But that it’s not uncommon.”

“Correct, sir,” Sana said. “Both officer training commands don’t worry overmuch about providing a liberal arts education along with the military one, though there are calls to change that in some circles, so it’s not uncommon to see a sixteen or seventeen year old ensign or second lieutenant, or enlisted personnel fifteen and older.”

“But not Majors.”

“No, sir.”

“We’re approaching the field,” Sana said, and sure enough, they stumbled into a grassy field full of personnel in blue Starfleet uniforms. One of them, a young woman about eighteen with the tabs of an enlisted crewman on her uniform, looked up at her and shot her a surprised look.

“Yes, I’m a Major,” she said quickly, catching everyone’s attention. “I’m young, but I’ve earned my rank.”

How she carried herself was enough for the young woman.“Yes, Major,” she said, coming to attention.

“Major Suki?” A surprised male voice said from behind her. She looked up to see a young male with the darkest skin she’d ever seen, with short black hair and the single pip of an ensign on his uniform. “Ensign William Gray. Not meaning to be rude, but your about my age. How do you know you’re not pretending to be a major?”

“Do you want to be in charge here, Ensign?”

Ensign Gray blanched. “God, no.”

Suki smiled. “Good.”

There was a rustling of leaves behind him and ten men and women in MACO uniforms stumbled out of the woods, their rifles still pointed at the forest. Wasting no time, she stepped up to them.

“Which one of you is Staff Sergeant Kwanmesa?”

Kwanmesa, a large muscular man with the same dark complexion as Ensign Gray, shot her a surprised look. She saw his eyes drift to Private Kassab, then back to her. Making a decision, he looked at her, and said, “Sir, when we ensured that the Starfleet personnel had withdrawn, we used several of our grenades and our smokebombs to scatter the oncoming hostiles and obscure our own withdrawal.”

Really, she thought to herself. We must’ve withdrawn downwind. Suki nodded, and opened her mouth to order him into a defensive position when she was interrupted by an exclamation from behind her.

“Holy crap on a stick! Is that an airship?”

“Yes, it is,” Suki said, folding her arms, “and in about thirty seconds I’d say our problems are going to be solved.” She watched as the Fearless came to a stop above the ship and dropped a steady stream of bombs towards the forest below. A heartbeat later, the bombs detonated, exploding through the forest and sending plumes of flame up into the air.

When the explosions subsided, she heard her communicator beep.

“Kelby to Suki,” she heard Kelby say.

“Go ahead, Captain,” she said, referring to the naval tradition that an officer in command of a ship was called Captain regardless of whether or not he or she held the rank of Captain.

“Katara’s spotted what appears to be an enemy supply depot to the west. What do you say we pay them a visit and solve our supply problems? We have the men for it now.”

 

[Graywand2]

Lieutenant Colonel Thara cursed as she watched the roiling pillars of smoke rise from the forest from her office. It had been the handiwork of that Sovereign-class airship that had appeared out of nowhere and bombed that entire company out of existence before heading back into the cloud layer and out of sight. She had sent them out on the orders of the Crown Princess to seize more of those mysterious “star people” that had shown up literally falling out of the sky in lifeboats that looked like giant metal cans. She hadn’t taken the rumors seriously, of course, until the mission orders from the Army Chief of Staff reported that several had been taken prisoner in the capital. Her forces had located a small detachment in her command area and, pursuant to her orders, she had sent in a company to kill and capture as many as possible. The fact that a group of fifty had thrown that company back three times and managed to kill half of them in the process chilled her to the bone.

Then one of our airships shows up and drops bombs on our own people, she thought to herself, still stunned at the sight. That’s not a coincidence; that ship must be under the control of the enemy.

“Major Jaone,” she said, turning to her executive officer. The brown-haired, fair-skinned woman in her mid-twenties snapped to attention. “Get down to communications and use that experimental cabling system to send an urgent message to Pohuai, tell General Chang that hostile forces have seized control of a Sovereign-class airship and wiped out the bulk of our remaining combat forces. Inform that we no longer have the numbers to offset the enemy’s technical superiority and that we are going to evacuate and destroy this facility to deny its use to the enemy.”

“Yes, sir,” her exec said. She stopped and turned. “Colonel-,”

She sighed. She’d been expecting this. “We are facing a force operating isolated in what they see as hostile territory. They’re no doubt going to be looking to meet their own immediate supply needs: food, water, coal to fuel that airship they’ve stolen. We are the largest supply depot in the sector, logic says we’re their next target. Now, if you want to survive long enough to learn to not ask stupid questions get moving!”

“Yes, sir!” She shouted quickly before rushing out. Thara sighed. The Major was a good soldier, but she still had to learn to adapt. She, like herself and every officer and man in her command, had served in a military that had been the most advanced in existence since their grandparents were children. To be suddenly faced with an enemy that put all that avowed technological superiority to shame was unnerving to say the least.

She looked out the window and shook her head. What is our world coming to? Unlike most of her people, she held no illusions as to why her nation was fighting this war. It wasn’t to propagate “The March of Civilization”, as most people were taught from the time they were old enough to think. She’d seen enough to realize that it was about the self-aggrandizement of the previous three Firelords, and she personally didn’t think that a planetwide Fire Nation Empire was a good idea.

But we’ve passed the point of no return, she thought to herself. It’s not like we can just stand our combat units down and say sorry. After the crimes we’ve committed over the past century, every Earth Kingdom nation and the Water Tribes would declare open season on the Fire Nation and not even the Avatar will be able to stop them. They’ll exterminate the entire population of the colonies within a few weeks, and be in the Home Islands within a year. They’ll kill every living thing and salt the earth so nothing will ever grow again.

And as a loyal Fire Nation soldier, more importantly, one with a husband and four children back in the Home Islands, she would give her last breath to prevent that from ever happening. So she willingly fought the war, because it was far too late to back down without something akin to divine intervention to prevent the destruction of her entire people in retribution for its sins. It was what every veteran Fire Nation officer and enlisted man and woman who stayed in the field fought for.

She heard footsteps behind her, and, she turned back to face the door, expecting to see one of her own people. Instead, her eyes widened in shocked recognition to see a young man with a scar on the left side of his face standing there, a fire encased fist pointed at her head, with five people with gray and white patterned uniforms holding those deadly black weapons, also pointed at her head


"Colonel," the renegade Crown Prince said. "There's no reason anymore of our people have to die today."

Lieutenant Colonel Thara sighed, considering a suicidal charge rather than surrender. Just as her fist clenched, and she felt the energy that would’ve ignited the air around her fist flow, the memory of her husband, and her four beautiful sons and daughters flashed unbidden into her head.

I’d attack, and they’d mow me down like hay, she thought to herself, but all that will accomplish is to take my kids away from their mother. Sighing, she looked up and nodded.

“Very well, Your Grace,” she said at last, kneeling and putting her hands on her head. “I surrender.


---------------------------------

Katara stood in the center of the secured supply depot, watching as a force of Starfleet people from the Columbia herded the garrison survivors onto the Fearless, their hands cuffed and bound. Her core was a roil of emotion. They had saved fifty of their new allies, but at the cost of a hundred Fire Nation soldiers. She had killed Fire Nation soldiers before of course, during the course of battle, they all had, but never so many at one time. At least no one had to die here, she thought to herself. But that wasn’t what was going through her.

Zuko had saved her life. During their initial infiltration into the base, they had been set upon by an enemy squad, led by a firebender. She had been charged at by one of the enemy foot soldiers, armed with a broadsword, and as she’d turned to engage that threat, the bender had kicked her foot out from under her and had drawn his fist back, intending to sear her to a crisp. An unexpected blast of fire from behind her and came roaring at her attacker, and the surprised noncom was fought off by Zuko as Private Kassab’s blast took the nonbender in the chest and sent him to the ground. She had shrugged off what happened in the chaos of the battle, but now that the battle was over, she couldn’t ignore it anymore. Zuko, the banished Fire Prince, the man who had hunted them throughout the world intent on killing them and capturing the Avatar, the man she’d treated like less than the ground she’d walked on since he showed up among them, had saved her life at great risk to his own.

She felt filthy and it wasn’t just the sweat and dirt from the day’s fighting. Unable to keep standing there, she sighed, squared her shoulders, and walked through the supply depot, looking for Zuko. After a few moment’s wandering, she finally found him outside the base sitting on a log, looking back towards the forest.

“Zuko?” She said. The man she’d been treated like crap the past few weeks turned to face her, a curious look in his eyes.

“I just wanted to say thank you for saving my life back there,” she said. Encouraged by the surprised look in his eyes, “and I wanted to apologize for how I’ve treated you since you’ve arrived.” She shook her head. “I mean, I’ve been so stupid. You help reunite me with my father, you save my brother’s life, and I still treat you like something I’ve scraped off the bottom of my shoe.”

Zuko sighed. “It’s okay, Katara. I can’t expect a few actions to erase what I’ve done.”

“You’ve proven yourself,” Katara said, “silly, stupid me was to blinded by my hate to see that, and for that I’m sorry. If there’s anything I can do for you, please don’t hesitate to ask.” Zuko nodded.

“Thank you.”

Katara had turned to leave when Zuko’s voice came back. “Katara?”

Turning around, she said, “Yes, Zuko?”

Zuko opened his mouth as if to say something, then thought better of it and closed her mouth shut. “It’s nothing.”
------------




Zuko sat at his desk on the Fire Nation airship, relieved that his belly was now full of food after a week of half-rations and going to bed hungry. He thought back to the exchange between him and Katara earlier. He’d considered telling her what he’d deduced about Toph, but decided against it. Ever since Toph had left that day, he’d felt awkward passing her in the corridors or eating next to her in the mess: the memory of that blush coming to mind every time they were in the same space together. It hadn’t taken him long to figure out what the source of that blush had been. Toph had a crush on him, it was that simple, and he couldn’t decide how to handle it. On the one hand, he knew he was in love with Mai. On the other, he had broken up with her, for her own good, meaning he was technically single and free to pursue whatever relationships he wished. Toph really was quite pretty and they were really good friends, but however much he considered her attractive, however much he liked her, he didn’t love her. Mai still had his heart, while he considered both of them pretty in their own ways. The other sticky thorn of the situation was that, until now, she was the only other young woman that was available for any form of relationship, and when they returned to Aang, she still would be. Also, since their long-term survival was still very much in doubt, along with his chances of ever rescuing Mai, he wasn’t sure he wanted to spend what could very well be his last days alone.

And, he was beginning to suspect, neither did Toph.

He was interrupted by a rap on his door. Eager to focus on something else, he turned around and said, “Come.” The door opened to reveal Toph Bei Fong walking into the room, carrying a sleeping bag.

“Toph,” Zuko said, more concerned at the moment with the fact that she was carrying a sleeping bag then his more primal needs. “What are you doing here, and why are you carrying that?”

“Captain Kelby booted me from my room,” she said, sitting in one of his easy chairs. “This is one of the smaller Fire Nation military airships so we need to double up now. Sokka and Suki already share a room, Katara’s been moved in with Teo, and now I get to stay with you. He said you wouldn’t mind, as a matter of fact he told me to tell you that he’s ordering you not to mind.”

You’re a cruel man, Captain, he thought to himself. He sighed. “I’m technically his acting executive officer,” he said angrily, referring to the fact that the chain of command had reorganized itself around the three people that had served as officers at one point in their lives. “He could at least have done me the courtesy of informing me that he was assigning me a roommate.” Zuko had been granted the provisional rank of Lieutenant Commander by Iroh when he’d first been exiled by his father four years ago, and since the naval officer hierarchy on his world was identical to Starfleet’s, that made him Kelby’s immediate junior and obligated to serve in the First Officer position. Suki was technically ineligible, as she wasn’t a naval officer, but they didn’t have an officer superior to her in the Starfleet stragglers to replace her with. Shaking his head, he waved in the general direction of the floor“Just roll it out wherever.”

Toph nodded and rolled her sleeping bag out to the left of his bed. Zuko shook his head. Gods, this is going to be a long trip.


-----------------------------



Captain Jonathan Archer sat in the Captain’s mess of the starship Enterprise, staring out the window, watching the stars and ionized gasses streak past as they cruised at many dozens of times the speed of light towards their destination, taking an occasional sip from his drink cup. He was lost in thought. At any moment the shift comm. officer was going to inform him that they were entering the Psi Cancri system. The sight of not only the mystery of what happened to their sister, but the mystery as to what a human colony was doing so far from the rest of human space, and so close to the Klingon Empire.

“Captain, are you feeling all right?”He looked to see both Commander Tucker and Commander T’Pol, who’d taken to wearing a regulation Starfleet uniform since the refit, giving him a concerned look.

“It’s nothing, Trip,” Archer said, putting his cup down, and leaning back into his chair.

“Are you sure, pinkskin?” Shran said curiously. “You’re normally more talkative. Not that I’m complaining.”

He sighed. “To be honest I’m not sure what I’m feeling, Shran. On the one hand, we’re getting back to the mission we were supposed to be on five years ago, exploring. It’s just what we’re exploring. Why did an alien race take so many of my people on that world, and how did they get there? What happened to the Columbia?”

“It is a puzzle,” Shran said, nodding. “But whatever the reasons, there are answers out there and we’ll find them.”

“I-,” Archer began, only to be interrupted by the sound of the intercom ringing. Getting up he walked up to the wall and pressed the button.

“Go ahead,” Archer said.

“Attention,” the male voice of the beta shift comm. officer said. “We’re entering the Psi Cancri system, all alpha-shift personnel report to their stations. Captain Archer to the bridge.”

Five minutes later, Archer left the turbolift and sat down in his command chair, watching as his senior staff assumed their stations. Looking over, he watched as Shran sat down at the auxiliary engineering console on the bridge.

“We’re within visual range of the planet now, sir,” Lieutenant Mayweather said.

“Onscreen,” Archer said, nodding. The scene on the viewer switched from empty blackness to reveal the first planet in the Psi Cancri system. The blue ball was clearly M-class, with one large continent and a huge island chain off its western side.

“The planet matches the data transmitted by Columbia,” she heard Commander T’Pol remark.

“Can you find any sign of her?”

He watched as T’Pol looked into her viewer. After a moment, she looked up and said, “I’m reading duranium alloy fragments in upper orbit, their composition matches that used in Starfleet hulls.”

“Malcolm?” Archer said, mentally cursing. “Can you get a weapons signature?”

“Standby,” Lieutenant Commander Malcolm Reed said, manipulating his board. After a moment, the English officer sighed and gave a slight shake of his head. “There’s a weapon’s signature in the wreckage. It’s Romulan.”

Archer gave an angry sigh. That’s one question down, he thought to himself. He’d had a nagging fear that the Romulans had been behind Columbia’s destruction, considering how close this world was to the generally accepted frontier of the Romulan Empire.

“Standard orbit, Travis,” Archer ordered.

 

[Graywand2]

Chapter Seven​

“The planet,” Commander T’Pol said to the assembled senior staff in the situation area at the rear of the Enterprise bridge, pointing out the relevant data on the situation table as she spoke, “is virtually identical in every respect to Earth. It’s orbital distance from the Sun is 1 AU from the primary, it’s orbital period is roughly three hundred and sixty-five days long, it’s day 23.9 hours long, and it has an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere with virtually the same chemical breakdown of the atmosphere. Like Earth it has a surface temperature of 23 degrees centigrade and a surface gravity of 1 G. There is however, an important difference from most M-class planets, including Earth.”

“Like what?” Archer asked, still amazed at the level of similarity between this planet and humanity’s homeworld.

“It’s axial tilt is negligible,” T’Pol said. “Neither hemisphere tilts away from the sun in the course of a year.”

“But that would mean that the planet doesn’t experience a normal seasonal progression,” Reed said. “Any climate variations would be based strictly on latitude.”

“What about the surface geography?” Archer asked, still amazed by the similarities between the human homeworld and this one, despite the significant lack of a normal axial tilt.

“We can conclude that the planet is relatively young geologically,” T’Pol responded. “The main continent, which contains the bulk of the population, is currently in the process of splitting into three smaller continents. There is evidence of frequent volcanic activity on the surface in relation to that process. The volcanic eruptions are of varying severity with evidence of at least a dozen separate Plinian eruptions in the last century. The earliest being in the island chain about a hundred years ago and the latest occurring in approximately mid-April of this year. In addition there are several Hawaiian eruptions going on simultaneously at the moment. In other areas of both the main continent and the island chain earthquakes of at least 5 on the Richter scale appear to be frequent.”

“This sounds like a fun place to live,” a deadpan Trip commented.

“In addition,” T’Pol began, only to be interrupted by a beeping from the science console of the bridge behind her.

“Captain Archer, sir,” T’Pol’s relief said, shock on her voice. “I’m reading active Starfleet transponder signals on the planet.”

“Where?” Archer asked, as his legs propelled him back into the bridge. As he sat down in his command chair, he watched as T’Pol resumed her station and activated her viewer.

“I’m detecting them in the central portion of the continent,” T’Pol began. “Clustered around what appears to be a fortress and a set of ruins that appear to have once been a city approximately five kilometers away.”

“Hoshi,” Archer ordered. “Hail those coordinates, all Earth frequencies.”

“Channel open, sir,” Hoshi responded, running her hands over her board.

“This is Captain Jonathan Archer of the United Earth starship Enterprise to any Starfleet personnel on the planet’s surface. Please respond.” Archer waited, every second feeling like a minute as he waited for a response, hoping and praying that the person who would respond was Erika Hernandez.

“This is Acting Captain Asha Naidu,” a female voice with a distinct Indian accent responded, “Acting commanding officer Starfleet vessel Columbia. You don’t know how glad we are to have you here, sir.”

“Captain,” Archer began. “Where’s Captain Hernandez?”

The woman on the other end of the line gave a distressed sigh. “We don’t know, sir. We know she made it off the ship, but she must’ve made landfall somewhere else on the surface. We haven’t seen her in a couple weeks.”

Archer sighed, resisting the urge to slam his fist into his command chair, “understood, Captain. What is the status of your men?”

“That’s going to be a little more difficult to explain over the comm, sir,” Naidu responded, a note of apprehension suddenly appearing on her voice. “Perhaps you should come down here and I can deliver my report in person? It would be much easier if I could actually show you what’s been going on since the ship was lost.”

“Acknowledged, Captain,” Archer said, rising from his chair and motioning for T’Pol, Hoshi, Malcolm, Travis, and Shran to join him as he headed towards the turbolift. “We’re on our way, Archer out.”

---------------------------

 

[Graywand2]

“Now,” Katara heard Private Kassab say in the Fearless's small, empty mess hall as she showed her the padd with the English sentence. “You’re doing amazingly well at this, perhaps it’s because your spoken language is identical; that and the fact that and the fact that it takes practically no time for an adult to learn how to read as opposed to a small child, particularly one who knows how to read and write in another language and, amazingly enough, grew up speaking this one. ”

“She sells seashells by the sea shore,” Katara read fluidly for the third time. “Gods this sounds so stupid.”

“It’s a tongue twister,” Private Kassab repeated, “it’s supposed to sound stupid. Hell, it’s supposed to be said three time fast for as long as you can say it without it coming out a jumbled mess. It’s a game children play.” Katara looked at her annoyed, until she realized it was probably best for her to start small when it came to reading in their language. Though what the Private said was true, learning to read was actually easier for adults then it was for children.

“All right,” Sana said, taking the padd away from her and thumbed through it. “Since you’re fifteen and I’m seventeen, and we’re both women grown and you are blazing right along, let’s try something a little more complex, shall we?” She handed her the padd. “This is a poem, a personal favorite of mine by a personal favorite poet of mine by the name of William Butler Yeats. It’s called ‘An Irish Airman Foresees his Death.’” Katara took it and nodding, began to read.

I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public man, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.



“It’s beautiful,” Katara began, when she was finished reading it aloud. “What’s it about?”

Sana sighed. “It’s about a friend of Yeats by the name of Major Robert Gregory, a combat pilot who was killed during the First World War on Earth when he was mistakenly shot down by an Italian pilot. The point is that the airman, who Yeats wrote in first person, is convinced that this flight is his last and he thinks of why he’s here. Unlike most flyers, he’s not out there fighting the Germans out of patriotism, duty, to defend his family and such. He eventually concludes that his life up to that point was wasted, and he doesn’t believe that there will come anything to convince him that his life is going to get any better so he decides to enjoy flying.”

Reminds me of Toph, she thought to herself, suddenly, thinking of the aggressive young Earthbender. Everyone else in this group has lost something. Aang lost his friends and family. My brother and I lost my mom, even Zuko lost his mom and with it a strong moral center. Not Toph, who at least had a mother and father, regardless of how they treated her. Toph joined us because she felt stifled in the life she was being forced to live, neglected and not given the chance to mature and develop as a person. So she signed up with us, in the hopes of making something of her life.

“Well,” Katara began, keeping her feelings to herself. “Why do you like it?”

“Well,” Sana responded. “I suppose it’s because it’s the opposite of why I’m out here. Those I guard I do love, and I am here out of patriotism and a sense of duty. That and the fact that I’ve wanted to follow in my father’s footsteps ever since I was old enough to walk.”

“You’re father was a MACO?”

“Yes, he was,” she said, a smile on her face when she sat back. “Command Sergeant Major Faisal Kessab, 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team ‘Fenton’s Own’, Fifth Infantry Division.”

“He must be proud of you,” Katara responded.

“I suppose he was, Katara,” Sana responded shaking her head. “However, he wanted me to be an officer, though, and the way I finished secondary school, at fifteen and at the top of my class, would’ve written me a ticket to the MACO officer training command in West Point, New York.”

“Why didn’t you?”

Sana sighed. “There are many ways to become an officer in both services, Katara. Both services value achievement, drive and ability over fancy sheets of paper saying we completed some official government-approved training course. They maintain officer training facilities to teach the skills to those who don’t acquire it through life and other means, of course. Starfleet’s is in San Francisco, California, the Military Assault Command’s is in West Point, New York.” She shook her head. “But the reason I made such an effort and graduated early is that I hated every minute of sitting in school, I didn’t want to spend the next two years in any form of educational system similar to the one I’d just extricated myself from. So I struck out on my own and enlisted the day after I graduated high school.”

“And your father?”

“We had a huge argument the night before when I told him my plans. It’s not like he had a choice. I wasn’t a child anymore. Besides I was of military age, and I graduated high school, once all those things happened I could join either service of my own volition. He just really wanted me to become an officer. What about you? Why do you fight?”

“My brother and I are out here because someone needed to accompany the Avatar. He’d been recovered after a century frozen in the ice, he had no experience with the world the way is now as opposed to a century ago. That and I, personally, was tired of waiting around and doing nothing while my father was fighting the Fire Nation.”

“Now, I am sorry for that,” Kessab said, and the trace of anger on her voice. “If there was any justice in the world, we as MACOs would’ve done our duty and stopped Sozin before things could’ve gotten this far. You’re world is a human world, Katara, it comes under our protection, from all enemies foreign and domestic.”
-------------------------------------------------

Suki looked around her at the verdant green field, running in front of the clear blue pond, wondering just how precisely she got here from the Fearless. One second she was bedding down next to Sokka for the evening, and the next she was standing here. Her clothing felt odd and she looked down to see herself wearing a pair of matching dark blue pants and coat with a white undershirt. Why am I in a MACO Service Uniform? She thought to herself, shaking her head. She turned to look around at her new surroundings and saw a sight that caused her to breathe in hoarse shock. Looming in the distance was a huge mountain, ten times the size of Mount Melchior back home, even from this distance it seemed to stretch on forever into the sky. She abruptly realized this was the mountain she was supposed to climb, though at the moment why escaped her.

She was interrupted from her musings by the sound of a rock skipping across water coming from behind her. Surprised she looked to see an instantly familiar brown haired woman with grey eyes, throwing rocks and watching them skip across the water as if the concerns of war and duty were the farthest thing from her mind.

And Ty Lee was wearing the same uniform as she was.

“Gods, I didn’t realize how much I missed this,” Ty Lee said, and Suki realized that she was talking to her. “It’s the simple things in life you treasure.”

“Funny,” Suki said suspiciously, folding her arms. “I would’ve thought heroes of the Fire Nation would have all the time in the world to skip rocks down a lake.”

Ty Lee turned and fixed her an annoyed look, standing and walking toward her. “Heroes of the Fire Nation? She gave a contemptuous shake of her head.” I’m a prisoner of those people, sir.”

Then Suki remembered the vision of her from the other day, when the double of her had been in Fire Nation prison garb. “Why?”

Ty Lee smirked derisively, and shook her head. “That bitch of a Crown Princess and I had a falling out.” Suki was stunned by the depth of vehemence and hatred in the other woman’s voice.

“What sort of falling out?”

“I tried to kill her.” At the stunned look in her eyes, Ty Lee elaborated. “It was just after you, Zuko, and Sokka made good their escape. Azula was about to kill Mai, and I couldn’t let that woman, who’d already destroyed so many lives, controlled me through fear and went out of her way to ensure that everything I ever did to forge my own place in this world would come to naught, I couldn’t let her claim another victim. So I attacked her. It should’ve killed her, but my aim must’ve been off. She went down, but the guards caught us before we could escape, so we’re in the Rock.”

“You’re in the Rock?”

“Along with two hundred Kyoshi Warriors,” Ty Lee said, causing a jolt of shock to fill her. “They were transferred there because they kept trying to break out of the Capitol Prison. After I saved the life of one of her men, Captain Shiga offered me a position. Specifically, she made me a First Lieutenant and placed me in charge of teaching her men chi blocking. It’s going quite well; actually, the group I’m initially teaching is among the best pupils I’ve ever trained. Plus, I my original career choice was to be an officer anyway, and it feels good to actually be one finally.”

“Have you noticed what you’re wearing?”

“What are you talking about I’m wearing my prison-,” then she looked down at herself. “Odd, I’m wearing the same uniform as you, though I’ve never seen it’s like before in my life. How about that?”

“I can explain,” Suki began, and she did.

“So, what does this mean?” Ty Lee said when she finished explaining. “We’re both fated to join up with the star people? No offense, but up until now, I didn’t believe they existed.”

“They exist,” Suki said. “Trust me, they exist.”

“Fine,” Ty Lee responded. “But just what are we doing here?”

“You’re here,” a mysterious voice said from all around them, “because this is the land where humanity was born, it is in this land where humanity’s fate will be decided along with the destiny of the galaxy, and where the doom of you two will be decided.”

------------------------------------

Captain Jonathan Archer sat down in the Enterprise’s briefing room, looking at the beautiful world that they orbited, forever falling but never touching the ground. He sighed, thinking about Naidu’s report. The world below them, a human world, had been at war with itself for a century. Aside from the fact that this world had apparently been settled for far longer than even the Skagaran colony in the former Expanse, and had developed a thriving culture similar in many respects to cultures on Earth.

And is also destroying itself, he thought to himself as he remembered Naidu’s report on what she’d learned about the conflict since she’d landed, shaking his head. All of T’Pol’s rhetoric about leaving the decision to get involved in the affairs of other worlds to government’s, not starship captains, had flown out the window the moment he saw the sensor data weeks ago. The inhabitants were all human, and all humans were legally citizens of Earth. For all intents and purposes this was an Earth colony, and the law demanded that Starfleet, that he, take whatever means necessary to safeguard the lives of Earth citizens. Naidu had taken the initiative in response to a Fire Nation, the aggressors in this conflict, attack on her positions in Gaoling, seizing what had amounted to be a major Fire Nation base in that sector the day before before he had shown up, and stopping a force pillaging a nearby town an hour before. It was a sector that he knew they were going to want back, and she wanted to go on the offensive again and ambush Fire Nation recon patrols, maybe drive them out of one of the nearby towns in an effort to secure her position, but he had countermanded the order until he learned more about the current situation. She was to stay on the defensive, to respond to attacks into her command area and not to launch attacks outside of it without his express permission.

He was interrupted in his musings by the intercom suddenly sounding on the other side of the room. “Phlox to Captain Archer.”

Sighing, he got up and pressed the button on the intercom on the other side of the room. “Go ahead, Doc.”

“I’ve discovered some information about the humans here, Captain,” Archer said. “You might want to come to Sickbay.”

“I’m on my way,” he responded, “Archer out.”

Archer stepped into the wide, spacious Sickbay. Before the refit, it had been the mess hall. After the refit, it had been converted into a sickbay large enough to meet the needs of the expanded crew, with the old sickbay now serving as an operating room. He looked around him. Occupying all of the beds was a score of human civilians from the planet below, from the village Naidu’s forces hadn’t been able to save in time. His heart hurt, half of them were under the age of fifteen, indeed the oldest, a sedated girl with a huge anti-burn dressing covering the left half of her face, was no older than eleven.

Forcing himself to ignore the deliberately massacred civilians, he walked over and put his hand on Phlox’s shoulder. The Denobulan doctor turned and looked in surprise, then nodded.

“Ah, Captain,” he said. “Before we begin are you familiar with the history of human migrations on your world?”

“Feel free to refresh my memory, Doc,” Captain Archer responded.

“As you know, every species of the genus Homo evolved in Africa over the past several million years. The first of them, Homo erectus first left Africa for Europe about 1.8 million years ago, a migration caused probably by the development of language. That species was followed by Homo antecessor about 800,000 years ago, and then Homo heidelbergensis 600,000 years ago, the latter probably evolved into Homo neanderthalensis. Archaic homo sapiens evolved about 500,000 years ago from Homo erectus. They were distinguished from anatomically modern humans, every human in this room including the ones lying on the biobedsby having a thick skull, prominent brow ridges, and the lack of a prominent chin. Anatomically modern humans, the ancestors of you and everyone else in this room including my patients, evolved in East Africa from archaic Homo Sapiens about 200,000 years ago and eventually displaced and marginalized the “Archaic” types into extinction about 70,000 years ago. Around 100,000 to 80,000 years ago, one group settled Southern Africa and are what are now called the Khoisan or bush peoples. At the same time, another group settled in Central and West Africa and are now called the pygmy peoples. The rest stayed put in East Africa for 40,000 years, until a small group of them, probably trying to escape adverse living conditions crossed the Red Sea to the Arabian Peninsula and began the eventual process of driving the other hominid species to extinction and making humankind the dominant species on Earth. Indeed, the genetic diversity of the entire race, which isn’t much compared to other Terran species, can be found among the indigenous peoples of East Africa”

Archer opened his mouth to ask his ship’s physician to get to his point. “According to every analysis, the ancestors of these humans were taken directly from the group that never left East Africa thousands of years before that small group did.”

 

[Graywand2]

"He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it."
-Herman Melville, Moby Dick

​

Chapter Eight​

Mai paced the floor of the cell she shared with Ty Lee, shaking her head with worry. It had been hours since the guards had dragged her off. Judging from the view out her cell, she saw that the other Kyoshi officers had been dragged away to. She felt her dismay and anger increase with every hour they were gone. It’s that monster that bitch Azula replaced with my uncle with, she thought angrily. She seems determined to make life for us a living hell. Warden Madora seemed to think her uncle’s tenure had been too lax and was determined to, as she’d termed it over in her address to the prisoner’s, “remove the conditions conducive to dissent and lack of discipline.” It didn’t take long for it to be obvious she meant torture innocent people, something not even her uncle had done.

Gods, those horrible screams, she remembered about last night, as she thought back to Zuko’s letter, how he talked about standing against the barbarities the Fire Nation government committed against the world. For the first time, it had been driven home what he’d been talking about.. For the first time, she felt acutely the shame she knew Ty Lee had grappled with ever since her faceoff with Azula on the loading dock had ripped the blindfold from her eyes. The absolute self-disgust that she’d facilitated the spread of such barbarities in the name of civilization. This is not civilization, she thought, this is its antithesis, and I’ll do anything to stop this madness. Gods, I’m so sorry, Zuko.

She heard the sound of a body being dragged between two guards out in the corridor, and not for the first time she’d wished she’d had her knives to give anyone who would participate in this and try to cover up their culpability in it under the guise of “following orders” a knife to the throat. She heard the locks on her cell unlock and they threw Ty Lee in and closed the door.

She could see right away that she hadn’t had a pleasant time with the new Warden. The bruise on her face said she’d been roughed up, and the fact that the first thing she’d done upon being thrown into the cell was curl up into a fetal ball suggested she’d either been raped or thrown in the coolers. She hoped to all the spirits and gods that it was the latter. She reached out and touched her, and felt mixed anger and relief that she was chilled to the bone. What disturbed her was the blank and haunted look in her eyes.

“Ty Lee?” She asked. “It’s me, Mai. You’re safe now.”

She turned to her, her eyes betraying no hint that she’d recognized her, then she saw a tear slide down her face and abruptly she screamed at the top of her lungs and slammed her fist into the floor. “Those animals!” She shouted, a manic, vicious tone on her voice as she continued to attack the floor, and Mai took a shocked breath as she realized that the strongest woman Mai had ever known was breaking down in front of her. “I’ll kill them all if it’s the last thing I do?! And Azula! I won’t rest until I’ve strangled her with my bare hands!” After roaring again she finally stopped and collapsed into a sobbing ball.

“What-what did they do?” She was afraid to hear the answer.

“They murdered them right in front of me!” She said through her tears. “Captain Shiga and First Lieutenant Kelula! I tried to stop them, and as I tried they announced that half the company had been killed ‘resisting arrest!’ Bullshit! They murdered them to! They took the rest of us officers and threw us in the freezers!” Unable to say anything more she broke down into more sobbing.

“Ty,” she said, grabbing onto her and pulling her still sobbing, still fetal friend into her lap. “I’m so sorry. And yes, I agree, they need to be stopped.”

“I wasn’t strong enough! I wasn’t good enough!” She said sobbing. “They were my commanding officers and my men. They were my friends, and I failed them all!”

“There’s nothing you could’ve done to save them,” Mai said.

Ty said nothing, just continued to sob into her arms, a damp feeling spreading throughout her shoulders. After a moment she said, “You’re the commanding officer now. They’ll look to you for leadership.”

Ty Lee finally stopped sobbing and looked up at her, her eyes glistening. “I’m a failure as an officer. I was entrusted with their safety and I failed them. Half of them are dead. Why should any soldier ever follow me again?”

“Because you’re the ranking officer,” Mai said. “They’ve been trained to look to you for answers, whether you want them to or not. Are you going to let the rest of them down?”

“I can’t face them now,” Ty responded. “I can’t stop crying.”

“Don’t even try,” she said. “Don’t even try. You’re the strongest woman I’ve ever known. You know that?” When Ty Lee looked up at her, tears still streaming down her face, she said, “You are. You were strong enough to maintain the facade of an idiot as a shield against Azula when she made you realize that she would rather kill you then suffer a rival in intelligence and ability for years. That shield kept me safe as much as it kept you safe, for she couldn’t conceive of either one of us being as smart as her. Finally, you were strong enough to let it go and strike when you realized it was no longer going to work. Another woman would’ve been too frightened to strike that day, and would’ve watched me die. Another woman would have struck anyway and would have been paralyzed with fear, and stood there long enough for Azula to kill her.”

“There’s so much evil in the world,” Ty Lee whispered. “And I stood by and let it happen, blinded myself to its existence, facilitated it, all to protect my own craven skin. Where’s the strength in that? If I were truly strong I would’ve killed Azula at any of the number of opportunities that have presented themselves over the years and none of this would’ve happened.”

“Even if you’d succeeded what would that have accomplished?” Mai said. “We’d be fugitives or dead, Zuko would still be hunting the Avatar, and Ozai would be free to continue this. No, Ty. For better or worse, you were meant to strike when you did. You were meant to endure this hell. It’s your destiny to face the Rock, and you will defeat it.”


First Lieutenant Ty Lee walked unsteadily through the corridor heading into the courtyard, her legs still stiff and unsteady under her, cramping every few moments. Mai walked by her side, and whenever she stopped to steady herself, she always reached over and made to grab her shoulder. Ty always waved her off. She was an officer in the Kyoshi Warriors. More than that she was their commanding officer, and she needed to be seen walking on her own. She couldn’t risk damaging the morale of the remaining officers and men any further than it already was.

There are only one hundred of us left here, she thought to herself, shaking her head in dismay at the military situation. We’re outnumbered four to one by our captors now, by an order of magnitude if you count the hardened criminals. But there was no choice. She had to strike back. Anything less would be signing the death warrants of every man in her command. There had to be a way to negate the odds they would be facing but how she didn’t see it, and she hadn’t seen it in the three days since her commanding officers had been murdered in front of her. One-third of the other inmates were there because they were dissidents, another third were hardened criminals who would kill her as soon as look at her, and the remaining third would do the same thing, only they’d rape her first. The other concern was that, if she neutralized the guard force, her people wouldn’t be enough to stop the rapists and pirates from going to town on the political prisoners and smugglers and other nonviolent offenders.

It was a desperate situation, but if she’d learned one thing about her people is that they love desperate situations.

She and Mai walked out into the courtyard and the first person Ty Lee saw, giving her a relieved smile, was Second Lieutenant Michiko Kurosawa. The other woman, older than her by about a year, with brown eyes and jet black hair, rushed over and enveloped her in a very unmilitary bear hug. She was also the officer who’d warmed up to her, probably because she saved the life of one of her platoons men, faster than the others had, and had been there in the dark cold freezer, huddled around each other in a ball to slow the effects of the cold as long as possible. So she hugged her friend back fiercely. After a long moment, the two women detached from each other and together they walked through the crowd to the corner where the remaining Kyoshi Warriors. Immediately they made to stand up.

“As you were,” she said, and they sat back down. The last thing they needed was to draw more attention to themselves. Turning to her executive officer she asked. “Anything new to report?”

“No, sir,” Michiko said. “No incidents between us and the guards, but several of them have been having liaisons with some of the political prisoners.”

“Uh, I seem to recall that you’ve slept with one person during your time here,” Ty Lee said pointedly. “What’s your point?”

“That was when we had twice the people we have now,” Michiko said, a red blush appearing on her face. “What if they get diseased? What if they get pregnant? We can’t afford to start cancelling out the people we have left, or to have them bear children in a place like this. The last thing any civilized human would want is to have the Boiling Rock gain a self-sustaining population.”

“Yes, we’re in the Boiling Rock,” Ty Lee responded. “One, I know for a fact that they spike the food with moonleaf. Two, other than constant training there is no other diversion in this urine soaked hellhole? You’re right that we’ve lost the manpower, but I’m not about to take away the one thing that may be keeping the morale of who we got left from sinking any further, especially when we don’t have a workable plan.” That and I’m not going to ask them to give up something I’m not sure I want to give up myself.

“You’re the boss,” Michiko responded, shaking her head sullenly.

“Yes, Lieutenant,” Ty said. “I am.” Turning to face her men she said, “all right, guys go about your business, and for the love the gods don’t draw any attention to yourselves all right? There aren’t a lot of us left.”

She sighed. “Michi, have the officers meet me in my cell in three hours. We’re going to figure a way out of here if it kills us.”

“Where are you going?” She heard her exec ask.

“Somewhere where I can think,” she said, and it wasn’t entirely a lie.


Five minutes later, Ty Lee slid into the back storeroom, confident that the guards hadn’t seen her. She felt the typical tingling thrill she got whenever she set about on one of these little trysts. It was that feeling that she got running down her spine that was why she refused to hold back the remaining Kyoshi Warriors from doing it. She didn’t feel right telling her subordinates not to do something she didn’t want to stop doing. It wasn’t right. She heard a sound from behind her and she turned to view, sure enough Kozin. The dark haired, handsome twenty-one year old smiled, even before Ty Lee crossed the space between them and kissed him, hard. In that passionate moment, as they relocked lips again and again and their tongues battled for dominance in this oldest and most instinctual of games they played. After a long moment she broke the kiss, and ignoring her lips’ cries of protest she said, “Has Medora caught on to you?” Her lover was one of the many people who oversaw, in a matter of speaking, the thriving black market in contraband items that existed in any prison. He was in a unique position because he, serving out a life sentence for agitating for independence in his home colony, had been put to work in supply.

“No, thank the gods,” he said, leaning in and kissing her again. “Not that I cared. You’ve been the single thought on my mind since Medora’s creatures took you away.”

“Thanks.” Ty Lee began. “How’s work?”

He knew perfectly well that she was referring to his clandestine trade activities not his thankless, payless job of keeping track of supplies for the Rock’s rulers.

“I’m good,” Kozin said, smiling. “I got some interesting stuff off the supply ship that put to port here last week. I have more medical supplies ready for what’s left of your people, some rice wine, and oddly enough, an ass load of spicenut powder. Now who would have a barrel of spicenut powder?”

“Spicenut powder?” Ground spicenut was used in cooking, though in rather small quantities as it had a tendency to poison people. Not fatally, but enough to make them sick for a few days. Make them sick, she thought, the wheels spinning in her brain. “Make them sick.”

“What?”

She turned him around and kissed him, hard. “Did I ever tell you that you’re a genius?”


---------------------------

Two hours later, a freshly befuddled Ty Lee snuck out of Kozin’s cell and set a course for hers, careful not to daydream about what had transpired earlier. Not that she would’ve minded, given a choice she would’ve returned and continued her tryst with Kozin unabated, but she had to tell her officers of what she’d discovered so they could think of some sort of a plan to use the spicenut. It was an insane plan, but they were out of options.

She opened her door to see, sitting on her bed, a knowing smile on her face, Michiko. “So,” she said, throwing the parchment ball she habitually played with up and down. “I knew there was a reason you were loath to clamp down on our people fraternizing.”

“Did I make a stink of your affair?” Ty Lee asked, folding her arms and sitting across from her.

“That only happened once, not what you’ve been doing,” Michiko responded. She shook her head. “Look, Ty, the only reason I'm here is because I thought you would’ve at least told me Kozin was secretly your boyfriend?”

“I wouldn’t describe him as my boyfriend, exactly,” Ty Lee responded, feeling a flush appear on her cheeks.

“I overheard that little exchange between the two of you in the storage room,” Michiko said. “If that’s not a boyfriend, I don’t know what is.”

“Okay, fine,” she said, “he’s my boyfriend. And if I had a choice, I’d marry him in a heartbeat. I’m fifteen, Michi, and you’re sixteen. Now’s about the time we’d be getting married anyway.”

“Are you sure?” Michi asked. “Wouldn’t he be your first serious relationship? Between the times most women get their courses at around eleven or twelve to now, they’ve had at least one or two other relationships.”

“The nature of my life prevented that,” Ty Lee responded, shaking her head. “I was thirteen when I ran away from home join the Circus. We never stopped in one colony for more than a week, two at the most. I was limited to liaisons with men I knew I’d probably never see again. I’m tired of it, Michiko, I want it to end. And, you know, I love him. I really do. He’s the first man who’s ever come to see me as more than a roll in the hay for an evening. Granted, it probably because this is the first time I’ve been in one place long enough for that, but still. I’m not letting him go.”

Michiko looked at her for a long time. “I see,” Michiko said. “Few women are as lucky as you, Ty.”

“It’s okay,” she said. “That’s beside the point anyway.” She leaned in conspiratorially. “Kozin’s provided us with a way out of this shithole. It’s a tad unusual, but we’re out of options.”

“Like what?” Michiko asked.

“How familiar are you with the toxicity of spicenut?”

 

[Gojirob]

You've crafted a very believable 'smart' Ty Lee.

 

[Graywand2]

Interlude: End of Part One​

​

Captain Jonathan Archer walked among the ruins of Taku, staring around him at the ramshackle collection of Starfleet and MACO issue tents spread out among the ancient stone ruins in the early morning light of Psi Cancri rising in the east. A human city, Archer thought, misplaced anger and a desire to see justice done flooding him. In the Twenty-second century. We shouldn’t be getting involved in the affairs of alien worlds, but this isn’t an alien world. This is one of our worlds, and we’re getting involved. “Have you discovered something new about the situation from those villagers you rescued?” He asked his traveling companion, Acting Captain Asha Naidu of the starship Columbia. Or what was left of her.

“Quite a bit actually, sir,” Asha said. “The leader of the village was quite forthcoming with information after my forces breached the building those Fire Nation thugs was holding him in. There’s talk of this Avatar, who’s seeking an end to the war and a restoration of status quo ante bellum. They say he has the ability to exercise partial control of air, water, fire, and soil and rocks, a state they say is unique only to him.”

“Interesting,” Archer, whose time in Starfleet has opened up his mind to the possibility of pretty much anything, responded thoughtfully. If there can be a cold war fought across time, he thought, then everything I’m seeing about these people’s powers is certainly possible. “Does he know where we can find him?”

Naidu shook her head. “Sorry, sir, he disappeared after a coalition force he put together to seize the Fire Nation capital was defeated with heavy losses.”

He was interrupted before he could respond by the communicator in his breast pocket.

“Yes, Enterprise?” He responded.

“Captain,” the emotionless voice of his Vulcan executive officer said. “We’re reading what appears to be an airship matching the profiles of the airships employed by the local aggressor faction closing on your position.”

Archer cursed mentally to himself. “What’s it ETA?”

“Thirty minutes,” T’Pol responded. “But Captain, I’m reading active Starfleet communicators on the ship.”

Archer and Naidu shared a shocked look before Archer said. “So either they have United Earth prisoners onboard,” he said, a sudden groundswell of hope that Captain Hernandez had managed to organize her own return to her crew seizing him, “or it’s been seized by United Earth personnel.”

“Captain,” the Vulcan woman said, “based on the fact that it’s on it’s own, with no accompanying air or ground forces, it’s logical to assume that the latter is the case.”

Archer nodded. “Maybe so, but it’s dangerous to make that assumption. Beam me back to the ship.”

“Then, take us into the atmosphere and set a course to rendezvous with that airship.”





Zuko stood in the middle of the Fearless’ bridge, watching as the sky slowly started to turn purple from the light of the rising sun. He took a cautious taste from the tea in his hand before turning his attention to the Starfleet personnel working the controls lining the walls around him. He looked around approvingly as they went about their tasks. It was a testament to their training that they were able to obtain a working proficiency on unfamiliar controls so quickly.

Plus, it is good to command a crew again, Zuko thought to himself, as he stared around him with pride. He looked over at the only other non-Starfleeter on the bridge. Katara still managed the helm, primarily because she’d impressed Captain Kelby over the last several days, but also because this was technically their ship, not Starfleet’s.

She really is a natural pilot, he thought to himself, he brought his cup to his lips again when suddenly the deck plating heaved under him. Before he could catch himself he crashed to the floor on his side, the cup of tea shattering as it hit the deck. He watched as the Starfleet personnel picked themselves off the ground.

“Report,” he ordered when he got to his feet.

“If I had to guess, sir,” Petty Officer Corner said from behind her, the blonde young woman’s voice said calmly from behind him. “I’d say that it was a sonic boom, a shockwave caused by something moving at very high speed entering the atmosphere.”

“From what I understand,” Zuko pointed out. “The only people in the area who have anything fast enough to generate a sonic boom is you- Starfleet.” He’d almost reflexively said “your people” even though it wasn’t appropriate. These were his people as much as anyone from the Fire Nation. His mind believed it, but it instincts still had trouble adjusting. More than that, there was a Starfleet presence nearby.

Zuko’s communicator beeped to life. Zuko took it out of his pocket and flipped it open. “Go for Zuko.”

“What the hell just happened?” His commander’s voice said, whatever traces of sleep on it all but gone.

“Petty Officer Corner thinks it was a sonic boom,” Zuko responded instantly.

“I’m on my way,” Kelby said immediately.

“Katara,” he began, “only to be interrupted once again, this time by an ominous rumbling like a roaring tiger lion.

“There’s something pulling alongside,” Zuko and Katara said instantly. The two young adults looked at each other with surprise before both of them bolted towards the door. Running up the short flight of stairs at the end of the short corridor, they ran into the mess hall, and looked out the window.

Zuko’s breath caught in his throat. Floating in the air, blotting out the sun, was a ship he couldn’t help but recognize from the images that Kelby had shown him of the Columbia. The saucer-shaped primary hull, bolted to the cylindrical secondary hull. But that ship was destroyed, Zuko thought. This must be her sister. The Enterprise.

 

[Gojirob]

Can't wait for the next part!