Star Trek: USS Fortitude - Season Three

[admiralelm11]

Star Trek: Fortitude
Season Three, Episode One - ‘Tempus Futile, Part Two’
By Jack D. Elmlinger


PROLOGUE


Last time on Star Trek: Fortitude…


While anticipating the return of Doctor Lynn Boswell to the USS Fortitude, NCC-76240, Captain Ewan Llewellyn prepares to deliver a speech at her impending birthday celebrations. His preparatory efforts are cut rudely short when Commander Valerie Archer, his trusted First Officer, and the object of his hidden affections, informs him that Doctor Boswell’s shuttlecraft is oddly missing from the rendezvous coordinates. In that instance, Captain Llewellyn immediately fears the worst.

Ordering a search pattern, the USS Fortitude soon encounters a strange alien warp trail intersecting Doctor Boswell’s route back from the Ragrindan medical conference that she had been attending on the behalf of the Federation. Following the trail, the Intrepid-class starship caught up and intercepted an ominous cube-shaped vessel belonging to Humanity’s greatest and most feared enemy: the Borg Collective. Instantly ordering a red alert, Captain Llewellyn rallied his crew around him as they realized that Doctor Boswell had probably been captured and assimilated by the Borg.

Sending an away team over to the Cube, the crew of Fortitude were shocked and appalled to find no trace of Doctor Boswell, save for her uniform and her combadge. An overeager Lieutenant Commander Sollik accidentally trips an alarm while digging through the Borg central computer and quickly the Borg detect the presence of the Intrepid-class starship. Beaming the away team back to the relative safety of the ship, Llewellyn was shocked to learn that the Borg’s goal is to assimilate Earth.

In their path, the Santrag system, Starbase 499… and the USS Fortitude…


… and now the conclusion.


ACT ONE

“Shields to maximum! Standby all weapons! Resistance is not futile!”

Captain Ewan Llewellyn felt his pulse racing, the blood coursing through his veins and throbbing in anticipation of an apocalyptic confrontation with the Borg Cube that was looming over the Intrepid-class USS Fortitude. His ship, his crew, his friends, and his loved ones, all in mortal danger. It wasn't for the first time that the Welshman considered himself to be too young to be in such a position of responsibility. No, he thought, shaking his head firmly, this wasn’t the time for doubt.

“Captain,” Jason Armstrong barked from Ops,” we’re being scanned!”

Suddenly, a blinding green energy beam penetrated the hull. It swept across the Bridge, forcing everyone that it touched to recoil in slight fear and obvious ocular distress as it probed their bodies. It happened on all decks with crew members backing away from the approach verdant menace. The scan took only a few seconds.

Lieutenant Commander Sollik ran from the Captain’s side, heading to the engineering console along the starboard bulkhead. “They’ve conducted a threat analysis, Captain,” he hissed through gritted teeth. “We don’t appear to be affected in any way.”

“That could change,” Llewellyn lamented. “Are the shields still up?”

“Affirmative,” Sollik replied.

“Untouched by the hand of the Devil,” Archer observed with curiosity. “What are they doing over there? Why not assimilate us like they did Lynn?”

The mention of Doctor Lynn Boswell hung in the air for a silent moment. While they had time to realize that their friendly chief medical officer was in grave danger aboard the Borg Cube, any flicker of hope that they may have once held for her safe return had been extinguished by the news that Valerie Archer’s away team had brought back.

A Starfleet uniform… Lynn’s uniform… and no sign of her. She would hardly need it as a drone.

Interrupting the sadness at her sudden departure, Ensign Armstrong had yet more worrying facts to impart from the Ops console. “They’re charging weapons!,” he cried out.

“Brace for impact!” Ewan shouted in response.

A single green discharge burst forth from the haphazard hull plating of the immense goliath blocking their path. It struck Fortitude’s shields, instantly causing them to overload and collapse in defeat.

Sollik’s shocked expression told everybody all that they needed to hear. “Shields are gone!,” he said anyway.

“Captain,” Lieutenant Vuro yelled from the helm,” I’ve lost helm control!”

“Sollik?,” Valerie asked the question with the tone of her voice alone.

“The Borg weapon caused a massive feedback pulse along our ODN relays and EPS conduits,” the Suliban growled in frustration, slamming his display with his scaled hands balled up into angry fists. “All systems are suffering an energy drain!”

“Anything to get us out of here,” Llewellyn asked in a panic,” would be greatly appreciated!”

“Diverting power to thrusters,” attempted the chief engineer.

It was hardly needed.

The image on the viewscreen has changed. The once-immovable Borg Cube was turning away from the crippled Fortitude and back towards its original course…

… back towards Earth, and back towards Starbase 499…

...back towards Santrag II, the defenseless civilization relying on the Federation…

Well, Ewan had to admit as he watched the Cube prepare to depart that if we have been defeated so easily, then Rear Admiral Blackmore over on 499 doesn’t stand a chance and neither do the Santragans. All eyes widened as the Cube leaped to warp with a howl.

“Why didn’t they assimilate us?,” whispered Valerie.

“What’s the point?,” Llewellyn responded with his own question. “Soon, they’ll have Earth. Why waste time on one lone starship? Besides, we’re not going anywhere.”

Round one was over.

The scores favored the Borg Collective.


* * * *


Captain’s Log, supplemental;


The persistence of the Borg in their mission to assimilate Humanity might have spared my ship and crew, but I fear for those who lay in their path. Obviously, the Borg made a tactical decision based on the scans that they took of Fortitude, realizing that we could put up a fight, but what about when they scan a defenseless target?

Sollik had informed me that Santrag II and Ivor Prime are their only obstacles before they reach Earth… both relatively defenseless locations. I am compelled, despite the danger, to complete repairs to the Fortitude and give chase to the Borg.


“How long, Sollik?”

“About an hour, give or take,” answered the Suliban, fixing the Captain with an intense stare that told him not to quibble with the estimate. “I’ve replaced all of the ODN relays that are vital to main systems, but the EPS couplings in Main Engineering are fusing beyond recognition. I don’t know whether to try and repair them or start from scratch and replicate new ones altogether.”

They were clustered around the Briefing Room table, not bothering with seats. There was no time to sit around and go through the formality of a staff meeting. Besides, Sollik’s uniform was covered with a layer of grease and dirt so it kept the upholstery clean.

Ewan inwardly stopped himself from laughing at that thought. It had become one of his worrying traits to take situations of such dire imposing danger or tragic loss and overlay comedic, almost sarcastic comments. He wasn’t the first man in history to do it and he wouldn’t be the last. At least, it helped him to cope. The pacifist forced to fight, to accept the violent loss, and to accept the cost of an enemy’s actions…

Readjusting his attention, he stared back at Sollik with understanding eyes. “Okay, but see if you can avoid using the replicators. It would be prudent to save as much of our power reserves as possible for the coming fight.”

“I still can’t believe that we’re going to knowingly engage a Borg Cube,” Jason said with a sigh.

“Neither can I, Ensign,” Llewellyn countered,” but it’s either that or stand by as Santrag II falls to the Borg. Rear Admiral Blackmore would do the same for us. He would fight with his last ounce of strength and it is our duty to protect the Federation’s presence in this corner of the Beta Quadrant in any way that we can.”

Arden Vuro nodded, agreeing entirely with the Captain’s decision. “We’re all on board,” the Bolian told the room, stating the obvious to reinforce morale. “It’s an incredible thing to do but it’s the only thing that we can do.”

“I’ve been reviewing as much information about the Borg that I possibly can,” Valerie Archer revealed, tapping away at the wall screen in the Briefing Room as she called up a schematic of a prism-shaped device. “Thanks to the records kept by the crew of the USS Enterprise-D, we’ve got a possible advantage to exploit. There are distribution nodes that are found aboard all Borg vessels. They regulate the collective consciousness and keep all of the drones in line.”

“Order to chaos…?,” Llewellyn ventured to ask.

“Yes, something like that,” the First Officer continued with her plan. “If we can punch a hole in a specific part of the Cube’s shields, several photon torpedoes should make short work of the hull plating near this relay…”

The wall screen changed accordingly and everybody took note of it.

“... and we’ll have a clear shot at the central distribution node for over thirty percent of the drones aboard. Like a wounded dog, they’ll kick back even harder as soon as we succeed so we’ll have to work fast. Even if we destroy one, maybe two, it might be enough to stop them dead in their tracks.”

“It sounds good,” Ewan confirmed with a sharp nod. “It’s better than no plan at all.”

“I’ll try to take that as a compliment,” she smiled in return.

Good old Valerie.

Surrounded by such support, Captain Llewellyn felt like he couldn’t lose.


ACT TWO

Federation Deep-Space Outpost Starbase 499

Orbiting Santrag II


Routine wasn’t really dull but it wasn’t really exciting either. It was just routine. Nothing more or less. Regardless of the action being undertaken, repeating something enough times became dull.

Even though he loved his job, this morning, Rear Admiral Edward Blackmore was drumming his fingers on his desk with annoyance. His office aboard the space station had never felt so quiet. It was too early for whiskey… The coffee from breakfast was just starting to wear off and lunch was too far away.

Scratching his grey beard in frustration, he realized that today was just going to be one of those days. A day where those in the top brass levels of Starfleet kicked back and enjoyed the privilege of agenda-setting.

Lifting his polished shoes from the spare chair that he had dragged over, his broad shoulders shifted to align with the desk’s straight edge. “Blackmore to Station Master Martinez,” his relaxed North American drawl called out after he tapped his combadge.

“Erica here, Boxer,” the Latina responded promptly.

“Poker, my office, in ten minutes… and don’t tell me that you’re busy! I know better!”

“I yield to your superiority in these matters. See you in ten.”

Another tap of his combadge and another call followed. “Blackmore to Doctor Pulaski.”

“This is Katherine Pulaski,” the relatively new addition to 499’s staff answered within seconds. “What can I do for you, Boxer?”

“Bring chips,” Boxer chucked, appreciating the difference between Erica’s hands-off reply and Pulaski’s no-nonsense approach. “The day’s a slow one, Kate. Poker, in my office in ten minutes. Just you, me, Erica, and the cards. There’s nowhere to hide!”

“You know that there’s a treatment available for masochism,” Pulaski teased him.

“Those are fightin’ words, Kate!”

“You know me all too well, Boxer. I’m on my way.”

It wasn’t long before the Rear Admiral had replicated three sparkling glasses of a pleasing Andorian ice juice that the trio had shared and enjoyed recently. He set them out accordingly on the circular table reserved for poker games. The cards were found in his desk, as per usual, and he was just about to shuffle them when something caught his eye.

Something that was out of place.

Turning to the beautiful starfield beyond his panoramic window, Edward Blackmore knew every place for every star out there. Today, on one of those days, a star wasn’t behaving itself.

It was growing…

No, wait, it wasn’t a star at all.

Whatever it was, it was blacker than the darkest recesses of the cosmos. It was blotting out stars with alarming frequency. Whatever it was, it was massive and almost the size of Starbase 499 itself.

When it got close enough for a visual scan, Boxer’s eyes never failed him. It was close enough for the personnel manning central command operations in the Station Master’s Office to panic and sound Red Alert.

Rightly so, Blackmore thought.

He had only seen them in the reports… never for real.

Poker would have to wait.


* * * *


The USS Steamrunner, NX-52126 had seen relatively little action for a destroyer-type starship. There had been a large battle with the End space fleet, one year ago, and since then, only a brief altercation with some disgruntled Santragan revolutionaries who couldn’t fight their way out of a wet Argelian bag. Captain Llewellyn had fought hard to renovate and reassign the Steamrunner to Starbase 499, but leaning back now in the command chair on her Bridge as the daily systems checks were being made around him, Lieutenant Commander Gabriel Brodie couldn't see the point.

Brodie was a tall, handsome and striking thirty-something-year-old African American who had been born for tactical operations. His pride in his skills was only exceeded by his overbearing ego and self-confidence when it came to his job and his love life. Ever the ladies’ man, he was currently contemplating his latest possible conquest, a lovely crew woman from the engineering corps aboard Steamrunner that he had asked out to dinner when the red alert klaxon sounded with its light flaring a deep crimson red.

In his arrogance and frustration, Brodie believed that some stupid young ensign must have accidentally slipped it. The Steamrunner was safely tucked away inside one of the cavernous docking ports of Starbase 499. Today, his command duties would involve chastising him or her before he wrote an incident report, told the poor quivering wreck to read the regulations again, and to take a day off. Sighing heavily as he lifted his athletic frame from the command chair, Brodie moved towards the tactical station to starboard on the small, cramped Bridge and got the attention of the officer on duty.

“What is it now?,” he grumbled.

“It wasn’t me, Captain,” she protested, using the rank merely as a formality when addressing the Lieutenant Commander. “The main computer received the red alert signal from Starbase 499. Sir, I’ve got the Station Master’s Officer on screen!”

“Put them through,” Brodie frowned, turning towards the main viewer.

“Gabe, this is Rear Admiral Blackmore,” the grizzled features of Edward Blackmore shouted across the Bridge of the starship. “Get your butts out into space! We’ve got a Borg Cube on a direct intercept course with weapons primed!”

“Oh my…”

Secretly, Gabriel Brodie welcomed the news.

Finally a proper battle with a worthy adversary. It was finally time to prove himself.

 

[admiralelm11]

ACT THREE

They were just too late.

Watching the viewscreen with crestfallen faces, Captain Llewellyn and his crew realized that they had been moments too slow in their repairs. Hoping to stop the Borg Cube short of any targets, they had failed.

Ahead of them was the geometric shape that represented all of the fear and the death that they all sought to stop. It rested beside the familiar site of Starbase 499 and darting around it, the USS Steamrunner was giving everything that she had to the fight… and being slapped about for her trouble.

“You know the plan, everyone,” Ewan called out, focusing on what they could do now, rather than what they had failed to do already. “If we get busy on our assigned targets, we could possibly send the Borg into a shutdown that we can take advantage of. We may be small but we know where to hit them!”

“Red Alert!,” Valerie Archer yelled, moving towards the helm. “Arden, take us in and head for the upper starboard quadrant of the Cube.”

“I’m on it, Commander,” the Bolian replied with a deft flurry of fingers across his console.

“Sensors show that Starbase 499 has sustained only minor damage,” Jason Armstrong called out from Ops with a hint of relief in his voice. “The Borg haven’t been here long and I don’t think they were counting on the Steamrunner. I’ve also got the Katherine Johnson on my scope, Captain. They’ve taken heavy damage and bowed out of the fight.”

“That was to be expected,” Valerie said, matter-of-factly.

“Science vessels can be repaired later,” Ewan agreed with her. “Redirect all sensors onto the Borg and scan for any changes in behavior or effects of our actions, Jason.”

“Gotcha,” the young Kentuckian replied with formality suspended for the moment.

Working furiously at the engineering console this entire time, Sollik finally finished his calculations and modifications to the phaser banks. Their frequency would now even alternate mid-strike, keeping the Borg adaptive systems on their tones more than had ever been achieved before. It was the benefit of working at Starfleet Command during the early stages of Borg tactical defense development…

With a grin, he turned back to the main action aboard the USS Fortitude and delivered the good news. “Weapons are ready, Captain,” he shouted as the first Borg counterattack struck the shields and rocked the deck beneath their fleet. “Target locked!”

Llewellyn stepped forward dramatically. “Open fire!”

The phaser spewed forth, punching through the Borg shield grid with surprising ease and tearing into the black hull beyond. Multiple plumes of flame and debris belched out into space. Even a flailing drone drifted out from the open wound. A smattering of congratulatory outburst echoed around the Fortitude Bridge, all of them directed at Sollik. Even Jason, burying a long-exposed hatchet for the sake of the moment.

“First distribution node destroyed, Captain,” reported the Suliban who was satisfied by the results. “Targeting the second node at bearing zero-seven-three, mark two. Lieutenant Vuro?”

“Adjusting heading to zero-seven-three, mark two,” confirmed the helmsman.

“Jason, hail Steamrunner,” Valerie ordered while the Intrepid-class starship soared triumphantly around the sharp corners of the immense Cube and head for the next juicy item on the menu of destruction that they had written up. “If we can get them to focus their weapons with ours simultaneously, we might even be able to do a little more damage.”

“Communications aren’t getting through,” Armstrong answered a second later. “Both 499 and Steamrunner have their communications systems down.”

“Nice thought, Valerie,” Ewan comforted her,” but let’s keep our heads in the game.”

“Okay,” nodded the First Officer.

“Second distribution node directly ahead,” Sollik pointed out. “Phasers charged.”

Fortitude lurched hard, struck by a particularly powerful blast from the relentless foe that they were trying to cripple. Valerie had been right, earlier in the Briefing Room. Like a wounded dog, the Borg were kicking back and hard. Multiple cutting beams smashed into the shields, sending lightning rods dancing across the hull. Several LCARS displays exploded spectacularly along the aft section of the Bridge.

Instinctively, Llewellyn shielded Archer from the sparks with his body. It was a caring move that didn’t go unnoticed by the Commander’s personal feelings for the Captain.

“Well, what are you waiting for?!,” he barked at Sollik. “Fire the bloody things!”

“Firing phasers… direct hit! The second distribution node is offline!”

The deck stopped rumbling.

The noise of the battle went silent.

Everybody froze.

“Oh, I don’t like it when this happens,” Ewan lamented, breaking up the ominous silence.

“Captain,” Jason said from Ops,” the Borg are powering engines!”

“What the…?”

“They’re running, Captain! Course: Sector 001… It’s Earth!”

Ensign Armstrong was correct. The viewscreen showed the damaged Borg Cube pitch away from Starbase 499, from the jewel of Santrag II, and away from the starships that had been stinging them like hornets. With a resonating howl, the Borg leaped to warp, disappearing into the depths of space beyond and from the threatening tactical knowledge of the USS Fortitude.

“Get a subspace signal through to Deep Space Five,” Llewellyn shouted. “Warn them!”

“I can’t sir,” Jason sighed. “Our communications system is down too.”

They had saved the population of Santrag II. they had saved Rear Admiral Blackmore and their friends aboard Starbase 499. They had saved the crews of the Steamrunner and the Katherine Johnson, and they had saved themselves.

But could Earth be saved?

Nobody in this corner of space knew.


* * * *


Captain’s Log, Stardate 50896.4;


News has reached me of the Battle of Sector 001. As the Federation task force that was sent to intercept the Borg Cube was nearing defeat, Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise, NCC-1701-E intervened with his extensive knowledge of the Collective and somehow managed to stop the Borg from assimilating Earth. While all of the details are unknown at this time, but, at least, we can call it a victory. Humanity has prevailed in the face of assimilation once again, and while the rest of the Federation would appear to be celebrating, we have yet another memorial service to attend…


“Heading over now?”

“Yes,” Edward Blackmore nodded. “I assumed with you?”

Ewan was in agreement, walking alongside his friend, the Rear Admiral, as they headed for the main transporter room aboard Starbase 499. The Captain had been working aboard the space station for several hours with the clean-up after the battle with the Borg Cube well underway.

Steamrunner and Katherine Johnson had been salvaged with the latter being almost beyond help. Currently, the question over whether it was worth renovating the aging Oberth-class starship hung in the air around Blackmore’s head. With its reinforced shields and gigantic power reserves, Starbase 499 had done quite well, escaping with only minor damage. That was thanks to the starships themselves and the bravery and ballsy nature of Captain Ewan Llewellyn.

“The Mess Hall was tidied up this morning,” the Welshman told his superior officer. “I didn’t want to say goodbye to Lynn standing in a pile of bulkhead debris.”

“Good to hear,” Blackmore growled. “I don’t know. First, we lose Jim, and now Lynn. I wonder when it’ll stop becoming dangerous and start becoming rewarding.”

“It’ll happen, Boxer. It has to happen, okay?”

“Okay, Ewan.”

They walked around the apex of the corridor and to the transporter room beyond. Pausing in mid-stride, Blackmore had one final business question to pose and he didn’t want it to encroach on the memorial service for Doctor Lynn Boswell when they beamed aboard Fortitude momentarily.

Rest his hand on Ewan’s shoulder, he voiced his thoughts. “The Borg,” he said. “Why didn’t they assimilate your ship in that first encounter?”

“The Borg are the most single-minded race that I know about, Boxer,” Llewellyn replied. “That single-minded consciousness was focused on Humanity and Earth. It’s a wonder that we even managed to slow them down. Stopping to assimilate everything that they ran into. Every starship… Every planet…”

“Yeah, good point,” the Rear Admiral nodded, cutting the sentence short. “I’m just glad that Captain Picard violated his orders.”

“You and be both, Boxer. Here's to Jean-Luc Picard and the good ship Enterprise.”

“Seconded, Ewan,” smiled Blackmore.


EPILOGUE

“We are gathered here today to pay respects to our honored dead.”

It was horrifically the second time that he had spoken those words in recent months. To lose any crew member was painful enough but to lose a member of the senior staff was especially damaging to the Captain. These were his friends, the department heads that he dealt with daily, and the ones that he had formed friendships with. The death of Ensign James Morgan had been tough enough but he had been on the other side of the Galaxy at the time. This time, this tragic time, Doctor Lynn Boswell had been in Llewellyn’s charge when she was captured and assimilated by the Borg.

“Lynn was a dedicated physician,” Ewan told the assembled officers. “Her spirit will continue to live on through all of us as we remember her energy, her soul, her humor, and her friendship. She will be sorely missed.”

There were tears. Jason Armstrong was having a hard time and not just because Lynn was dead. The atmosphere of a memorial service was a harsh reminder of the service where he had said goodbye to his beloved Jim. Valerie Archer was also struggling to cope with her emotions. She was remembering the discussion that she had with Lynn the day that Arden Vuro had been shot and needed an operation. Lynn had been forced into the position of Chief Medical Officer after the original chief medical officer had been… well… exposed. The young woman suddenly becoming the woman in charge of the ship’s health had suffered a crisis of conscience on that day and Valerie had picked her back up, helping her become the fine doctor that she had always been, deep down.

The photon torpedo casing, again empty for the lack of any remains, was beamed into space.

Out there, somewhere, it would join the casing representing Jim Morgan.

All present were thinking the same thing.

Rest in peace.


The End.

 

[Cobalt Frost]

Dang, dude. Great stuff!!

 

[admiralelm11]

Thank you.

 

[admiralelm11]

Star Trek: Fortitude
Season Three, Episode Two - “Virus”
By Jack D. Elmlinger


PROLOGUE

One vial… was all that it would take.

The alien spy hired for the job was being paid handsomely and so much that it was worth the insane risk of transporting such a volatile substance. To his species and to the people paying his fee, the powder was lethal. It could kill a room filled with people in seconds, matching the ferocity of substances such as thalaron and sentox. Yet, to the target race, it would kill much slower.

The target race came from a planet called Earth.

As the spy set the vial of fine topaz-hued powder down beside the cargo container earmarked for Starbase 499 in the Santrag system, he wondered if the Humans would ever discover who was responsible for the coming attack. Shadows played across his twisted face as he deployed the substance with finesse, his hands keeping the entire process at a safe arms’ length. Soon the entire vial had been emptied with the powder settling through the small gap pried opened in the hermetically-sealed Starfleet container and getting to work drifting through the fabrics and materials like it was designed specifically to become absorbed by.

Humans… how easily they would eventually fall.

This experiment on the closest of them would prove valuable.

Stepping back and admiring his handiwork, the spy turned away. The Universal Translator built into his cranium automatically jumbled the standard Federation script on the side of the container into his native language which he noted with a callous disregard for the consequences of his actions.

Starfleet standard issue duty uniforms, batch #8647.

Starbase 499, Santrag II, Santrag system.

Gender: female.


ACT ONE

Captain’s Log, Stardate 50898.7;


A change of uniform and a change of crew has heralded a change of attitude and a hopeful new beginning aboard the Fortitude. As we prepare to get underway on our mission of exploration, I have the duty of selecting the replacements for Doctor Lynn Boswell and Ensign James Morgan in the roles of Chief Medical Officer and Chief Security/Tactical Officer. Rear Admiral Blackmore has been more than generous in offering any of his staff over on Starbase 499.

An offer that I intend to take him up on.


It fitted him well.

Walking out onto the Bridge of the USS Fortitude, NCC-76240 for the first time wearing the new standard-issue duty uniform that had finally made its way to the distant corners of the Federation, Captain Ewan Llewellyn cut a dashing figure. Gone were the blatant, screaming colored shoulders of the old uniforms: now everybody matched with blue-grey shoulders arching across a fitted, two-piece black suit with the rollneck undergarment displaying the departmental identification. Straightening the red highlights on his cuffs, Ewan headed for his command chair.

Nodding at her Captain from her own seat, Valerie Archer was having less fun with the fresh attire. A frustrated look spread across her sharp features. She was fidgeting with her deep crimson collar as if the hue was from a thousand red ants.

“Problems, Commander?,” Llewellyn asked her, picking up his morning report.

“Whoever designed these new uniforms should be shot,” Valerie grumbled.

“I find them rather comfortable myself…”

“Lucky you,” snapped the First Officer before she calmed down. “I don’t know… Somebody must be playing a practical joke on me. I swear that mine’s been doused with itching powder or deliberately made one size too small.”

Ewan wondered if it was just a personal issue. Turning in his chair, he decided to take a straw poll on the subject, if only to comfort Valerie in her struggle.

“Ensign Armstrong,” he called out. “Yours fits, right?”

“Like a glove, Captain,” nodded the young Kentuckian.

“Arden, could it be the red?”

Spinning around on his chair at the helm, the Bolian grinned at the Welshman. He and Sollik had been discussing this subject over a shared breakfast in the Mess Hall only a few moments ago after they had witnessed another female crew member complaining about the cut of the new uniforms.

Raising his hands in mock-surrender, he reassured his superior officers. “I’m all kinds of happy with it, Captain.”

“I’m glad that somebody is,” Valerie mumbled, attacking her wrists now. “What I wouldn’t give to find the designer over at Starfleet R&D and make them wear one of these for a day or two…”

“You’ll get used to it,” Ewan suggested.

She was in obvious discomfort, though. As Vuro and Sollik had observed that morning, it seemed to be a problem with the women. Ewan started to think over things a little more analytically as the itching on Valerie’s part persisted. His morning status call from Rear Admiral Blackmore had mentioned something about Doctor Pulaski and Station Master Martinez loathing their new uniforms and he had passed a female ensign in the corridors who looked positively sick of the blue-grey shoulders and yellow collar that she was now under an official obligation to wear.

So when Valerie Archer pitched forward, Llewellyn’s mind went into overdrive.

“Medical emergency!,” he cried out, his concern for his First Officer not being limited to a professional relationship, his heart skipping several beats as she fell. “Arden, give me a hand here, now!”

What was going on here?


* * * *


Katherine Pulaski silently thanked her deductive reasoning.

Immediately upon developing the irritable symptoms that were striking all of the female crew members aboard Starbase 499 and Fortitude, she had eliminated the one new factor in her life. The uniform, with its blue undergarment and grey-shouldered tunic, had gone straight under the microscope as soon as she had donned her old blue-shouldered jumpsuit in an instant. Her expression was a picture of deep anxiety as she worked.

Having found something amiss in the intricate fabrics of the new uniform, something at a microscopic level unbeknownst to the innocent officers heading to their posts and about their duties, Pulaski had quickly become inundated with emergency calls. Women of all ages, ranks, and positions were calling in, collapsing, vomiting, and generally having a physically wretched morning. When the first cases beamed over to the extensive medical facility aboard 499 from the starship Fortitude, she knew that she wasn't dealing with a simple station-wide epidemic. This was something more, something altogether more… sinister.

“Doctor Pulaski!”

The cry for help came from the door, the Welsh accent instantly recognizable despite the stress placed upon it. Turning around, Pulaski saw Captain Llewellyn carrying the lifeless form of Commander Valerie Archer into the main sickbay. Rushing over to guide the new arrival towards an available biobed, the doctor brushed her blonde curls aside to get a clear view of her latest patient.

“She was complaining about her new uniform when…,” Ewan began.

“... she collapsed, losing consciousness,” Pulaski concluded. “It’s all women and it’s the new uniforms.”

“What about them?,” asked the panicked Captain, suddenly fearing his own garment.

“I don’t know. I found some kind of particulate matter inside the weave of my own uniform when I started to show symptoms. I’m just glad that I was quick enough in changing. I issued an instant emergency across all terminals but I was obviously too late to stop serious damage to our personnel.”

“How many have been taken out by this?”

“Approximately fifty percent of the women aboard 499. You should start screening your own people aboard Fortitude.”

Ewan ran a concerned hand through his dark hair as he considered that little piece of advice. Watching Pulaski run a tricorder over the motionless curves of Valerie Archer, he suppressed his own emotional distress, fighting to keep a level head. He needed to be in crisis mode, a mode that he was growing tired of lately, but an essential mode nonetheless.

“In case, you haven’t noticed, Doctor,” he snapped back at her,” we’re short of a chief medical officer over there.”

“Sorry, Captain,” came her retort,” but that’s not my problem.”

“Are you feeling all right?” Llewellyn changed the subject, wondering how long that wearing the uniform would continue to incapacitate the women in his crew.

“Slight headache and skin irritation, but all within manageable limits…”

“And not a single male has been affected?”

“No, not a single male,” she confirmed with a short nod. “Look, with all due respect, yours is the place to wonder why, Captain. Mine is to do or people die. Let me get back to work here and stop getting in my way.

Like a wounded dog, Ewan actually gave a slight whimper as he recoiled.

Well, it was Pulaski’s sickbay… and therefore her rules.


ACT TWO

It was an odd sight that Llewellyn barely took in.

Working furiously inside the Station Master’s Office of Starbase 499, Rear Admiral Blackmore wore his brand-new Starfleet Admiral’s uniform, complete with gold trim and a belt adorned with a polished Federation crest. It made him appear to be quite handsome with his salt-and-pepper beard, and quite the contrast of Erica Martinez. The Station Master was apparently suffering from a heavy cold, wearing a creased and unimpressive old uniform with red command shoulders that made her appear out of place.

Ewan walked in, wearing the male variant of what had caused Erica’s symptoms, and despite her affection for the Captain, it made the Latina shudder.

“Oh, great,” she whispered,” another one.”

“Ah, Ewan, excellent,” Blackmore growled, ignoring Erica’s lament. “How’s your crew holding up? I assume you’ve informed all of the women to change?”

“At Pulaski’s insistence, absolutely,” he sighed, rubbing his face.

“I hear that you brought Valerie over.”

“Carried her over myself. Yeah, I hope she pulled through.”

Erica was bristling with discomfort at that little nugget of information. Her mind instantly filled with an image of Valerie Archer on a biobed before quickly to a playful image of Ewan being all heroic and dramatic for her, not Valerie. She pushed it aside, regarding it as her begrudged mind searching for diversion from the tragedy that was unfolding on the Starfleet presence in the Santrag system. All of the women… she had already checked around her best friends, but there were so many affected and so many potentially yet to develop symptoms. Readjusting her focus, she returned to participate in the conversation between Llewellyn and Blackmore.

“What do you have so far, Boxer?,” the Captain was asking him.

“Not much,” huffed the older man. “The cargo containers that the uniforms arrived in yesterday have been scanned and tested positive for the virus. That means that whatever we’re dealing with probably happened somewhere outside our jurisdiction.”

“Damn. Part of me was hoping to find whoever was responsible and… well.”

“You and me both, Ewan,” Blackmore nodded with understanding. This wasn’t just a hit against Fortitude but a hit against his own command.

“What about the virus itself? Any leads to be gained from that?”

That was Station Master Martinez’s cue to step forward. Holding out a PADD to Llewellyn, she spoke over his reading of the information, narrating the words on the page for him, explaining the situation thoroughly.

“There’s evidence of a corrosive agent on the lids of the containers,” she said. “It reads as biological material. The closest thing that we have in the Starfleet Database is a record of a species called the Tah’Heen. They’re employed in certain unsavory circles as thieves and spies as their poes secrete a corrosive agent wiping any trace of fingerprints or any salvageable DNA identification.”

“But you know that it’s a Tah’Heen, right?,” Ewan asked, craving a lead.

“Well, no. It’s the closest thing that we have on record. Unfortunately, the nature of the corrosion means that even locking onto substantial evidence pointing to the Tah’Heen is impossible. It’s why they make the best agents. Nobody has ever caught one.”

“Oh, bloody hell!,” gasped the Welshman in frustration. “You’re kidding me!”

“We’ll do what we can,” Blackmore interjected, feeling Ewan’s frustration which matched his own,” but right now, we’ve got to concentrate on curing our people and wiping the virus from the uniform. Until Pulaski has finished her analysis and finds a cure, we need to remain focused.”

“Agreed… but rest assured, we’ll find those responsible.”

“You can count on it,” grinned the Rear Admiral.

He and Llewellyn were so alike.


* * * *


The Mess Hall was swamped by an eerie silence.

Lieutenant Arden Vuro found the complete lack of any women to be quite unsettling. He enjoyed the variety of crew members aboard Fortitude, the myriad of the male, the female, the Human, and the alien. Now with the crew’s female population in either Sickbay or their quarters feeling entirely unwell thanks to the infected uniforms, there were only a handful of male officers left on duty. The Bolian thanked the Universe that there wasn’t some kind of important or dangerous situation engulfing Fortitude and that they were able to make the best use of Starbase 499’s excellent resources to deal with the crisis.

Beside him, Chief Engineer Sollik was drinking a replicated version of a Suliban tea, a noxious beverage to Bolians. Twisting his green scales into an expression of disgust, the Lieutenant Commander was ranting about the cowardly nature of the latest attack to befall the Starfleet presence in this corner of space.

“I could handle the Borg,” he hissed. “I could handle the End and the Santragan revolutionaries too. Hell, I would even prefer Naketha right now, compared to fighting an enemy that we can’t see, don’t know, and can’t beat. I just hope that the effects can be reversed. Half of my engineering staff have gone down, thanks to this… this contagion.”

“That’s a good point,” Vuro observed. “Do you think this could be Naketha?”

Sollik pondered that question for a moment. He had rattled off the name of the Romulan spy simply as a checkbox in the ever-growing list of enemies that Fortitude had faced over their two years in the Beta Quadrant. Poisoning incoming uniforms with a deadly virus… it was certainly a tactic that suited the subterfuge-centric Romulan Star Empire. Then again, no, it wasn’t her personal style. They had faced off against her, twice now, and both times she had desperately avoided anything that would seem like an act of war. Her business was the spy business, not the war business.

“I doubt it,” Sollik finally answered his friend. “She’s got form, I’ll give you that, but she’s never actually directly wished any harm upon us. What good would come from exterminating our female population for her?”

“Prelude to invasion,” his Bolian crewmate pointed out to him. “Weaken our resources.”

“Read the news, Arden! The Alpha Quadrant has everybody worried. Nobody, not even the Romulans want to risk a conflict, not with the shadow of the Dominion hanging over them, ready to pounce.”

“You’re good at this politics thing,” Vuro smiled, semi-surprised at his friend's words,” for an engineer.”

“My homeworld is in the Alpha Quadrant. I have good reasons to remain educated.”

Vuro nodded in agreement. “You and me both, my friend. You and me both…”


ACT THREE

Captain Llewellyn rushed into Doctor Pulaski’s office as soon as he received the call.

Leaving behind the collection of PADDs on his Ready Room table, replete with biographical information on the officers stationed aboard Starbase 499 as he searched for suitable replacement personnel for the vacant positions aboard Fortitude, he beamed over immediately. Continuing to work despite the critical condition of Valerie Archer had been a headache for him. He welcomed any new developments.

Materializing in one of 499’s transporter rooms, he found Rear Admiral Blackmore waiting for him.

“Pulaski has news,” Boxer growled.

“I hope it’s good news,” Ewan nodded. “Come on!”

Both men entered the Sickbay facility together, spotting Katherine Pulaski and walking over to her. The doctor was standing over a coherent and smiling Valerie Archer, completing a wave over her with her medical tricorder with satisfaction. Noting the arrival of the Captain and the Rear Admiral, she turned triumphantly towards them.

“Success, Doctor?,” Llewellyn asked her.

“Undeniable and categorical, Captain.”

“Kate was just explaining it to me,” Valerie said, taking her place in the conversation and accepting Ewan’s compassionate gaze with a hint of a blush. “Since the virus worked in stages that built up to an eventual defeat of the central nervous system, it was only a simple matter of cutting off the route that it was taking at certain junctures.”

“A simple matter…?,” Blackmore barked. “You’re kidding?”

“Well, simple for any Starfleet physician, maybe not,” Pulaski had to admit, a slight twinge of humility overcome by the facts. “My skills, not to mention my additional experience with the Eastleans for two years, made me think outside the box, so to speak. I’ve cooked up enough of the cure to be distributed throughout 499 and your ship, Captain.”

Handing Llewellyn a small case containing hypospray vials, Pulaski smiled.

“That’s it?,” confirmed the Welshman.

“Just take one of these and call me in the morning!”

It was the best possible news. Grinning from ear to ear and thankful to be rid of another stressful and unusual situation, Captain Llewellyn turned towards Valerie and gently squeezed her shoulder. While the Commander returned the gesture, Rear Admiral Blackmore practically hugged Doctor Pulaski in an explosion of gratitude. Around them, women were coming out of their unconscious states and rising from their biobeds, shaking away the danger.

It was a glorious sight and the perfect end to the most sinister of threats.

All that remained was the question of whom.

Why had they done this?

Those answers would be sought out later. Turning to Ewan, Boxer addressed other impending matters with an honest realization and a sly grin. “So, Ewan, which of my people will you be stealing off me now?”

“I’ve got two names for you, Boxer,” admitted the Captain. “I would prefer to ask them first, though. Chief Medical Officer on a starship… Tactical and Security Officer… Those are big roles. I don’t want to discuss people’s careers without thinking about the person.”

“Agreed.”

“To that end,” Ewan continued, turning around,” Doctor Pulaski, I’d like to have a word with you.”


* * * *


The USS Steamrunner was back to normal. The Bridge was occupied by a nice mix of men and women now with all of them wearing the updated Starfleet uniforms. The previously infected variants that caused so much damage had been sent through the transporter buffer filters, multiple times to rid them of the virus particulate that was now detectable and easy to destroy. Thanks to Doctor Pulaski, there had been no fatalities. Things were running so smoothly again that Lieutenant Commander Gabriel Brodie, seated firmly in the command chair, didn't mind the impromptu visit from Captain Ewan Llewellyn.

It was a rare visit to his old stomping ground. Ever since the huge coup of getting the Steamrunner-class prototype vessel sent to the Santrag system and overhauling her systems to bring her up-to-date, the ‘father’ of the design had barely enough time to return. He was pleased to see her looking so tidy and clean, especially after the recent engagement with the Borg. It lifted his heart.

“Captain on deck!,” an overeager ensign barked.

Gabriel Brodie shot up to his feet, moving aside from the command chair.

“At ease,” Llewellyn chuckled. “Don’t worry, Commander Brodie. I’m not here to take your chair or your command from you. In fact, I’m here to take you… that is, of course, if you’ll permit me after hearing me out.”

The tall African-American officer cocked an inquisitive eyebrow. “Sir?”

At a wave of the Captain’s hand, the Bridge crew moved away, giving Gabe and Ewan a degree of privacy. Standing on either side of the command chair, each man had a hand resting on it as they spoke, the conversation quickly cutting through the formalities.

“When I first took command of Fortitude,” Ewan began with honesty,” I had never imagined selecting an officer like you. You’re brash, arrogant and you like a fight. You shoot first and ask questions later.”

“With all due respect, sir,” Gabe noted, “that’s quite a way to go with putting your case forward.”

“Look, Jim Morgan was greatly loved among my crew and I’m a pacifist to boot. You would have your work cut out for you, fitting in as my new tactical and security officer. But now, after two years of running space battles and encounters with hostile species, I’m beginning to realize that not everything can be solved with a nice cozy chat and a cup of coffee. There’s a great degree of danger when flying through the stars--”

“Sorry to interrupt,” sir,” Gabe cut in,” but flying through the stars is impossible. One flies around them, I’d hope… and as for having my work cut out for me? I welcome it. The only way to truly know yourself is to find your limits and to constantly challenge yourself.”

“And doing laps around the Santrag system is hardly a challenge,” Ewan nodded, going along with the straight-talking officer before him, appreciating the refreshing nature of Brodie more than he realized that he would. “Whereas being aboard Fortitude?”

“I’m a man who likes to lift rocks to see what’s beneath them, not scan from ten paces away.”

“Hmmm… and likes to shoot it, no doubt.”

“Very likely, sir.”

Llewellyn smiled that Gabe soon mirrored. Okay, he would knock heads together. He was an outright fighter and a man who craved violence. He was absolutely and without question, an anomaly, a rare and erroneous character who had somehow slipped through the Academy and wound up aboard Starbase 499, in command of a starship designed for battle that did very little fighting. He was cocky, arrogant… and it was true. Two years ago, Ewan would have never entertained selecting him for his crew, but now…

“Your welcoming ceremony will be shared with my new Chief Medical Officer, Doctor Katherine Pulaski,” Llewellyn told him. “Fortitude Mess Hall, tomorrow evening at 1800. Don’t be late.”

“I look forward to it, Captain.”

They shook hands.

Ewan Llewellyn had done it. His new crew was complete.


EPILOGUE

“Report your findings.”

Bowing before the mammoth display, the alien spy felt his spine protest. He didn’t dare straighten it. Mere meters away, a large holographic communicator hummed with a threatening power. Standing upon it, a humanoid figure stood over him, shrouded entirely by shadows. The scale was completely wrong, of course, but it helped to keep the spy in line. Having his commander, his taskmaster, almost a full six feet taller than him was a constant reminder of the hierarchy of their agreement.

Dull lighting flickered around the shady hologram, playing across the spy’s face. Just as it had been theorized by the enemy without his knowledge, he was a Tah’Heen national. In no way did he speak for his government or for any other organization from his homeworld.

He was a rogue individual, an infiltrator of starships, starbases, secret facilities, and worlds, available for hire at a reasonable price. Of course, the job dictated the price. His most recent job, infecting the female uniforms being sent to the Santrag system’s Federation outpost and vessels, had required a significant increase in his wages. The shadowy hologram didn’t seem to mind.

“They overcame the virus,” hissed the Tah’Heen.

“Time elapsed?”

“Much quicker than we expected. There were no casualties.”

“We have underestimated this Federation,” the hologram growled. “Our next test should be altered accordingly. From a medical standpoint, they should have been deemed invulnerable to biological warfare attack.”

“Agreed. When will the next test be ready?”

“You will be contacted.”

The hologram in the shadows disappeared. As soon as the last proton had faded away, the lighting in the communications chamber of the Tah’Heen ship rose to normal levels. His pointed teeth glistening with menace, the spy turned and rubbed his hands together, anticipating his new assignment and his next paycheck.

The next test to be bestowed upon the Federation.

How delicious…



The End.

 

[admiralelm11]

Star Trek: Fortitude
Season Three, Episode Three - “Leap of Faith”
By Jack D. Elmlinger


PROLOGUE

Sollik gritted his teeth as the butt of the ugly weapon was jammed into his back.

Walking slowly with a somber acceptance of his fate, Captain Ewan Llewellyn was alongside him with his head bowed down. The darkness of the corridor was depressing and almost soul-destroying, considering where they were heading. Their uniforms were dirty, their combadges discarded and they were alone.

The Suliban chief engineer of the starship Fortitude turned his head slightly to share a final glimpse with his Captain. “Sir, I --”

“Don’t worry, Sollik,” Ewan whispered without looking up. “It’s not your fault.”

“But, sir, I--”

“No buts. There’s no way out of this. I’d rather not spend my final moments wallowing in regret. I mean, the shuttlecraft is only a few chambers away, but the amount of weaponry on display around here? Forget about it.”

“Captain, please listen, I’m saying that--”

It was too late. They had reached their final resting place.

Before them stood a towering creature that was much like the other aliens who had captured them. Much like the aliens standing behind them with their weapons drawn. Llewellyn didn’t know their name. All he knew was that they had attacked with any warning or provocation while he and Sollik had been returning to Fortitude aboard the shuttlecraft Honor. It was a simple dash behind them. The shuttle, an escape, but to what end? They were deep inside the alien moonbase with, at least, seven guns trained on them.

The creature stepped forward.

“You seem wealthy,” he spat out with contempt and greed. “Your ship, your clothes… you are wealthy people. Your deaths will help us. We will track down your mothership and use your deaths as examples of our power. We will have what is yours.”

“Over my dead body,” Ewan snapped at him.

Unfortunately, that was the idea.

Sollik had failed to get his message across to the Captain, to warn him in advance.

He simply had to act.


ACT ONE

Ewan Llewellyn couldn’t believe his eyes.

Beside him, Sollik had leaped into action. The manacles that had bound his wrists together were gone, falling to the floor… but how? It hardly mattered as the Suliban chief engineer was already attacking the closest alien creature. Everybody in the room was suffering from the sudden shock of all of it. A Starfleet issue boot shot out. It kicked another creature, sending him flying. Tied up and helpless, Llewellyn threw himself to the cold stone floor of the grimy chamber and watched with amazement.

Sollik was grabbed from behind. The Captain was sure that this was the end.

Then, what happened next, seemed to defy logic.

Sollik simply squeezed himself free, morphing his shape to become thinner.

In an inconceivable display of moves, he defeated two more of the creatures before another pair stormed into the chamber with their weapons drawn. Quicker than a flash, Sollik leaped upwards, higher than any normal humanoid could ever leap. He struck the ceiling and, remarkably, stuck to it.

“Sollik?” Ewan mouthed in awe.

Before he had even gasped the name, Sollik had disappeared from his sight.

What the hell was going on?

Suddenly the Chief Engineer reappeared, blending back into existence behind the two new arrivals. A brutal clubbing sound knocked them both out of consciousness and the chaos ended its reign. Ewan opened his eyes, having shut them to see if he was dreaming or not, only to see Sollik standing over him. Aghast with astonishment, the Welshman found himself entirely lost for words.

“Captain, are you all right?”

“I’m… well… what the…?”

“Sir, we should get out of here. The shuttle! Come on!”

With his hands still confined by the alien manacles, Llewellyn got up and followed him as he armed himself with one of the discarded weapons. It was never used. Apparently, the entire gang of thugs had been congregated to watch the execution of the Starfleet officers. Soon, they were running for the shuttlecraft Honor which was parked exactly where they had seen it last and still intact.

Sealing the hatch behind them, Sollik turned to his Captain and grabbed the manacles. Ewan was in shock. For now, the Suliban was giving the orders.

“Turn away, sir.”

A blast from the alien rifle melted the durasteel bindings and he was free.

“I’m going to need a copilot, sir. Are you with me?”

Ewan nodded weakly. He was aware of what he had just witnessed but he was at a loss to even attempt to comprehend it. Sollik had turned invisible, slipped out of his manacles, and out of the arms of an enemy! He had run up walls and stuck to the ceiling! For goodness’ sake, he was an engineer, not some kind of… ninja magician! Cutting through the mental fog, he analyzed the situation dispassionately and realized that regardless of the insanity that he had just witnessed, they were still here. They were inside the shuttlecraft and they had to escape. Taking his seat. He began to fire up the impulse engines.

Moments later, the shuttlecraft Honor broke orbit of the desolate moon.

They had escaped.

“Okay,” Ewan breathed, turning towards the Suliban,” now… do you mind explaining… that?”

Sollik turned his bald green head towards his commanding officer and adopted an apologetic look.

Yes, he did mind explaining it… but he had no other choice.


* * * *


Captain’s Log, Stardate 50963.4;


Upon escaping from the unknown alien compound where we were imprisoned against our will and our imminent execution, I found myself utterly surprised at the previously hidden abilities of Lieutenant Commander Sollik. As we’ve set a course for our rendezvous point with Fortitude and sent out an emergency subspace signal, I can only hope that we’re left alone long enough to make it home safe… and for my Chief Engineer to give me some answers to the spectacle that I’ve just witnessed.


“Are you aware of the history of my people, Captain?”

They sat together in the rear of the Type-9 shuttlecraft, each man sipping slowly at a water pack from the rations stored underneath their seats. The surprise alien attack, the subsequent imprisonment, and attempted execution was easy enough to reason away for Ewan Llewellyn. He had been involved in similar situations before and there was enough information to gleam from things said and actions taken to draw reasonable conclusions.

They had been wealth-based acquisitionists who had been hell-bent on using the corpses of two Starfleet officers as bait to lure in the big prize, Fortitude, into their net. There were a dozen such log reports about a dozen such unknown species from a dozen different starships commanders across the past ten years alone… but Sollik? Ewan was at a loss to draw any conclusions about him. There was no information to gleam there.

“Barely,” the Captain answered honestly, staring at the Suliban across from him.

“We don’t like to dwell on it,” Sollik sighed, his yellow teeth matching the shade of his collar, having discarded his grey-shouldered uniform jacket. “During the mid-twenty-second century, we were nomadic… misguided. Significant portions of Suliban were ensnared into a cult known as the Cabal. Unfortunately for our society, for our culture, the Cabal became a fact of life for most Suliban. They were rich, successful, and powerful. It was a lure for many young people, and soon, standard Suliban society died out. There only remained the Cabal and their followers.”

“What did this… Cabal stand for?”

“They were agents in the Temporal Cold War,” Sollik stated gravely. “You were taught all about that conflict at the Academy, weren’t you?”

“We all were,” Ewan noted with a frown, recalling the details.

“Well, I won’t rake over common knowledge. What’s important is that the Cabal was given genetic enhancements from the future as payment and rewards for doing the bidding of the Temporal Cold War aggressors. One man, in particular, was responsible for bestowing great powers onto the Cabal. To this day, his identity remains a mystery.”

“Let me guess…,” Ewan pieced it together,”... shapeshifting, invisibility…?”

“To name but a few of them” nodded Sollik with his head bowed with regret.

“And you have these abilities because…?”

“We’re a proud people, Captain. We don’t like that period in our history but it had left many Suliban with the latent genetic coding installed in our ancestors. I have no choice in the matter, but one such ancestor of mine was in the Cabal, and they obviously had the full arsenal of enhancements carried out… because now I have them.”

Ewan sighed, rubbing his forehead.

This was huge news. Genetic engineering was banned in the Federation for just this reason, and here sat a man who didn’t like, nor wanted to have his abilities. What was the precedence in this matter? Would he have to punish Sollik for simply being Suliban? Would he even tell Starfleet? Would it lead to a court-martial? Perhaps not for the abilities themselves, but for Sollik’s misleading of Starfleet and for his silence?

“How have you kept this quiet for so long?,” he asked him.

“The genetic markers for the abilities are dormant, Captain. Before you ask, I haven’t drafted any Starfleet doctors into a conspiracy here.”

“Well,” Ewan muttered to himself,” at least, that’s something.”


ACT TWO

When the shuttlecraft Honor landed on the shuttlebay deck of the USS Fortitude, several hours later, Valerie Archer immediately spotted the scorch marks on the usually pristine hull plating and knew that something had gone wrong. Stepping towards the main hatch, anticipating an explanation, she was shocked to see the state that the Captain and Sollik had returned to the ship in.

“What happened?,” she asked with her mouth agape.

“We were attacked by unknown aliens,” Llewellyn told her, happy to see Valerie again, though he was tired and sore from his mistreatment. “Sollik and I barely escaped with our lives. I want you to plot a course that avoids the nearby binary system.”

“I’ll get right on it,” Archer nodded, walking with them across the shuttlebay and towards the nearby turbolift. Before stepping inside, she paused. “You should head right to Sickbay. I can handle the Bridge.”

“Thanks,” Ewan smiled weakly.

As Sollik silently entered the turbolift, his demeanor was like that of a school child after being reprimanded. The First Officer took stock of the atmosphere hanging in the air and she shot Llewellyn an arched eyebrow of inquiry.

“So your plan of spending some time to get to know your chief engineer a little better,” she asked Ewan,” didn’t work out, I presume?”

If it hadn’t been rude to do it in Sollik’s presence, he would have laughed.

“On the contrary, Valerie…,” he simply stated flatly.

He disappeared behind the turbolift doors. Confused by the cryptic response and left alone in the shuttlebay, Commander Archer shrugged her shoulders and hoped that it wasn’t anything too serious. They were alive and that was what mattered. Turning, she left the Honor behind and headed for the Bridge to implement her orders. As soon as the door closed after her departure, it was safe for them to move.

There were two of them.

They had stowed away aboard the shuttlecraft, knowing that it would return to its mothership.

Two of the alien creatures, their faces a complex maze of crimson facial ridges.

They were aboard.


* * * *


It was hardly boring for Katherine Pulaski.

After her experience with the Eastlean people, the estranged Starfleet doctor had been looking for something a little quieter, and a little more sedate. Starbase 499 had provided that, albeit briefly, but it had only served to remind her what she signed up to Starfleet and why she had studied medicine. She was a healer first and foremost, a frontline physician and she thanked Captain Llewellyn for reminding her of that.

Seeing him walk into the Fortitude Sickbay alongside Sollik made her leap into action. They were battered, bruised, and obviously needed to be seen to, despite walking themselves here. That was always a good sign.

“Anything major that I should know about?,” she asked them as she scanned them.

“No, nothing. Do we get a clean bill?,” Ewan asked her.

“Aside from a few scratches, you’ll both be fine. Wait here. I’ll fetch a dermal regenerator and be right back. Then I’m prescribing showers, sleep, and soup.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” Sollik nodded as she left.

Llewellyn turned towards his Suliban colleague, his mind still ablaze with questions concerning the latest revelations unearthed by their escape attempt. He didn’t want to appear to be too forward or offensive, although he still hadn't decided what his decision should be with regards to the genetic abilities. Well, no, perhaps not the abilities themselves, but the silence was damning.

“So… what exactly can you do?”

Sollik seemed to have been taken aback for a second before he answered. “I’ve adapted my uniform into a biomimetic garment capable of copying my genetic camouflage which makes me practically invisible to the humanoid eye. You’ve already seen how agile I can be. My shapeshifting is limited. I won’t be turning into a Tiberian bat anytime soon but I can alter the molecular density of my tissue to quite radical degrees. And… oh, yes, I can survive in the vacuum of space.”

“What the…?”

“Only for a short period. Two minutes at the most.”

“Have you ever tested these abilities?,” Ewan had to ask, leaning forward.

“They only became apparent during my adolescence,” Sollik admitted slowly, thinking back to his Academy days and the first time that he had seen through his own arm in a moment of heightened anxiety. “Some of the training courses afforded me the chance to quietly sample the full range of the powers at my disposal.”

Ewan let out a short whistle, his eyes open wide. “That must have been a big leap of faith…”

“You have no idea, Captain.”

Pulaski returned at that point, halting their conversation while she tended to the most major of cuts and bruises with a wave of her dermal regenerator. When all was healed, she sent them packing from Sickbay with orders to return to their quarters, get cleaned up, and take in a good deal of rest.

Walking through the corridors to the turbolift, Llewellyn turned his attention over to the courses of actions that were available to him. Sollik seemed to be in tune with his thinking, worried about his future aboard Fortitude.

“Captain, if you’re wondering what to do…”

“Unfortunately, I am,” he confessed, awkwardly.

“I don’t want all of this to become public knowledge, sir. I mean, the ship may find out and I could perhaps accept that, but… a court-martial and Starfleet Command broadcasting this as news… I don’t think, with all due respect, that I would be comfortable with being the brunt of widespread prejudice.”

“What are you saying?”

“Allow me to resign my commission quietly.”

Ewan suppressed a knowing smile. He had always pegged Sollik as the honorable type. How he hadn’t predicted this response from him so far amazed him, but shaking his head slowly, he addressed another point that had been brought up.

“The thing that gets me… all this time,” he noted,” is that you’ve had this secret, afraid of what prejudice might strike at you, and you’ve harbored your own prejudice towards Jason Armstrong and his relationship with Jim Morgan.”

“Yes, Captain,” nodded the Chief Engineer. “I can see the degree of irony.”

“The degree?!”

There wasn’t any more time to protest that point any further. Shipwide lights switched to red, joined by the screech of a familiar klaxon.

“Intruder alert! All hands to stations! Intruder Alert!”


ACT THREE

The Bridge was awash with activity.

Standing over the command chairs, Valerie Archer snapped her gaze from station to station, receiving bits and pieces of information from everybody. She had one more person to look at. Still wearing his ripped and dirty uniform, Captain Llewellyn burst out from the turbolift doors and asked for a report.

“Two alien lifeforms,” Jason Armstrong reported from Operations,” on Deck Eleven.”

“Engineering…,” Arden Vuro mused from the helm.

“Where are they exactly?,” Ewan asked, turning towards Gabriel Brodie at Tactical.

“Deck Eleven, Section Ten,” the black man answered a moment later,” in an EPS transfer substation on the portside hull. It looks like they’re trying to tap into the energy grid, Captain. I don't know why.”

“Can you box them in?,” Valerie asked him.

“Negative, Commander. Emergency force fields are not responding.”

“Bridge to Engineering,” barked Llewellyn.

Silence replied.

“The comms system is down,” Jason confirmed from behind his blonde fringe. “They’re slowly taking our systems out, one by one!”

“Mister Brodie,” the Captain ordered immediately,” take a security team.”

“I thought you’d never ask, sir.”


* * * *


Like Captain Llewellyn, Sollik had ignored Pulaski’s orders to return to his quarters upon hearing the intruder alert. Heading for his post in Engineering, he paused slightly as he noticed an open hatch leading into a Jefferies Tube, just around Deck Eleven, Section Ten. Frowning, the chief engineer instantly knew what was down there. He also knew that the hatch wouldn’t normally be open, and he instantly recognized the echo of voices from inside. His mind flashed back to the nightmarish moonbase that he and the Captain had been detained upon, only several hours before.

Damn, how did they get aboard?

No matter. They were here now.

The lights around him dimmed. They were here now and messing with his ship, and his systems that he carefully maintained, day in and day out as it was his duty. They were messing with his ship!

He had to take action.

Crawling inside, he soon found them. Two hideous creatures, red-faced and cunning, were inserting their clawed fingers into Fortitude’s systems, going about their wicked business… Two of them. Any other man would be blamed for looking at a two-against-one scenario and turning around but Sollik wasn’t any other man. Focusing on his abilities, he felt himself blend in, becoming entirely invisible.

The next moment, he was dropping down on them from the ceiling.

Surprise, you fools…


* * * *


“Captain, I’m reading another biosign along with the intruders!”

Turning and walking up the Bridge to Jason Armstrong’s Ops console, Ewan adopted a concerned expression as he leaned over and read the display for himself. When he saw it, he instantly felt his stomach do a barrel roll.

“Suliban,” he breathed. “Damn it, Sollik!”

What was he doing? Was this some kind of penance? Was he trying to make up for the fact that he had kept secrets from the crew by saving them in some insane attack on the intruders? Or had he taken complete leave of his senses altogether? Or was it a suicide attack to avoid the court-martial that could possibly hang over his head?

Llewellyn barely had the time to think about all of these possibilities before, once again, the lights fluctuated and the Intrepid-class starship around him let out a defeatist whine.

“Whatever he’s doing down there,” Vuro observed with worry for his friend,” it isn’t enough. The intruders are still causing damage, Captain!”

“Lieutenant Commander Brodie reports that he’s two decks away,” Archer asked, tapping at the controls on the central console between the two command chairs. “I don’t think he’s going to make it before the intruders manage to cut off main power completely or worse, life-support to the Bridge and other vital areas.”

Ewan had heard enough. Calculating the variables, he was no longer the tactically shy commanding officer that he had been, over two years ago. His naturally ballsy demeanor had applied nicely to those situations that required fighting against an enemy or making sacrifices for the greater good. He only hoped that Sollik hadn’t been lying to him, earlier in Sickbay.

Heading for the tactical console, he relieved the ensign on duty.

“Captain,” Valerie asked him,” what are you doing?”

“That EPS transfer substation has an outer hatch. I’m depressurizing it.”

Valerie, Jason, and Arden all turned to look at the Captain.

He felt their eyes lock upon him but he had no time for explanations. For all that they knew, he was committing the murder of their Chief Engineer in order to save Fortitude from a larger threat and consigning him to be sucked out into the cold depths of the Beta Quadrant. For all of their shock, they could perhaps understand the action, even if nobody present agreed with it or considered it to be viable. What they head next just confused them.

“Bridge to Sickbay,” Llewellyn shouted. “Doctor Pulaski, in a moment, I’ll be transporting Sollik directly to Sickbay. Be prepared, just in case, but he should be fine.”

“Understood, Captain,” the Chief Medical Officer replied. “I’ll be ready.”

“Captain, he won’t be fine,” Valerie tried to interject. “He’ll be dead.”

Ewan looked up at her with one of his trademark grins just breaking the surface. “I trust Sollik… So trust me!”


* * * *


Down in Section Ten of Deck Eleven, Sollik was becoming frustrated. No matter how many strikes that he managed to land on the creatures, one of them kept an arm inside the open access panel, screwing with the ship’s systems. Whenever he tried to stop it, sliding through the grip of muscles or running up the walls, the other one would always appear and attack, drawing his attention away.

Suddenly, there was a brief flash of a blue warning light above them. The alien creatures were oblivious to it but he knew what it meant.

It meant that the Captain had believed him.

The outer hatch hissed open, revealing the unprotected vacuum of space. The two hostile aliens were lifted from the deck plating, flailing helplessly as they were dispatched for their crimes against Fortitude. Joining them as they shot out into the stars beyond, Sollik felt a little odd but otherwise fine.

Space was cold, but it was a cold that didn’t bother him.

His lungs constricted, preserving what oxygen that they already had inside of them.

His blood flow increased, insulating him against the fatal conditions.

His brain was stimulated by billions of neuroelectrical pulses, being kept alive.

Between his feet, Fortitude grew even smaller.

Then the familiar tingle of a transporter beam enveloped him, taking him away from the company of two spinning corpses and placing him in the safe, warm environment of Sickbay. Pulaski was on him in seconds, scanning away with her medical tricorder as per the Captain’s orders, double-checking that he was, as Ewan had predicted, absolutely fine… and he was.

“And just where have you been?,” she asked him.

Sollik kept quiet.

The answer would require explaining and he had done enough explaining for one day.


EPILOGUE

“There won’t be a court-martial.”

Sollik couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Standing at attention in the Captain’s Ready Room, he listened to the reason why. He had predicted some disciplinary action, despite his early views on Ewan Llewellyn being less than exemplary when it came to enforcing the regulations. Apparently, it was going to be swept under the carpet and the Suliban Chief Engineer couldn’t believe it.

“It’s not your fault that you were born with these abilities,” Ewan was saying from behind his desk, a cup of coffee in his hand, cleaned up in his neat uniform. “The only thing that you’re guilty of is hiding them. I find myself realizing that it’s not my place and it shouldn’t be the place of Starfleet to know everything about everyone. If Jason Armstrong hadn’t been in a relationship with another man, I wouldn’t have known about his homosexuality but I wouldn’t have cared. He wouldn’t have been obliged to tell me. I can’t expect all of my crew to come to me and dump all of their personal baggage at my feet.”

“Thank you, Captain,” Sollik said, nodding.

Even the mention of homosexuality hadn’t thrown him. While it still remained that Suliban culture was deeply intolerant of that aspect of life, Sollik’s time aboard Fortitude had opened his eyes. The Captain’s reaction to his genetic abilities had hammered home the point that he was scared of prejudice. Perhaps harboring his own prejudice was hypocritical. It was something that he would endeavor to change.

“Besides,” Ewan added, a knowing smile on his face,” you might come in handy.”

“Captain?”

Ewan’s expression said it all, and for the first time ever, Sollik had to laugh.

“Rest assured,” concluded the Welshman,” you remain no different in my eyes.”


The End.

 

[admiralelm11]

This isn't no Zack Synder cut of Justice League or Godzilla Vs. Kong... but I hope people are enjoying my stories. My tricorder must be broken.


Star Trek: Fortitude
Season Three, Episode Four - “Connection Lost”
By Jack D. Elmlinger

PROLOGUE
“It will be a test of their range.”
The Tah’Heen spy bowed slightly, not fully understanding exactly what the test would entail. All he knew was that he would be the one to implement his paymaster’s devious scheme, regardless of content, and that he apparently had unlimited funds from which to bankroll it. The Tah’Heen didn’t ask questions. He didn’t want to. All he wanted was the money.
He barely had the chance to spend his last paycheck. Infecting the uniforms bound for Starbase 499 and the starship Fortitude had afforded him a tidy sum, but the paymaster wasn’t sitting around to let him grow fat from his riches.
He needed an agile, skilled infiltrator and right now, the Tah’Heen fit that description. It wasn’t lost on him that he was assisting in the downfall of a people who were devoid of greed and run on ideas and politics rather than wealth. All of this for a dirty great lump of cold hard currency.
That was the weakness of these… Federations. They could stretch out as far as the eye could see, deep into all of the corners of the Galaxy, but there was one certainty, one absolute across all cultures and species. That absolute was money. Trade… Well, it was fine for starters but it only reached so far.
The Tah’Heen grinned while anticipating his next challenge.
“Their starship will be crossing the boundary of the Korleenaq system,” the towering anonymous hologram before him said in a booming voice. “When they do, you will be initiating a sensory suppression field. I want to see how this starship copes when they’re cut off from their base of operations and forced to stagger in the dark.”
“As you command, sir,” nodded the Tah’Heen.
“You will monitor only. Do not engage. I am not ready to assess their weapons.”
“Of course. I will keep my distance.”
“See that you do.”

ACT ONE

“I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Sollik revealed.
“Oh, yes?”
Lieutenant Arden Vuro cocked his blue-skinned head in curiosity as he looked at his friend from across the Mess Hall table. It was the first meal that they had shared, so far, discussing the recent revelation concerning Sollik’s hidden genetic abilities. Being the chief engineer’s best friend, he knew that it was difficult to openly discuss such things for the Suliban, but he knew that the more that it was discussed, the easier it would be and the less of an issue that it would become. Having these chats with him had helped both men accept what it meant and what the genetic abilities would spell for the future career of the Lieutenant Commander… and now they could talk about other things with all of their bases well and truly covered.
“Gabriel Brodie, our new tactical officer,” Sollik continued. “What’s he like?”
“Well, you’ve seen him about,” Vuro answered shortly. “You tell me.”
“I’m not a Bridge officer. I haven’t seen him in action. I was just wondering what you thought about him. That’s all.”
The Bolian helmsman made a face. It was suddenly clear that Sollik had touched a nerve with his question, but it was a nerve that had been previously unexposed. Now that there was clearly fodder for a continued discussion, the Suliban pressed on, half out of concern for his friend and half out of sheer curiosity.
“What? Has he been reckless? Don’t you like him?”
“He’s a perfectly fine officer,” Vuro sighed,” if a little brash and unruly, sometimes…”
“... but?”
Arden paused for a long moment. He thought that he could bury this and that it would be a problem. Sollik’s direct question had thrown him. He hadn’t been expected to be pressed on the subject of Lieutenant Commander Gabriel Brodie yet or to reveal the history that stood between them.
Of course, Brodie himself wouldn’t talk about it. He didn’t even know that Vuro was Fortitude’s helmsman until he had come aboard and served his first shift on the Bridge. It had gone too far. Sollik knew something was wrong and Arden knew that he couldn’t dismiss it or hide anything any longer. Not after this meal, so he leaned back in his chair and put his fork down.
“When I was at the Academy,” he began his story,” I was a member of the Martial Arts Society, along with Gabriel Brodie. He was a year ahead of me but we were pretty much on equal standings in the Society. It infuriated him that a Bolian could be so good. He thought that we were all supposed to be jolly, round people who were terrified of a fight and good only for menial tasks aboard starships.”
“You’re saying that he’s a racist?”
“Probably not now, but back at the Academy… I don’t know. I mean, it’s not uncommon for young men and women of any culture to have extreme views, and his best friend in the Society was a Vulcan. I think that it was more to do with the fact that I was better at martial arts than he was.”
“That’s it?,” Sollik exclaimed with a wide-eyed expression as he ran his slender fingers across his bald, green skull. “He was mean to you on Friday nights at the Academy?”
“Well, that and he cheated during our final contest. He broke my ankle in an illegal move that the judges happened to miss.”
Sollik nodded his head. Of all people, he suddenly understood. His own personal grudge against the dearly departed James Morgan had seethed away in the back of his mind for years after Jim’s Academy actions had caused serious injury to the Sulivan engineer. He could relate and so he simply nodded his head.
“I see…”
Arden was grateful, though he was left feeling a little guilty.
“All senior staff,” the Captain’s voice interrupted their conversation,” report to the Bridge.”

* * * *

Captain’s Log, Stardate 50974.2;
We have entered the previously-unexplored Korleenaq system and discovered an unsettling piece of news. Somehow, all of our subspace communications links with Starbase 499 and the Santrag system are being suppressed. My ship and crew are completely alone, with no way of calling out for assistance from home. While I have faith in our ability to survive out here, Starfleet regulations suggest that we turn tail and run for it… but I want to know what or who has cut us off like this.

When Arden Vuro walked out of the turbolift and onto the Bridge, he almost ran past the tactical console and the stoic frame and expression of Gabriel Brodie. If he hadn’t brought it up until now, he had either forgotten or he simply didn’t want a showdown. Neither did he and that was fine.
Pushing his personal mindset aside, the Bolian took his station at the helm and put on his professional face. Two steps behind him, Sollik headed for the starboard engineering console and transferred Main Engineering’s interfaces to his fingertips.
As soon as both men were in place, Captain Ewan Llewellyn began issuing orders from his command chair. “Helm, bring us to a full stop,” demanded his Welsh accent.
“Aye, sir,” Vuro acknowledged. “Helm is answering at a full stop, Captain.”
“Good. I don’t want to go deeper into this system until we know what’s going on here, but I also don’t want it to look like we’re running for cover. Sollik, I want a full diagnostic analysis of our communications system. Find out why we can’t talk to 499.”
“It should take the better part of two hours, Captain,” Sollik informed him.
“Then you had better get to it,” Ewan nodded.
As Sollik left the Bridge to better facilitate his new assignment, a worried look spread across the smooth features of Ensign Jason Armstrong. Calling out from his Ops console, he caught the attention of Captain Llewellyn and Commander Valerie Archer. Both of them joined him to see what had him so concerned.
“We’ve just lost long-range sensors,” Jason revealed to them.
“What the hell?,” Valerie asked nobody in particular with a frown.
“Are you sure that you detected no natural phenomenon in the entire Korleenaq system before this latest failure, Ensign?,” Ewan asked him. “I don’t want to get paranoid when it could simply be an electrical storm or something.”
“No, sir, nothing natural. It’s a pretty empty system that’s not even inhabited. Wait…”
All eyes were on Jason at the Operations console.
“Damn it. Captain, we’ve just lost short-range sensors, too. We’re blind, sir.”
“Navigational console isn’t responding, Captain,” Vuro called out to him.
Ewan returned to his command chair and slumped helplessly into it, letting his face fall into his cupped hands. This wasn’t how he had envisioned returning to his peaceful mission of exploration, this morning.
“Oh, for the love of…”

ACT TWO

“All right, let’s discuss our options.”
While Sollik was furiously waking up every single crew member with any kind of practical engineering experience and putting them to work as he tried desperately to counter the loss of the communications and sensor arrays, the rest of the Senior Staff was gathered together in the Briefing Room at the behest of Captain Llewellyn. Ewan knew that his crew worked best as a whole, each of them acting as they were merely a part of a larger machine. Putting their heads together, they might find a fresh angle that hadn’t been previously considered. Given the nature of the crisis, how he wished that his chief engineer was present.
“We know that it’s nothing natural,” Valerie voiced, starting the brainstorm. “I think that we should be looking for whoever has done this to us.”
“Do you think it’s some kind of dampening field?,” Ewan asked her for confirmation.
“Absolutely. Somebody’s toying with Fortitude here.”
“Whoever that somebody is, Captain,” they’re powerful,” Jason Armstrong spoke up with trepidation ruling his expression. “To create a successful dampening field around an entire star system would require either considerable energy reserves or a type of technology that we’ve never encountered before.”
“What about directed dampening fields?,” Vuro ventured a guess. “Surely it could be a single field aimed at us alone? Without sensors, speculation could mean--”
“We don’t need speculation,” Gabriel Brodie cut in, interrupting the Bolian mid-sentence and causing him to snarl in dislike of the black tactical officer. “We need action and we need it now. Captain, we can use computer records to extrapolate our exact current position in relation to the Korleenaq system. If our helmsman is capable, he can plot a safe, methodical search pattern so we can get searching!”
Ignoring the jibe at Arden, Archer had a larger concern. “Searching for what, Mister Brodie?,” the First Officer asked him slowly. “Without sensors, there’s a limit to what we can do. What happens when we fly into a planet?”
“With all due respect, ma’am, this starship has windows, doesn’t it?”
“You want to fly Fortitude by peering out of a window?,” Vuro exclaimed, thinking that the idea was a ridiculous one and rightly so since modern starships weren’t simple, straightforward craft. Sensors were the mainstay of every single operation when it came to moving through space with essential navigation. Still, that was known so he decided to try and score another type of point against Gabe. “Say we encounter an alien vessel and they try to make contact? Without communications, what do you suggest that we do? Wave to them, perhaps?”
“It sounds like somebody’s scared,” was Brodie’s retort.
“How dare you --!”
“All right, that’s enough, gentlemen!,” Llewellyn snapped at them, raising his voice to a tone that hadn’t been heard since the Borg incident. “I can’t have my officers fighting each other while we’re fighting an unseen enemy! Whatever bad blood there is between you, stow it!”
Both men mumbled their apologies to the Captain.
“Now,” he continued,” I’m forced to agree with Mister Brodie. We won’t accomplish anything by simply standing still. Nobody ever has… well, except the accomplishment of standing still in itself… Anyways, we do things carefully, but we do them all the same. Arden, start plotting a search pattern. I want nothing faster than impulse power. That should give us some reaction time if we run into anything big.”
“Captain, at least, wait until Sollik has reported back with his…,” the Bolian helmsman attempted to interject, hoping that Gabriel Brodie wouldn’t win this round. The fact that he wasn’t able to finish his sentence dashed that hope immediately.
“I’m sorry, Arden, but I’ve made my decision.”
Well, that was that. Resigned to his defeat, Vuro bowed his head.
Gabe flashed a brief victory grin as Ewan concluded the meeting.
“Okay. Dismissed.”

* * * *

Two hours later, Arden Vuro was seated at the helm, undertaking an action that he never imagined that he would ever let himself undertake. Inputting course corrections, his hands expertly danced across the LCARS display before him, though the viewscreen was blank. The navigational sensors were blank. He might as well have closed his eyes and touch-typed his work, for today, he was flying an Intrepid-class starship entirely blind. The nerves of the entire crew, all one hundred and forty of them, were directed squarely at his station. And the blame if it all went wrong? Well, at least, he would share that with the architect of this insane plan, Gabriel Brodie.
The Bridge was quiet.
The Captain was down in Main Engineering with Valerie Archer and Sollik, working on some way of cutting through whatever interference that was clouding their sensor and communications systems. Without sensors, they couldn’t even detect what the interference was and so it was definitely a tricky situation. Jason Armstrong was the only other senior officer on the Bridge, along with a handful of junior crew members who were all far too preoccupied with watching Vuro’s careful actions.
The turbolift doors swished open to reveal Doctor Katherine Pulaski. She headed for the helm with her reason for the rare Bridge visit hardly needing any pretense.
“Checking up on me, Doctor?,” Vuro smiled weakly.
“Of course,” she replied honestly. “The lack of a ship’s counselor means that I’m the closest thing that you’ve got to support during these heightened moments of stress.”
“Ah, flying blind is unsettling but I don’t think I’d say that --”
“I didn’t mean your job,” Pulaski revealed, leaning over the helm while she observed the Bolian’s actions. Leaving the hint in the air, she decided to change the subject rather abruptly to exactly what she had just discussed with him. “How exactly does this rather mad plan of Commander Brodie’s work, anyways?”
“We’ve got stellar cartographers at windows on all decks,” Vuro sighed, lamenting over the very words that he was speaking. “They’re constantly updating my status display with data regarding what’s out there. The most interesting thing so far has been a passing comet, and when I say passing, I mean that in the same way that Earth happens to pass Venus every once in a while.”
“Then everything’s going well,” Pulaski pointed out.
“Yes, everything’s going well,” he repeated.
“And yet it’s not, is it? The Captain told me about your little duel with Mister Brodie in the Briefing Room. I wondered if you wanted to talk about it.”
Arden shot the doctor a wide-eyed expression of slight disbelief. “If I make one wrong move here…”
“I understand, and I don’t expect you to suddenly open the emotional floodgates,” the reassuring comprehension and knowing tone of Kate Pulaski kicked in. “I just wanted you to know that anything you want to talk about… doctor-patient confidentiality isn’t restricted to physical ailments, Lieutenant.”
“Thank you, Doctor. I’ll -- “
All of a sudden, Vuro spotted a flashing alert on his left side. Pulaski moved aside as the helmsman swung his chair across the width of his station, his eyes narrowing as he focused on the incoming report. A crewman on Deck Four had spotted something out of a window and he was streaming the data to the Bridge.
It wasn’t good news.
This was what he had been afraid of.
“Red Alert!,” he yelled. “Captain to the Bridge! “We’re not alone out here!”

 

[admiralelm11]

ACT THREE

Captain’s Log, supplemental;

According to visual scanning, an unknown alien vessel is sharing the Korleenaq system with us in our hour of desperation. After taking some holographic images and feeding them into the main computer, we’ve drawn a blank on who they might be. Unfortunately, due to our compromising position, we’ve lost them. I keep expecting the bulkheads to come crashing down around our ears at any moment…


“Not a single match?”
Valerie Archer shook her head as she delivered the report to Ewan Llewellyn in his darkened Ready Room. The crimson lighting of the Red Alert status was deeply foreboding. Every member of the Fortitude crew was expecting to be colliding with an unknown alien at any time. The sensor array was still crippled and the communications system was still producing nothing but subspace static. The processed holographic images of the spotted alien craft that failed to produce a match had once again failed after a more extensive computer search, leaving her with no new news to give her Captain.
“I’m starting to think that we’ll never find out what’s doing this, Ewan,” she admitted, dropping the rank titles as she always did when they were speaking frankly. “Although you didn’t ask for it, my advice would be to turn around and head for him. We can send the Katherine Johnson out here from Starbase 499 later. Let a science vessel worry about this mystery.”
“Firstly, your advice is always welcome, Valerie,” Ewan said, smiling from behind his desk as he set his PADD down and lifted his coffee cup. “Secondly, the Katherine Johnson is an Oberth-class starship. If this is a malicious attempt to cripple us, I wouldn’t feel right about leaving and sending a smaller ship back here to answer our unanswered questions. We’ll stay a bit longer, but you’re right, I’m starting to think that we should call it even and make a break for home.”
“That ship, though,” Valerie pointed out, acting as the counter to his slow descent into defeat,” could have something to do with this. Having said that, they could easily be a cargo vessel or a passenger liner. We just don’t know.”
“It shows how reliant we’ve become on technology, doesn’t it? If it wasn’t for the possible danger or lives being potentially in the balance, this would make a fascinating case study for a sociological professor. Anyways, that’s not what’s important here. I don’t know, Valerie. Seriously, I don’t. One day, I would just love to chart something, a planet or a star system. Make a dull routine run-of-the-mill entry into my log saying that we encountered a new type of star or made First Contact with a really friendly alien species. I just want a normal day.”
“With all due respect, Ewan, if you wanted normal, then you’re in the wrong job.”
“Good point…”


* * * *


Vuro was wholeheartedly relieved when Captain Llewellyn stepped out onto the Bridge and asked for a status report. For almost four hours, the helmsman had not only been the ranking officer in charge but also the one responsible for flying Fortitude in circles around an uncharted region of space. Just the Captain’s presence immediately steadied his nerves. Gabriel Brodie’s plan wasn’t just reckless, he thought. It was stupid too!
Ewan took a seat in his command chair, joined by Valerie beside him as they made a few calculations on their respective consoles. Soon the turbolift opened and unleashed Gabe who quickly took over the tactical console when he spotted the grey shoulders and red collar of the Captain’s presence. Sollik followed behind him, tired of his constant system-fiddling in Main Engineering. The Suliban literally fell into his chair at the engineering console.
“All right, everybody,” Llewellyn began after obviously having collected the senior staff together from his Ready Room before coming onto the Bridge,” after giving our situation some further thought, I’ve decided that staying here and trying to discover whatever is crippling our systems is a futile effort. With the sensors or a communications station, we can’t detect or talk to anybody or gain any relevant information. So… we’re heading home.”
Arden gave an audible sigh of relief, along with Jason Armstrong over at Ops who, for obvious reasons, had his own small distrust of the newcomer Gabriel Brodie.
Sollik nodded in simple agreement, respecting the authority of the Captain’s four rank pips over his own personal beliefs and decisions. The only person who had anything to say on the subject was the architect of the idea to stay and fly blind.
“Captain, permission to speak?”
“Granted, Mister Brodie,” Ewan turned towards him and nodded,” although I think I know what you’re going to say. You want us to stay longer.”
“Absolutely,” Brodie emphasized with his dark eyes open wide. “Sir, we’ve only been doing impulse circles for a couple of hours! Of course, we’re not going to find anything this quickly! Give it some more time!”
“But we’ve already found something,” Vuro blurted out from his position at the helm,” and we were unable to do anything about it! An unknown alien ship. Was it friend or foe? We can’t decide and we can’t act! I’m sorry to interrupt, Captain,” the Bolian carefully added with a glance to Llewellyn who cocked his head in allowance,” but Lieutenant Commander Brodie speaks of wanting action. I can understand that want and I respect it but let’s be honest. Without the sensors or the comms system, we simply can’t survive out here. Even if the answer to this mystery landed right in our laps by beaming right onto the Bridge, what could we do?
“Call for help? No.
“Scan it for data? No.
“Apologies but you’re wrong, Brodie. You’re wrong. Bravery sometimes involves admitting your shortcomings.”
There was a moment of silence.
Everybody stared at Arden. Such an outburst was incredibly uncommon. It had never happened before. Not from him. Jason wore an expression of near-admiration but slight fear over what might happen next. Archer and Llewellyn just started at the blue-skinned man, still seated firmly in his chair, as did Sollik.
Then a slight chuckle broke the tension.
It was Gabe.
“You know, Vuro,” he revealed,” all you had to do was say something.”
In that instance, the arrogance was gone. All that Vuro could see now, standing there at the tactical console in the Starfleet uniform and yellow collar, was a fellow officer. The annoyance, the hatred, it was gone. There was nothing to replace it, of course. No instantaneous respect or friendship but a fraction of humility.
Gabriel Brodie had just admitted that he was wrong and he had just agreed with him. Yet, in itself was annoying to the helmsman and slowly the previous emotions crept back into place. The expression on his face said it all, showing the complete and utter bafflement at what had just happened.
Humans were definitely complex creatures.
“Okay, well,” Ewan finally spoke, standing up now,” well, with that complete, Helm, using the existing sensor data in the computer, I want you to reverse course, take us to Warp Five and the Santrag system.”
“Aye, Captain,” Vuro complied with his order.
“Engage at your discretion.”
He did.
Nothing happened.
“I hoped that your discretion would be a little more immediate,” Valerie said with a smile.
“I don’t understand,” whispered Arden.
Once again, he tried to activate the warp engines.
Nothing happened.
“Arden, any time today would be nice,” Ewan pressed him, frowning.
“Captain, warp engines are offline!”
Before the sentence was even finished, Sollik leaped into action, hammering away at his own LCARS display before Llewellyn could even order an analysis. As the data came through, with Main Engineering becoming a torrent of organized chaos as crew members frantically tried to respond to their superior officer’s requests, the green scales on the Suliban’s face contorted into disgust and horror.
It wasn’t good news.
“Captain, I … The warp core is operating properly, but we’re unable to create a stable warp field. I can’t locate the problem. Without sensors…”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that Fortitude can’t go to warp,” Sollik spelled it out for him. “We’re stuck here.”
Swallowing him, Ewan turned back towards the helm. “How long would it take us to get home on full impulse power?,” he asked, dreading the answer.
“Approximately one hundred and fifty years, sir.”


EPILOGUE

“You have done well,” hissed the hologram.
Grinning with the expectant greed that ruled his actions, the Tah’Heen just kept thinking about the next paycheck that he would be receiving from such praise. The anonymous paymaster’s image flickered before him, promising to make that paycheck substantially larger than before. The latest assignment had been tricky. Risky too, but not impossible as he had proven by succeeding perfectly.
“Thank you,” the Tah’Heen said with a bow.
“You may deactivate the local sensory suppression field now,” the booming voice continued to order. “The beacon that you planted on their hull will continue to render their communications and sensor grids useless while also canceling out their warp field. Are you certain that it is secured properly?”
“As you directed,” confirmed the spy.
“And are you certain that your ship was not seen by any of their crew?”
“Without sensors, how could they have?”
The hologram leaned over slightly, just enough to make the tidy hair that adorned the top of his silhouetted scalp fluctuate as it touched the edge of the holoprojector’s circular field. Despite being only a trick of the light, it was a frightening feeling to have such a shape loom over him, dramatically, and the Tah’Heen felt both of his stomachs tie themselves in a knot as he backed down slightly.
“Never assume anything,” growled the paymaster. “Assumption is the first step towards defeat. These tests have been specifically designed to make any assumption irrelevant. When we finally strike, we won’t have to assume anything.”
“Yes, of course,” stammered the Tah’Heen.
“Do not fail me, spy.”



The End.

 

[Cobalt Frost]

Definitely enjoying the stories. You might want to check the formatting/spacing on that last one though; a lot of the sentences were on top of each other, making big blocks of text.

 

[admiralelm11]

Thank you, Cobalt Frost. I will admit that I posted that last one on the fly. Anyways, if anyone wants to read any of the Fortitude stories, I keep them here.

Home | Star Trek: Fortitude (wixsite.com)

 

[Galen4]

Nice work! I still have to get fully caught up, though! I'm speed challenged.
I also like the Fortitude site. I plan to dive in more when I get the chance.

Peace and long life!

 

[admiralelm11]

Thank you, Galen4. Here's another installment in the Fortitude universe.


Star Trek: Fortitude
Season Three, Episode Five - “Alone”
By Jack D. Elmlinger


PROLOGUE

Darkness…

Complete and utter darkness…

Ewan Llewellyn had no idea where he was. He felt weightless, a sensation that he hadn’t experienced since his zero-gravity training at Starfleet Academy. Surrounding him was a choking blanket of darkness. There was nothing but an endless shadow that seemed to stretch out for infinity.

Of course, the Welshman couldn’t tell. Tilting his head downward, he saw his own feet, cold and bare. Where the hell was his uniform? Damn it. No wonder he was freezing. He was completely naked!

Then a light…

Something was approaching him…

Something bright…

Ewan threw his hands up in front of his face. The light was too powerful. His eyes were accustomed to the darkness and he was recoiling in pain at the sudden flashes of pure white light. Whatever it was, it was approaching him fast. Blinking through the pain, he saw a sphere take shape. It was familiar and yet, strange to see. Rotating before him, growing in his field of vision was a planet… Class-M, with peaceful blue oceans meeting rolling green continents dusted with fluffy grey clouds.

For a moment, Ewan thought it was Earth, his homeworld, his birthplace… but no, it wasn’t Earth. It was another world entirely and suddenly he saw what gave it away. There, beside the planet, was a structure that he had seen before, knew of, and loved. It was a structure that was home to his friends and colleagues…

It was Starbase 499 and that made the planet to be Santrag II.

He was close now… so close that he could almost reach out and touch it…

The weightlessness was replaced with a sharp feeling of descent. Gravity, with all of its gut-wrenching horror, brought Ewan crashing down into the shadows. Santrag II fell away with Starbase 499 joining it…

Screwing his eyes tightly shut, he waited for the impact with nothing else to do…

That was when he woke up, alone, in his quarters.

Just like his nightmare, he was far away from the place that he called home.


ACT ONE

Captain’s Log, Stardate 51026.3;


It has been almost five weeks since my ship and crew were left blind and voiceless by an unknown suppression field. It’s also been almost five weeks since our warp drive was also rendered useless. Despite our best efforts, we have been unable to determine the source of our troubles. With no other course of action available to us, I have ordered the slow and steady course back towards the Santrag system charted and engaged. On a personal note, the circumstances have left me unable to sleep as I am deeply affected by the sense that this crew is my responsibility and that I am unable to save them from one hundred and fifty years of limping home like a wounded dog.


“Both shuttlecraft have returned to the ship,” Valerie Archer was saying,” and their crews report that they found nothing on the hull for the third time, Ewan. Their independent sensors are completely useless as ours are. Sollik wants permission to take one of them further out from Fortitude and see if we’re the one generating our own problems here.”

Llewellyn was completely tuned out. He hadn’t heard a single word. It took several well-placed coughs from his First Officer before she simply slammed her PADD against the surface of his Ready Room desk.

“Hmm… sorry, what?”

“Oh, hey, Ewan,” she quipped,” did I disturb you?”

“My apologies,” the Captain said, sighing. “I didn’t get much sleep last night. It’s been much like every other night since we stumbled into this nightmare. You were saying something about Sollik and a shuttlecraft?”

“Just another desperate scheme,” she assured him with compassion in her eyes. When he had lifted his head away from the desk, she had seen the exhaustion in his eyes, the utter remorse and hopelessness that he was desperately trying to hide from the crew. They needed a strong leader now… and a strong leader, Ewan was not. Of course, she couldn’t blame him. She would be feeling exactly the same way if she was in his position.

“Desperate schemes seem to be the order of the day,” Llewellyn pointed out to her, not needing to remind his close friend of the moment when he had ordered the ship to be navigated by noses pressed up against windows, over a month ago. “Tell Sollik if he thinks that it’s an acceptable risk, then he can make preparations and give me a full briefing within two hours. I’ll probably sign off on it anyways, but we might as well follow the rules. Although I can’t remember the part in the rule book that talks about procedures while drifting aimlessly through unknown space…”

“Well, let’s look at this on the bright side,” Valerie smiled. “We are truly going and doing what nobody has done before. That truly makes us Starfleet.”

“I’ll get out a bucket of paint and change the name on the hull to Enterprise…”

“That certainly wouldn’t hurt…”

They laughed together. It was a weak and hollow laugh but it was still a laugh. Ewan had almost forgotten what laughter sounded like since the past five weeks had been devoid of humor. Tensions had reached a snapping point on several occasions.

Jason Armstrong was running some of his infamous 20th Century B-movie holodeck programs to give the crew a chance to vent some of their violence and anger, but it hadn’t been enough to stop Arden Vuro and Gabriel Brodie from rediscovering their differences after the ever-so-slight hatchet burying that they had managed at the start of the current crisis. Reports of minor scuffles over minor things were becoming commonplace.

Oh, sure, they were only Human. Ewan knew it was either violence or retreat into one’s self and ever the pacifist, he had chosen the latter. Still, he was only one man out of a crew of a hundred and forty at the end of the day, no matter what the four pips on his red collar meant.

The weak laughter was broken when the Ready Room was bathed in a bright flash of topaz light. It was coming from outside the ship, from space. Whatever it was, it was both powerful and close.

Ewan stood, following Valerie to the window.

It was some kind of vortex, sensors or no sensors, that much was clear.

Both officers watched as a vessel emerged.

Fortitude had company.


* * * *


“There’s a vessel incoming,” Ewan Llewellyn told the Bridge crew as he entered from the Ready Room. “Go to Red Alert!”

Understanding the unusual order, Gabriel Brodie immediately instigated the shipwide klaxon and switched the lighting from standard to dark crimson. Normally upon meeting a new alien vessel, such drastic measures weren’t taken by a Starfleet officer with no sensors, no communications, or the ability to beat a hasty warp-powered retreat, it was the natural protective action for the heightened alert.

“All decks report ready, Captain,” Brodie reported a second later.

“Arden, what are your spotters saying?”

Hunched over the helm, the Bolian examined the reports that he was constantly being streamed by the crew members whose new permanent job was to watch the cold depths of the Beta Quadrant for anything that the sensors would usually find. Those at windows points in the right direction were eagerly chattering about the new arrival. Several images flashed upon his display and he routed them to the main viewscreen.

“She’s holding steady for now,” he said of the unknown vessel’s movements.

“At least, it gives us some time to speculate,” Ewan sighed.

“Are those weapons ports?,” Archer asked, moving forward with concern.

“No, ma’am,” Jason Armstrong called out from his practically redundant operations console, his insights as analytical as his sensors could ever be. “They’re sensor pods. I’ve seen similar designs on a Sheliak warship. They look formidable but it’s simply the arrangement of the directional finders.”

The vessel did look rather formidable. It was large and it had a pointed nose sweeping aft into a pair of rather impressive wings laced with the sensor pods. The large cluster of engines towards the rear of the craft glowed a deep orange hue which was at odds with the otherwise perfect silver chrome hull. According to the additional data being punched up by Vuro’s spotters, she was also large. From observation-only, her size was predicted to be that of a Galaxy-class starship, nearly six hundred meters in length and packed with decks.

“Captain, they’re moving,” Vuro suddenly exclaimed,” towards starboard. I’ve got three spotters predicting that they’re attempting to dock, sir! Starboard docking ring, saucer section… connection in three, two…”

The deck rocked underneath everyone’s feet.

Ewan showed Valerie his expression of apprehension. Who were they? What did they want? Why were they boarding Fortitude? Those questions needed answers and standing on the Bridge wasn’t going to find them.

“Valerie,” the Welshman said, nodding.

“Mister Brodie,” the First Officer barked upon receiving the nod from him,” you and your best security team, with me! Starboard docking ring! Let’s go!”


* * * *


Moments later, Valerie Archer stood with her phaser in hand, braced and ready for action as Gabriel Brodie moved to stand beside her. Together, they aimed their weapons at the airlock door of the starboard docking ring. They listened to the work underway on the other side, wondering who or what was trying to access Fortitude. Around them, eight young security officers flexed their muscles and their grips on their compression rifles, blinking through the fear of the unknown to get a better aim.

“You follow my lead,” Valerie warned the reckless Brodie. “Shoot when I tell you.”

“I’ll shoot when I see danger, Commander,” Gabe replied, his eyes narrowing.

Suddenly the airlock doors burst open into a shower of sparks. As soon as the shower had passed, the sparks cascading to the floor, several forms burst forth. Before anyone could react, the black tactical officer clamped his eyes on the weapons in their hands and jumped to the conclusion that he had always suspected.

The danger had arrived.

Gabe opened fire.


ACT TWO

They were fast, whoever they were… whatever they were…

After Gabriel Brodie’s first two shots had taken down the first two intruders, Commander Archer had taken a few steps back to find a better cover position. Three more of the aliens emerged from the smoke clouding around the docking ring.

They were also armed and thanks to the exchange of weapons fire already underway, they were now prepared to return the shots that had dropped their comrades. This time, everyone had a better look before responding to the plasma bolts that now burned through the air towards them.

Their arms and legs were simply too thin to be organic.

As they walked, the sound was almost… metallic.

Shooting one of them directly in the chest, Valerie watched it twitch and writhe in supposed agony. Then she noticed that the open wound wasn’t seeping blood but rather tiny arcs of energy. This wasn’t due to the agony of the phaser blast but rather due to a short-circuit in the alien being’s systems. They were a boarding party of robots: slender, mechanical men who returned fire with a methodical and precise aim.

Two Starfleet security officers fell to their plasma rifles, groggy from the blasts but very much alive if only stunned.

Then Archer heard a voice cry out, a strange unfamiliar voice. “Protocol Vunek! Stand down! Stand down!”

The robots stopped in their deathmatch, their arms neatly folding their rifles to one side as they snapped to some form of attention. Only the lead pair closest to Valerie Archer and Gabriel Brodie kept their rifles in a trained position. Poking her head out from behind the bulkhead, she watched as the voice that had stopped the robotic attack was given a form. It stepped over the broken metal of the dead machines and took up a position behind the obviously defensive and still active ones.

It was humanoid and Valerie guessed male, but no one could ever tell.

In fact, this individual looked incredibly Human… except for the skin tone which almost matched the polished chrome of his vessel and his robotic army. A small cranial ridge, nothing too pronounced, poked out from underneath a mane of jet black hair.

“We come in peace,” he was shouting. “Peace! I apologize!”

Despite a glare from Gabriel Brodie who still had his phaser raised in anger, Valerie cautiously rose from her position and lowered her sidearm. She locked eyes with the organic individual before her, trying her best to convey sincerity and forgiveness through her expressions it was hardly needed, seeing that the Universal Translator was already working, but it was the Human thing to do.

“My name is Commander Valerie Archer,” she slowly stated. “You have boarded the Federation starship Fortitude with an armed party… and I need to know why.”

“Forgive me,” the alien blustered. “Our robotic assistants should not have been armed as they are programmed to respond to threats without calculating any of the factors that you or I would normally consider… I’m sorry. My name is Tano Jmara of the Shurvun exploratory vessel Vunara. We attempted to communicate with little success so we assumed that you were having some kind of trouble.”

“That’s awfully forward of you to dock right away with us.”

“We are a headstrong people,” Jmara replied earnestly. “I only meant to make First Contact with you. I didn’t mean for there to be a firefight. Rest assured that our weapons are always set to a stun setting. Your people will be fine.”

As the smoke of the battle drifted before her, Valerie Archer didn’t know what to say.


* * * *


“Tano Jmara, I’m Captain Ewan Llewellyn. Welcome aboard Fortitude.”

Awkwardly shaking hands, the new friend of the starship Fortitude had obviously never encountered such a gesture before. Beckoned to a seat in front of Ewan’s Ready Room desk, he wore a permanent expression of timid guilt. Ewan understood why after having been fully briefed by Valerie about the docking ring shootout. Taking his own seat, he arched his fingers as he posed the question that everybody involved had been dying to ask, especially with sheer curiosity overcoming perhaps even more pressing requests.

“Robotic shipmates…?”

“It’s something of a new trend in our fleet,” Tano admitted sheepishly. “As I told Commander Archer, the Shurvun people are a headstrong people. If we don’t get responses or we can’t find answers, we, unfortunately, have a tendency to jump right in and take a look around for ourselves. It is a habit that our people have lamented, but it simply cannot be helped. For whatever reasons, Captain, once again, I apologize profusely for the misunderstanding.”

“You can’t fight your nature so I can’t hold you to any blame. If anything, I should apologize to you,” Llewellyn smiled, surprising his guest. “Our crew will be fine, thanks to your weapons being kept on stun. However, my tactical officer destroyed two of your robotic crewmates. Are they easy to replace?”

“Oh, my, please… please, think nothing of it. The reason that we’ve adopted robotic machines in our more dangerous roles is simply to prevent the loss of actual life. We have a plethora of space machines in our cargo hold to account for such losses. So again, please… don’t apologize for simply defending your ship. I can only hope that you can forgive me for my inquisitive nature and for my presumption in boarding Fortitude.”

“You had good intentions,” Ewan pointed out to him.

“Indeed. Your communications are broken somehow, yes?”

“Not only that but our sensors too. Our warp field is also refusing to cooperate with the laws of physics at the moment. We’re suffering rather badly, I’m afraid to say, and that brings me to my next question.”

“I believe I can guess that question, Captain,” Tano interrupted him, his silvery skin folding into something akin to a child caught with his hand deep inside the cookie jar as he spoke. His guilt was evident. “I’m afraid that my answer is going to have to be no.”

Ewan’s eyebrows arched in surprise. “No…?”

“We cannot help you.”

 

[admiralelm11]

ACT THREE

Captain’s Log, supplemental;


The glimmer of hope that was provided by our meeting with the Shurvun has faded. Tano Jmara had revealed to me that the Shurvun equivalent of the Prime Directive expressly forbids the use of Shurvun technology to benefit another race. Even if relations with that race are friendly and sincere. I now have the difficult duty of explaining this to my senior staff.



“What kind of selfish -- ?

“Okay, I’m going to stop you right there, Sollik,” Captain Llewellyn immediately cut in, causing the Suliban chief engineer to freeze with his scaled jaw locked in a silent gasp. “We have a series of laws just like the Shurvun. While the Prime Directive upholds the principles that we hold dear and find to be just and proper, there are those who we have encountered who believe it to be a pompous and overblown document. I’m sure that I don’t have to remind you of the incident with the Pekeni, eighteen months ago, do I? When a war-torn race asked us to share our weapons systems with them and we had to refuse them?”

“That’s totally different,” Sollik continued to protest. “That was about arming a race. All we’re asking for here is a tow and perhaps a once-over of Fortitude with their sensors to check for anything that we might have missed!”

Ewan decided to stand. It was such a minor aspect of these briefings but when he stood over the table and over the seated senior staff, it made him feel like the Captain. It made him feel that little bit more important. Even if, deep inside, he felt wretched about these decisions that he had to make on their behalf.

Today was one of those days. He was preparing to let the Shurvun vessel depart without pleading for assistance and for the simple reason that, like it or not, he could see where Tano Jmara was coming from. Clasping his hands behind his back, he recited what he had been told in his Ready Room and the reason why Fortitude was being left behind, blind, mute, and limp in the middle of nowhere.

“The Shurvun are an insanely nice race,” he began his recitation. “They have a culture built around charm, peace, and expanding their knowledge. I must admit that it was jolly nice to see such things for a change. They are headstrong and impatient at times, as we learned today, but it is born out of a genuine desire to explore. According to Tano Jmara, when the Shurvun first began to explore space, they met a race that openly shared technology with them. Eager to please their new friends, the Shurvun vessel provided some sensor enhancements… that were later used to plan out an imperialistic invasion. Since then, the Shurvun have vowed never to offer any piece of their technology, no matter how small to anybody outside of their own culture. I can understand why.”

Sollik rolled his beady yellow eyes as he was clearly not impressed.

The rest of the senior staff responded slightly differently from the chief engineer. Looking from face to face, Ewan could see that some of them agreed with Sollik. Gabriel Brodie, in particular, appeared to be mightily annoyed with the situation. However, the others were more compassionate to the Captain’s position and his overall decision.

Jason Armstrong nodded in agreement as did Katherine Pulaski from the other end of the table. Vuro was silent, reflecting on the morality of the issue as he always did, and Valerie… Ewan could see that she was being her usual wonderful self. She simply smiled at him with a smile that warmed his heart and made it skip a few excited beats.

“You’re right to accept their rule book, Captain,” Pulaski said, breaking the silence. “As you say, we have our rules that we would never dream of breaking. We would be hypocrites to uphold the Prime Directive and yet expect other cultures to abandon their moral codes just because we need their help.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” Llewellyn nodded gratefully at her. “That’s exactly what I mean.”

“So, in a hundred and fifty years when Fortitude floats into Santrag II,” Gabe piped up, voicing the other side of the coin,” what then, sir? What happens when we’re all wasted away and dead?”

Ewan fixed his tactical officer with a stare. “We’re not dead yet.”


* * * *


The next few hours went by at a crawl. Tano Jmara had one final meeting with several members of the senior staff before he was called to the starboard docking ring to finally bid farewell to the Intrepid-class starship. While he and Captain Llewellyn wished that they could stay in one another’s company a little longer, both of them the explorers that their chosen professions demanded of them, Ewan knew that his crew would become restless hanging out with an alien race that refused to help them in their hour of need. The lack of sensors, communications, and warp drive had been plummeting morale to an all-time low lately and despite the slight boost that the Shurvun had initially given them, there was something to be said for the road home, however slow that road might be.

To that end, the silvery hand of Tano Jmara was taken by Ewan once more, this time as a parting gesture between understanding friends. Flanking the alien explorer were two of his robotic crew members, static, lifeless, and no signs of plasma rifles on them this time. Ewan found them a little unsettling like ethereal skeletons that whiffed of grease and oil but it was all part of the experience in meeting new races.

“My apologies again, Captain,” Tano was saying.

“Please, there’s no need,” Ewan said, shaking his head. “I’m a member of Starfleet, working in the employ of the United Federation of Planets. I respect the laws of other cultures. That’s what my crew and I are out here for.”

“My only hope is that we might meet again, one day. Our star system is not too far from here, although I am prohibited from revealing its exact location. I’m sure that you understand that too. If you do return, you shall be welcomed with open arms, let me assure you. I’ll even give you a tour of the capital myself!”

“I look forward to that,” Llewellyn smiled, only half-faking it. “That is if we ever get ourselves sorted out.”

Tano pondered for a moment before making his parting promise. “Tell you what, Captain. While I may not be able to help you directly, I will give you my word that any other vessels that we encounter will be told of your plight. If they appear to be friendly and are willing to offer you assistance, I’ll give them your heading and tell them what you require. Of course, only with your permission?”

Llewellyn smiled again, this time his handsome features were grinning with a genuine appreciation for his guest. It was a work-around that he hadn’t even considered as he had been so adamant to stick to the moral debate of the issue rather than bothering to think up any alternatives that had been pushed far out of his mind.

Opening the repair airlock door, he stepped aside to allow Jmara to pass into the waiting Vunara with his unadulterated thanks. “You are a true gentleman, sir. Thank you.”

Ewan watched him leave, seeing the immense silver chrome vessel disappear from sight, knowing full well that he had made a friend and that he would like to see the Shurvun homeworld for himself, one day.

It was literally the silver lining to the whole crisis.


EPILOGUE

Revolving peacefully in orbit of the glistening Class-M jewel of Santrag II, Starbase 499 hadn’t been visited in quite some time. Neither the Steamrunner nor the Katherine Johnson had been launched in almost a week. The daily schedule of events was so empty and so infrequent were communications from the surface, thanks to the recent political upheaval that had been witnessed firsthand by Rear Admiral Edward Blackmore and Station Master Erica Martinez.

It wasn’t the empty spaces on the schedule that had either of them concerned. No, once more, a day had slipped through the sands of time where the scheduled events had failed to come to pass and that simply deepened the worry lines spread across Blackmore’s forehead.

The Rear Admiral’s office rotated to face the unexplored depths of the Galaxy, the rest of the Beta Quadrant’s maw yawning towards Edward’s unblinking gaze. He wasn’t looking at the stars today. He was looking into them, searching in some idealistic and yet hopeless fashion to see a glimpse of the USS Fortitude, NCC-76240.

The door chimes rang behind him. “Come on in,” he growled, motionless.

Erica Martinez entered the room, her striking Latina features were a picture of disquiet from behind the cascades of her long dark hair. She was holding a PADD and yet it was hardly needed for the news that she was about to deliver. It was the same as it had been for the past four weeks. The same when Blackmore asked the question: “Have we heard from Ewan lately”? Today, as it always was, the answer came in the form of a negative.

“Let me guess,” Edward foretold her response. “Nothing new.”

“Silence on all frequencies, Boxer,” Erica answered with a sigh.

Gritting his teeth behind his salt-and-pepper beard, Blackmore turned on his heel sharply and marched right up to the Station Master. His gray-shouldered uniform was held perfectly in place by the Federation Crest belt buckle despite his rough and sudden movements.

“Screw this, Erica,” he hissed with determination. “Fire up the Steamrunner for me and prepare her to launch as soon as possible. I’m going to find out just what the devil Ewan Llewellyn has gotten himself into this time!”



The End.

 

[admiralelm11]

Star Trek: Fortitude
Season Three, Episode Six - “Old Debts”
By Jack D. Elmlinger


PROLOGUE

“A sensory what…?”

Scratching his grey beard as he usually did in times of severe confusion, Rear Admiral Edward Blackmore frowned as he tried to concentrate on what Station Master Erica Martinez was telling him. Despite his better judgment, the Latina woman had demanded to accompany Boxer on his rescue mission.

Now, standing together in front of the main viewscreen of the USS Steamrunner, NX-52126, she was proving her worth as an excellent officer, acting outside the usual confines of her position as commander of Starbase 499.

“A sensory suppression field,” she was saying. “We’ve found six of these buoys positioned around this sector of the Korleenaq system. They’re designed to act in concert to drown out all communications and sensors.”

“And you think that Fortitude blundered into this and has gotten lost?,” Blackmore asked her.

“This was the last place that we knew they were stopping, Boxer,” Erica pointed out to him.

“Hmm… if that’s true, Ewan could be anywhere by now, flying blind…”

Despite her role as a defensive dreadnought, the Steamrunner had been flying into the deep unknown recesses of the Beta Quadrant for ten days solid now. Ever since his sudden declaration of a rescue mission, Blackmore had grown more and more concerned for his friends aboard the USS Fortitude, NCC-76240 with each passing minute.

With a long sigh belying his advanced years, the Rear Admiral nodded as he processed this new information. “Do we know who left this trap behind?,” he finally asked Martinez.

“That’s the interesting part,” Erica told him, raising an eyebrow. “Remember that virus that infected our new uniforms, a couple of months ago? Remember how we speculated about the source and how the Tah’Heen came up?”

“Don’t tell me…”

“You’ve got it, Boxer. These buoys are Tah’Heen technology.”


ACT ONE

Personal Log, Rear Admiral Blackmore, Stardate 51085.9;


Our search for the missing starship Fortitude does not proceed with as much success as I had hoped. While the limited speed and sensors of the USS Steamrunner were expected factors in the negative column, this new evidence of Tah’Heen involvement leaves me feeling cold. First, a virus, and now a dangerous web designed to incapacitate and blind innocent starships… and we just happen to lose contact with Ewan? A picture is being painted here and all of the brush strokes point towards a Tah’Heen plot against the Federation presence in this corner of space…


It had been a long time since Edward Blackmore had commanded a starship into space. Over a year had passed since the unfortunate incident with the USS Winchester, NCC-2799, and the subsequent loss of that Miranda-class starship to a devastating particle fountain. Each time that the Rear Admiral gathered up enough courage to consider taking the command chair again, the memory of that ill-fated mission came back to haunt him. It had shaken him considerably. Waking up on that Sickbay biobed and learned that his actions had resulted in her loss…

At his age, such things had bigger impacts on one’s outlook. Life was growing shorter and shorter. Mistakes couldn’t be made. And risks couldn’t be taken, not simply to satisfy a personal yearning.

That was Blackmore’s outlook, anyway. He had lived a full life with years packed with service both bold and outstanding. He had adventures that he had never even comprehended and seen sights that he could have never imagined. There was a reason that Starfleet Admirals were given desk jobs. They belonged behind them, making sure that those out there flying the starships around learned from the mistakes of their elders.

Not today. Today, he let the risks be damned.

Ewan was in trouble. With Fortitude missing… it justified everything.

Marching out onto the Bridge of the Steamrunner as she streaked across the stars at high warp, the Rear Admiral watched the crew work the sensors and the helm in their deployment of the search grid that he had personally overseen. If Fortitude was out there, limping around in the dark, thanks to the blasted Tah’Heen, he would find them and save them from whatever fate that whatever powers-that-be had planned for them.

There were too many questions to be answered for it to end this suddenly. Too many layers of the onion to peel back before the driving force behind the recent troubles could be exposed. He couldn’t do it alone. He needed his friend and trusted right arm.

He needed Ewan Llewellyn.

“Erica, report,” he growled as he assumed his place in the command chair.

“We’ve picked up nothing of interest,” the beautiful Latina woman replied from the First Officer’s chair beside him. “The stray ions that we picked up earlier turned out to be that… stray, and not the impulse wake that we believed them to be.”

Blackmore sighed. Yet another false hope. Turning he shook his head at the Station Master to his right. “How are you holding up?,” he asked her, sympathetically. “It can’t be easy. What with--”

“No, it’s not,” she cut him off, knowing full well that he was referring to her hidden feelings for Ewan that had been harbored for so long and nurtured in secret. “Being out here, looking for him… it helps. It’s damned better than just sitting back on 499, twiddling my thumbs and waiting for your call.”

“At least, it keeps you on your toes,” Blackmore noted, smiling slightly.

“Not only that, but it’s not just Ewan that we’re after,” she pointed out to him. “There are one hundred and forty crew members aboard Fortitude. All missing, all with loved ones or family or friends, somewhere. We have to find them, Boxer.”

As if on cue, an alert sounded from the helm console.

Both Blackmore and Martinez leaped to their feet, walking forward and leaning over the ensign’s grey-covered shoulders. The LCARS display was showing something that was both promising and gut-wrenching at the same time. Sharing a look of deep concern that smothered the glimmer of hope in Erica’s eyes, they returned to their seats and began preparing the Steamrunner for battle.

There was weapons fire ahead of them.

Starfleet weapons fire.


* * * *


“Shields, Mister Brodie?”

“At sixty percent, Captain,” yelled the black man through a shower of sparks that cascaded dramatically over his shoulders. “Now… fifty percent! We can’t take much more of this, that’s for sure!”

The USS Fortitude was under attack. Thanks to the total lack of sensors or communications, nobody aboard knew who their attackers were. The absence of any warp capability almost made any kind of effective escape impossible. That meant that the terrified and lost Intrepid-class starship was reduced to firing random shots into the cold recesses of the Beta Quadrant in the vain hope of hitting… well, something.

Slowly, reports had come through from Lieutenant Vuro’s spotters. Positioned at viewports and windows through the fifteen decks below the Bridge, they tried hopelessly to relay the positions of the enemy ships as the bulkheads holding them together rocked and buckled.

“Three more bandits,” the Bolian shouted from the helm towards Tactical,” bearing at three-nine-one, mark four-two-six!”

“Firing photon torpedoes spread three,” Gabriel Brodie confirmed from his station.

There was an uneasy pause with nobody quite knowing if any of the warheads had hit any of the aliens. With a foreboding sense of reality, the complete and utter desperation of the entire battle suddenly punched Captain Ewan Llewellyn in the chest when, finally, one of Arden Vuro’s spotters reported that the entire volley had missed. Lurching backwards into his chair with yet another precise strike by their faceless foes swarming around them, the Welshman’s tanned visage contorted as he shot a look towards Commander Valerie Archer. She shared his concerns silently in reply with a look of her own.

“We’re never going to win this,” he whispered.

“Listen,” Valerie began awkwardly,” I’ve been meaning to -- “

“Don’t… please, not like this at any rate. I refuse to accept that this is over.”

The deck shook again, violently enough to knock Valerie away from her chair and face-first onto the floor. Ewan was there, picking her up gently. With an arm wrapped around her shoulders, the bleak nature of the chaos around them was almost choking so much so that they grew closer… and closer… and…

“Captain!”

Snapped back to reality by the Kentuckian accent of Ensign Jason Armstrong, Ewan blinked hard before responding, brushing away the warm feeling that he had been enjoying while staring deep into his First Officer’s beautiful eyes.

“What is it, Jason?”

“I’ve got a crewman on Deck Six telling me… oh, yes!”

“Out with it, Ensign!,” the Captain barked, back on his feet.

“Sir, it’s the Steamrunner! She’s here!”


ACT TWO

Captain’s Log, Stardate 51085.9;


After a furious and spectacular four-against-one dogfight, the USS Steamrunner has succeeded in driving away the alien bandits who were threatening to destroy my ship. With communications offline, my crew and I have been left with the strange dilemma of trying to contact our friends without actually talking to them. To that end, I’ve ordered what remains of our shields to be lowered in the hope that somebody over there will work out our predicament and beam over directly.


It took longer than expected.

Drumming his fingers along the armrest of his chair, Captain Ewan Llewellyn had been waiting for five whole minutes for the crew of the Steamrunner to figure out that Fortitude was obviously incapable of holding a conversation with them over the communications system. While he had seen some of the space battle from his Ready Room window and knew that the other Starfleet vessel had taken several pretty nasty blows, surely they would be quicker to answer the blatant distressing needs of the larger starship, no?

When the whine of a transporter beam was finally heard, Ewan stood from his chair. Before him, at the center of the darkened Bridge, Rear Admiral Blackmore appeared before him.

“Boxer!,” cried the Captain, forgetting rank in front of his senior staff and other Bridge officers. “It’s so good to see you again!”

“Hello there, Ewan,” Blackmore grinned as he stepped forward, alone. “Listen, I’m sorry for the delay. We’ve taken quite a beating over there. Erica’s holding down the fort.”

“I can’t thank you enough for your timing.” Ewan smiled, the pain and isolation of recent weeks melting away almost instantly upon seeing the face of his superior officer. It was a face that he hadn’t expected to see again with one hundred and fifty years being too long to survive the journey home. “A few more hits and we would have been even more crippled than we are now. I take it you guessed that we’ve hit a few snags?”

“Right,” Blackmore said, nodding. “I’m only sorry that we didn’t get out here sooner. Still, we’re here now, ready to tow you back to Starbase 499… Only the damage done by those alien ships to the Steamrunner was pretty heavy. Basically, I’m here to pinch your chief engineer if you’ll let me.”

“What’s mine is yours, Boxer,” Ewan answered immediately.

Silence reigned for a few seconds. Both men wore relieved smiles, despite the dirt and battle-weary creases on their foreheads. They had both shared a fear of it all being over, a fear of loss and defeat in the face of the dangers of the unknown… And they had both emerged victorious, and undefeated, to stand together in this moment. Both of them knew that, after today, their friendship would only grow stronger.

“It’s good to see you all,” Blackmore finally acknowledged, looking around the Bridge to all stations. “To survive this… you’re all made of strong stuff. Be proud.”

“I’ll round up Pulaski and a medical team for you as well,” Valerie cut in, heading for one of the turbolifts at the back of the Bridge as Llewellyn and Blackmore walked over to the other turbolift and prepared to make their way to Main Engineering.

“Good thinking, Valerie,” Ewan thanked her, turning towards the Rear Admiral. “Now, let’s try to get, at least, one of our ships moving again, shall we?”

“That sounds like a plan…”


* * * *


Erica Martinez hadn’t been near a warp core in almost ten years.

At least, this one was functional, she thought to herself. Beside her, with the swirling blue lights making his green scales appear turquoise, Lieutenant Commander Sollik had been telling her about the mystery surrounding Fortitude’s warp status. All systems were working, apparently, and everything checked out. Yet, for some reason, a warp field refused to be formed, leaving the Intrepid-class starship at impulse speeds, struggling around the stars like an elderly person besieged by some unknown illness.

Hopefully, Erica thought to herself, they would be able to tow Fortitude back to 499 soon and solve a few of these mysteries. For that to happen, it would require a tractor beam. Unfortunately for the Steamrunner and her crew, one of the places damaged by the battle with the unknown aliens was…

“Yep, you guessed it,” Martinez pointed it out to Sollik. “The tractor beam relays are through here, right where an EPS conduit blew out half that wall.”

The Suliban engineer from Fortitude snarled in frustration at the scene that he was currently surveying with his narrow yellow eyes. It was a simple job to fix the tractor beam relays. That wasn’t the problem. No, the problem was getting to them. Almost a metric ton of twisted durasteel and melted interfaces lay in his path, along with several bio-neural gel packs that had burst their azure contents over the industrial wound like blood, adding to the horror of the image. For a Chief Engineer, it was a sorry sight, but for Sollik, it almost represented another hurdle entirely.

“I can get through it,” he told Erica, much to her confusion.

“Uh… how may I ask, without spending hours with cutting equipment?”

Sollik took a deep breath. He had a difficult enough time aboard his own starship, dealing with the revelation surrounding his enhanced genetic abilities. Nobody outside of the men and women serving aboard Fortitude had been told. Hell, even some of them didn’t know yet! Now an entire engineering crew, not to mention the Station Master of the furthest Federation outpost in the Beta Quadrant, were about to witness him deploy those very genetic abilities that he had feared revealing.

The hell with it! He could deal with their reactions and possible prejudice later. Right now, his fear of being stuck out in the middle of nowhere overrode his fear of peer rejection and so, wordlessly, he stepped towards the wreckage.

First, his left hand… then his right… and then his head…

Slowly, his entire body morphed around the gaps in the debris, snaking through until he reached the opposite side of the tiny space beside the tractor beam relays. As his body solidified, the gray shoulders and gold undergarment of his biomimetic uniform returning to normality, Sollik could feel the eyes of Erica Martinez and the Steamrunner engineering crew bore into the back of his head.

“What the…?,” the Latina woman breathed in disbelief of her senses.

“Much has happened since we’ve been away,” Sollik simply told her, tapping several commands into the tractor beam control pad and finding success met his touch. “The tractor beam is back online. What’s next?”

 

[admiralelm11]

ACT THREE

Captain’s Log, supplemental;


With the tractor beam and other repairs completed aboard the Steamrunner, we are finally underway, heading home to the Santrag system and the overhaul awaiting us at Starbase 499. As we travel, Rear Admiral Blackmore and I have started a full sensor sweep of Fortitude, using the unaffected sensor relays of the Steamrunner, to try and ascertain just what had been happening to us of late. Although, as I’m told, some of the answers may already be present…


“The Tah’Heen?” Ewan asked with a gasp. “Are you sure?”

“One hundred percent positive,” Ed was telling him, standing outside the only cargo bay found aboard the Starfleet dreadnought. As they entered, they locked their eyes upon the Tah’Heen buoy that they had picked up from the Korleenaq system. It was resting peacefully with an air of ominous intent around it. “This, along with six of its brothers and sisters was surrounding the area in which you got lost. The technology is confirmed as Tah’Heen, although we’ll get a better match once we return to Starbase 499.”

“We’ve got an image of an unidentified vessel,” Ewan started to explain, his hand running across the pockmarked surface of the buoy as he spoke. “When we lost sensors, Mister Brodie came up with a plan to station crew members at all of the windows … just in case, to avoid running into anything. Besides the Shurvun, who we managed to actually entertain a dialogue with, and those aliens that you just scared off… Well, it’s the only thing that we’ve encountered. I wouldn’t mind betting if we process the image through the Starfleet Database…”

“... that we would get a match,” Blackmore observed,” to the tune of the Tah’Heen.”

“Damn it, Boxer! Why us? Why do we, once again, find ourselves to be targeted?”

The Rear Admiral had no answer.

Together, he and the Captain left the buoy resting in the cargo bay, walking through the narrow corridors of the Steamrunner as their discussion turned to more personal matters.

Entering a turbolift, Llewellyn waited until the door was safely sealed and the familiar hum of transportation was heard before he opened up a little and released some honesty to his best friend. “I had a dream, Boxer,” the Welshman began, his expression being akin to both of the emotions derived from concern and relief. “In fact, I’ve had several. For almost five weeks, I’ve survived on barely any sleep and industrial amounts of coffee. I just kept thinking… it was my fault, you know? My ship, my crew… stranded, isolated… and under my command, my protection. I couldn’t save them.”

“What are friends for? Besides, I’ve owed you one ever since you saved my ass from the Winchester. Consider this to be an old debt repair.”

“And I thank you. I honestly do,” Ewan said, nodding with a smile. “But what if you hadn’t arrived when you did? We could all be dead. All of us.”

“But we did and you’re not.”

That statement ended the conversation right there. Ewan and Ed knew each other too well. Here was a possible slide into depression, or at least, serious self-deprecation on the part of Ewan Llewellyn. It was Ed Blackmore’s job to snap him back to reality and to remind him of what good that there was to still live for, to work for, and fight for. Together, they were underway, heading home… and that was enough for now.

“Bridge to Rear Admiral Blackmore,” the comms system interrupted their moment of silence.

“Go ahead, Bridge.”

“We’ve found something attached to the hull of Fortitude that I think you should see.”


* * * *


The viewscreen was dominated by a close-up of the port ventral quarter of the engineering section. It was as clear as day. It wasn’t even cloaked or disguised with any kind of camouflage paint or anything. It just sat there, flashing away, doing its nefarious suppression tasks to the systems of the USS Fortitude. As more and more data came in about the device, Ewan felt his hands clench into fists with uncharacteristic loathing and anger boiling within his pacifist exterior.

“It’s generating a micro-inversion around Fortitude,” Erica Martinez reported from the science station, standing beside the Steamrunner’s science officer who had detected the device in the first place. “That inversion is what was preventing you from forming a stable warp field, Ewan. it was also performing the tasks that those buoys were, but on a much smaller scale. No communications, and no sensors.”

“Is it Tah’Heen?,” Blackmore asked immediately.

“Unknown at this stage,” Erica replied with a frown. “We need to analyze it.”

“Beam me back over to my ship,” Ewan asked. “I’ll tell my people where it is and send them out in environmental suits. We’ll pry it from the hull and find some way of shutting it down. Then we’ll join you back at Starbase 499 as soon as we have warp power.”

The Rear Admiral nodded, signaling towards Erica for a PADD containing all of the data that Fortitude’s crew would need to find the device. As he handed it to Ewan, he paused, keeping a strong hold on it as he locked eyes with the Captain. He had noticed the rage within him and he knew what that rage was capable of when it was unleashed in those rare moments of inner exposure that had exploded over the past two years. They needed the device intact so they could study it to prove anything and to have any leads in the coming investigation.

Tah’Heen buoys, Tah’Heen ships, Tah’Heen viruses… they all needed as much confirmation as possible, and if Llewellyn were to blast that thing from his hull…

“Take it easy,” he warned him slowly. “As Erica said, we need to analyze it.”

“Gotcha,” Ewan said, agreeing with a lopsided smile and an understanding wink. “You don’t need to worry about me.”


* * * *


They stood together in Main Engineering. There had been very little reason lately to visit the technical heart of Fortitude. With the warp drive rendered useless, the core had been reduced to a pretty-looking centerpiece in an otherwise redundant chamber and nothing more.

That was about to change.

As Sollik entered, still wearing the white protective armor of his environmental suit sans the helmet, he approached Captain Llewellyn, Commander Archer, and Ensign Armstrong and held the device up for inspection. It was no bigger than a standard European football. Three menacing claws jutted out for it at strange angles and it had obviously been manhandled with considerable force to pry it from the hull.

“Whatever it is, it’s still working,” Sollik told the group with disdain. “I can’t find out how to disarm it. Sensors, communications, and the warp drive are still being suppressed by the inversion that it’s producing.”

“It looks like there’s a panel underneath there,” Jason pointed out, taking it from the chief engineer’s gloved hands and lifting it to get a better look. “Maybe we can get inside and gut it like a fish…?”

Valerie reached for a tricorder as Ewan reached for something else entirely.

“Put it over here,” Sollik was saying, heading for his console.

“I’ll get tools,” Jason offered, moving away.

Valerie saw what was coming next and she barely had time to get out of the way.

Ewan had a phaser.

Within a second, he aimed and mercilessly opened fire.

Sparks of energy flew from the device as the shell tore open. Smoke and flame swept through the technology inside of it, riddling it with injury. The flashing lights died away as did the tiny buzz that it gave off. No sooner had it finished to cease operating, a satisfying new sound filled the air. The warp core jumped back to life, joyous clunks and hums building to a victorious crescendo.

“We have warp power now?,” the Captain asked the stunned officers before him.

“Yes… yes, Captain!,” stammered Sollik, impressed and somewhat shocked by the outburst that he had just witnessed from his normally calm commanding officer. “Sensors, communications… everything’s back online!”

Ignoring the small cheer from the engineering crew, Ewan raised his head as he lowered his phaser. Valerie joined him, standing at his side as he called out to the communications system and got a gratifying response.

“Fortitude calling Steamrunner,” he said triumphantly. “Boxer, thanks for the lift but I think you can deactivate your tractor beam now. The device is offline. We managed to save, well, at least something to analyze later. We’re setting course for Starbase 499 and we’ll see you when we get there!”

“Acknowledged, Ewan,” replied Blackmore’s voice. “Welcome back.”

“It’s good to be back,” Llewellyn smiled, sharing it with his First Officer before making another, more local call. “Bridge, this is the Captain. Arden, I was wondering… has your console lit up like a Christmas tree yet?”

“A what tree, sir?,” answered the confused Bolian.

“Never mind! Set a course for Starbase 499 and engage at Warp Eight!”

“With pleasure, Captain,” came the response. “Warp Eight, aye.”


EPILOGUE

Santrag II… Starbase 499… What a glorious sight…

Standing with his hands clasped behind his back in a ponderous stance, Ewan was enjoying the simple experience of gazing out of his Ready Room window without having to file a report on what he was seeing. The sensors were doing that for him now, along with linking up with the Starfleet Database and working on the analytical process of matching a name to the image that they had sent over. That, and confirming that the buoy and the suppression device were definitely of the suspected Tah’Heen origin.

Such questions overshadowed his relief at being home. One time he might have called a different place home, but he hadn’t seen Earth in over two years now. The Santragan system, for all of the political problems that it had thrown up and all of the battles that it had suffered, was the safe haven, the place that he had fought for and suffered for, the place that had healed old wounds and it was healing his starship right now.

The door chimes rang behind him.

Katherine Pulaski entered upon his answer to the summons. The chief medical officer had been dealing with the transfer of the injured Steamrunner crew members over to the starbase hospital and the caring hands of the medical staff on Starbase 499. She approached her Captain with her arm outstretched and with a PADD grasped in her hand.

“Doctor?”

“I was on my way back from 499 when Boxer asked me to deliver this,” she informed him with a grim tone, though it was obvious that she had read it already. “He asked me to tell you that an investigation is underway and that the proper authorities are being contacted, hence his inability to brief you himself.”

“Proper authorities?”

“The Tah’Heen government, Captain,” she said with a nod. “All of it matches.”

Ewan took a deep, cleansing breath as he took the PADD from her. It wasn’t only to collect himself but it was also to brace himself against the unknown future that had just become a whole lot more dangerous for him, his ship, and his crew.

“And so it begins…”



The End.

 

[admiralelm11]

Star Trek: Fortitude
Season Three, Episode Seven - “The Way Things Were, Part 1”
By Jack D. Elmlinger


PROLOGUE

“... so why contact the government?”

Valerie Archer flexed her tired muscles, realizing that she had been sitting in the co-pilot’s chair of the Starfleet Danube-class runabout USS Snohomish, NCC-59876 for almost three solid hours.

Beside her, Ewan Llewellyn survived a mini-war with a powerful yawn in order to reply to her question. They were discussing, as everybody was these days, the Tah’Heen. Who had hired a Tah’Heen to attack and damage Starfleet vessels? What known Tah’Heen operatives were near the Santrag system? What was the motive behind such actions? Even now, the runabout shared by Fortitude’s Captain and First Officer was undertaking the long journey back to Earth to try and answer some of those questions, meeting with several intelligence experts on the way.

“Everybody knows that they make perfect spies,” Ewan answered, remembering the briefing that he had gotten from Erica Martinez the first time that the name Tah’Heen had been used in conjunction with the virus outbreak on Starbase 499 and aboard Fortitude. “While the actual government never endorses their actions, the simple matter is that their natural lack of fingerprints or residual DNA samples makes them excellent agents of subterfuge.”

“The question stands, Ewan,” Valerie pressed him, reaching for her coffee cup and finding it empty with a disappointed frown. “Why contact the government?”

“If they can help us identify which Tah’Heen has been following us around and messing with our ship, it can narrow down the search. Bloody hell, we’ve got to start somewhere. Otherwise, we’re just pissing off into the wind with a whole bunch of theories.”

“You know, sometimes you’ve got a wonderful way with words,” Valerie said, laughing.

“Benefits of a classical education, m’dear,” Ewan retorted in his best overblown Welsh accent, smiling through the confusion that had clouded his days. Suddenly an alert on his console added to that confusion, making him lurch forward. “Uh-oh, I don’t like the look of this.”

“Chronometric particle build-up,” noted his copilot. “Readings are off the scale!”

Through the twin viewports in front of them, Ewan and Valerie watched as the very fabric of space itself tore apart, unleashing sporadic arcs of lethal energy as the small runabout failed to make sense of the phenomenon and slowly started to fall inside of it. In a flash, and as quickly as it had appeared, the maw closed without a trace.

The Snohomish was gone.

Ewan and Valerie were gone right along with it.


ACT ONE

Coughing…

Lungs filled with smoke…

It wasn’t a nice thing to wake up to.

As he fought to breathe, Ewan Llewellyn found his feet and found the source of the smoke. A ruptured conduit stuck out of the bulkhead beside him. Shutting it down and venting the cabin of the thick clouds of smoke and replacing them with the sweet freshness of recycled atmosphere, he tended to his next important concern.

Valerie Archer was groggy but awake. She hadn’t moved from her place in the copilot’s chair, unlike Ewan who had been thrown backwards by whatever force had swallowed the runabout and thrown it… wherever they were. Checking her toned figure over for injuries, he found nothing major aside from a few dirty stains on the shoulders of her uniform which she probably sustained when the conduit blew. It was obvious what had tossed him across the Snohomish cabin like a ragdoll.

“Hey,” the Welshman said in a soothing voice as she opened his eyes.

“Hey,” Valerie replied with a weak smile. “I guess this is a silly question, but what just happened? I mean, besides all of the bright lights and loud noises? I got those…”

“You tell me. I was on the bloody floor.”

“This is no time to be lying about, Captain, sir,” she teased him, regaining herself to full capacity as he leaned forward, her hands immediately finding the LCARS display assigned to her station and getting to work. “It looks like you were right. Chronometric particle density is off the scale. The runabout is soaked in it.”

“All systems are operational,” Ewan noted after he moved back into the pilot’s seat and ignored the slight cut on his forehead, the blood nowhere near his eyes so it didn’t bother him. “Impulse engines are still running. Shutting them down, and answering full stop. I don’t want to go anywhere until we know where that anywhere is. Shields are raised. Okay, try and get a fix on our location.”

“Scanning,” Valerie confirmed, letting the computer work as she lifted the stray locks of her blonde hair away from her face and replaced them in her otherwise intact bun. The results would be in, momentarily, allowing her a second to glance properly at the Captain to make sure that he was just as fine as she was. As soon as she saw the blood, her expression quickly turned from relief to panic. “Ewan, you’re bleeding!”

“It’s nothing, just a scratch,” the Welshman said, dismissing it.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” the Commander countered, getting to her feet and finding the medical kit stowed nearby. Returning with a dermal regenerator, she set about waving it over the cut, sealing it up nicely in a matter of seconds. “There… that wasn’t painful, was it?”

“Don’t get all medical with me, Valerie. You know how I hate Sickbays.”

“Let’s just concentrate on where we are right now,” was her suggestion.

Ewan wasn't listening. He had spotted something out of the forward viewport. It was something that made him freeze up in his seat in shock. Everything around him was drowned out. The conversation with Valerie became a dull whisper, the flashing, and beeping of the systems that he was using faded into nothingness. All he could comprehend was the image that he could see before him… and even that was a challenge.

“I don’t think we should be worried about where,” he whispered,” but rather… when.”

Valerie followed his gaze and gasped in agreement with his shock.

Outside, looming over the runabout, was a starship.

It was a starship that both officers had seen before… in a museum.

It was the famous Enterprise, NX-01… from the 22nd century.


* * * *


“Do you recognize it, T’Pol?”

On the Bridge of the NX-class Enterprise, standing before his command chair in the blue jumpsuit of the 22nd century Starfleet and probably just as confused as his 24th-century counterpart aboard the Snohomish, the legendary Captain Jonathan Archer turned to his Vulcan science officer with a frown. Somehow, the vessel that was holding position directly in their flight path, had appeared out of nowhere, seconds ago. Their appearance was so sudden that Ensign Travis Mayweather had been forced to slam Enterprise into reverse, just to keep from colliding with them.

“This can’t be,” T’Pol answered from her science station.

“I’m sure it can,” Archer answered. “Come on, out with it, Subcommander.”

“They have Starfleet markings. At least. I think that they’re Starfleet markings.”

“It doesn’t look like any Starfleet ship that I’ve ever seen,” Lieutenant Malcolm Reed piped up from the opposite side of the Bridge, his tactical sensors now being deployed in an effort to back up or dismiss T’Pol’s claim. “Captain, I’m reading some powerful weaponry over there… antimatter warheads, phase cannons that are almost five times as focused as ours… and some kind of energy shielding…”

“Should I back us away?,” Travis asked from the helm.

“No, keep us here,” Captain Archer ordered him, stepping forward as his narrow gaze remained fixed on the viewscreen. “Hoshi, hail them.”

To the Captain’s left, Ensign Hoshi Sato typed several commands into her console and opened standard Starfleet communications frequencies, sending a pre-recorded audio message that she had recently programmed into Enterprise’s standard greeting protocols. Raising a smooth eyebrow in surprise at such a prompt response, she saw that the message was answered on exactly the same frequency before she could even blink.

The view on the main screen changed. It now showed the inside of the runabout with two Humans seated at the controls. Their concern and shock was also visible. Whoever they were, they obviously knew something that Archer and his crew did not.

“Captain Archer,” the youngish man said with a Welsh accent,” I’m Captain Ewan Llewellyn of the Federation Starfleet runabout Snohomish… and I’m sure that you’ve got some questions that you would like to ask us.”

“You’re damned sure that I do,” Archer replied. “You say that you’re Starfleet?”

“Yes, we are… but not the Starfleet that you know. We’re from the 24th century, and I think this is going to take some explaining…”


ACT TWO

Captain’s Log, Stardate…

… No, that’s not right. There are no stardates here. The actual date, as I’m told, is May 5th, 2152, and my runabout finds itself cruising alongside the Enterprise, NX-01 after encountering some kind of chroniton surge. It’s obvious that Commander Archer and I have fallen back through time and that we now face two challenges. The first one is convincing the crew of the NX-01 that we are who we say we are, and the second one is finding a way to reverse the time travel effect and return to our own century.


They sat across from one another, one Captain facing another Captain.

Jonathan Archer was having a difficult time assimilating the facts. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust the idea of time travel. On the contrary, recent events in his life and his mission had found him stuck in the 31st century, literally leaping back and forth across timelines as a result. No, the problem that he had was with Ewan Llewellyn and his female colleague. They were open, honest, and entirely honorable… which put him completely at odds with all of the other time-traveling beings that he had encountered.

Meanwhile, Ewan was finding that the history that he had been taught in school to be mostly accurate. Captain Archer was a straightforward, no-nonsense hero who asked some powerful questions with a powerful presence. He came complete with T’Pol, his skeptical science officer and the first Vulcan to last more than a week aboard a Starfleet vessel. She sat beside Archer with an eyebrow that was permanently raised. Ewan could feel the excitement and giddy nostalgia of Commander Valerie Archer beside him as his First Officer being somewhat of an expert on this time period. It was only then that it suddenly occurred to him about the surname ‘Archer’ and the 24th century Captain did his best to hide the potential embarrassment and confusion that it might cause.

“Okay, suppose for a moment that we believe you. I mean, you’ve got a fancy ship over there,” Captain Archer nodded, motioning with a hand out of Enterprise’s Briefing Room window towards the runabout. “You’ve also got Starfleet insignias on your chests, albeit they look a little… modified.”

“One of the smaller modifications made by history,” Ewan said with a smile.

“With all due respect,” T’Pol interjected, her tone as cold as ice,” you have yet to demonstrate your ability to travel through time effectively. While Captain Archer may be open to accepting your story, the Vulcan Science Directorate had declared that time travel is impossible. As Science Officer, I remain unconvinced.”

“You always do,” Valerie noted. She simply couldn’t help herself.

“What does that mean, Commander…?”

“Valerie Archer.”

No sooner had the words left her mouth, Valerie realized what she had done. Seated across from her, her ancestor instantly glared at her, as did T’Pol, even though she had already been glaring. The minds of the 22nd-century officers went into speculative overload, kicked into gear by the woman who now regretted answering so quickly without laying some groundwork before the revelation.

“Archer,” the Captain of Enterprise asked. “You mean…?”

“Valerie means,” Ewan interrupted him,” that we have a set of rules to abide by called the Temporal Prime Directive. While we can’t engage in free and easy time travel in the 24th century, it had been known to happen inadvertently, hence the drafting of those rules. The most important of them is not to reveal the future to those dwelling in the past. Not historical events, not technological advance… or family trees.”

“Nice save,” Valerie whispered to him.

“You owe me one,” he replied back.

Before anything else could be revealed at that moment, the communications panel behind T’Pol came to life with a deep Southern drawl that could only belong to one man. Captain Archer got to his feet and pressed the response button as the Fortitude officer heard, for the first time ever, the voice of Charles ‘Trip’ Tucker III.

“We’ve got those readings that you wanted, Capt’n,” he called out into the Briefing Room.

“Go ahead, Trip,” Archer replied.

“Quantum scans indicate that the vessel is from the future,” Trip confirmed. “The numbers are in the minus, to the tune of over two hundred and fifty years.”

“The latter half of the 24th century,” T’Pol mused aloud.

“Thanks, Trip,” Archer said, signing off before returning to the table and clasping his hands together as he once again resumed staring at Ewan Llewellyn. “You check out, but that still leaves one important question hanging out there. How did you get here?”

“We don’t know,” Ewan answered truthfully.

“Then maybe I can help with that.”

Four heads snapped towards a corner of the Briefing Room where a fifth person had entered the room. Both Ewan and Valerie drew blanks on his face, failing to recognize him from anywhere but both Captain Archer and T’Pol stood, their faces wearing shocked expressions.

“Daniels!”

“This is all an unfortunate coincidence,” Daniels stated blankly.

Both pairs of Captains and First Officers did nothing to hide their unimpressed snorts and frowns of indignant dissatisfaction with the answer. Here stood a Temporal Agent from the distant future, a man who spent his entire life studying and maintaining the timelines, keeping them from becoming tied in knots… and the best that he could say was that the Snohomish had fallen back to the 22nd century by coincidence?

“We’re supposed to buy that?,” Jonathan Archer snapped, jerking his head as he paced back and forth along the length of the Enterprise Briefing Room. His scathing expression shot towards the black-clad Daniels as he paused for a moment. “Besides, it hardly fills me with confidence. The last unfortunate coincidence that I found myself involved in alongside you ended up in the eradication of the 31st century!”

“I understand that,” Captain,” Daniels nodded,” and this is linked to that incident.”

“Hold on. Slow it down,” Ewan interrupted them, feeling like he had just walked halfway in through the show and needed a recap. “What incident, exactly, are we talking about?”

“There is a cold war going on through time,” the young Temporal Agent relayed carefully to the Captain of Fortitude. “It is a Temporal Cold War and the 22nd century is a front in that war. Recently, events between Starfleet and the Suliban Cabal came to a head and I was forced to transport Captain Archer forward in time with some… rather… catastrophic side-effects.”

“I’ll say,” the Captain of Enterprise said, rolling his eyes.

“Wait a minute,” Ewan paused, holding his hand up for a moment of silence,” all of this sounds a little familiar. That’s it! I was given a refresh on the Temporal Cold War recently by Sollik when his genetic abilities were revealed”

Valerie nodded alongside him, remembering that little skirmish.

“Sollik?,” T’Pol asked, breaking her cynical silence.

“My Chief Engineer is a Suliban national,” Llewellyn told her flatly, ignoring the glare from his 22nd-century counterpart and wondering if he had just witnessed a hint of racism on the part of Jonathan Archer. No, that was unfair. “Carry on, Mister Daniels.”

“Anyway, due to the recent temporal activity and fluctuations in the timeline which stem from the incident with Captain Archer and myself, the Temporal Cold War has heated up. Different factions are becoming more and more emboldened, striking each other without any provocation. This has had a disturbing knock-on effect of creating random temporal anomalies through history. You might call them… collateral damage. This is what pulled you here, Captain Llewellyn and Commander Archer. Your runabout fell through one of those anomalies.”

“Pulled towards me like I’m some kind of magnet?,” Captain Archer asked him, starting to understand the flow of the conversation. “Because of my recent trip into the future, I’m somehow attracting this… collateral damage?”

“Yes,” Daniels confirmed with a sharp acknowledgment.

There were a few seconds where the three Starfleet officers and the Vulcan scientist were able to catch their breath and take stock of what they had just been told. Daniels had been right. This was all one big unfortunate coincidence… and what a circumstance of chance to fall prey to, Ewan thought to himself. As if events back in his own time weren’t pressing enough, he needed to be there, carrying out the investigation into the Tah’Heen mystery without any annoying interruptions like, oh, being thrown two hundred and sixty years into the past.

He was just about to ask the next logical question when, sitting beside him, Valerie pre-empted his words. She had been thinking exactly the same thing and asked exactly the same question. Damn, they were so in tune…

“This explains how we’re here,” she pointed out,” but home do we get back home?”

“Honestly?,” Daniels replied, the timber of his voice being higher than usual. “I don’t know yet but I’m working on it. The timelines are very delicate at the moment. I’ll need some peace and quiet to figure out a feasible solution.”

“And what do we do about it in the meantime?,” Ewan asked him.

“Remain with Enterprise and don’t break your Temporal Prime Directive.”

Jonathan Archer and T’Pol shared a concerned look. It was a look that they usually shared when they both sensed a complication on the horizon. Whenever Daniels appeared, confusion and chaos usually followed in short order. Having a 24th-century runabout drifting alongside them couldn’t be as simple as all that.

Ewan simply turned to Valerie with a wry smile. “You don’t have any plans for the next few centuries, do you?”

 

[admiralelm11]

ACT THREE

Captain’s Log, supplemental;


Mister Daniels continued to work on a solution to returning Valerie and I to our own period in history aboard Enterprise. In the meantime, I’m trying my best to keep our interaction with the famous men and women serving aboard Earth’s first Warp Five starship to a minimum. It’s bad enough that I’ve got Captain Archer’s direct descendant with me, and to that end, we’re both returned to the Snohomish to finish off repairs and prepare for the journey home… whenever it may come…


Ewan handed Valerie the tricorder that she had asked for, crouching down beside the open hatch in the runabout’s deck plating where the Commander was working. With his own task complete for now, the Welshman fetched two mugs of black coffee from the replicator and returned, handing one of them to his First Officer.

“You’re loving this, aren’t you?”

“Repairing a plasma conduit isn’t my idea of love, Ewan,” Valerie answered, trying her best not to look at her superior officer’s eyes when she mentioned the L-word. Nevertheless, despite all of her tough exterior, she felt her cheeks grow hot.

“No, I mean being stuck in this time period, getting to see the Enterprise and meet Jonathan Archer. Seeing your favorite chunk of history up close and personal… You know that there are not many people who get the chance to actually do that.”

Valerie emitted a wistful sigh as she traded her tricorder for coffee. “I must admit that staying here for a while would be rather nice,” she finally revealed to him. “I mean, this was the time to explore space, Ewan. Think about it. There’s a starship out there with eighty people aboard, and that’s it! No backup from Starfleet, no starbases to dock with, and no knowledge of what’s out there… yet…”

“Mmm,” Ewan mused, countering her optimism. “We both know what’s coming for them. It’s not an all happy-go-lucky adventure in the coming years.”

On that rather downbeat note, foreshadowing the coming tragedies of the next twelve months to strike Earth and the crew under Jonathan Archer, the comms system rang off an alert, stopping their conversation before more positive examples could be pointed to. Upon answering, Ewan turned to see Valerie’s ancestor joined by Daniels on the Bridge of the NX-class starship. Their faces set the tone perfectly.

“Captain Llewellyn, we’ve got bad news,” Captain Archer told him. “Our sensors indicate that a small group of Suliban Cell Ships are on a direct intercept course.”

“Suliban,” Ewan repeated. “They’re the bad guys in this time period, right?”

“Unfortunately, yes,” Daniels chipped in. “They’re being led by a man named Silik, an agent of the Temporal Cold War. Somehow he detected your arrival in the 22nd century and he’s demanding that you, Valerie Archer and your runabout be handed over immediately for interrogation and analysis… or he’ll destroy us all.”

“How many vessels do they have?,” Valerie asked, joining Ewan at the controls.

“Lieutenant Reed estimates almost twenty,” growled Captain Archer.

“Even with your advanced weapons and shields aboard the runabout, and using Enterprise as backup, the odds of beating them in a firefight are slim,” Daniels added, just to add that extra weight of pressure. “All we know is that they’re after you.”

“Understood,” Llewellyn nodded, ending the transmission. “Valerie, raise shields.”


* * * *


Stars… darkness… silence… shattered by the screams of weapons fire.

The dirty burnt orange armor plating of the Suliban Cell Ships stood out as terrifying examples of one possible outcome as a frantic dogfight broke out between them and two temporally-challenged Starfleet vessels instantly the Suliban broke formation, diving for the Danube-class runabout. It was their target, their prize, the trophy that Silik would take back to his master and be rewarded with yet more genetic tricks for retrieving them. Opening fire, the Suliban scored three powerful hits against the USS Snohomish, but the benefit of the 24th-century shields rendered them mostly redundant.

As soon as more Cell Ships banked together for another strike, Captain Jonathan Archer of Enterprise proved his heroism. Without even thinking about his own safety, he ordered his ship on a course that intersected the life of fire. With only polarized hull plating instead of energy shields, the several hits that they subsequently sustained did some serious damage.

“Malcolm, return fire!”

“With pleasure,” Lieutenant Reed grinned, achieving the destruction of a Cell Ship with a single blast of their aft phase cannon. “One down, nineteen to go.”

“Bring us about,” Archer demanded, lurching forward to lean on the helm console beside Travis Mayweather as Enterprise shook violently around him. “Keep us circling the runabout. I don’t want Silik getting any more shots on target.”

Travis did as he was told, but with nineteen Cell Ships creating a thick swarm of plasma fire and hull plating around both vessels, it wasn’t long before the unfairly-stacked odds finally paid off for the attacking Suliban. Four of them slipped through the defensive flight pattern of the NX-01 and together, fired in concert at one specific point in the runabout’s shields. The maneuver was a success.

Captain Archer watched in horror as the Snohomish burst into flames.


EPILOGUE

Inside the Snohomish’s cockpit, the fog of concussion slowly lifted from Ewan Llewellyn as he staggered, once again, back to his feet. The computer was calling out something about a hull breach. It was quickly followed by a statement about how it had automatically sealed the breach with emergency force fields. Feeling the obvious deja-vu kick in, he turned back towards the controls of the runabout. Instead of finding his First Officer safety in the copilot’s seat, this time, he found Valerie Archer was sprawled out on the deck beside him… and she wasn’t moving.

“Valerie,” he gasped, falling to her side and lifting her head tenderly.

She gurgled something, her pupils coming back into sight. Dirt covered her forehead. Her uniform was torn in some places and as Ewan continued to look down the length of her crumpled body, he felt his stomach nearly explode in panic. Sticking out of her abdomen, there was an ugly blade of shrapnel. It was part of the LCARS display that had destroyed itself and sent shards of transparent aluminum flying.

“How… bad?,” Valerie asked, weakly, flickering back to life.

“Oh, nothing that we won’t be able to fix,” Ewan lied badly, tears forming in his eyes.

“Don’t get … all… medical on… me,” she chuckled in reply, fighting the pain and horrible sense of numbness that her limbs were succumbing to in order to echo Ewan’s own words from the last time that they had found themselves in this situation. “Listen, I… we… well, I think you… know what I… what I want to say…”

“I think so,” Ewan nodded, letting the first tear meet his cheek.

“Last big chance… to say it, I guess…”

Ewan tried to find some words, any words but failed. He was experiencing just as much pain as Valerie was. It wasn’t physical and it wasn’t from shrapnel. It was killing his heart as he cradled the woman that he loved in her final moments. The sounds of the firefight outside provided the soundtrack that both of them ignored as, after two and a half years of serving together aboard Fortitude as Captain and First Officer, all pretense of rank and position were discarded.

At that moment, they were just Ewan Llewellyn and Valerie Archer.

They kissed.

It was her final act, her final ounce of strength… her final breath…


To Be Continued…

 

[Cobalt Frost]

Aaarrrgh, cliffhanger!!

 

[Orbing Master]

Aaarrrgh, cliffhanger!!

I KNOW, RIGHT?!?!

 

[admiralelm11]

Dun, dun, dunnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn!!!! I feel like this might be some of my best work.